Day 3… Ta-Ta Treacletown

So, as mentioned in the last ramble, I managed to get a decent night’s sleep in the hotel, and finally surfaced about 9. We had already had a recommendation for food. I didn’t mention in the previous days’ blog, that Chris had stopped off at a chothes shop to pick up a cap, as he didn’t want to get any of his dozen hairs wet. We got chatting to the shop owners who had instantly picked up on our accents. I explained about our pin-on-a-map charity shop excursions, and he gave us a recommendation of an old cinema that had been converted into a large eatery place with lots of individual stalls to buy food from.

We went on the search for it, and also stumbled on an untapped vein of 5 or 6 independent charity shops. That was an unexpected bonus.

Thankfully, I did pick up a few CDs this time. I don’t think there was anything amazing in them, but I’ve yet to listen to them at the time of typing.

We found the eatery which called itself “Picturedrome”, and it was indeed large, and plenty of places to eat… It did seem a bit “hipsterish”, with plenty of laptops and beards flying about. It wasn’t exactly cheap either. Ihad a chuckle at a noodle bar called “Send Noods”.


So, it was time for the final hurrah. Naturally, one last trek around any charity shops I might have missed. My first concern was… had they restocked the Age UK I’d visited previously?

Yes. Yes, they had. the shelves were full. Of course, my next question was, could I still get the CDs for 50p? I was feeling confident. I was definitely going to get away with it two days in a row. I took my 11 CDs to the counter.

“That’ll be £11 please”. Gosh darn it. Never mind. It’s all for charidee, innit? As the weather was still nice, and we still had a little bit of time before we could set off, we had a walk around the surrounding area. I found a mural dedicated to those 108 steps, stuck to the side of a bridge.

It’s also the first time I can recall where I’ve walked over a bridge, but also been under a bridge at the same time…

Fascinating stuff. I also don’t know what it is with me seeing faces in things… first there was “Coke Bloke”, secondly, there was this one…

I’m not quite sure which one amuses me more. I feel that second one might be a little more intentional though.

And, doing things slightly out of order, because I can, and there was no other place for it, I also photographed these classy old fluorescent streetlights in the grounds of Macclesfield sorting office…


So, that was it for good old Macc. It’s a nice place. Plenty going for it. The next stop was Stockport. Again, this was more of a pin-in-the-map type thing. It was on the way home, and I have no recollection of where the idea came from. We probably passed it on the way down. I’d like to call this place ‘varied’. It’s bigger than I imagined it to be. There were a few charity shops we’d passed on the way down. I expected that to be it, but it turned out we were a good few miles from the town centre. Leaving Macclesfield and getting to Stockport town centre seemed an age, but in reality it only took 30 minutes, and that included an aborted stop in an Asda to get to the afore-mentioned charity shops.

First impressions were… not amazing. There was confusion on how to pay for parking – it looks like the shopping centre we were in was in the process of going “app only” for parking. A genuinely disgusting turn of events. If that’s the future, no wonder town centres are dying.

Anyway, rant over, thankfully, we found possibly the only pay machine tucked away in the corner. I deposited the cound, and we had two hours to explore the delights of Stockport.

Peering over the wall didn’t look promising.

Oh, would you look at that! It’s taken my collection of shopping centres during demolition up to three. Two in three days. Aren’t I lucky?

It took a while for things to get good when it came to shops. It seemed like you have that rank old precinct, but walk a couple of streets away, and it’a much nicer affair. Modern shops, a decent number of charity shops, and of course, a market hall.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a photo of the market hall, but it was much nicer than the one in Huddersfield. There was even a guy selling local bottles of beer. Reasonably priced too. I think I picked 4 up. I have, of course, drank them in the intervening time between me getting home and typing this, so I can’t remember what they were called, but they were very nice.

We even stumbled across a record shop. I knew we were limited on time, so I couldn’t spend much time as I wanted in there, but I almost jizzed my pantaloons at the sight of a “Loading Bay Records” copy of Ankie Bagger’s “Where Were You Last Night”, until it was pointed out that I already have it. A quick check of the databse, and it is, indeed in there. I certainly didn’t pay £2 for it though. Bugger. Or should that be Bagger? A-hahahaaaaa. Sorry, it’s getting late.

