Christmas Day is next Monday and a public holiday. Boxing Day on Tuesday is theoretically a Bank Holiday if you disregard the sales.
And of course that is what the shops want to do – make sales.
Customers, however, want goods to be available when they need them and this, particularly in the areas of food and drink, can be at the last minute.
This is because the customers may be lucky enough to have jobs, and Christmas is a busy period for them too.
So where do they go for food and drink on Christmas Eve? Certainly not Jempsons, Rye's only supermarket and its still "work in progress" supermarket.
Going to the temporary Post Office within Jempsons earlier this week, I found my shoes had acquired a lumpy undercoating of tar, a typical experience in a supermarket which has now tried for many months to reconstruct itself around, above, and even below customers.
But, back to Dickensian times, Jempsons will not open on Christmas Eve. And the Peasmarsh store will apparently not reopen until Wednesday December 27 after closing at 10pm on Saturday December 23.
Yes, both stores will be open overnight December 22/23 but that's not when I want them to be open. And I suspect from the amount of building work still going on that an "all-nighter" might be more for Jempsons' benefit than anyone else's.
The "new" Post Office has not opened on schedule and I have limited confidence, at this stage, that my parcels will be delivered on time from the temporary setting.
I am grateful that I can at least find things now in the supermarket, though I worry that there may be yet another major reshuffle over Christmas. It was embarrassing in the summer having to tell visitors that I had no idea where things were. And how long ago was that?
I gather the Rye Store will reopen on Boxing Day from 6am to 10pm. In the meantime though, if you do have a last minute crisis, Sainsbury's in New Romney is open 10am to 4pm on Sunday, M&S in Hastings is the same , and I imagine most of the major supermarkets are similar.
But will 2018 actually start with a Jempsons supermarket in Rye without builders on the premises? I wonder.
Photo: Rye News Library
Photo: Rye News Library
