Another few days away – King’s Lynn Day 1!

When you read this, I shall be home from a few days away in the pleasant town of King’s Lynn. As I type this, I’m getting ready to leave the hotel room for the final time. I’m sat with my tablet and wireless keyboard looking around the room for things to comment on. It’s a little dated, with crusty bits hanging from the top, but that’s enough about me, more about the time away.

Myself and Chris, my usual travelling partner for these days away, had originally planned to do this as part of my “stick a pin in a map and just bloody go somewhere” initiative last year, but as luck would have it, I got indescribably sick, and Chris had the sniffles, so it was postponed several months until this week..

I initially thought the whole trip was doomed to failure again, as we’d barely left Hartlepool when we ended u[ stuck in traffic. Some complete loser lost his trailer on the Tees flyover. I;d normally complain, but while this did add a whole 20 minutes to the  journey, it gave me the first opportunity for a photo. You should all know by now  how much I like my “grim graf”, this one was a winner.

You might have to click the original image for that one. Thankfully, as far as I can recall, the rest of the journey was plain sailing. I fired up my “trip away” playlist on Spotify. Unfortunately, I think I’d only managed to add about 6 songs to it, so that didn’t last the whole three days as intended. Instead we endured local radio. I was saddened to find that my favourite local radio station, Lincs FM, 102.2 had bitten the dust.

A quick blast down the A1, and our first stop was, coincidentially, Lincoln. A lovely little city where I’ve been before, but not for a very long time. There was also large portions of it I’d never seen before, such as the cathedral.


Of course, the most important part for me were… yes, you guessed it, the charity shops. And streetlights. I’ve not mentioned those on here for a very long time. Sadly, the LED onslaught has taken the entire fun out of everything, so you’ll have to forgive me for almost creaming my pantaloons at the sight of a Thorn Alpha 3, on original Thorn column and its almost makeshift-looking outreach arm. Phwoar. they don’t make them like that anymore.

Anyway, there was one thing I thought I’d learned about Lincolnshire. It was flat. Let me tell you, that it is not. If you want to visit certain places like the cathedral and the castle, it’s certainly an uphill walk. In fact, the route we took takes you to a place named Steep Hill. Annoyingly, I did take some photos of the ascent, but my phone thought it’d be a great laugh to convert these photos to black. You’ll have to make do with a photo at the top of Steep Hill.

Halfway up was a local beer shop. they still remain in their bag, so I’ve yet to comment on how nice they are. Of course, at the top of the hill is the cathedral, and it would be the first of several cathedral stops on this tour.

We made a quick pit-stop at a place called the Duke William Hotel. Amusingly, the guy behind the counter had relatives from Hartlepool. Us monkey hangers get everywhere.

Time was getting on, so we headed down the slightly less steep version of Steep Hill, which still gave me some good photo opportunities.


We went back to the car and headed onto our final destination, King’s Lynn, which would be our home for the next three nights.

There was, however, a moment that almost put the entire week in jeopardy. Somewhere along the A17. An amusing turn of events. We passed a service station and Chris took a wrong turning, heading towards Boston. It just so happened that I needed to do a toilet, so we attempted to pull into the service station, making a wrong turning on the way. Chris parked up, and on my way to the afore-mentioned defecation station, I stepped off the kerb… It wasn’t a normal kerb, it was one of those foot-high kerbs. My right ankle almost gave way. Thankfully, it didn’t, but I bet the bog in Starbucks wishes it had. Hoho. No photos.

That was it now. No more stops until our final destination. One thing I had never seen before, however, are fields and fields of daffodils. It’s funny, you see them in the shops this time of year, but I never thought that they’d be grown over here. Certainly, in the north-east we never have anything close to this. At least, not that I’ve seen anyway.