That pretty much would be the final stop. I nipped into the “Pound Bakery” for a sausage roll. It was not amazing. I also nipped into Holland and Barrett for some cough sweets that I liked, but it seems they don’t stock them anymore. Another thing discontinued is “Green Cola”, something released a few years back. It was not amazing. Either way, I picked a can of that up for 59p. I’ve yet to have it, it’s chilling in the fridge.

And that, as they say, is that.

The rainbow, pointing towards the pot of gold that is Teesside, assuming you don’t check the GPS location embeeded in the photo. Overall, an enjoyable few days away. The food was superb. the charity shops could have been better, but I was still happy with the little haul. the weather certainly could have been improved on. Unfortunately, the week after we went, the sun was cracking the pavements. At least it was back in sunny ol’ Hartlepool. Still, a little rain never hurt anybody.

Hopefully, I won’t leave it six months until I have something worth blogging about!

Day 2: The full day out

Well, it’s day 2, and if you’ve not seen this for a couple of days, it means I’ve struggled to think of a catchy title. Anyway, today was the fun day. The one where we had free rein to do anything, go anywhere. So, of course, that means.. Go to some places related to where I work, because everyone’s sad enough to do that… right?

Seeing as we’re already here, the first stop was, of course, Macclesfield. Luckily, the hotel is a very small distance from the town centre. It’s situated next to something referred to as “The 108 Steps”, because, I assume there’s that many steps.

We didn’t take these, deciding it was too early in the morning for anything resembling excersise, so we just took the long way round.

And there we were. In the shops. What had started off as a lovely day weather-wise, was soon turning overcast and cold. Joy. Never mind, it was warm in the charity shops. The first step, however, was the indoor market. It took me seconds to stumble on a decent little stall called “Rockalittle Records”. Despite having a large amount of stock, I did feel a little guilty about only picking two out of the £1 box.

It didn’t take long for me to turn my attention to the charity shops. I found a large one down one of the side streets, namely an Age UK. We got in, and there were very few CDs on display, despite there being a large bookshelf for them to reside. I needn’t have worried, as the one of the ladies kept bringing out armfuls of CDs. I quickly amassed a small collection, but at £1 a pop, I had to keep it fairly modest. I took my haul to the counter. “That’ll be £4.50 please”. I couldn’t have got out of there quick enough. I was definitely going to come back here later when the stock had been replenished.

B+M was next door. That gave the opportunity to stock up on the essentials. Namely, some of these.

We stopped off at the market again to get some brekkers. I got a cup of tea and a sausage sarnie. We had a walk around the shops, but there wasn’t anything else that particularly stood out, apart from this particularly tacky display. Hope you enjoy your sponge cubes and cup of paper, kids!

Unfortunately, by now it was now absolutely heaving it down. We went down the 108 steps, somehow managing to avoid breaking our necks on the cobbles, and headed to the car. Next step was Buxton. It was probably about half an hour in the car, it became clear why this area of the country is called the Staffordshire Moorlands.

Now, as I mentioned, I occasionally talk to people from the Staffordshire area, as part of work. It was pretty interesting to see some of the places I’ve only talked to people from.

Of course, the shops were the next step. We had two hours. There was plenty of charity shops, in fact more than I was expecting. I picked up a few CDs. There was also a shop that sold American cans of pop, for roughly the price of normal ones, so I picked up two cans of cherry coke. The US stuff is much nicer than the British stuff. You could also tell you weren’t in Kansas anymore, as there was also a shop that sold pigeons ready for roasting. Never seen that before.

We left Buxton behind and headed off to Matlock. A place I hadn’t even really heard of, until this particular day.

The road between Buxton and Matlock is an especially picturesque one, with the road running through a valley, with a nice litte river running alongside the road. Unfortunately, neither my photographic skills nor the lighting did it justice…

If, like me, however, you like charity shops, you’ll love Matlock. There’s essentially a whole parade of shops dedicated to them. Beautiful. I wish I’d have got a photo of them. Just stick “Firs Parade” into Google Maps. You’ll see what I mean.

In fact, here’s a video of me in 40 years time reminiscing about the place.

