Another one bites the dust

Abstract

I'm writing this, fuelled by coffee and feelings of nostalgia, a bittersweet ache for a lost past. After a walk through my childhood town, I discovered that a local grocer shop had been razed to the ground, reduced to rubble. Tucked just around the parish church, it was a small stop that routinely punctuated the morning walk to school. The construction vehicle didn't just tear down the last remains of a small family-run modest shop which stood there for decades, it took with it a piece of the town's communal soul. [extract]