Anyhoo. Normally before we go away somewhere, I do a deep scan of the places on Google Maps / Street view, in order to get an idea of the ‘facilities’ that are worth visiting, namely the pubs, Indian restaurants and charity shops. For the first time in all of the times we’ve done these trips, I didn’t do that. I wanted it to be a surprise, especially seeing how long I’d waited to get here. The sat-nav eventually put us on the right road, and after only a few minutes after arriving in King’s Lynn it seemed like we were in the centre. A large market place, seemingly something that must have been around since for hundreds of years. The Duke’s Head hotel was to be our residence until Friday.

Of course, the first thing to do was to arrange parking. £15 per day, and if you left, you weren’t guaranteed a parking space back in. Still, it seemed cheaper than stayin in the market square, and probably more secure. The next job was to actually find the bloody car park. It’s not well signposted at all, and the location just throws Google Maps into a spasm. At one point, it announced we’d reached our destination, when this was clearly a council ran car park. Little did we know, that if we’d just walked down a side street, we’d have found it, and I’d have saved £2.50 for about 38 seconds parking. Hey-ho.

We headed into the hotel entrance at the back. Decorator’s sheets littered the floor. A smell of wet paint filled the air. Temporary LED lights hung from the ceiling. This looked like a hotel, but in the process of being regenerated. A workman pointed us to the right entrance around the corner. Remember that side-street? Yup, that’s when we discovered it.

Eventually we got through the right door. The reception and foyer area was very nicely decorated, with leather chairs and chandeliers everywhere. Very nice indeed. The receptionist was friendly, and after the correct parking charge was settled, we headed up to the room. It was. compact, but dated. The bathroom was spot on, but the room itself was flaking paint, along with chipped veneer on the desk. It’s also the first hotel room I’ve ever been in that doesn’t have plug sockets next to the bed. It’s 2025. People need to charge devices during the night! The only plug sockets were the other side of the room.

The view out of the window was quite nice, the view of a distant church, the name of which escapes me. Let’s just call it St. Jocky’s. There’s also some big silos behind too. I didn’t realise King’s Lynn had a port, but apparently that’s where they’re from.

As much as I liked staring out of the window, we weren’t going to spend much time in the hotel room. It’s all about the curry, beer, and charity shops. I fired up the tablet. Google recommended one called “The Curry Shop”. We got there, and it looked very closed. Thank you very much, bloody Google Maps. Fortunately, there was an Indian restaurant right next door that was open, named ‘Voujon’. Well, that’s what Google Maps tells me anyway.  We were the only people in there apart from the staff. Just like the hotel room, it was also small and compact.  the food was acceptable, but I’m sure we’d find better. It went on the “might revisit” pile.

Food was consumed, and it was time to actually find somewhere to drink. The first stop was “the Eagle”. Wow. If King’s Lynn has a chav centre, I would think this was it. The beer was awful, and I only had a Carling. I think we spent the entire time looking around just thinking “Yeah, probably should have picked somewhere else”. Think we ran out of there.

Next stop was the pub next to the hotel, the Maid’s Head. The footy was on, so we watched that. Can’t tell you who was playing or what the score was, as I was too busy shitting my brains out. Dunno if it was the curry, or that dodgy pint in The Eagle, but…. wow.

We headed out of there and went to the Wetherspoons for one, planning to have one at the hotel as well. The Wetherspoons was absolutely dead. More staff than punters. Mind you, it was a Tuesday night. We went back to the hotel bar for one, only to find it was closed, and it must have only been 11. Gosh darn it. Oh well, back to the hotel room, and after a couple of episodes of Family Guy, it was time to embark on Day 2…

Viva Darbados Day 2: Some Loughborough Steamers

So, day 2 commenced with me waking up as “fresh” as a “daisy”. Maybe it was the beer, maybe it was the curry, but I felt like I’d been dragged through a hedge backwards. I suspect the beer. I decided to just lay in bed for a few hours staring at my phone. You may recall that I mentioned that the room windows didn’t open. I suspect that I actually partially cooked in my own juices during the night. It was extremely warm, and it turned out the air conditioning didn’t work either.

