DON'T be surprised if you see a lot of shops closing in Brighton during the next few weeks, months and years. The town has far too many and they simply cannot all survive.

There are more than 1,300 shops in Brighton and no other town of similar size in the country can match that number. Not only does it have a main centre in Western Road and North Street but there are subsidiary shopping areas in London Road and St James's Street.

Brighton has been lucky in having the sea in the front and the Downs at the back. This has meant there are few opportunities for the faceless out-of-town shopping malls that are sucking the commercial lifeblood out of town centres up and down the country.

But there have been scores of new shops opening within the town recently at the new Churchill Square and the Marina. This puts pressure on the existing ones, especially in side streets and at the far end of existing parades where gaps are already starting to show.

Planning policies in the past have been to resist the loss of shops wherever possible but this is no longer realistic. Some corner shops have been on the market for years before owners have reluctantly decided there are no takers.

Good specialist shops will survive, especially when they are in lively areas such as North Laine. The secret of their success is to provide something the multiples and superstores cannot manage.

Infinity Foods in North Road has prospered for around 30 years selling organic produce. There's a wonderful cheese shop in Kensington Gardens. Several shops sell kites, ideal for a windy town like Brighton. There's any number of specialist book and record shops.

Traders will often seek to blame others for their problems, notably the council for parking and traffic schemes. But the good shops, spotting gaps in the market, will survive and prosper while the others, often deservedly, go to the wall.

Amid the bewilderingly rapid changes in Brighton retailing it is often difficult to remember what went before, which is why I welcome the enterprise of North Laine traders in suggesting a blue plaque trail. This will allow people to see where the old cork shop was in Gardner Street and the nearby site of the first Marks & Spencer.

Ihope it will also record the site of the shop there which sold nothing but eggs and the outlet in Kensington Gardens where Anita Roddick began her first Body Shop. If the idea is extended to other areas, plaques could be put up in Western Road, Boundary Road and Church Road to mark the sites of once-flourishing department stores.

The retail revolution will continue in Brighton, and in this world of cut-throat competition only the fittest will survive. For shopkeepers not prepared to adapt, there'll be trouble in store.

DAN, the Department of Appropriate Names, was delighted to read a property advertisement for the Well Barn estate in Oxfordshire, which has one of the finest shoots in England. Resident head keeper, who puts down about 16,000 pheasants and partridges a year, is a Mr Cull.

PLANS by East Sussex County Council to rejig the school year, getting rid of the long school summer holiday, have run into predictable opposition from some teachers. Faced with lowish pay and unruly kids, they now may miss their one great perk of a big August break.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.