Spectator competition winners: elegy on the death of the High Street

The call for elegies on the death of the High Street brought in a large entry that was poignant and clever, and transported me back to teenage Saturdays under the spell of Dolcis, Lilly & Skinner and Freeman, Hardy & Willis. John Morrison’s lines ‘Oh Amazon how swift you rise!/ Swamping all before your eyes…’ spoke for many, though J.R. Johnson thinks that the roots of destruction run deeper, to Buchanan’s 1963 Traffic in Town: ‘Blaming online, high rents, might just be wrong/ It was Buchanan perhaps all along’. The winners earn £25 each. Bill Greenwell pockets £30.

Bill Greenwell Hear their doors and cash-tills close, Play their dirges, sing their blues, Dolcis Shoes and Bargain Booze, Ottakar’s and Rumbelows.

Each a loser, once a winner, Laid low by a store bacillus — Where are Freeman, Hardy, Willis, Where is Lilley, where is Skinner?

Soon they’ll vanish altogether Like Lipton, Dillons, Dunn and Co. — Even Past Times had to go With Littlewood’s and Land of Leather.

Where assistants leant and dreamt, Tumbleweed blows idly through: Fine Fare, Netto, Comet too — Even Poundworld’s not exempt.

Alan Millard Stop all the socks; return the tops and ties, Prevent the buyers ordering for the stores, Silence all the shoppers’ protest cries And grieve, for BHS has locked its doors.

Let Carpetright weave patterns of remorse And strip its rugs of all their fancy frills, Tell Toys ‘R’ Us to shroud the rocking horse, Let Poundworld ditch its coins and close its tills.

They were my life, my joy, my bliss, my all, My daily jaunts to join the happy throng, My High Street treasure chests, my shopping mall; I thought they’d always be there: I was wrong.

Blockbuster, Woolworths, Maplin, all closed down.