It got to 10:30 and I decided I wanted to do some exploring, so I nipped out for an hour.

As I mentioned in “yesterday’s” post, there’s a river near the taproom, with a nice little path going down the side of it, so I thought I’d have a leisurely stroll down there. And very nice it was too. Nice to see a bit of greenery in a city.

I also just have to post this for posterity. I was stood under a road bridge that went over the river, and I mentioned there was a distinct lack of amusing cartoon graffiti. Not even so much as a badly drawn set of male genitalia. Seconds after I thought that, I spied this beautiful sticker stuck to a lamp post.

I don’t know if there’s a story behind it. I don’t really care. I just know this was the greatest thing I’d seen in my current time down there.

After my merry jaunt along the water, I had a bit of a wander around near the hotel, and found a couple of charity shops. I picked up a couple of things. Not really anything I’d heard of, but that’s half the fun. There was also a Greggs, where I picked up a sausage roll. The way my stomach felt would confirm if I was hungover, or hungry. I can confirm I was hungover. Somehow, I forced it down, rather like that scene on the Vicar Of Dibley where Geraldine has to eat all those sprouts and had to physically force them in there. That’s what I was like with that sausage roll.

By this time, Chris was ready, so I headed back to the hotel. Today’s plan was to go to Loughborough. For once, there was something there for both of us. Chris wanted to see the trains that are there, and I… well, of course, had the charity shops. Beforehand, we had another small walk around the Derby City Centre. Chris wanted some brekky, and I settled for a bottle of coke. The slice of lemon that came with it would be enough to keep me going all day.

We had enough time for a brief walk around Derby city centre before we went. We had became aware of the Derby Computer Museum, so tried to find it. Unfortunately, we couldn’t. It was on the 2nd floor of another building and Google Maps didn’t appear to signpost it very well, but it turns out it would have cost £7 to get in, and you had to book in advance. Oh well. To be honest, it looked to have been geared more towards kids and school groups anyway, so I’m not sure if there’d have been anything interesting for me. One thing that I happened to see out of the corner of my eye, that was even better than a computer museum, was a sign for a record shop, namely BPM Records. I go in and… Oh my. The new / sealed vinyl was downstairs, which didn’t really spark much interest for me, but upstairs… wow. Boxes and boxes of singles, an entire room dedicated to CDs, and even a couple of boxes of CD singles dotted about.

It was getting on at this point, so I grabbed a couple of CD Singles, the best one being “Flavor of the Month” by The Posies, a single that I’d bought back in 1993 on purple vinyl.

I vowed to come back the following day, so confirmed the opening times, and off we went to Loughborough. The first stop would be to get a photo of a building…

Apparently, they used to make parts of locomotives, or something, Chris did tell me, but seeing as it’s been a few weeks since the trip, I’ve entirely forgotten. I’m sure he’ll help out in the comments! The building is used for something else.

Next stop was to the Great Central Railway. I genuinely think we spent more time trying to get parked than actually being there. Considering this was a well-established tourist attraction (a lot of people apparently still like steam trains), there’s very little parking available, except for residential streets. I guess the locals must love that.

So, trains, then…

I took up most of my phone’s memory trying to get a decent photo of the station cat, who was happily wandering about, gathering atention from myself and other people hanging about. Of course, I don’t know if it was the station cat or not, but I liked to think he was employed as head mouse catcher, and to his credit, I didn’t see a single rodent.

We waved goodbye to the trains, and headed into Loughborough town centre. I’m happy to say I really liked it. We stopped off for a drink, and I was happy to see an old US streetlight still in use..

They were originally made by General Electric in the US, but the ‘moulds’ were bought by Phosco in the early 2000s so they could be manufactured over here. If you ever get close to one, you can see where the GE badge used to be…. cough, erm.

