LIKE many other country towns in our beloved land, Tadcaster heroically managed to survive the deprivation of the Great Depression of the 1920s and 1930s. I was there!

During that time we had an adequate range of small shops which served our day-to-day needs.

Now, alarmingly, our brewery town seems to have lost the will to survive. It appears to me, a first generation Tadcastrian, to be unable or unwilling to cope with these different times. Individual riches abound which my parents' generation would have been unable to comprehend.

Hitherto, if a Tadcaster retail outlet (all right - a shop) had closed and ceased trading for whatever reason it would have been commented on endlessly - even by those who had never been inside the shop premises. It would have been news.

Nowadays, Tadcaster shop closures are routine and no longer newsworthy - sadly in some cases deemed to be not worthy of comment. Or perhaps not even noticed in these days of payment by plastic card. It is called progress.

Ida Mary Goodrick,

Woodlands Avenue,

Tadcaster.

Updated: 10:22 Thursday, July 07, 2005