On the way back, we stopped off in Bakewell. I didn’t even know we were so close to it until we actually drove through it. There was literally just enough time to stop off and grab some stuff from the original Bakewell tart shop. Sort of wish I’d got a photo… but I did get one that summed up the weather…

Yep, nice weather for ducks. As we headed back to the car, it started raining. Hoying it down. I got into the car, as I thought Chris was going to drive over to the pay point. Nope, he walked over, and came back completely sodden.

We accidentally went a different way back which took us through the town of Leek. In fact, according to Google Maps, it was quite the detour…

By this time, there wasn’t much to do in Leek, except to nip into Lidl and get some suff for the following morning.

And so, back to ol’ Treacletown. After Chris dried himself off a little, we headed back out on the way to discovering that other Indian, namely a place called Paprika, and of course, a few more of the nearby bars. Of course, it was back to the George and Dragon for a couple. A nice little place.

It was then onto the Jolly Sailor. A nice little pub that has a huge wall of random books. I’m not sure if any of them have ever been read since they were put up there, so we chose to pick out to film review books and have a flick through them. It took a while to get served though, even though I was the only one at the bar. Twice. Still, I liked it in there and I’d definitely go again…

Next was to the Indian. Paprika. Unfortunately, it took us longer to get there than originally intended because the GPS had broken on my phone, and we were completely heading in the wrong direction. Instead of walking what should have been about 100 yards, we walked half a mile. the walk, however, was well and truly worth it.

It takes a lot for me to absolutely, 100% recommend a place. I’ve reached the age now where I’m cynical about everything, but I will quite honestly say that this is, without doubt, one of the best curries I’ve ever had. Once again, there was the poppadom, with their own variation on the newly discovered “brown dip”.

I even asked them what it was, they just said it’s “their own chilli sauce”. I’m still none the wiser, and I’m gutted about it.

Vindaloo for the main again, with onion pilau, and of course, naan bread. It was faultless, absolutely faultless. It even had that little drizzle of melted butter over the top… Ghee whizz, it was superb. I’d say, in the dozens, if not hundreds of indian restaurants I’ve eaten in other the decades, I’d probably put this in the top 3. It also worked out at about £10 less than the first place. I was gutted, as I bought the first one the previous night, and Chris paid for this one. Typical. Even “Coke Bloke” had a long face over it…

One last stop in a place called “The Fountain”. I think the beers were taking hold at that point. We’d headed back to the Travelodge after this, and watched whichever episode of Family Guy was airing that night. I remember this, because I commented on the episode at about 2AM in the morning, two hours after the telly had gone off and we’d both been asleep.

Needless to say, I’d managed to get an infinitely better nights’ sleep than I had previously. even the trains didn’t wake me up. Almost time for day three and the journey home…

Car boots and Castlegate

Now, it would be remiss of me to not start off this post by mentioning the passing of our dear old Queen Elizabeth II at the ripe old age of 96.

Anyway, I mention this, as it meant that plans for this weekend were a bit sketchy if they went ahead or not.

Let’s rewind a new days. I got sent a flyer on facebook… there was a car boot sale in an area of Stockton I’d never visited. Now, Stockton is a couple of towns over, and this wasn’t a journey that could have been made by bus. I asked Chris if he fancied it, and the answer was to the affirmative.

Evenrything was planned… until the sad death of our former monarch. Pretty much the country stopped. Horse races were cancelled. Football was stopped. Even the BBC dropped their coverage of the final Diamond League athletics meeting of the year halfway through their coverage of the women’s 3,000 metre steeplechase. The country had ground to a halt.

Understandably, there’s a period of mourning, and I was wondering if this car boot sale had been cancelled. I asked on facebook. Nobody got back to me.

Saturday morning rolled around, and I took a chance. Yeah, we’re going. The entire journey for me had a nagging, painful memory of a car boot sale that didn’t happen,back in… oooh, let’ws say 1996. Back then, I’d arranged with Chris to go to a similar car boot sale in Billingham on an early Sunday morning. Now, this was long before Facebook was a thing, and real-time information on events was non-exisent. Either way, Chris’s dad drove us up and down this road where it was meant to be… aaand no sign of it. Absolute waste of a journey, and I felt awful for it.