And so, off onto the major part of the day, for me at least… the charity shops. I’m happy to report that Loughborough does have its fair share of them, most of which are located in Biggin Street. One Age UK shop had a large amount of CD singles in there, so I filled my boots. I picked up other bits along the way too. I might elaborate on this if I can be bothered. It did have its fair share of nice old buildings, all appear to still be well maintained. Overall, yes, I can happily say, looking back, I liked Loughborough a lot.

Unfortunately, Chris got lost on the way back. It did give me a photo of what I’d consider to be the worst street I’ve seen. A passing interest of mine is to go around Google Maps and look at streets that have the worst possible view from the residents’ front window. This one is certainly up there….

I wonder what the going rate for lung / bronchial conditions is there..

We got back to the hotel dropped off our things, and then headed out. Of course, we wanted to see if that taproom was actually going to be open. Success! it was! We had a couple in there, and then went back to Ye Olde Dolphin inne. We got chatting to a couple of regulars while we were in there, who wondered what we were doing in Derby… I think they were more surprised than anything. I don’t think they get many tourists around those parts.

We got chatting about food, as you do, and where the best Indians were. A place called ‘Himalayan’ was highly recommended to us.

It was a Gurkha restaurant, admittedly not something I’d tried before. Always the ambitious type of guy, I went for something completely different on the menu… This time, I went for the…. chicken vindaloo.

It goes without saying that the food was incredibly nice, and the beer was also excellent too… again.

Not a brand I’d seen before, but I’d definitely get it again. On the way back, we nipped back to the Old Silk Mill for one more, and then back to the hotel. Great beer, great food. Now, ono the 2nd half of the trip! and because they didn’t really fit in anywhere, he’s a couple of arty shots of the cathedral…

A weekend in York (Day 1)

You know, it seems sometimes all I post about on here is Amiga stuff and charity shops. It’s pretty much what my life has became recently. Sometimes I do leave the house, and this time it was for a mooch around York. Well, yes, there were charity shops involved, but there was other stuff too.

In early July, Martlepool hosted a leg of the Tall Ships race. It’s something that has happened before, way back in 2010. Sadly, I wasn’t able to attend much of those festivities thanks to work commitments. this time, 13 years later, I avoided it through coice. This time, it promised absolute carnage for the lovely little fishing village of Hartlepool. Chris, who you may remember from many blogs previously, lives in an area of the ‘village’ affected by the traffic measures, so he decided to get out of the way for a few days, and head to Leeds and York, instead of having to fight the council for a parking permit. Plans were made for me to join him half way through this trip. I said I’d get the train down on the Saturday, meet up with him and stay overnight, and come back with him on the Sunday. Of course, there was possible “industrial action” on the train to worry about. Would I actually make it down?

I booked the ticket the week previously. I was surprised just how easy it was. I’ve never actually ordered tickets on my phone before. Despite my technical knowledge, I can’t help but think that paper tickets, or having some physical representation of a ticket is the best way to go. Anyway, no sooner had I paid, it got put into my “online wallet”, and I was all set. I was genuinely amazed at how simple it went.

Anyway, as mentioned. There were train strikes, and that was my worry. This particular train company didn’t have the greatest reputation when it comes to reliability. I’d have thought that any excuse to cancel a train, they’d be all over it. Anyway, I awoke early on the Saturday, still expecting to read my phone and find that the train had been cancelled. Amazingly, this never happened. I arrived at the station to find the board was still showing it was turning up. While in the waiting room, the guy next to me ran out without his phone charger. Amusingly, I’ve known the person who I spoke to for about 30 years, I’d totally forgotten he’s worked there, and to complete the circle of life, he still has some Amiga disks with my handwriting on. If only Elton John and Tim Rice were in the vacinity. I do wonder if this guy ever collected his phone charger.

