Here today…

Here today and gone tomorrow! How things change.

One day last week I filled the car at our local petrol station. It’s a Total, so the petrol is relatively cheap (if you can say such a thing about petrol) roughly the same price as Tesco. Of course, you don’t get Tesco clubcard points there, but the fact that you don’t have to wait for hours in a huge queue, more than compensates.

Imagine my distress when, as I was driving past the very next day, I noticed that the petrol station was closed. Barriers across all the entrances, and heavy machinery already uprooting the pumps. I suppose it was always on the cards, as the accompanying Little Chef closed months ago, but I hadn’t expected it, not a word was said the previous day and I hadn’t even heard about it on the jungle telegraph.

However, it seems the petrol station will re-open, when it has somehow mysteriously metamorphosed into Shell (more expensive, no clubcard points, not even Nectar points.) Rumour has it that the Little Chef will also re-open, with a botox facelift magically identifying it as MacDonalds, although how that will encourage more customers is anybody’s guess. Just outside Norwich, and only half an hour or so from Yarmouth, it just doesn’t seem to be in the right place to catch casual custom making for the beach.

Is it my age that gives me a pang when I regret these changes, or is it the probable hit on my wallet? OK, I don’t care what sort of petrol I buy, but I do like to find the cheapest possible, I do like it to be local, and I don’t like queuing.

I think that says it all.