Napoleon was apparently spot on when he scornfully declared England a nation of shopkeepers (although he got the notion from Adam Smith). In the late 18th century, Britain had more shops and shopkeepers than anywhere in Europe. Oxford Street, with its glass windows and sumptuous displays, provoked envy and wonder in continental visitors. Provincial towns mimicked London's prodigality.
My particular provincial town, a bit more than two centuries later, displays little of this bustling enterprise. As I wait for the bus on a miserable English winter day, the shops clustered around the end of my street neither gladden the eye nor lift the heart. Two estate agents, a bank and a 24-hour store grace the corners. Beyond them are more estate agents, more banks, half a dozen charity shops, several cafés, two fish and chip shops, a post office, a bookie, a funeral parlour, four hairdressers and an interior decoration shop that must do most of its business online. There is a stationery shop, a hardware store, a newsagent, a useless present shop for well-heeled students—fluffy picture frames, egg-shaped mini-fridges—and a couturier selling bespoke wedding dresses. Dominating the scene are two middle-sized supermarkets. No food shops can flourish in their dull shadows.
My neighbourhood in Italy is not very different from my English one. It has fewer professionals and children, more pensioners, artisans and shopkeepers. A busy stream running through the area gives it a picturesque touch, but it is pretty ordinary, neither central nor fashionably out of town, neither poor nor wealthy. Yet the street between my house and the bus stop in the square is thick with shops, all of them run by their owners, many of them tiny and specialised. The square has a daily market for fresh food, flowers and clothes. But on the way down I pass, just on my side of the street, three clothes shops, a racy underwear shop, a tailor, two bakers, an optician, a sunglasses shop, a plumber, a shop selling windows and shutters, a lottery booth, a hairdresser, an upholsterer, a chemist, a delicatessen, a jeweller's, a bar, a chocolate and coffee emporium, a toy shop and an estate agent. It's the same on the other side: more clothes shops, an electrician, a glass-cutter, a furniture store, a leather shop, a clock mender: 43 shops in this street alone, and in the dozens more dotted through the neighbourhood you can buy everything from iron filings to a fitted wardrobe.
There is a small supermarket too, the Coop, about the size of a Tesco Metro, with no car park and terrible traffic jams at the checkout. It has only been there 30 years: Italy had no supermarkets until after the second world war. Rockefeller capital set up the country's first chain: calories counted in Italy's long battle between left and right. The owners of Supermarkets Italiani saw their shops as bulwarks against Russian influence, and its directors declared, "It's hard to be a communist with a full stomach." Local shopkeepers, powerful because of their numbers and the labour they absorbed, responded smartly. They had been Mussolini supporters but now they switched allegiance, thus ensuring that left-of-centre city governments kept restrictive practices and favourable zoning laws. As late as the 1970s only 2 per cent of Italian retail spending was in supermarkets. Even now, with out of town megastores and Ikea, chain stores have failed to kill off local shops and have to coexist and compete with them.
But shopping in my neighbourhood has always been about much more than buying stuff. Complex local loyalties and knowledge are at work. I patronise the Bar La Madonnina, but not the Bar Italia. I go to one forno, never the other: it would not do to walk past my friends Franco and Sandra in Il Buon Pane conspicuously carrying a loaf from down the road, and the same rule operates, even more obviously, with my hairdresser. Then, you might go to the Coop for its excellent meat, but the best mozzarella is at the Gastronomia Chianucci.
At the Chianucci old practices and modern retailing have come together. The owners are young but take their time in the old way. A severely leftist political talk show plays on the morning radio, the ubiquitous Italian peace flag is pinned up alongside the city's newest football hero, Luca Toni, and the Chianucci's baby toddles about in defiance of health and safety regulations. You will wait in line here and always pay more. You will have to listen to conversations and complaints and join in yourself. But for both the pensioners who come in the mornings and the young professionals who come on their way home between seven and eight in the evening, the quality and chat are worth the premium. Slow food, in other words, has never gone away, and now prosperity is keeping it alive. With slow food go slow household goods and clothing.
Britain still has more retail space per head than any other European country. Slow food has made a cute comeback with farmers' markets and delicatessens in prosperous areas, but it shouldn't be only for the rich or for Saturday morning. Local zoning laws and favourable business rates should be used to encourage other small traders. Then a neighbourhood computer technician might install my wireless technology instead of my having to spend several cursing, miserable, self-recriminatory hours doing it myself.