This particular train company was even a guy walking up and down the platform showing people where to stand to get onto the right carriage. Never had that service before, so this was my position while I waited…

The eagle-eyed amongst you may have noticed that the other platorm (which was supposed to be ready in time for the Tall Ships) is still out of bounds. There’s now a bridge connecting both platforms, but it’s not ready yet, and there’s no canopies or lighting installed on that side.

Anyway, I successfully boarded the train, and took in the sights of Teesside and Yorkshire, as the bone rattler wound its way through many little villages and towns.

An hour or so later, I was in York., and I was taking in the sights and sounds… of a place I’d been to about 60 times before, but I still can’t help busting the camera out.



That last one is of “Grape Lane”. A street that has had a slightly different name in times of yore. I’ll leave you, the viewer to find out what that is.

As menitoned previously, I hit the charity shops. And by golly, did I find some classic tat in there…




At some point during the “Wayne King” record, and the Metrocentre postcard, Chris met up with me. Of course, we had a mooch around a few more shops (many of them may, or may not have been of the charity variety), before the weather started to turn. It was raining. Not much, but enough to think “Oh, there’s a microbrewery. Let’s have a sneaky pint”. And so, that’s exactly what we did.



I love that little ornament of the eagle, and his little hat made out of beermats. Sadly, I doubt he was for sale, so that photo will have to do.

Sadly, the rain kept up, so I didn’t get many more photos. Instead we headed off to Drake’s for some chips. Seems everyone had that same idea, because it seemed like the world’s longest wait for two portions of curry and chips. They weren’t bad, I guess, but could have done without the wait!

With the charity shops plundered and time getting on, we headed off to the B+B. And what a nice little place it was, about half a mile away from the city centre.

Sadly, I didn’t really get a decent photo of the size of the room, but Chris had that big bed, and I had my own bed, right next to the open window. This would become beneficial later on.

Shortly after, we went out to the first of the pubs we’d passed on the way.

A nice little place. I think I had a pint of something called “White Rat”. It was nice whatever it was. We stopped at another place. The “Royal Oak”. I think we had one or two in there, and then decided to go for the most predictable part of the night… an Indian! I’m guessing it must have only been about 6PM at that point. Turns out this was the best decision of the day. We entered, asked for a table, the guy shuffled his papers for what seemed like an age, and then ushered us to a table. It was right near the door. this meant that we could hear everyone that came in. “Sorry, we’re fully booked until 9:30”. Ha! We’d just got the last table, and it was lovely. Not quite as nice as the one in Macclesfield, but it was certainly enjoyable, and the fact we were the last ones to get an unbooked table just added that little extra spice to it all.

No trip to York is complete without a stop in the “Three Legged Mare”. One of my favourite haunts in York Something interesting always happens.

We’d grabbed a seat right at the front. Little did we know that there was going to be a band/duo on, until they turned up with all of their equipment.

I must admit, I wish I could remember their names, because they were bloody good.

I’m bound to find out, and I’ll update when I do.

We began to head back relatively early. Chris wasn’t sure what time the B+B closed its doors, so we were back by 10.

About 10 minutes after getting back, we opened the window and found out that our timing was, once again, impeccable. We looked out, and there was a thunderstorm going on outside. I think we spent the next two hours or so discussing which presenter was at the centre of the latest BBC shenannegans. Turns out my guess was completely wrong.

Eventually, I drifted off to sleep, with the sound of the rain and thunder being a perfect white noise generator. Day 2, the journey home, should be fun.

Day one in Treacletown

A couple of years ago, during the lockdown, I came up with the idea that when we were through it, I’d visit a few places that I’ve never been to, with the whole premise of raiding thr charity chops and trying a few nearby eateries and… drinkeries. Last year, I travelled to Skegness with Chris, and this time we headed off to Macclesfield.

As I type this, it’s 7:39AM. I’m laid in bed in a Travelodge listening to the traffic go by. Unfortunately, the traffic seems to consist of large trains, seeing as we’re probably less than 50 yards away from the main train line, the one that runs from here to Manchester. I’d ask Chris which one it is, but he’s snoring merrily away, and by the time I get this online, I’ll probably forget.

