Nail bars

For Mothering Sunday I went back to the small town in which I grew up. Winding down the High Street towards the river is always a time-shifting experience. Each shop front is a veil behind which lurks the hidden face of its childhood version.

This bike shop was once the chemist. What was once the butcher’s is now one of those peculiar petite clothes shops, the sort where there will never be another customer to keep the shopkeeper’s oversolicitous eye off your browsing. The monumental mason once sold carpet tiles. The sportswear shop was, well, it was a different sportswear shop.

Just as confusing are the shops that have not changed. The old-fashioned hardware shop and it’s offshoot over the road (selling an unsatisfying array of furniture oddments) are just as they ever were. The grocer’s has evolved into a late-opening convenience store by such tiny increments that it is no longer possible to accurately reconstruct in the memory any of its previous incarnations.

The biggest change since my last visit only suggests itself very slowly. Dotted all down the stretch of the town are almost half a dozen small boutiques, offering a service I am sure was never available in the town as I grew up.

My hometown has a full handful of nail bars.

I feel such a stranger.