On Lodge Lane: The L8 Superstore

A post from just before Christmas 2014. Now in May 2015 comes the news that Lodge Lane’s L8 Superstore has won the BBC’s Food and Farming Awards for 2015 as ‘Food Retailer of the Year.’ The BBC used these photos of mine in a film they put together for the Awards show. Well done L8!
As the joint and malign forces of red top media and multinational capital try to force people to surrender even more money they haven’t got, by spending it on Christmas trash in town on their so-called ‘Panic Saturday’ we’re in Lodge Lane in Liverpool 8. Doing the kind of shopping everybody actually needs to do, in one of Liverpool’s most magnificent superstores.

The L8 Superstore is part of the ‘Manchester Superstore’ group – implying they’ve more of these in a nearby town (in fact there are several throughout the North).

There is an inside to the shop, where we’ll go in a bit, but it’s the luxurious display of fruit and vegetables outside that draws the eye and gets the camera out of my bag.

Some of what they’re buying will be eaten on Sarah’s allotment where they do as much cooking as gardening during these winter months.

So this is Bren’s local greengrocer’s.

Before the 1981 riots Lodge Lane was a busy high street full of pubs, shops and even Liverpool’s first ‘health food’ store ‘The Dancing Cat’. But after the riots the street suffered years of desolation as streets around here and nearby Granby were demolished and so many people were moved out of the area.

So there’s no ‘Panic Saturday’ here, or money being thrown at stuff no one needs. Just the sensual delight of being alive in a place that looks and smells and feels so full of life and the living of it.

This isn’t even the only shop like this around here. There’s a similar emporium operating out of the former Tesco and Kwiksave store on the corner of Lodge Lane and Smithdown.

They add immensely to the urban richness of living around here. And are yet another reason not to do the whole weekly shop in some faceless corporate ‘superstore’.

And our total spend? £25 for vegetables, fruit and other food for the ‘holidays’. Including that whole tray of lemons Sarah’s clutching there for making lemon curd. Good value, a deep pleasure. And no panic whatsoever.

So this week, as the present buying subsides but you dread the prospect of jostling for food in you know where, come to Lodge Lane instead.

This is not an advert, of course, it’s just obviously better. And see a bit more of Lodge Lane during our 27 bus adventure.