As I mentioned, I ‘took the plunge’ Google’s sat nav guided us to the destination. The church was there, and there were some stalls set up. Phew.

Overall, there were meant to be 33 stalls. There might have been than many, I didn’t count. I’d been though a few stalls, and picked up 6 from one at 50p each.

Now, the next stall I visited was… shall we say, awkward.. I’m going through some more CDs, at 50p each. While flicking through, and picking one or two from a particular artist, I heard the words “He liked those”. My heart sank. I knew what was coming next.

The sellers were two women, probably late 60s, early 70s. I’m clearly looking through some of the CDs that a late son had once owned. Oh my.

I was in too deep at this point. I’d picked some out, but I clearly wasn’t going without a few more, was I? Admittedly, I had a couple of them which I left behind, but the rest of those came home with me. “Think Of [Dave] While you’re listening to them!” were her parting words….

Shortly after that, the heavens opened. Thankfully, we’d managed to go through the entire car boot sale before the rain started. It was time to go, and head into Stockton’s town centre itself.

Now, 2022 is a bit of a time of change for Stockton. The “Castlegate Centre” that has been “at the heart of Stockton” for at least 40 years, is getting flattened. I have very good memories of this centre. And I hope you’ll excuse me if I go on a bit of a ramble. I’m archiving memories of a (now defunct) shopping centre….

Let’s go back to the 80s. I remember being there, must have been something like October or November, as the Christmas decorations were being put up. the fluorescent lanterns that were used to illuminate the external walkways were 4ft Thorns. At this time I don’t have an exact model number, but they were the same that were used in Hartlepool, and that’s what made them stand out to me.

Let’s fast forward to the 90s. In 1991, before I even owned a proper record player, I picked up my first “proper bought” single, “Carribean Blue” by Enya. It was either this, or “World In Union” by Kiri Te Kanawa. The Rugby world Cup had been happening at the time. There was something like 20p difference, which made me choose Enya. Plus, it had “Orinoco Flow” on the B side. A song I vaguely remember liking at the time. I remember going back to my cousin Julie’s house, and listening to both sides on her record player, as she lived near the Stockton railway station at the time.

So, as I mentioned, it’s getting flattened. Like a lot of shopping centres, it’s suffered a massive decline, and Stockton council think it’s going to be better off replacing it with a park.

Here’s a “few” photos I took at the weekend.

A brightly lit, modern shopping centre, with three people in it.

This was Kitsons butcher’s last day.

This left one shop still open… Herons. Quite surprisingly, this was the last shop before you hit the barricade of where they were demolishing the place. I asked the ‘lady’ behind the counter how long it had left. “A few more weeks”, she grunted, as the new shop in “Welly Square” was still being prepared. I genuinely don’t think she was much into conversation, or communication in general.

Even the parking meters had been “evicted”…

Did this mean the car park was free? I’ll never know. There was, however, a “graffiti wall”, where memories could be posted of the place… I was very disappointed with the complete lack of actual vandalism, and people posting actual memories of the place.

So, yeah. this will almost certainly be my final trip into Castlegate. I’ve just had a couple of memories come into my mind while typing these. There used to be a “Cash Generator” in there. I remember picking up some great vinyl from there which they were getting rid of, for 20p a pop. At some point, it moved across the road, became “Tyne Bargains”, and became of little interest to me, as they stopped selling music.

This was also one of the sites of my final “That’s Entertainment” pilgrimage when I found out they were closing. I picked up a box of empty CD cases from there for 50p. To this day, the cardboard box full of empty CD cases is still cluttering up the kitchen. Whoops. This very same store wa also the one I picked up “Now That’s What I Call Music! 4” on CD, for 49p. I’ve seen it go for hundreds of pounds with the case… sadly, mine was just the CD and therefore probably worth nowt.

Oh yeah, I also bought “Faithful” by Go West from there. It was exactly a week after my mother’s funeral, and it was also the first time Id ever been over the Transporter Bridge…

Right. We’re getting a bit too deep into the memory banks there, so let’s just draw this bit to a close. I hope that somewhere down the line, these photos remind someone of The Castlegate shopping centre…

UPDATE OCTOBER 2022: I can confirm the shopping centre has now closwd down, though B+M, Barclays and maybe another one will remain. Can’t remember. These are all accessible from the high street. No doubt these will go in the future too.