Anyhoo, on to yesterday. It started off with a trip to Huddersfield. It’s a place I’d been to several times. One place I remember with a great amount of fondness, was a little record shop known as “Vinyl Tap”. The top part of the shop was unassuming, and not really that interesting. It was all new stock. All stuff that was out of my price range, and also stuff that just didn’t appeal. There was one saving grace, however. A massive basement, that probably ran underneath three other stores, full of 7″s and 12’s, of all different genres. I remember my previous visit in 2016, I spent hours down there and came back with a fairly decent haul.

Sadly, on this visit, the record basement was no more. Instead of a welcoming staircase to heaven, there was instead, the velvet rope, draped across the stairs. I could have cried.

So, after about 2 minutes, aimlessly looking at CDs I was never going to buy, we left. Probably never to return, ever. Sad times

Of course, Huddersfield has more to offer than just one record shop. There were, of course the charity shops. And what a disappointment they all were.

Approximately 2 hours of walking around yielded 4 CDs, and most of those were from a branch of Barnados that had only just opened.

There was also the outdoor market. I don’t know whether Tuesday is “Flea Market” day, but it seemed like it. Not one shred of anything decent. Unless you like horse ornaments.

We then stumbled on what could only be described as a fire waiting to happen. It’s hard to put into words just how cramped this place was, stacked high with tables, chairs, cabinets. If it’s made of wood, it’s in there.

Of course, I had to stumble over a mercury vapour light. Should I have bought it? I certainly didn’t fancy lobbing at around, with no guarantee that it actually worked, so I passed on it.

One of the last few stops we made was to one of those local community / tourist places. Ended up picking a bottile of Carolina Reaper hot sauce. At the time of typing, I’ve yet to try it.

So, that was Huddersfield. It was getting a bit late in the afternoon, but there was still time to head somewhere else, and that place was Oldham.

Getting there was a piece of cake. Getting parked, not so. Eventually we settled on a car park that we’d passed twice. Luckily by that point, I’d discovered two charity shops, so we headed there. It was 15:32, and one of them, the RSPCA, closed at 15:30. Sure enough, the doors were already locked.

That’s definitely one of the worst thing about being a charity shop fan, having to put up with whatever opening hours the old dears beihind the counter can put up with.

The other one is an Oxfam. These are always hit and miss. Sometimes, they’re great and have reasonable prices, sometimes they just slap any old price on stuff.

It was raining at this point. Missing a charity shop by 2 mintes had also not lightened the mood. I was ready to put on par with Grimsby as the most depressing place I’d been to, but thankfully there was no smell of fish in the air.

We found another untapped vein of charity shops, adn I ended up with my biggest haul of the day. Only 9, however, but it was still more than before.

We did find a diamond in the rough, however. Tucked away in the top left corner of the “Tommyfield Market” was a lovely little micropub called the Cob & Coal. I didn’t get a photo of the place itself, but here’s a photo of the doorstop, as we both found it particularly amusing.

And that was Oldham. The rain had not relented the entire time we were there. Thankfully, this meant that there was no dust from the shopping centre they’re knocking down… and it also allowed me toadd to my ever growing collection of shopping centre demolition photos with…. two.


And the onto the final destination. Good old Macclesfield. Sally satnav showed us the way, and after making only one wrong turning, we’d reached our destination. I was quire surprised how small the town seemed. Seemed one minute we were in the country, the next second was the sight of the Travelodge, and our base for the next couple of days.

Even though it was raining, there was a decent view out of the window, both daytime and at night.

