M74 Daily Photo

Headed south into a forest of windmills.

Headed north away from those threatening windmills.

I enjoyed the blue patches of occasionally visible sky and the drab undulating hills on this 2 hour drive, the traffic's light, I can daydream and the radio provides my daily background dose of education and topical nonsense. Today's big story: It seems that the people of Bruntsfield are up in arms because Sainsbury's have slotted in a convenience store where gloomy Edinburgh wine institution Peckhams once stood. Now gleaming counters and orange dabbed plastic bags replace the dark wood, step-ladders and leather of the former off-licence and winery. None of the locals can quite understand it and want order restored, but these days the customer (whom no one owns to actually being) is king, sadly Peckhams has failed as a business and the big boys will find it easy to muscle in. Nothing succeeds like capitalistic success and cheap donuts and chicken wings in this trading vacuum. For some a return to Victorian values is required with steam, dirt, poverty and the ruling classes spitting on those tow- rags in the gutter shoveling coal dust. Hmm...I can see the local's point of view but nothing should be too big or sadly too small to fail  - but maybe Tesco and Sainsbury's are missing a trick here. They should redesign these ugly and unfriendly metro stores under a banner like "Tesco Classic", bring back wooden shelves and counters, dim the lights a bit, disguise the CCTV and the auto tills and try to blend in with the area's own ambiance. Reinvent broken biscuits in tins, spices in tubs, brown paper bags, loose fruit and veg and charge slightly higher prices - the punters would love it (we are all gullible enough and all like a good con). They could even rebrand like the auto industry did when marques lost their sheen and loyalty value (Lexus for Toyota etc.)...Peckham & Sons for Sainsburys, Cohen & Co. for Tesco. It just might win this tiny PR war for them...