Delay & Distraction

IT’S been a while since I updated this blog, despite still having two walks from my last trip to write up. And the fact that my March 2026 trip is still my last trip betrays that it’s been a while since I went walking also.  Just what, you might wonder, have I been doing in the meantime?

Just Lazing About, Eh?

No, I have not. Well, not not quite.

I have, in fact, been distracted by something of a passion project…

What Was That?

You probably know that feeling when you walk past a new shop or building and, while you certainly know that it’s new and wasn’t there last week, you cannot, for the life of you, remember what was there. Even though you walked past it countless times over multiple years.

That this happens is a consequence of how evolution has hardwired our brains for survival instincts.  Our brains are excellent at spotting a change in patterns (like, say, the tell-tale signs of a tiger moving through the bushes on a mission to eat us for dinner) but pay little attention to any static background (like, say, the bushes themselves).  The upshot of this is that if a building has no actual relevance to your life and is simply there, you’ll recognise it each time you see it, but you won’t store much in the way of memories you can actively recall.

Okay, So What?

I had one of those moments a couple of years ago and it bugged me. It bugged me sufficiently, in fact, that I felt a pressing need to look up what that building had been before. Except, as I soon discovered, there was no easy way to do so.

‘Perhaps there should be,’ I thought, ‘but would that even be possible?’

Let’s Find Out…

In the general spirit of enacting the change that you wish to see in the world, I decided to give it a go and create a proof of concept.  For this exercise, I chose Broad Street in Reading, the principal shopping street in England’s largest town (but not city, having been refused city status an embarrassing four times).  I chose it mostly because I grew up in Berkshire and, while I now live in London, I still know that street pretty well.

I have since spent innumerable hours wading through old records, trade directories, newspaper articles and what feels like a billion photos to create a Giant Spreadsheet of Doom.  I have also spent hours drawing illustrations, so that buildings and occupants can be compared with images of similar style.

The spreadsheet was translated into a database (that bit was a doddle, I design them for a living), and I dusted off some very dusty web development skills to build a website.

What’s In a Name?

Perhaps the hardest part of this exercise was deciding what to call it. What name is appropriate to a website examining long-vanished shops over time?  You won’t be shocked to know that I went with a pun (of course I did). 

It’s called Gone Shopping.

If you’re at all curious, you can find it here.

So, Now What?

I could add a lot more to Gone Shopping, and probably will. But, I need a break and a change is as good as a rest. In other words, it’s probably time I wrote up those last two walks…