Woolworths. Clinton Cards. Comet. Jessops. HMV.The list goes on.

The future! Now! A wonderland of empty shops. A pervading smell of piss and vomit. Fuck all to see and do.Hurrah!

Melted and gone. Like an ice cream carelessly held at the business end of a jet engine.

Supermarkets determined to give over floor and shelf space to “non food”. Offering limited choice maybe, but just enough convenience. Need a bridge camera whilst out food shopping? Sold!

Blundered in for some Hobnobs, and suddenly remembered you need a dishwasher? They can help.

Midnight? Want a good old-fashioned paper book, that’s in the current bestsellers, but don’t want to wait for a lazy fucking bookshop to open? You’re in the right place.

Want to buy a fridge? But you want to see if your chosen model off the Internet is a shoddily built piece of shit that will incinerate you whilst you sleep? Walk into any branch of Currys, check out the goods, then recheck the price on your smartphone, and order online before moving off.

Stepped into a local hardware shop that has the audacity not to stock millions of product lines? To Amazon!

Need to return some Internet clothing purchases after getting home late? Why not hold up the queue in a local garage forecourt that for some reason offers a drop off returns facility. It’s staffed by some overworked illegal, and keeps him busy between skimming card details.

Card to send? Get that fecking pig or pigeon to do it all for you.

Soon, you’ll be able to wave your phone or card at the unmanned till, pick up the bags you packed yourself, and mooch off back to your lonely life. All without interacting with anyone.

Progress through disruptive approaches. Every company sticking their dick in every other companies business, and yelling “surprise!” The assaulted company staggers, reels backwards, and then knee-jerk reacts to the onslaught… Probably by scrambling some half-baked attempt at doing the same act of trespass into some other company’s backyard.

Meanwhile, the high street shrinks back into a selection of fast food outlets, cafés, pub-chain identikit boozers, and charity shops. All helped along by progress commoditising media so that nobody cares about music albums, or films. They can be downloaded or streamed absent-mindedly if so desired. There’s no stopping progress there.

And the icing on the cake being that as the shafted economy makes everyone more careful with their wallets, nobody will shop from that local business if they can get the same items on their whizz-bang smartphone app for a quid less, delivered to their door.

Just walk guilt-free past the empty town centre, to one of the cafes , then sit there tutting, and wonder where it’s all going to end.

And yet. What to do? Maybe it’ll all turn out for the best? Hooray!