Tattie Shaw's farewell

Tattie Shaw's was my first #leithwalkshop, on 7 January 2011, so only a few months after I had started blipping. There have been a further 110 #leithwalkshop blips by me, and a few by others, since that date, so this is the 112th. It won't be the last, even though it marks a sad event, which is the impending closing of this shop, about which others, notably meles, have talked.

Rather than replicate the first blip, I wanted to put Tattie Shaw's into a wider context of the changed Leith Walk. It was always a shop that I was glad was there, rather than one which I used. I have been in there fewer than half a dozen times in the well nigh 20 years I have been going up and down the Walk. It's on the wrong side of the road for me easily to pick up shopping on my bike when heading home, plus it doesn't have extended opening hours. It may turn into a hipster cafe and bakery, and goodness knows there are enough of those, but in my humble opinion it is in the wrong place for a greengrocers, and as the thriving Asian shops further down the walk, which include good greengrocery, actually prove, it's probably not possible to survive as only a greengrocer, unless in a particular place like Stockbridge or Marchmont. There just isn't enough shopping footfall where it is or enough similar shops around to make it a destination (although Valvona and Crolla seems to be doing fine), although there probably were back in the day. I do think that the Foot of the Walk, and its environs, would really benefit from a good greengrocer, and I'm sorry we don't have one. I would buy stuff from such a shop, as and when I do head out on foot to pick up bits of shopping.

The changing nature of Leith Walk, with its trams and its wider pavements encouraging pavement cafes (and much, much less air pollution than it used to have) is captured by this photograph. There will be more change to come, and I do hope it will not all be hipster cafes and bakeries. Other shops are possible.