Chasing Rainbows

 OK, not so much chasing them as walking in their general direction before having a cup of tea under them.

Walking is my main pleasure at the moment, taking care not to mess my ankle up too much however. Saturday was a foul write off of a day, constant heavy rain, and so I just spent it indoors keeping warm. I do feel guilty about doing this, but you have to realise that enjoying a day watching videos about board-gaming or indeed anything else you enjoy, is a perfectly valid way to spend the day. 

Yes, board-gaming. It's something I've been fascinated by for quite a while, and spend time in a local gaming cafe, but I don't get to do an awful lot of it or indeed any of it, as I spend the vast majority of time on my own these days.

However, I've investigated solo gaming, and there are a fair few options for this and I was able to pick a game up called "Tiny Epic Zombies" (!!!) at a sale at the cafe. I've been working out how to play this over the last couple of days. It's very daunting.

Modern board games are a long way from Snakes and Ladders.

After that, I was able to take a trip to the park and enjoy the aforementioned cup of tea, rather relishing the gentle rain that was falling, allowing the sun to paint a rainbow at the opposite end of the sky. 

I even got to take an evening walk too, happily listening to Stuart Maconie's "Freak Zone" on 6 Music.

That was a different sort of perfectly valid day!

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 07.12.21

Newark's New Gaming Cafe

Today, the weather has managed to get worse again, with gales all day to go with heavy rain showers. I thus only had the one walk to the park today, before heading indoors, in town, to the Buttermarket.

I can just about remember the Buttermarket in its incarnation as a thriving indoor market; there was a sort of train set stall, if I remember right.

At some point in the 80s the market was closed and the building sold and renovated into an indoor shopping arcade on two levels. Trouble was the rents and rates were so high that nothing ever stayed open for long, the exception probably being Strays bookshop before that moved to its current location.

From then on, decline really set in, to the point when only about 3 of the premises were occupied.

Recently, the council bought the building back, and slashed the rents for 6 months to encourage pop up businesses and now virtually every unit is occupied with various little boutiques and craft shops.

Long term, how sustainable this will all be is all in the air, but here's hoping.

Anyway, the unit formerly occupied by Strays now has a little food quarter, in which the wonderfully named "Soup Dwagons" operate, among others. And at the back of this, is the gaming cafe.

Basically, it has hundreds of board games for you to play with your friends. I love boardgames, but given my lifestyle I don't really have anyone to play with. Luckily for the cafe, plenty of people do, and every table was occupied with folk playing games while I sat and had a cup of tea and read the magazines, in a delightfully geeky atmosphere.

The trick for me is to pluck up the courage to ask someone to show me how to play Carcassonne next time I go in.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 16.03.19