No, really, genuine bricks and mortar things that you can walk into. It seems that soon in the UK you'll be able to order something from Amazon then go and get it. The only question is: why?

I have a few theories. First, the novelty of getting everything delivered and not seeing anyone was never going to last forever. Second, it's bound to be cheaper to ship a couple of thousand books to one location and have someone pick them up than to deliver them all (and Amazon's been using couriers over here for a while now).

The latter point, though, gives you the real clue and also tells me that the company might not, in spite of wide predictions, open this experiment up to the rest of the world eventually. The fact is that the UK has been subject to a number of postal strikes just lately. Hopefully they'll just go away but if I were an Internet book seller I'd be looking around for a Plan B, just in case.

And oh look, there it is.