Garden centred

I head over the border into West Sussex to see mum, who treats me to lunch at a garden centre. I’m served a perfectly acceptable snack that comprises an Italian-style sandwich with Italian-style ingredients on Italian-style bread, finished off with an Italian-style coffee. To continue the continental theme there's even an advertisement for 'Italian grown plants' on the table. Apparently these plants spend their childhood in Tuscany, which means they're well suited to the south of England. I gaze through the double-glazed window at the nose-to-tail traffic outside. It starts to rain. The concept of homesick shrubs begins to trouble me, so I distract myself by looking inside the garden centre instead.

When I was younger, places were always what they claimed to be. Garden centres sold grass. Supermarkets sold food. Airports were where you caught a plane. Not any more. Everywhere is a 'destination'. Take this freshly-expanded garden centre, for example. There's a pizza oven in the restaurant. There's a conference room to hire; ideal for the kind of business meeting that needs to be held in a plant-themed retail environment. There's free Wi-Fi. Gifts. Kitchenware. Stationery. Shortbread biscuits in enamel tins. A chaise longue, for heaven’s sake.

Meanwhile, supermarkets now sell televisions, airports play host to celebrity restaurants and almost every petrol station has a coffee machine. Mind you, occasionally the coffee tastes as though it’s kept in the same storage tanks as the fuel.

Arriving back home, I find our resident teenager suffering from ennui. "Ringmer is boring", he tells me, before adding "there's nothing to do". Rather than draw attention to the unnecessary duplication in his weary claim, I'm prepared to admit he has a point. It's not that Ringmer really is boring. Definitely not. But our little village can sometimes appear a bit on the quiet side.

I reckon I have the perfect solution. All we need to do is put a roof on the entire place and call it a multimedia experience. Our church is smarter than the average airport chapel, our garden centre actually grows plants and our pubs are livelier than any tacky themed bar. Come to Ringmer retail park: where everything makes sense.

First published on vivalewes.com 21st March 2013: http://vivalewes.com/