UPDATE FEBRUARY 2023: the demolition continued. They’ve taken a fair chunk out of the old Swallow Hotel now too.

There’s a chance I’ll be going back at the weekend for a proper look at the weekend, so I’ll post a proper update if I manage to get any decent shots. I’m not sure how much of it is fenced off.

Is there anything better than a surprise record fair?

Saturdays. It’s hard to say that you can genuinely enjoy just a seventh of your life, but yes, seeing as Saturdays only come round once a month, it’s hard to put it any other way. Fridays still involve work, and Sundays are spent dreading work, so yeah. One day of enjoyment a week.

This particularly depressive attitude means that I have to make the most of my Saturdays. I went to bed particularly early the night before, as “Totally 70s” was off-ait this week. It’s an online radio station that… Yep, you guessed it, plays 70s music, and has live videos, usually with a video stream. Unfortunately, the Friday night DJ couldn’tt make it, due to real-life commitments, so it was left to their automated system to dish out the tunes. And without the interactive element, it’s just not the same, so I went to bed.

It did mean, however, that I could wake up early enough to actually do something with my one enjoyable day, so thought I’d jump on the bus and go to Stockton and then Middlesbrough. It’s a good while since I’d done a full day of “charity Shop shit”.

I disembarked at Stockton, and quite literally the greatest sight that could ever be projected into my shiny little eyeballs, the sight of a marquee, and those magical words…

It was like some type of beautiful waking dream. It was free too, which was just the icing on the cake.

One complaint I’ve had about recent record fairs is that there’s been very few boxes to rummage through, namely random boxes of singles. This time, I was not disappointed. In fact the very first box I went through, I pulled out this….

It’s a song I don’t expect anyone reading this to know (much like the entirety of my collection), but I first heard it probably back in 2014, from this particular episode of Ron Gerber’s “Crap From The Past”. It was also used in the film “Playing For Keeps”, which I’m sure you’ll be unsurprised to learn I haven’t seen.

I picked up a few other bits from this particular stall, and ended up paying £8 overall. I think this marks a significant moment, as I’m sure it was the first time I’d paid for anything at a record fair using my card.

I went through a couple of other stalls and picked up a few bits and bobs, (including Now 1 on CD, the 2018 re-release though), and came out highly satisfied with my haul, considering I didn’t even know it was going to be there.

Of course, this record fair ate into the time that would have otherwise been allocated to the charity shops. This wasn’t much of an issue, as these days, the quality of the musical merchandise you can pick up from Stockton’s shops has gone slowly downhill recently, so I didn’t come out with that much.

Despite the fact that time was getting on, there was still enough time to grab the bus to Middlesbrough (there’d have been even more time if I hadn’t have forgotten which pocket I’d put my bus ticket in, meaning I had to wait for the next one).

I think Middlesbrough has to be my favourite place for charity shops. They’re plentiful, and a couple of them had even came back from the dead. The “Age UK” had reopened (despite it having a big “To Let” sign on the door, and also the “Cats’ Protection” which had closed at some point before the lockdown, I believe. I didn’t buy anything from either, but good to see they’ve been resurrected, at least for now.

There’s also a new “Amazing Grace” shop, in the place of Scope/Sense (Can’t remember which) in the shopping centre. Again, nothing of any interest.

YMCA always have some goodies on offer, and today was no exception, along with Farplace. They had some “100 Hits” boxsets, at a quid each, snapped up three of those. I probably already have, like 95% of the songs, but I’ve always found a couple of obscure gems on the other ones that I’ve not seen anywhere else.

That concluded my journey pretty much. The last stop was HMV. I considered getting a James Blunt “Greatest Hits” CD for his song “Bartender”, which I like, but don’t own, but it was too close to payday to consider paying £5.99 for such an item. Good lord, inagine going overdrawn because of James Blunt? It stayed on the shelf.

Last stop was the bakery near the bus station, where I picked up some lovely sausage rolls.

