Seaside high streets, with their ice cream parlours, souvenir emporia, and off-seasonal waves of neglect, are among her favourite things. Boarded up, boarded up, betting shop, café, tat shop, charity shop. That’s how it usually goes. And in her town, the best charity shop is at the crossroads, over from the laundrette and with a view down to the prom and over the bay.
Sometimes, when she finds a gem at the shop—a Liberty shirt her size in fine tana lawn, a signed first edition from an earnestly edgy Granta author or a set of Le Creuset pans—she wonders why this one is so good. Do the staff have a particularly keen eye, or a hotline to the GP, to hear when people of taste are downsizing from house to care home? Whatever it is, she’s found all kinds of bargains, so she keeps coming back.
Issue 10
LOST SHOAL
Amelia Hodsdon is a writer and editor based in Gloucestershire, and has just finished an MA in nature and travel writing at Bath Spa. She likes finding out the why of places, particularly those that seem forgotten.