WHISPERING SMITH: What are your thoughts on regeneration?

Currently the High Street has two book, craft and stationers – one is great value if you really are into James Bond and Game of Thrones among other comic book heroes – two betting shops, a supermarket, four tea, coffee and cake outlets, three charity shops, a nail beauty shop and a hardware store in competition with two cheapo bargain shops selling similar wares at a fraction of the price.

Oh, and a pet shop that is, among other things, a home for a very big snake and a lizard.

We have a health food shop, three large chemists and frequent unwelcome street entertainment from the Littlehampton Wine Club which appears to have expanded its membership of late.

Not a very inspiring or inviting town centre.

We could certainly use a greater variety of retail shops but the little grocery store on the corner of my street has to pay a business rate of around £7,000 a year for which they get little for their money, not even council help to clear the pavement pigeon poo.

With this in mind I cannot see many excited small or large business owners getting in line to rent or buy on our High Street, and suggestions of a cinema and allied leisure facilities are, frankly, pie in the sky.

Radical thinking is required and a new start rather than an idealistically hopeful patching up with a raft of suggestions and ideas that the council has no money for and, perhaps, little real desire to provide.

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YOU know you are getting old when you trip over your own feet at the allotment and just lay there looking at the sky and thinking that a big fluffy white cloud looks a lot like a poodle.

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