The bus ride was particularly uneventful, until the bus got to Asda, when a load of kids got on, who decided they want to make a nuisance of themselves, with water pistols and the like.

A teeny, tiny bit of water hit my hand, like maybe three drops.

“If you even think of aiming that at me again, I’ll jump over there and shove that down your throat”. Of course, I said that about 30 seconds before I got off, otherwise I’d have no doubt got completely soaked off them.

Just as I was getting off, the driver came out of his cab and bellowed at them to behave, or they were getting kicked off. I do wither what happened after that!

I then stocked up at lidl, and returned home, just in time to see the build-up of some insignificant football match, which The Liverpools lost, I believe.

It was an early night for me, as there was something exciting happening that following morning… A radio rally!

Eurovision 2022! Hurrah!

It’s one of my favourite times of the year. A time when I sit down and spend an entire night listening to potentially terrible music

The normal rules apply… Refresh this page to hear my thoughts on a particular song…

I’m already looking forward to “Give That Wolf A Banana”… In a perfect world, the best song will win, but we all know that Ukraine are going to win…

Here we go! Well, if the intro songs are to go by, this isn’t going to be too bad. No idea what they were (and I’m not referring to that “Give Peache a Chance” crap), but I quite liked them. Laura Bazini, or someone. I’ll probably look her up later.

Oh good lord, there’s a parade of the flags now. I think I’ve started this a bit early. Still enough time to nip for a piss before the real action starts

Oh no! Apparently, there’s going to be a load of “emotional ballads” this year.

Czech Republic: We Are Domi – Lights Off

Here we go! Bit of an 80s vidbe to it, not much of a tune. The flashing effects aren’t really doing much for the compression, considering I’m watching via iplayer. It’s definitely been the best song of the contact so far, but I’m sure there’ll be better.

Romania: WRS – Llámame

Well, the crowd are clapping. Nil points for whatever the bloke’s wearing, however. the intrumental bit’s pretty catchy, which isn’t great, seeing as this is a song contest. I’d probably prefer this over the first one if I’m honest.

Portugal: MARO – Saudade, Saudade

“Harmonised introspective ballad”. says Graham Norton. I don’t know what to make of it. Oh wait, yes, I do. It’s dreadful. I genuinely disliked everything about that. NEXT!

Finland: The Rasmus – Jezebel

Always amuses me when actual bands that I’ve heard of enter this competition. It’s certainly more uptempo than the last one, and that’s probably all I can say about it. Oh, wait, there was a nice little key change there. It’s improved it somewhat.

Switzerland: Marius Bear – Boys Do Cry

The question that Mr. Norton asked was “Will it stay in the memory?” I can guarantee it will NOT. this is pretty much everything wrong with music these days. Has there been a shortage of drumkits? He’s got a whiny voice like a mile Adele. Naaaaah.

“Boys do CRAAAAAAAGH”.

France: Alvan & Ahez – Fulenn

Ooh, I like this one. Well, I did until they started singing. Don’t know if it’s me, but the verse bit sounded ever so slightly out of time? La la la le li lo, lu, lm, lx, etc. Saying that, it’s one of the few that I’d listen to again so far.

There now follows a human sacrifice”. Hahahah.

Norway: Subwoolfer – Give That Wolf A Banana

I do love a good novelty song. And this is probably my favourite so far. SOMEONE GIVE THAT WOLF A BANANA. And they repeated the word “Yum” 90 times.

Armenia: Rosa Linn – Snap

Oh, it’s another ballad, but this one’s not too bad. I’m thinking KT Tunstall? I do actually really like this one. I’d say this is my favourite so far. I’d definitely listen to this one again. Deux points.

Italy: Mahmood & Blanco – Brividi

TO TERRY! Up to 9 songs already. Is it a ballad in Italian? well, I don’t understand, but the crowd appear to be loving it… I, however, do not. Now, where did I put that beer…

Spain: Chanel – SloMo

A song originally written for J-Lo, did he say? oooh, I’m sorry, I’ve totally zoned out of this song, she has a lovely bottom. I might have to watch this one back later. Good lord. That’s one way to be memorable.

