The shops dealing with the long shadow of Covid

Exactly three years on from the first pandemic lockdown, Dunkeld's high street is vibrant and busy.

It's a place where tourists and day-trippers stop and shop, attracted by a host of small, independent outlets.

Redwood Wines is a new arrival, conceived during the pandemic, and born as the lockdown lifted.

Co-owner Morgwn Preston-Jones has come here from California, via Sussex and London. But the pandemic helped him put down roots in Big Tree Country, as Perthshire is known, close to the family of his Scottish wife Roseanna.

He took the shop space during the lockdown of March 2021 and found he had plenty of time to focus on building up the business.

"We had some help from tradespeople and goodwill from locals but we did a lot ourselves," he recalls.

"Fitting it out was challenging. I basically learned how to be a carpenter. I built the bar, rebuilt the walls a little bit - as much DIY as I could possibly do."

By the summer they were ready to open. As lockdown measures lifted, they found a ready market for their wine and food: people who had been bored and frustrated during the lockdown, and who wanted to live their lives again.

"I think for us, it was a perfect time to open. People were ready to engage again, ready to experience.

"People wanted the tactile nature of taking the bottle off the rack, reading about it, talking to someone who knew about it. Sometimes people would just come in to have a chat."

For so many Scots, lockdown was a tough and lonely experience. And when it eased, many wanted to get back in town, to meet and break bread with friends.

Dunkeld is popular with the tourists, but home-working locals are now a mainstay for many local retailers.

"We held a wine and cheese tasting last night," says Morgwn. "Almost 100% of the people who came were locals. It's totally reinforced that we were right to open here."

Fifteen miles down the River Tay lies the city of Perth. Here too, there are stories of lockdown survival. But with footfall down since the pandemic, Perth faces far greater challenges than Dunkeld.

Darren Slater started repairing shoes as a 16-year-old trainee. Thirty five years later, he was running Sole Savers, an independent store just off the city centre.

Then the pandemic struck.

"It was horrendous. It was a nightmare. Landlords were still looking for rent every month, staff screaming for wages. I didn't pay myself and hung on by my fingernails.

"We had to close. During lockdown we were shut. Then I started taking on more and more car key remotes as an essential service. That kept me open and trading."

Darren's business shed all four of its staff, and it's only started to pick up in the last couple of months, because of the cost-of-living crisis.

"What's helped my industry and me is the hike in gas and electricity bills. People are repairing, rather than buying new. So it's given us a big boost to allow us to stay here.

"We're not back to the level of staff we had before Covid, but we're getting there.

"I'm finding there's more work being posted in, from right across the UK.

"I even had pairs of shoes posted in from Africa and Canada to be repaired and then posted back."

Darren worries for the future of Perth city centre, which has seen its biggest department stores, Debenhams and McEwens, close in recent years.

In its pedestrian areas, To Let signs are now in abundance.

This city, like so many others, is suffering from its own version of long Covid.

The pandemic forced many of us to work from home. Last month, the Office for National Statistics revealed that 41% of Scots are still home, or hybrid, workers. That lack of footfall is a long-term blow to towns and cities.

Lori McGaffney runs two shops in Perth's high street - Evalucia and Petit Pas. She's also president of Perthshire Chambers of Commerce.

She says the lockdown forced change on Perth town centre at an alarming rate.

"There's been a change in how people live their lives."

No longer, she says, can the health of high streets be taken for granted. Problems need to be solved, and fast.

"Lots of shop fronts are owned by pension funds which don't have a stake in the local area," she says.

"Bigger shop units tend to be empty. How do we attract businesses which fit them? I'd like to see a repurposing within Perth city centre, and where it's viable - subdivision. "

She sees Perth changing in the years ahead, "with a bit of a mix, with key multinationals which will drive footfall, blended in with more independents - smaller, repurposed stores - and higher-end urban housing".

It may seem a futuristic mix, but it's the way many towns and cities looked in decades past - long before the pandemic came along to change our lives.