OLD-TIMERS will tell you, and a scan of the history books will show you, that 5 o’clock might have been knock-off time once upon a time, but for shopkeepers it was a ritual sweeping of the doorways and front entrances to their shops that signalled the end of another trading day.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Reg Brody and Vince Bradbery might not have wielded the broomstick too often in their early days of working, but they remember distinctly that someone did – and that today it’s mostly another one of those rudimentary practices of a bygone era. Gone and mostly forgotten.
But, they chorus, maybe we should bring it back.
It would be one solution to what they see as the creeping disease eroding the beauty of Peel St in Tamworth.
The retired blokes are not just grumpy old men but proud Tamworthians keen to see the city avoid going to the scrapheap – at one time, we were at the top of the list for Tidy Towns honours right across the countryside.
Mr Brody and Mr Bradbery have been compiling a list of seedy-looking, scrappy, grubby, dirty shopfronts in Peel St.
They’ve uncovered tattered old posters on buildings, some of them advertising events at least eight months old, dirt-encrusted grime on shopfronts as well as dirty steps and doorways, peeling paint and grotty surfaces as a perfect example of what they’re talking about.
Bloody awful, they say. Disgustingly dirty. Where’s the pride in our place?
They’re right.
Many shopkeepers today concentrate on the shop fittings inside – the outside is left to the elements, the graffiti vandals, the public that drops muck and rubbish unthinkingly and often, deliberately most times, or the owners or landlords to keep an eye on things.
Hoses and brooms, once a staple of the daily agenda for shopkeepers, don’t often see the light of day today. When do you see someone cleaning the windows or facades?
And that’s the pity, despite deadlines, budgetary constraints, employee workplace agreements and plain old modern times.
But perhaps all is not lost. Pride is a perfect place to start to generate a retail revival in sprucing up the city. Isn’t it?