As my computer course was cancelled yesterday, S suggested that we go “up to The Mall”, a huge retail park north of Bristol. There is nothing we need to buy, but as it was, by now, sleeting, and the ground is very wet from all the melting snow, a vast shopping mall offers somewhere warm and dry where you can walk for a mile or so.

I know, I know, it’s all very sad. The idea of “retail therapy” is now seen as just a bit pathetic, but was so popular a decade ago. But that was when politicians, even some economists, were describing retail, and other services like banking, as an “industry”. It is not. Of course, we need shops. But the idea that we can sustain an economy by (mostly) importing stuff and then just selling it to each other (often on unsustainable credit) has always struck me as ridiculous.

This idea began (I would suggest) in the nineteen-eighties when the almost racist idea that dirty stuff involving factories and working outdoors would be best done by poorly-paid foreigners, usually in the far east, and the really clever stuff, like product design, banking, share-dealing, property speculation, going on holiday, eating out and funding the arts would be our responsibility in “The West”.

No-one told the foreigners, though, who, blimey, found that, they were quite able to do “the clever” things for themselves actually, thanks very much. In the meantime, Western countries are now up to their necks in debt, and desperately trying to “balance the economy”, i.e. get back to making and growing things for themselves.

I like the new regime, or “current climate” as it’s now known. I like the idea of saving up for, say, a really good quality, and therefore expensive, jacket which is going to last years, if you look after it. And repairing things rather than throwing them away. And making things, and growing food, in this country instead of transporting everything around the world.

Back to The Mall. As these places go, it was looking bright and clean and there are fewer empty units than I was expecting. But many shops were empty of customers, some big names have closed down recently: Jessops (of which more in a day or two) and HMV are the latest. The problem is that all the shops here are national chains; I could find exactly the same products in any town, so why would anyone come here, specifically, for any reason other than that it is the nearest incarnation of, say Next, M&S, Accessorize, H&M, Sole Trader, Clarks Shoes, H Samuel, other well-known jewellers, BHS, Boots, Waterstones (where I bought two books, actually), all the usual phone shops, Apple, Hush Puppies. And John Lewis. When you look through this list one thing strikes me: they mostly sell things that we don’t really need – blingy clothes, garish jewellery and unnecessary technology seem to predominate.

OK, rant over.

Jessops Camera Shops, in receivership.

HMV, in receivership.

The Architects – two full size upright figures inside the Mall. Did they create a huge white elephant or a useful, comfortable place to shop? We’ll know soon… Artwork, in bronze effect GRP, by Aden Hynes.