This month, a brand new shop opened up a mile away set to enhance the lives of the financially beleaguered public. No, it wasn't a large Poundstretcher. Or a 15-storey pawnbroker's. Or even a local Citizens Advice Bureau for those of us seeking ways to avoid mortgage-related debtors' prison for the next 25 years.
Instead, in the month we're celebrating Organic Fortnight (September 6 to 21, the Soil Association's annual fiesta which has never been called Organic Week because it takes twice as long to grow haw haw), it was the latest UK branch of the sparkling health emporium Planet Organic, which now numbers five in London and is set to expand into 13 stores nationwide.
The places in the nation, that is, which most resemble this latest location for the Planet Organic revolution; Muswell Hill, a fragrantly middle-class, unspoilt Edwardian enclave in suburban north London where the residents regularly pay £2.50 for a single beef tomato at a farmers' market (quite literally) while living in a £5 million, four-storey, mortgage-free townhouse inherited down the family line for the last 120 years.
One mile in the other direction, the not so fragrant "crime hot-spot" of Tottenham remains permanently festooned with the emporiums known as Speedo Pizza, Fried Chicken USA and a selection of off-licences where the only "additional iron supplement" is found on the vertical iron bars hastily soldered onto the crumbling rented windowsills
If anything reinforces and magnifies the concept of a class-divided society it's surely the still-burgeoning phenomenon of the organic food revolution. On one street, there's supermarket stampedes for "three loafs sic of whitest own-brand bread, 25p" while round the corner, a leisurely amble for "one carton of Vita Coco Fruit Flavoured Coconut Water, £3.99", as is the case in Planet Organic which, on inspection this week, was doing brisk trade with the locals, one of whom pronounced on entering the twinkling interior, "oooh! What a lovely shop!"
And, of course, it is; a glittering heath-food dreamscape plus in-house café plus Well Being shop stocked with meticulously positioned wizardly potions like some dazzling Damien Hirst sculpture entitled Live To Be 190, If You Can Afford It.
Three doors along the road, Holland & Barrett's vegetarian Scotch egg mouldering on the refrigerator shelf suddenly looks as nutrition-free redundant as a Findus Crispy Pancake from 1978. No sign here, then, of the credit crunch implosion which is testament, surely, to both our insatiable fixations with ethics, health and the almighty forces of fashion and the unshakeable belief that we can save ourselves and our beleaguered planet through the Everything Organic ethos, the latest market projections from research group Mintel telling us, despite being unable to pay for electricity, there'll be a 44% increase in the organic market by 2012.
Much of what these swish new stores are offering, of course, is exactly the same as the organic foods in the supermarkets, health-food stores and farmers' markets, only with infinitely more variations and even more laughable prices (one Jefferson's Seafoods salmon fillet, "36 hours from the sea to the door", £7.54) but it's the "organic lifestyle" products which truly prove what a nation of germ-free, eco-besotted, superfolk paranoiacs we've become.
Here, while we're waiting for the global corporations to invent affordable everyday foods and products without killing off every other living thing, we can indulge ourselves in hypo-allergenic preservative-free emollient wash for babies (£6.99), bottles of drops from the Australian bush which make you, somehow, more "womanly" (£8.50), "pure synergy superfood bulking formula" for hunky men (£64.75) and Dr Bronner's All-In-One Hemp Castile Magic Soaps, from the holistic American pioneer who believed in sharing profits with "Spaceship Earth" and whose 100% recycled packaging bears news of "1000 acres of Dr Bronner's beloved Rain Forest donated by his family to the Boys' and Girls' Clubs of San Diego County, California - underprivileged children can now camp under the stars within sight of Mt Palomar".
Price per bar: £3.99. Printed company slogan: HEALTH IS WEALTH. For some of us, undoubtedly. Though possibly not for anyone within ricocheting gunshot of Tottenham High Road
We would all, of course, if only we could, feast from a fabulous countryside tableau forever, healing both our toxic selves and the toxic planet but the truth is most of us can't, the best we can manage being the occasional treat, perhaps a slice of carrot cake and a coffee in the Planet Organic café (£4.95) then it's off round the normal supermarket otherwise it'd be even worse news down the Citizens Advice Bureau come Hallowe'en.
In these comically sophisticated times, meanwhile, perhaps the only difference between now and the seemingly primitive 70s is in our relationship with reality (like so much of everything else); we want to live like eco-warriors without any of the mucky sacrifice, our greatest aspiration to live like the guilt-free, optimistic, self-sufficient frugalites Tom and Barbara in TV classic The Good Life while spending money more befitting the cynical, self-possessed, extravagant toffs Margo and Jerry next door (who would've loved a £2.50 tomato).
The impressively shiny new Muswell Hill emporium, incidentally, used to be a much-loved all-purpose DIY shop for all your paint, lighting and bag of nails needs. Which makes sense, indeed, now our homes, refurbished or not, are worth less than a three-course meal from the likes of Planet Organic
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