| FM247:
Your Community Music Take-Away! |
This is your Captain speaking: “People of Sheringham:
Eddie Mayell’s article about Cromer Road Post Office in ‘@ Sheringham’
issue 34 has made your Captain wonder what he can do to keep alive this vital community
resource that is being so woefully neglected by the Blair government. How can we allow a
rural lifeline like this to wither and die? If the Royal Mail Group is allowed to sink
into the abyss of so-called free market competition, then what next? Is nothing sacred in
UK.dot.com, post-Y2K? Why not replace our Queen’s head on our postage stamps with the
(currently) expatriate Victoria Beckham’s, and have done with it? Why not throw in
your lot with the Tesco’s postal service (it’ll come, believe me) and buy your
stamps from them, together with your fruit ‘n’ veg, your bread, your electrical
goods, your car insurance, your mortgage, your legal advice, your funeral package…
and, while you’re about it, any other goods and services currently available at a
fairer and, crucially, more sustainable price through any of Sheringham’s splendid
and thriving local businesses?
“But belly-aching can only get you so far, dear listeners. There comes a point when
actions speak louder than words. And so it is that your Captain has formulated a plan to
help save Cromer Road Post Office. A modest plan; a plan involving some mutual advantage
for Eddie and your Captain’s very own on-line radio station, to be sure; but, most of
all, a plan rooted in the local community of which we’re both so proud to be members.
Here, then, dear listeners, is your Captain’s plan.
“In his so-called spare time your Captain runs a modest, hand-to-mouth music retail
business called FM247, combining some online selling (so no, cyber fans, I’m not
ENTIRELY a middle-aged anti-dot.com dinosaur – but ‘Too much of anything is too
much for me’, as The Who once sang) with face-to-face selling at weekends in various
draughty parish halls around the county. (You can read all about the online bit at www.fm247.gemm.com, if you’re
interested.) “And now, thanks to Eddie Mayell’s far-seeing eye, FM247 will
be extending its retail arm to Cromer Road Post Office, adding to the front-of-counter
retail service with a choice selection of new and nearly-new CDs, cassettes and (for the
seriously and sadly retro, like your Captain!) vinyl records (you remember, the black
shiny things). All of these treasures will be made available to you, the listening public
of this, our incomparable North Norfolk Riviera, at prices that may surprise and even
delight you. All will come with a no-quibble money-back guarantee, and all will be priced
as cheaply as is sustainably possible, without knowingly undercutting any other
locally-based, community-focussed retail businesses in Sheringham that your Captain is
aware of (although in that respect he’s ‘Still getting educated’, as David
Bowie once sang).
“Of course, it all depends on you, dear listener. If you want to do your bit to save
your local Post Office, then join the Counter Culture at Cromer Road: turn up, tune in, or
even drop out! Don’t buy that expensive, TV-advertised compilation CD from that
expensive supermarket: buy an “oldie but goodie” with better songs on it for a
fraction of the cost, at your local music take-away, at your local Post Office. Strange,
but true. Because, as Joni Mitchell once sang, ‘You don’t know what you’ve
got till it’s gone’. “People of Sheringham: let Joni’s words not
be an epitaph for your town, but the anthem of its fightback. You heard it here first,
dear listeners. And you know it makes sense.” End of transmission
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