Netherlands: S10 – De Diepte

“Something completely different”. Yeah, not amazing, but I’ve just noticed how much the backing scenery looks like the old “Taito” arcade games booting up…

Ukraine: Kalush Orchestra – Stefania

Well, this wasn’t what I was expecting. I have no idea what the guy’s wearing (it’s like when you put a lampshade on your head when you’re a kid), and I have no idea what he’s singing, but… it’s actually OK. When I read “Orchestra”, I was expecting another ballad, but this is a folky / rap crossover thing. With flutes. Not bad. Not bad at all.

It’s probably going to win.

Germany: Malik Harris – Rockstars

Oh, god. It’s that style of singing again. instead of “fast”, it’s pronounced fhaaaaaruuust”. “Rhhhockstaaaaaus”. I can’t get past the awful vocals. there’s a rap section that is a carbon copy of “Headlights” by Eminem and that guy off Fun. It’s a shame, because the song has got better as it went on, but, that style of vocal is just…. no.

Lithuania: Monika Liu – Sentimentai

Oooh, old style Eurovision I have a feeling I like this…. Well, it’s certainly got a disco vibe, but it just doesn’t get going. It’s like a slightly faulty kettle that never gets to boil, just sits there almost bubbling away. Still, it gave me a chance to go and fix some spelling errors.

Azerbaijan: Nadir Rustamli – Fade To Black

You think he’d have got dressed up. Shame that it’s another ballad. Nope, it’s a nil points for me. I take it there’s not a break between the songs because I need a wee again now.

Belgium: Jérémie Makiese – Miss You

Well, Graham Norton was right when he said the show was “toploaded”. Some of the best songs at the start, and the rest towards the end.

Greece: Amanda Georgiadi Tenfjord – Die Together

Hh no, “a batch of ballads”. If this was on CD I’d have skipped it after the first few seconds. Eventually, it got going. hmmm, I thought she was going to have a Bjork moment there.

Iceland: Systur – Með Hækkandi Sól

It’s a ballad, but I like it. It’s as if the Corrs attempted country. Out of all the ballady ones, this has been my favourite so far.

Moldova: Zdob şi Zdub & Advahov Brothers – Trenulețul

The ballads are done. Hurrah! YES! this is brilliant! This is what Eurovision is all about. After sitting through all of those bloody ballads, this is exactly the antidote to them. I think whoever owns the rights Blitzkreig Bop could sue them for copyright though… I absolutely loved that.

Sweden: Cornelia Jakobs – Hold Me Closer

Swedent are often my favourite, with “Invincible / Evighet” by Carola, being one of my favourite songs of all time”, and that Stormvind one from 1990, also by Carola. this one’s got a good instrumental. Vocalist sounds a bit like a drunk nanna on a karaoke though

Australia: Sheldon Riley – Not The Same

His face looks like the front door of a butchers. Did not like that one bit.

United Kingdom: Sam Ryder – Space Man

Here we go. The first time I’ve heard this song, at least I think so anyway. Yep, I like that one. Bleepy backing music. Guitars, and that overproduced percussion that’s been sadly lacking all night. That was great. Definitely not nil point this year.

Poland: Ochman – River

Three songs left. Mike made a balls-up and just caused Poland “holland”. Oh. Now if we had a nanna doing a karaoke earlier, now we’ve got the over-confident bloke doing karaoke. that’s a little unfair. I’ve heard worse tonight, but I’m certainly not going to rush out and add this to my CD collection any time soon.

Serbia: Konstrakta – In Corpore Sano

This will forever be known as the “Meghan Markle” song (or however it’s spelt). I think this one is the worst one of the night.

Estonia: Stefan – Hope

Awww, I’m actually gutted that it’s over for another year. 24 songs, 1 to go. Acoustic guitar, bit of whistling. Ennio Morricone would be turning in his grave, he’s totally ripped off “The Good, The Bad and the Ugly”… and I really like it. A decent one to finish the night on…. It could have done with a key change, but that was great.

Oh look, more records!

As promised, I thought I’d do another update on my charity shop purchases and days out. This week, there weren’t really that many. I didn’t do much on the Saturday. in fact the only place I went, was to Tesco to pick up a ready-cooked chicken, Therefore the rest of the day was spent with my face covered in the product of the rotisserie oven. Not much happening there.

