For the time of writing this piece, I am currently on my way home from a shopping centre .. the Trafford centre. It’s a place that has always had a place in my heart for good memories and just a nice feeling when I walk around, even if I don’t buy anything.
However things have changed for me here. One being that there are SO MANY shops that have closed and gone due to the pandemic … walking around remembering where shops were and seeing them boarded up was heartbreaking for me. Especially as some of the shops were ones I would always go I to and have good feelings about in my memories.
However, the shops that are still here and that I did get to go into also felt different to me … and I think the pandemic has hit stores more than just from sales and numbers .. but they seem to have lost their souls.
I don’t mean soul as in ethics or right and wrong … but soul as in how they feel to be in and around. For example, one shop I always enjoyed looking in was typo … they sell quirky stationary and reusable cups and all kinds of things. However, when I went in before, it didn’t feel the same .. while there were still quirky items … it didn’t feel right to me.
Upon self reflection, I feel that I could still be thinking and worrying about the pandemic and that it’s mostly me that has changed. So with me going into to places having the nostalgic feelings of before the pandemic, I’m just feeling off about it because places have had to changed and I guess I also have changed along the way. So with places having been in a lockdown for so long, and me only coming here for the first time since Feb 2020 .. I haven’t seen the gradual change and so it all hit me at once.
I mean that being said … I think I can adapt to the changing souls of places … hopefully we are able to keep the physical stores and hopefully those boarded up shops are soon filled with new and exciting shops.
Also … the food is still amazing … having had my first five guys burger in well over a year … it was just as good as I remember … and lately I’ve been making my own burgers and to toot my own horn … they’ve been epic, and five guys have equalled my own.
The only problem with relying on the food for me is that now I am a lot heavier and bigger than I was at the beginning of the pandemic … which I am working on rectifying as I go.
So while I’m not quite back to going into Manchester and out places without a second thought like I was before the pandemic … I think I’m slowly getting there … thankfully I’m double jabbed and who’ll hopefully be offered the booster .. stick me with all those needles.
Not quite there with wanting to get public transport or staying the night in a hotel yet … but maybe next year.
Which actually reminds me that I have to move a hotel date to summer as it was supposed to be for the night before we travelled to Florida but that trip was cancelled bad the hotel wouldn’t refund … so I’ve got between now and next summer to get alright with doing that.
…
Wish me luck
Couldn't help resist taking pics of my burger.
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