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Thursday 4 June 2009

A pleasant trip out

I had an enjoyable bus trip to Spalding today even though the town was busy. I was expecting it to be quiet as Thursday is the traditional half day/all day closing. I paid off the mortgage - and have the receipt to prove it - which gave me a great deal of satisfaction. The bus fare was cheaper than sending it Special Delivery - which I would have done if I was going to post it.

Then I spent a pleasant hour browsing in the bookshop there and bought Pevsner's Guide to the buildings of Lincolnshire with some of my book tokens from work as well as a book by a local author about Lincolnshire history. I still have some left to spend at a later date.

I pottered around the shops for a while and paid a brief visit to Sainsbury's for some strawberries and other odds and ends that I can't get from Tesco and then returned on the bus just as it was starting to rain - excellent timing.

The town seemed to have a cosmopolitan air today as it's warm enough to sit outside at the various cafes and the smell of coffee made it seem not quite English. I had forgotten how the average age of the people shopping changes during the day. Mornings it's pensioners and people who start work later than 9.00am; lunch time you get the kids out ffrom school eating chips and burgers and working age people shopping in their lunch hour; after about 2.00pm we're back to older people followed by school children after 3.00pm and people of working age with fewer older people. Interesting.

3 comments:

NAM said...

Glad it was a good day out. Your comments about the demographics of the shoppers reminded me of a holiday we had in Totnes - there was a particularly good eatery called Rumour in the main street which was in use all day like that. Older people in the mornings, with crosswords or having a cup of coffee between shopping, foodies along for lunch (huge helpings of really good home cooking), vistors for afternoon tea, a mixed bunch for dinner and the students all evening in the bar at the back until closing time. Facilities like that are invaluable, and there should be more of them.

Jilly said...

That sounds just like my type of eatery!

NAM said...

Yes, and we could do with one round here, that's for sure, but then we're singularly devoid of restaurants - haven't even got an ordinary Italian, if you see what I mean.