Fast Forward Failure

There's been a fair bit of hoo-ha in the media in recent days about "the death of the High Street", what with big names like HMV, Jessops and Blockbusters trying to duck the financial vultures. The Internet is being blamed and all the pundits are offering their opinions.

To me, the main point is that a load of poor saps are going to be losing their jobs, and in this age, you know they are going to be down the creek without a boat, let alone a paddle. As someone whose job seems to under threat, they have my utmost sympathy.

On the other hand, the likes of HMV and Blockbusters themselves are suffering the same fates as the small independent stores they played a part in putting out of business back in the 1980s and 90s. An example would be the one in my hometown of Whitehaven - Flix was a video rental place that I imagine sprung up when technology got to the point where the masses could have their own VHS players and enjoy a whole new world of entertainment. Or it could have started up in the Betamax boom and quickly readjusted.

In any case, to a young lad, it was a treasure trove of stuff you wanted to watch. As I recall, you paid for overnight rentals - yet my mother always insisted my got something out on Saturday, as the place was closed on Sunday and it meant you got to keep it an extra day. As the lad next door was only a year older than me, we would combine forces to get stuff like Transformers: The Movie and watch in baffled silence. It's a film I found for 50p in Oxfam a few years ago, and it still failed to make too much sense, the likes of Orson Wells, Eric Idle and Leonard Nimoy offering their talents being no help at all.

An abiding childhood memory I have thanks to this shop is when my brother, who was in the Cub Scouts, was away on some camping weekend. My mother was chosen to go with, leaving the house to Pop and I. As he often worked weekends, this was a rare chance for us to spend time together. He took us down to the shop and we picked a video each - which were Rocky V (me) and Die Hard 2.

Though I would later come to look the Rocky franchise, my choice was dire. To compensate, my dad let me stay up late to watch Bruce Willis do his thing. I loved the swearing, the violence and the humour and my dad swore me to secrecy about me seeing it. Some 20 years later, I accidentally let slip about this night at a family event, and my mother still managed to kick off about it.

To their credit, whoever ran Flix tried to keep up with the changing times. They began renting out video games on a weekly basis, which was superb. Later, they began selling as well, and several of my favourite early gaming choices came from there: Mercenary, Transport Tycoon and Frontier: Elite 2 spring to mind, and anyone who knows games will recall how they had a bad habit of eating up the hours. My brother and I even had rare moments of bonding after we put our money together to buy Pizza Tycoon. It was a bizarre little game that even allowed you to design your own pizzas, as well as engaging with gangsters and breaking into the competition after hours to smash the place up.

Sadly, once Blockbusters moved into town, the game was up and before I knew it, Flix had become a Top Shop. Today, it's not surprising the same shops are on their arse - shopping online is way easier, especially since it has become possible to stream movies onto your TV or download your albums. Times move on, but I'd like to add that I always did rewind the videos we rented. Me ma made me.