Someone has apparently written a book

about "milk bars" - and no, I do not mean an American sort of chocolate bar. I mean what we in this state would call a "corner" store  or "deli"  (short for delicatessan).
Not all of them were on corners of course but they were convenient sort of places that sold all sorts of useful things. I have known a few in my time.
There were two nearby when we first moved here. One was about 100 metres around the corner opposite a lone butcher. The butcher's shop has been demolished but the shop is now someone's home instead. I miss it. I used to take my nephews there if we were child minding and they could buy "orange juice ice-blocks" - which they loved. They don't make that sort of "ice-block" any more either. They still had a few mixed sweets on the counter - but not many. 
Long before that though there was "Short's" on the road that led to the beach at my paternal grandparents' place.  It was an enormous treat to visit that shop. It didn't happen very often but if we had been particularly good on a very hot day our grandfather would take me and my brother on a "Short walk" and all three of us would have a single scoop of vanilla ice cream (made by a company no longer in existence).  
The shop also sold milk (in pint bottles) and cream. The cream came from a churn. You had to provide your own container for the cream. If there was milk and cream left over the owner would make "milk ice blocks" for the local children - at a penny each. She would put them into little square wafer like cups. We thought they were very special too - perhaps because we almost never had money to spend. 
Along with that the shop sold things like newspapers, magazines, a few cards, bread, a few tinned goods  and other useful things. We children thought the mixed sweets behind the glass in the cabinet were useful but the adults never did. I remember those - and the difficult choice between the milk ice block and the small block of rock hard "lolly" that would last so long if we weren't caught  with it. Mum did not approve of those and would take them away from us. 
The shop is no longer there. It kept going until about 2001 and then "development" took place and the shop turned into something fancy that failed and then something that failed again. I think it is currently empty and that is sad.
There was the corner type shop in a street near my hall of residence in London. We students found that very useful when we ran out of biscuits for the endless tea breaks! 
And there was the corner shop I went to in Italy. I had a raging cold and I had spent a good five minutes working out how to ask for a box of tissues in Italian. I managed it and the elderly male behind the counter obviously thought I spoke more Italian than I did. He asked me where I had come from. I told him. He beamed. He had relatives there! 
In one of those strange little quirks of coincidence it turned out that the Senior Cat had taught his niece. He took me behind the counter out into the kitchen. I was fed soup and given something else for my raging cold.  Middle Cat went to visit the same couple several years later and, on that occasion, she and the friend she was travelling with slept on the floor in their sleeping bags.
Corner shops? Should we miss them? Of course we should. They are wonderful, magical places full of friendship. The supermarket can never compete!