What is Happening with Rumbles Cafe at Sconce Park?

I went in with my companion to get tea and scones, only to find this message displayed;

I signed

I signed the petition of course, while wondering what exactly it was that was causing this favourite little community cafe to feel it was under threat.

A brief google search leads me to conclude that this issue of rent subsidy reported upon last year, may be the most likely cause. 

Newark Advertiser Report on issues with Rumble's subsidised rent

Well, if this is the issue, then it is terribly sad. I would have thought that the whole point of a community cafe like this was to be a low cost venue for families and visitors to use when visiting Sconce Park for fun, Parkrun, or the historical nature of the site. 

Sconce Park has been transformed in recent years into a place that feels an awful lot safer and more pleasant to use than it used to be, and this Cafe is one of the reasons. There is no discussion on charging people to visit the Sconce fort, or use the children's play area, or walk the dog, and surely their use of the park is subsidised as well.

There is the issue of the employment opportunities for vulnerable and folk, and people with learning disabilities too, a very significant one if one thinks of the closure of many Remploy factories. Rumbles must also be a far more stimulating and sociable place for folk to work than some menial place on a well meaning but patronising production line. A lot less soul destroying too, take it from me, I know.

Still , in these days of austerity, what can one expect? The tiniest little social enterprise is under threat if it can't justify its existence with ledger lines full of numbers with a lot of black zeroes at the end.

Is £3,500 such a huge figure to be providing to an organisation that harms no-one, provides pleasure to many - it gets very busy on Parkrun days and when the sun is out - and provides jobs to those who might struggle in the labour market otherwise? 

Perhaps the adoption of Rumbles by the Civil War Centre project could be an option. As long as they keep things the way they are, for it is too nice a facility to lose.

I love the Rumbles fish sign!

After the Thunderstorm

Thunder meant no Parkrun alas, and indeed it stayed that way most of the day. But after watching the rain streaking down the window to the delight of no-one apart from a very fat woodpigeon having a hearty splashabout in a Lake Eerie sized puddle.

Luckily the sun was eventually able to put in an appearance, and I was able to run 5 miles rather stiffly, in conditions of tremendous humidity. The butterflies were presumably drying their wings off, but the bees were back out, attacking the flowers in the library park.

They flew without effort, while I ran  like I was dying.

Swan family at London Road lake

Red tailed bumblebee male in the library gardens

Devious tree bumblebee flies itself out of focus

The flower that drives the bees wild. Some kind of geranium?

Newark By-Election, the Aftermath

We are over. We are done with...no more media mentions, we have gone back to what we always were, a safe Tory seat who's MPs wear a bottom shaped dent in the backbenches until they disgrace themselves accepting a fiver for saying how wonderful Djibouti, Togo, Kiribati or Surinam are in Parliament.

And so I present the last of my by-election pictorials, have really enjoyed bringing you some different content. Any new viewers please stay with the page, I will bring you beautiful things, but will also bring you other new directions too.

And always, keep you eyes open and never stop looking!

HellsAngel with iron cross helmet double takes East Midlands Today crew

East Midlands Today in the foreground, Sky's Adam Boulton in the background

East Midlands Today van

Lord of the Outside Broadcasts, The Two Towers

Securing Newark's future by emptying his office and buggering off as fast as possible

Over our dead bodies

Newark Sconce and Devon Park in the Sun

After the rain comes sun...eventually.

After three days of rain, finally beautiful sunshine came out, and as the politicians left us to our own devices again, the nature deemed it same to come out of hiding at Sconce Park.

As did the world of the odd. The highlight of the visit was a fellow drinking Oranjeboom, and pouncing on something with his shirt. I investigated to find it was a fellow deeply interested in some small leps enjoying the clover.

Excitingly he was claiming they were small blue butterflies. I suspected they weren't however, I've seen these before at Willow Holt and figured them for chimneysweeper moths, which the folks at RSPB Langford confirmed.

Everywhere there is ceonothus, there are tree bumblebees

Honeybee in action

Not small blues, but chimneysweeper moths

A better view

Speckled wood by the Devon

Ceonothus row

Lots of these on a neighbours fence

Its not just newark politics, its nature too

Beacon Hill Park was busy with life, and I managed to catch some of it, although sadly not the lovely female common blue I saw sat on a buttercup trying to catch whatever warmth there was on a rotten day. I got lost in long grass, and I ended up covered in cuckoo spit.

I was silly!

Birds foot trefoil

White campion

Buttercups

My first cinnabar moth of the year

Tree bumblebee

Moth in the flying circus pub!

Washed away pigeon egg in my garden

Election Day at Newark By Election

And Ukip were out in force. Farage was due to show...I waited around but he was cagey about his movements. He eventually fetched up doing his man of the people pint shtick in The Queens Head, hunting for votes from the befuddled.

I'd already gone home. I wanted a picture, but not that much. Bad journalism I know, but I have a life, and Farage is no part of it. Besides, there was much else to see.

I was excited. I thought I was going to vote in someone's house

Tory activists. Sadly, it's now office space in the bungalow.

This is shameful. Here's an issue for our new MP to take a stand over.

What I think of "the return of common sense"

One of those "special vans" with no visible exhaust pipe

In our day, we had "Selectadisc" bags

Cheeky Tories are on the prowl

UKIP Reservoir Dogs. No sign of Mr Black or Mr Brown

UKIP dog

Man from the Koinonia Indian Restaurant Party has much more appetising purple flyers

Another UKIP modernising young gun

Tory MP Matthew Hancock on a late canvas

Newark by Election Emergency Update

Or rather, I forgot a picture...

...but it does give me a chance to reflect on the phenomenon of the "UKIP Hipster", the young males deployed to presumably counteract claims that UKIP is a party for elderly ex military types and windfarm hating nimbys who don't like the smell of the Polish run off license on the corner.

I dismissed one from my doorstep earlier with a curt "Don't even think about it". They remind me of the hardcore Christian Union types from University, and am willing to guess have a similar misogynistic pro life stance.

Mark 2 UKIP Hipster in action