How Long, O Lord?

OK. First to say - there's nothing wrong with nearly all the national chains that sell food across our fine country. They mostly sell food of a quality we (and I'm thinking mostly of the English here) could never have dreamed of until recent times. You may think there's other things wrong with some, many or all of them. I'm not saying you're wrong. But I'm not - for legal reasons and also because this is what I think - saying you're right. You may prefer a traditional creperie in a quiet Breton market town, where the eggs come from the flock of hens pecking round the front door, the cheese from the milk of the cows in the field opposite and the Calva from the apple orchard down the road. And who am I to say that you're wrong? Apart from pointing out that they don't make Calvados in Britanny by definition, and there's probably a poodle or similar half-pint-sized French pooch getting its revenge for Agincourt by shedding into the batter. But who am I to comment?

But to get back to the point I was trying to make - and doing quite well, till the French interfered. And it's about out-of-town eaterie megaplexes. They had a bit of a boom time in the latter Blair years, and their legacy is with us still. Normally next door to a designer outlet - whatever that is - or some other American-style "mall", they normally consist of a multi-screen cinema, bowling alley, and a smattering of the usual suspects - Nandos, Wetherspoons, Hungry Horse, Pizza Express - you know the kind of thing. And of an evening or weekend lunchtime, the locals who are possessed of a few bob - but not enough to go somewhere posh - will stroll along and spend a few quid.

And it's not that this is so wrong. What's the problem with eating a calzone pizza followed by three quarters of an hour in the Snow-Dome? Apart from the obvious fact that the other way round is less likely to result in stomach cramps, obviously. And there's nothing wrong with shops stelling stuff that other people have made, to other people who want to buy it. That is, after all, how the world works. And it saves us all schlepping off to India or somewhere every time we want to buy a pair of curtains.

But I guess it's the thought that this - this is the highlight of people's weeks or even years that worries me. My great-uncle laboured for years in a Castleford coal-mine. He kept soul and body together for himself and my great-auntie. And he must have thought to himself that by class struggle and a few tons of coal, he was working towards a better future. I bet he never dreamt that one bright, glorious day when the coal was too expensive to mine, they'd put in a climbing-wall and a shoe shop above where his head was.

Friends, it seems to me we've been sold a pup. Where our fore-parents strove for a better life we've been happy to eat our pre-processed mush. Instead of art we've Johnny English Reborn. Instead of the nobility of physical exertion we've a laser maze. As the great prophet Jarvis might have put it, had he been a coal miner in the last century, "the future that you've got mapped out is nothing much to shout about."

Northampton is - in some respects - lucky. As well as the standards - KFC, McDonald's, all the rest - Sixfields has a football ground. One of the few places where people can still get together and dream of a better future. The rest can just walk through rainy malls, buying Trespass clothing that will never see a field and fighting mock battles which care nothing for the blood and tears of the real ones.

There's a scene in Maya Angelou's I Know why the Caged Bird Sings. They've been to a revival meeting and cried "How Long, O Lord?" And they walk past the juke joint, where the punters dance with the hookers and she imagines the same cry - how long, O Lord? And I walk the concrete malls of our consumer heaven and hear nothing. Is this all it is? Is this why our parents and grandparents struggled? Is this the reason we live - why we get up in the morning and drag ourselves to work? Is this what we live for? And I listen for the echo from the shop windows - How long, O Lord?" And you know what? It doesn't come.