Shopkeeping...............

Are you familiar with the saying "England is a nation of shopkeepers"?  It's one of Napoleon Bonaparte's quotations.  Only a Frenchman would notice something like that, perhaps because they have a billion little family run shops everywhere too, from Paris to Provence!

Kitchen shop in Aix-en-Provence - 2008

Yes, in England, as long ago as I can remember..............the English loved opening little shops selling everything from Earl Grey tea and scones fresh from the oven (everyone loves a teashop), to prim and proper school uniforms (which I had to wear!), all very British!  Even today, neighborhood shops struggle to keep going in the shadow of behemoth chain stores.

Shops are often in historic buildings such as these timbered 15th century Elizabethan ones in the beautiful river town of Dartmouth in Devon................

Kitchen shop in Teignmouth, Devon - 2009

........or even smaller trading spaces where it's necessary to display goods outside on the pavement.....

  
............because there's so much piled up inside.  My favorites - stacks of creamy white china!

Some English shopkeepers still live above the shop..................this is one of my favorites with bowed windows making it feel quite Dickensian.  They sell a little of this and a bit of that.  It's in the Devon resort town of Teignmouth where my cousin and her family live.

Here, whiling away a hour or so around the harbor at low tide in pretty Polperro, Cornwall a few years ago.....

................I found a shop that could only be in England, and it was for sale.  Wonder if anyone has since bought it and opened up to sell something very small!

If you're wondering why I'm "talking shop"..........come back tomorrow and I'll share some fun news with you!