I have to get up on my rickety sopapbox for a minute as an online trader living and working in rural Ireland.
     I sell my stuff online. I get my clients online. I read in various places about how online shopping is killing the High Street.
     I sort of disagree with this, if that's allowed.
     I go to my office in the wilds of Sligo every morning. I do my drawings with pencils I bought in Sligo Supply. I then go and get prints made at Digicreativ, two miles away. I frame my piccies 100 yards further down the road, with Kevin Woods. While I'm waiting for Kevin I go to Chapters Coffee and have a bit of a chat and a cuppa. I make a few calls in Cafe Fleur and naughtily steal a bit of their WiFi to tweet about some daft thing, and answer emails from people in Hong Kong and Mullingar asking about work they need done.
     Later on I have a couple of meetings with clients who , by the way, have come to Sligo to meet.         We have lunch in Hargadons or Lyons Cafe and once the meeting is over I say *While you're here why don't you take a walk up Knocknarea*. One client did that and he's still here, six years later. So that's good. One more city dweller who succumbed to the charming yet irresistible witchcraft of Sligo.

      Being able to say you can safely and efficiently run a business here is half the battle. That and the Cake.
 
     Back to the office having bought a load of Cake in O'Hehir's Bakery , parcel up some stuff people have bought online. I call the local Fastway courier or post them from the post office down the road.
       Later on I phone Caroline in Printfix and get a couple of quotes. I realise I have one of those meetings tomorrow that requires the Suit, so I run to Master Dry Cleaners.  A quick visit to Liber Bookshop to see how the book is selling- the book which, interestingly, would never have existed because I would never have been introduced to Eoin Purcell online, the idea would never have been suggested and the book would never have been published.
       Because the work is coming along nicely, or because I made a hideously huge series of mistakes, I buy more paper from Art Upstairs.
       For me it's simple: some might say too simple. Sue me for oversimplifying but if I couldn't sell online I don't think I'd be living here at all. The internet allows me to live and work anywhere. I use local suppliers for nearly everything. I spend a fairly sizeable chunk of my business and personal income in Sligo town and county, as far as is possible at any rate.
        I make a decent living by working in rural Ireland and doing business online, without personally being responsible for closing any high street shops.  If it weren't thus, and I had  to try and stay here without running an online business I think I'd spend every day sprawled on the couch in my jim jams, watching Judge Judy and eating beans from a tin. And then I'd leave.
       Online shopping doesn't kill the high street. It gives it another reason to be there. Both can (I think), if allowed, exist happily together.

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