On Wednesday, I went to the kitchen to rustle up my usual elevenses of Nutella on toast. As I pushed the button down, the electric went off - a classic toaster power surge. Damn – new toaster time, and some unappealing plain Digestives for a mid-morning snack.

It was a Wilko own-brand toaster, which made the timing rather poignant. You can mock my anthropomorphism, but it was as if it knew its parent company would be closing the next day and was making a conscious protest.

The following day, I headed down to the Truro branch for its final hours of trading, partly out of professional duty, partly out of sentimentality - but also to see if they had any toasters in the sale. There, languishing on an almost empty shelf, was the last Breville, reduced from £21 to £12 – and it was mine. Result.

Of course, this victory was bittersweet under the circumstances. A steady stream of customer traffic was heading through the double doors, a mix of bargain-hunters and nostalgic well-wishers. There was very little stock left, giving rise to an awkward feeling of picking the bones clean.

I loitered at the entrance, pad and pen in hand (I’m old-school), asking departing shoppers how they felt and what they’d bought.

Susan and Derek Lane were on holiday from Leicestershire: “That’s where Wilkinson started,” said Derek, proudly.

Staying in Looe, they had done the tourist thing of popping into Truro on a cloudy day to do some shopping. “Wilko was always good for paint, and bags of washers and screws – I’ll miss it,” said Derek.

“It’s sad to see it go after all this time, but it’s just one of those things,” said Susan, philosophically. “Most people shop online these days.”

“Including us,” added Derek, but Susan disagreed: “I’m ex-retail, and I prefer to shop in person on principle.”

Stephen and Catherine Newman from Barnsley “heard it was the last day and just wanted the experience - it’s sad to see it go the same way as Woollies and C&A”.

Panamanian Sandy Maritza was carrying enormous red carrier bags full of glitzy lampshades, reduced from £30 to just £2 each. She lives in Newquay, where there is no Wilko, “so it won’t make much difference to me,” she said, not unreasonably.

I couldn’t help but overhear passing comments, which were just as revealing if not more so. “It’s not worth going in – it’s so empty,” said one passer-by. “I’d just like to say goodbye, really,” said another, while one elderly gent commented, with a slight shake of the head: “It’s a shame – they’ve probably never sold so much stuff in a week.”

Staff from other local stores popped in on their breaks, including a couple of young women in HSBC livery carrying plastic carrier bags heaving with items.

Stephanie Carveth took a few minutes from her job at Smiggle, where she has worked since a 25-year stint at Lakeland ended with its closure. “I was looking for sandpaper – I needed some,” she said. “Wilko is my go-to, like Woollies used to be.”

This scenario was no doubt replicated in St Austell, and possibly Redruth, which was scheduled for closure on Sunday but looks set to be turned into a Poundland.

For those of a certain age, including myself, it was all rather sad, and symptomatic of the times we live in and its conflicting desires.

“It's a stark reminder of just how important it is to buy local and use our town centres; every penny we spend in a local store is a boost to Cornwall's economy,” said Cornwall Chamber CEO Kim Conchie when the death knell was sounded last week.

“It's tempting to fund the Bezos empire to get something quickly and cheaply, but the reality is, the inconvenience of popping downtown to get the item could save our high streets.”

And there it is in a nutshell. We want our town centres to be vibrant and appealing places to visit, but we also want the convenience of online shopping and home delivery, or larger out-of-town stores with plentiful free parking.

The result – empty units in historic high streets, and fewer jobs for local folk. At what point will online shopping result in no one having any money to spend, or the only available employment being in packing warehouses or delivery vans? Is that really a world we want to live in?

Then there are the twin crises of the cost of living and climate change. When I told my mother-in-law that I’d heard a rumour of a new clothing store coming to town, she was aghast.

“Do we really need more clothes?” she asked. One might even ask: do we really need more stuff in general, in a time of “reduce, reuse, recycle”?

That £2 T-shirt in the discount store: who made it? How much were they paid? What was the carbon footprint of getting it onto the rail where you see it now? But if you don’t buy it, what happens to the person on the till?

I wish I had the answers to all these questions. Maybe if I did, I’d be as rich as Jeff Bezos, and I like to think I would spend the money on fixing the problems of the planet we’re on rather than decamping to Mars.

Instead, my brain melts at the thought of these seemingly insurmountable conundrums.

Perhaps some tea, and some toast from my new toaster, might help…