ONCE upon a time the big post-Christmas retail event was the January sales; this year it’s the January appointment of administrators.

I must admit that I haven’t gone inside a Blockbuster store in many a year, but the closure of Jessops and the news that HMV was struggling struck me as sad tidings.

In the case of Jessops, it’s because that’s where I went when I wanted to finally move into the world of digital images. I suppose there’s a certain irony here, since technological advances have clearly caused a lot of problems for all the aforementioned chains, but I was grateful for the help and advice I got in Jessops when choosing a camera that wasn’t more glitzy than I really needed or too complicated for me to operate.

There’s something a bit more deep-seated in my reaction to the possibility that HMV might be lost from our high streets. The sense of loss isn’t so much for the brand itself as for the departure of the “record shop”, with so many other mainstream music retailers having already vanished.

When I was a teenager – and all right, that was a long time ago – the record shop was one of the places to hang around, checking on the latest in the charts even if you couldn’t afford to buy the still-vinyl records. Switching to CDs didn’t entirely destroy the experience, and adding videos to the mix possibly enhanced it.

But I guess the arrival of iTunes and other means of downloading music and movies did much the same for shops selling electronic entertainment as having a camera incorporated in your mobile phone did for the likes of Jessops, and that’s before you consider the impact of actually buying your stuff through the internet.

At this stage I must put my hand up and admit a few things – I do have an iPod and I do buy stuff on the web; the former is remarkably convenient and the latter offers you maximum choice as well as loads of bargains.

However, I’m not convinced the demise of the traditional high-street shop is either inevitable or a good thing, and I’m not just being sentimental or hankering for the past.

I am amazed that anyone who isn’t housebound thinks it’s a good idea to buy clothing or shoes on the internet or over the phone.

Checking whether the items fit and look all right has always seemed important to me, and returning goods is to my mind more tiresome than going to a shop to have a pre-purchase look at them.

But there can be pitfalls to buying other kinds of items on the web unless you know exactly what’s on your computer screen; such as the time I bought (on the advice of a younger and supposedly more computer-savvy person) a piece of software which turned out to be an upgrade rather than the basic package I needed. So I went to a shop, where I could properly check I’d got precisely the right stuff.

Some people get around this by finding what they want in a store, perhaps with expert help from an assistant – and then buying the same item on the web.

This strikes me as shortsighted as well as unfair, so I’ve never done it.

Indeed, I’ve tried to “balance” purchases by using the internet when there’s a genuinely significant price advantage or I can’t find the items on the shelves, otherwise I tend to use the good old-fashioned shop.

After all, if you don’t use it you lose it. Though I loathe most kinds of shopping, even I can enjoy browsing, particularly in bookshops, and other people seem to appreciate the experience far more.

Do we really want all that to disappear?

But many people seem to think they can abandon the high street most of the time, yet still expect those shops to be there when they want or need them.

I fear there could be a nasty surprise in store.