Sunday was different, however.  There was a record fair in Durham… I’d remembered about it only a couple of days before, and Chris offered to give me a lift there. Woo, and indeed hoo.

The Durham record fair is never a big affair. I think I’ve mentioned about it before, there’s just a small section of a sports hall that’s netted off, while the rest of the place still is still used for badminton…

There was one stall that had quite a few boxes singles on it, at £1 each. It’s more than I normally like to pay for a single, but well, I thought I’m only here once, and there were some classics in there, such as Trevor and Simon (yes, THAT Trevor and Simon) covering a Donovan song (can’t remember which one off the top of my head) “Sky High” by Jigsaw… “I was made for Dancing” by Leif Garrett, and a couple of others that don’t spring to mind. I might edit this into a list later on… If there’s no list, then I couldn’t  be bothered. (EDIT: I couldn’t be bothered)

The Jigsaw and Leif Garrett songs are ones I’ve only just became familiar with in the last 6 months, thanks to an online “radio station” that I listen to quite regularly. Surprised I didn’t know them, as they were relatively big hits, reaching no. 4 and no. 9 respectively.

Also picked up another copy of the “Auf Weidersehen Pet” series 1 soundtrack. This wasn’t the one I had on tape as a kid, but instead contains the incidental music from the program. Been after a cleaner copy of “The Fire” from the final episode where the “hut borns doon”

So, onto Durham itself. This was a warm, if overcast Autumn day. There were only two charity shops open, so I think we only spent about half an hour there. I didn’t end up getting anything from there, except for a nice photo or two.

It was still incredibly early at that point, so on the way back, we made a detour to Peterlee. Despite being only a small town, it has its fair share of charity shops. There’s a huge Sue Ryder shop there. It’s pretty expensive too, so once again, I came out empty handed. There’s a large “Home Bargains” store next door, and I managed to pick up 5 of these for a quid.

You might notice there’s slightly more than 5 there. Turns out they’re absolutely brilliant for cleaning the muck, mould, shite and usually, for some unknown reason, dried blood, off the CDs that come from the charity shops. In fact, they’re so good, I went to the Hartlepool shop and picked up another 10 cans, and I might pick up more tomorrow. For that price, you literally can’t go wrong, and I’ll always need CD cleaning products.

Onto the main shopping precinct in Peterlee. It’s a depressing sight. This shop (which, until a couple of months ago used to be a British Heart Foundation) pretty much says it all.

I did notice that there’s a “Farplace” charity shop opened there too, which is great – they’re rapidly becoming my favourite chain of shops. It was closed, however, so I might have to make a detour there at some point.

The YMCA was open here, and I picked out a few singles from this batch. They were very well thumbed, and the covers were all an absolute state, but the vinyl itself didn’t look too bad.

Last stop in Peterlee was the “other” British Heart Foundation… Now, Peterlee is the same as most towns… Or at least it was. Two BHF stores. One that sells your standard charity shop clothes and bric-a-brac, and another, often much larger one that sells furniture only. Now, probably because the smaller shop had closed down, this larger shop had a very small selection of CDs. They had £1 stickers on, but the bloke out the back said he’d do three for a quid. Obviously, the person behind the till didn’t get the memo, as he tried to charge me £3…nah mate, I advised him to have a word with the guy out the back, and indeed, he then only charged me £1. Now I await the barrage of 0 comments calling me a greedy fecker.

Last stop of the day was another YMCA… The one in Hartlepool. I’ve had good results from this shop in the past… The items don’t get sorted as much as some other shops, so you can end up with some quality finds….

Something that I’ve been collecting for a little side project, are “knock-off” CDs. Take the songs from a famous artist, get someone else to record them in the style of the original singer, and sell them for much cheaper. These have been around since recorded music became a thing

A prolific manufacturer of these is/was Prism Leisure. I have no idea if they’re still in business, but, like this one, they released CDs along the lines of “Hits of {artist} as performed by Studio 99”

I have a couple of these now. Corrs, Britney Spears, Celine Dion, to name but a few, and they’re all absolute garbage! I have others too, the collection is coming along quite nicely.

And finally, I bought this.

I don’t think this needs explanation!