Another Year Older

So I hit 47 yesterday, not a massively wonderful occasion, and today, I have been going round town trying to buy msyself a few things.

I have scoured all the second hand shops looking for interesting clothes, looked in the sports shops for new bits and bobs I need, and looked in Millets for any gadgets I might find handy.

I have come back with a haul of precisely zero, apart from a balsa wood glider and rubber band powered helicopter I bought from Access Models for a fiver. I'm rubbish at shopping.

I think I will head to Lincoln at the weekend to raid Primark and go to the museum, and get some stuff from Decathlon website.

I've been feeling very sore today with my back, so I've only had a walk with a couple of cups of tea on route. Ticced my back into a pull I think.

But at least I have some photographs for you. I'm going to watch Space 1999 now!

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 10.10.19

The Most Wasted Building in Town

After my tiring as heck week, I've barely had the energy to move today. Woke up. Fell asleep. Woke up, went shopping. Fell asleep. Went shopping, fell asleep. Bath.

While I was shopping, I did two things of note. One was buying a new pair of Karrimor (actual) walking shoes, as I need something weatherproof for my winter walking, and had a look around the Buttermarket, the high end shopping development.

The shoes are pinching my feet on the top a little bit, and may have to go back which is ridiculous as I am really a size 9 and these are a 10, I've just been trying to bend them in a bit.

The Buttermarket isn't doing much better. Part of the town hall complex, it is actually a wonderful space. But the rents and rates on the premises seem to be so high that at best a few years ago, half the units were filled. Now, less than a quarter still seem to be in use, the popular bookshop has long since relocated, and a lot of the units seem to rotate between candles, computer bits and bobs and novelty T-shorts with none of them lasting more than a year.

Many many years ago, before the building was refurbed, there was a popular indoor market here; I dimly remember it and its stall selling bits of model train sets. Unless my memory is playing tricks with me. That market thrived, and local people continually compare it with the ghostly nature of the current development.

Rumour has it a Primark might be on the way...

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCRackeredNature 09.12.17

A Flower for my 45th

So yes I'm another year older, certainly no wiser about anything, but a lot lazier. I've done nothing today other than have a couple of gentle walks around town seeing if there was anything I wanted to buy myself.

There wasn't so much as a sausage. Actually, if I'd seen a nice sausage I might have bought one, but there wasn't even that.

When you want to buy yourself something, you never actually do.

Any good ideas for £20 worth of something for an outdoorsy type to buy himself other than a new waterproof running jacket. I also have love to shop vouchers, Argos has a camping mat, but the sleeping bags have terrible reviews.

Either that or I'll just buy myself a large bottle of rum.

Really, have done nothing today, it hasn't been special, and it won't be until midnight either!

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 09.10.17

It's Gone for a Burton

Having been a staple of Newark life for 80 odd years, our Burton's store here has finally closed.

Apparently this is related to the BHS collapse in some way due to the ownership chain - Burton's is also struggling these days - but I really have no idea. I think it tends to suffer for being neither seen as high quality nor budget in this day and age, and it never seemed to get any high profile campaigns going like M and S did.

I always remember that at school to be seen wearing Burton's gear was something to be ashamed of; a geek thing, a nerd thing, something you wouldn't want to be seen in on a non-uniform day. If my folks ever got me any casual clothes from there I was always nervous about wearing it out for fear of being taunted by the hip kids.

As I got older, I just cared less and less.

It's a landmark building in this town, surely Grade 1 listed as a wonderful example of Art Deco design in a town that has a fair bit of it kicking around. I can only hope it finds a worthy new occupier.

Chances are, we will end up with an Art Deco nailbar.

Si

And for those Seeking Satanic Supplies...

...I've found a fine purveyor of such artefacts. Behold!

Well, I suppose they might be meant for dogs, but I'd prefer to think that local witches and warlocks are buying these appetising looking items up and boiling them up in a cauldron in order to bring a plague of boils upon a man or woman who has wronged them.

Trachea!!! What you could do with these! The noisy neighbour could be rendered silent, or perhaps one touch of that mummified windpipe could silence a screeching baby on a bus. Curse a vain beauty with giant bunny ears, or burn Bambi's feet with incense in order to bring about inconsolable tears in an enemy.

As for the "hot dogs" I simply dread to think 1) what they are and 2) what they could be used for.

Bon apetit!

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 23.04.16

Get Carter!

I walking along Cartergate today, the street that marks the East side of the old Civil War town. You might therefore think it has a historic feel, and that the heritage people on the town council would look after it properly.

Well, not really...

For a start it doesn't have the same quality of building on it, no really impressive Tudor or Georgian builds, just stuff on a much smaller scale. Also, one end of the street has got some nasty modern slabs on it, well, this is inevitable, every town has these.

Like many towns, the issue is one of the sort of shops we have, and the sort of frontage design they have. It was never the poshest street in town, but you had a variety of shops, and the design wasn't too shocking.

Now we have two nail bars (and another directly round the corner), two e-cig shops, a bookies, a card shop, two charity shops, and various empty ones with forlorn looking "to let" signs bolted on. One of the nail bars in particular has a frontage so horrific it would be deemed "unclassy" by the ape creatures on TOWIE.

I suppose this is happening everywhere as the internet reduces the need for specialist shops, and faddy quick start businesses move in. But really, can you please make them conform to some kind of vaguely classy frontage design. A neon sign saying "Nails" really really isn't.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 22.04.16

Looking North

First e-cig shop. Used to be a tiny book shop. Note empty shop on right.

We only have about 64 card shops in town

Gamblers.

The aforementioned atrocity

Bookies. We have loads of these as well now. They tend to go alongside deprivation.

They've gone a bit posh, there was a £3,000 watch in the window the other day

Another nail bar

Beacon of sanity

More e-cigs

Looking back down 100 metres of street.

A Bit of Thrifty Xmas Shopping

So, I've delayed the event for as long as possible, but today was the day when I took my two plastic beer can money boxes to the supermarket in order to generate to present buying revenue.

After a lengthy period of clattering coins into the machine like a crazed seaside cascade machine, I found myself with rather less money than I thought from my collection of 1p, 2p and 5p small change. The reason for this, as it was easy enough to gather inspecting the rejects drawer, is that the pubs and small shops of my home town have evidently been giving me a lot of foreign coins in my change.

I took home a number of 5, 10 and 20 cent Euro coins. I'm going to watch my shrapnel like a hawk now, dear readers.

In any case, I was able to buy a few presents, presented here on my luxury bright green presentation duvet.

The nest box is for my folks, hopefully to provide a safer nesting environment against next door's marauding feline. The rest of the stuff is for a Latvian girl in the Secret Santa thing at work. The limit was a fiver, so I just got some board and card games from the Sue Ryder shop. Sadly the balloon racer car in the gadgets section at WH Smiths was too expensive.

I have to say I love board games, and have a little collection of things like Risk, Diplomacy and Cluedo scrounged from various charity shops. Don't have anyone to play them with, I just like having them. There's a geek shop in town where they do all the Dungeons and Dragons stuff, but I'd feel a bit out of place there. Would like to learn stuff like "Carcasonne" though.

I've never really been one for computer gaming, but I do have a retro console bought for £2.50 from Barnardo's that I can play Pac Man and Space Invaders on.

I live in a sci fi world, I do.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 10.12.15