Cold Hands and Bruce Springsteen

Carrying on from yesterdays post, I decided to GoogleMaps my local charity shops and see if I could find some that remain undiscovered by fashion-thirsty students, and I did! A quaint Barnados (which, I realised, is a word that I cannot say right, slightly embarrassing) I planned a route for exploration and after my seminar I was away! Down a closed road (oh the power), across some lights that were actually red (go cyclists!) and then up a huge hill (all momentum lost and I got off and walked).

Then across a lovely bridge which stretched over a vast river containing many old, sinking canal boats; here is a picture of it in summer. It was pretty rainy when I was there, but I could imagine the sun’s warm rays and a sky that wasn’t grey with clouds.

The charity shop was tiny and surrounded by other interesting, old buildings. It was a real village, with a bakery, butchers, laundry, Italian restaurant (promising pasta dishes for £3.80, a trip back is definitely required) and all your pizza/kebab/Chinese/Indian take-aways you could ask for. Oh yes, and a Co-Op Funeral Service. Love that local touch. It then dawned on me that while this place had probably seen better days, there were a lot of people behind the scenes working to keep it going. I wished I was the secret millionaire.

But on into Barnados, where I found some delightful gems. Unfortunately, such places don’t take plastic (gawd knows how much I could spend if they did) so I scraped together the odd £2.80 I had and bought a Bruce Springsteen vinyl for £1.50 to keep the boyf happy, and a blue and white stripey rug for £1.30 to keep me happy. It is pretty much exactly the same as this (I think I just fell for everything this ScandiLiving shop sells!).

I’ll end for now with this rather tasty image.