From cigarettes to energy drinks - half a century behind a newsagents counter

If you stood behind the same counter in the same shop every day for almost half a century, what changes do you think you would see?

Eugene Diamond has done just that, watching as customers coming in for cigarettes and newspapers evolved into people asking for vapes and energy drinks.

On Sunday he will pull the shutters down on Diamonds newsagents for the final time after 49 years.

Despite all the changes, the thing he said the thing he will miss the most is something that has never changed - the craic with his customers.

"I think I was born to talk and I've talked and talked and re-talked," the 68-year-old said.

"The conversations are completely different and we get every walk of life.

"Sunday morning was always a big morning for newspapers and we could have had anything... there would have been business owners, the street cleaner, the plumber, the factory guys.

"People have told me they are really going to miss it, and as much as they are, I am.

"Society is losing the fabric of what made towns great, it was local shops where people communicated."

One of his long term customers in the newsagents in Broughshane Street in Ballymena agrees.

"My wife says to me, 'what are you going to do when he's gone, you'll have nobody to complain to'," Lyle Cubitt said.

The retired solicitor has been using the shop for at least 40 years.

"Local people don't come in here for papers at all, they come in for the cheek, it starts the moment you come in the door."

Eugene took over the shop in 1979 when it was closed and he wrote to the letting agent and took it on for £30 a week.

"Honestly I haven't looked back, it's just been wonderful, it's been a great life," he said.

As recently as 2011, there were 4,597 newsagents in the UK but by 2023 that had declined to 2,285.

In days gone by many of Eugene's customers worked locally and walked to work, calling in to buy a paper or a packet of cigarettes on their way.

Now things are different.

"Energy drinks and vapes are big and had you told it to me 49 years ago that I'd be selling bottled water in the abundance that I sell it now? It's unbelievable."

The National Lottery, on the other hand, has become a big part of Eugene's business since it launched in 1994, including one customer who won big on a scratch card.

"He thought he'd won £5, I put it through the machine and I said to him, are you sure you've got a fiver?

"He said 'definitely' and I said 'well you have to phone Camelot because you've won £300,000'."

The media has also changed a lot in the lifetime of Diamonds - with the decline in printed papers and the rise of the internet.

Eugene recounted one occasion when the late UTV journalist Ken Reid overheard a conversation in his shop which gave him a story about a new mechanised device for lowering coffins into graves.

Another long-term customer Carroll Falls said Diamonds - and shops like it - are an example of a fading type of business on the high street.

"You don't need to buy a paper, Eugene is the news," he said.

"When you go into a supermarket you get your beans and your beef and your papers, but the paper is more than the commodity in this shop.

"I'll miss it, in fact I don't know if I'll continue to buy the paper."

For Eugene, the decline in newspapers is something to regret.

"There's people who have told me they learned to read in the past by having a newspaper in the home," he said.

"People who would maybe have lost out if they hadn't had that physical paper in the house."

Eugene has witnessed plenty of changes outside the shop too.

His shop stayed open throughout the Troubles and each morning as he opened the bundles of papers he recalls "death and mayhem" on the front pages.

"I do honestly think the best morning I ever put a paper on sale was the morning when it said 'It's Over'," he said.

In recent years, Eugene has gained a following on social media, known for promoting the sale of newspapers and for his early morning photos outside his shop.

"There's just a wonderful thing about being up in the morning and being out there, all you get is the birds singing," he said.

So what will come next after the end of an era on Broughshane Street?

"Maybe a few holidays and I hope a good few years retirement," he said.

"I'm definitely not going to be getting up early every morning."