A newsagents in Ballymena, County Antrim, is to close permanently this weekend following the retirement of its owner after 49 years.

Eugene Diamond, 68, has run Diamonds newsagents on Broughshane Street since 1979, when he took on the closed shop at a weekly rent of £30. He said he had not looked back and described the experience as wonderful.

The shop has witnessed shifts in consumer habits over the decades. Where cigarettes and newspapers were once the mainstay, demand has moved to energy drinks, vapes and bottled water. The launch of the National Lottery in 1994 added a significant revenue stream, and Mr Diamond recalled a customer who thought he had won £5 on a scratchcard but was told by the machine that he had won £300,000.

Long-term customers expressed regret at the closure. Lyle Cubitt, a retired solicitor who has visited the shop for at least 40 years, said his wife had remarked that he would have nobody to complain to once it was gone. Another customer, Carroll Falls, said the paper was more than a commodity in the shop, and that Mr Diamond was the news.

Mr Diamond himself said he would miss the conversations with a wide range of people, from business owners to street cleaners. He said society was losing the fabric that made towns great, namely local shops where people communicated. He also noted that some people had told him they learned to read by having a physical newspaper in the home.

The shop remained open throughout the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Mr Diamond recalled the morning he put a newspaper on sale with the front-page headline 'It's Over', referring to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which he described as the best morning.

In recent years, he gained a following on social media for his early morning photographs outside the shop. He said there was a wonderful thing about being up early and hearing only birdsong.

After the closure, Mr Diamond intends to take holidays and enjoy a long retirement, and he said he was definitely not going to be getting up early every morning.