Whenever I need a pint of milk or a packet of sausages, and I need them in a hurry, I pluck up my courage and pay a visit to the worst corner shop in Ireland, writes Frank McNally
Maybe it's not the worst anymore. There was a time when it was a cast-iron rule that if I did need something in a hurry, it would therefore follow that the shop was closed. The business seemed to operate on the basis that its doors opened only after the owners could be reasonably sure everyone in the area had gone to work, and would shut again before any of them got back. Recently it has started opening a bit earlier. So maybe there are worse corner shops now in Ireland. But I'd say it's still in the top five.
Milk is one of the few things I can ever be confident it will stock. Sausages are pushing it. I've long since learned not to ask for anything exotic, like frozen pizza, or a tin of sardines. Or any kind of brown bread. In fact, I've developed the habit of doing a quick scan of the shelves (it doesn't take long) and only asking for things that are clearly visible. Otherwise you can be offered something you don't want and it seems heartless to refuse.
Once I made the mistake of inquiring if there was any washing powder. There was one brand, as it happened, and it wasn't a brand I'd ever seen advertised. It looked like it might have been produced in East Germany before the wall came down. It was also suspiciously cheap. No doubt there was nothing at all wrong with it and my doubts were a triumph for the evil marketing geniuses of Procter & Gamble. In any case it was already too late to say no. I went home with the washing powder, afraid to use it on anything except my old sports gear, which could benefit from industrial-strength bleach.
The shop has its charms. One of them is the woman who works there, a mere employee of the never-seen bosses, who spends much of her time apologising for the operation's shortcomings. She has to improvise a lot. The shop seems to stock eggs only in wholesale-size cartons, so if you need a half-dozen, she has to put them in a bag. There was no bread of any kind one day recently, because headquarters had forgotten to order it. The poor woman was mortified.
I don't know if it's her idea, but one of the shelves behind the counter is devoted to a small Marian shrine, comprising pictures of three of the holiest female figures in Christendom: the Blessed Virgin, St Bernadette, and (I swear) Princess Diana.
It must be because of the intercession of one or more of these that the shop is still in business.
Another of its charms is that it still has a counter. Younger readers won't remember this, but the traditional shop counter was a flat, horizontal device, usually made of wood, on which you could place your purchases while paying for them. It seems a crazy idea now, I know. For security reasons, most corner stores and newsagents these days install three-feet-deep chocolate-bar displays as a buffer between the shop assistant and the customer.
This can be a pain when you're buying a bunch of Sunday newspapers, full of supplements that fall out easily, and you can't simultaneously hold them and sort your change. So you have to dump the papers on the chocolate bars which, ingeniously, are sloped towards you. Presumably the idea is that a thief trying to hurdle the counter and rob the till will find himself sliding backwards to the floor in an avalanche of chocolate, whereupon the assistant can emerge safely and finish him off with a blow from a king-size Snickers.
Anyway, my corner shop still has a flat counter, with lots of space for your purchases. The problem is there's never much to put there. Sometimes when I'm buying a newspaper or milk, I look around for something else to take the mean look off it, or just to celebrate the fact that the shop is open. Often as not, there's nothing available that I'd use.
Exasperating as it can be, I have become emotionally involved with the shop, because it seems like a good cause. Or a lost one. There's a Spar a block away, which is 100 per cent devoid of charm and has staff who wouldn't apologise if you held them at gun-point. On the plus side, it is well stocked with food and stuff. But I feel like a traitor if I pass my local (unless it's evenings or weekends, when it's still closed) and head for the Spar, just because my decadent lifestyle demands such luxuries as brown bread.
The owners can't be making much money. And yet they have a potential gold mine, possessing everything you need for a successful corner shop: ie a corner and a trading licence. Its underdevelopment defies the laws of economics. Some enterprising immigrant will buy it soon, expand the stock and opening hours, and put his kids through college on the profits. Then the current shop will be just another quaint memory of old Ireland.
I miss it already.