We dropped our stuff off. Chris has a cup of tea and I watched The Chase. We then went in search of food. Naturally, we went for an Indian. Of course, before that, we made a stop into a nearby pub, the George and Dragon. What a lovely little place. Not sure if it had just been done out,, but it was absolutely spotless. The drinks were nice… I went for a Dizzy Blonde, and Chris had a pint of something called Unicorn. It was decent. And the bogs were spotless. Not often you can say that about many pubs. they even had genuine brand-name hand soap.

After a couple of these were necked, we went onto the Indian. Now, we ended up going to a different one than we originally planned, a place called Lazeez. It was over the road from the George and Dragon, and seeing as the weather was still ‘inclement’, we ended up here because it was closer. The food itself was absolutely lovely. There was some sauce that came with the poppadoms. Now, anyone who knows me will know that I could quite happily bathe in the red sauce that you usually get. This time, it was like a brown sauce. No idea what it was, but it was beautiful.

I went for a vindaloo, naturally. Ended up getting loads. Only downside was that the beer wasnt great., it tasted like it had been in the pump for a while. If you go here, It’s probably an idea to get a bottle, but that was genuinely the only downside to what was otherwise a decent place. 7.5 out of 10.

So, the night was getting on. We went to a place for one more drink, namely Alfred’s. They had Beavertown Neck Oil on. Its lovely stuff. Expensive, but worth it. I ended up trying to teach some of the intricacies of Pokémon Go, but I don’t think he could have been any less interested!

So, back to the Travelodge. Thankfully the rain had stopped at that point. A couple of episodes of Family Guy later, and time for sleep. Turns out that the bed seemed slightly smaller than a normal single bed, and it felt like I was going to keep falling out. The trains going past didn’t help. Chris later explained that the rail appeared to have a loose fishplate, which was causing the “Th’dunk” sound every time anything ran over it. So, I’d say it was a below average sleep. Not terrible, but not great either.

And so, onto the main event… day two!

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.

Opening files from Amiga disks on the PC…

A nrecent commenter asked about the disk images that I’ve recently created… “Can you browse the contents of the disk images you create without loading them imto an emulator”?

The answer is… “Of course.”, and it’s all done using HxC. (Note: Not to beconfused with HxD, the hex editor).

I can’t remember if I mentioned HxC in any of my last posts, but it’s what I’ve been using to get those pretty green circles as shown in my other posts on the subject, but here it is in all its glory.

To load your freshly created disk image, you can either click “Load”, or drag the file onto the program.It’ll confirm it’s loaded by giving you the file name.

Click on “Disk Browser”. If it’s in a format that’s recognised, such as PC DOS, Amiga DOS, etc, you’ll see the disk contents. Note that this won’t allow you to read the files on protected disks / ones that aren’t in a standard format, but hopefully you expected that…

After that, the files are saved onto your computer. Naturally, what you’re able to do with the files is going to vary wildly. In my example, thankfully, the IFF / ILBM image format, along with the HAM variant, open up in a few modern programs. My example below is from XNview MP.

That means if you have a disk of images you made with Deluxe Paint back in the day, there’s a very good chance you’ll find something to open them with. Sadly, the GIMP, as of version 2.10.30 doesn’t want to open these examples. Shame.

It’s not going to do any harm to have a bit of a play around

Late Spring snow and early Fall sleet

Well, wasn’t this morning fun? As you’re no doubt aware by the title (which I’m sure I can improve on, but probably won’t), today saw the first heavy snow shower in April for as long as I can remember. Now, snow in this month isn’t that uncommon, but usually it’s just a very brief blast that might last a few minutes, and melt shortly after. Apparently, it was cold elough for it to not even snow, but lay too.

Let’s turn the clock back a few hours. It was 5AM. I’d just finished my weekend late stint at the computer, and was getting prepared for bed. I’d gone for a pee, and noticed the sky was a very weird colour. Sort-of a light grey colour. Although the nights are indeed getting shorter, it was just too early for the sun to be rising. I did a double take, and noticed that the roofs were covered in snow… Yep, it had been snowing, and there was plenty of it too. The cars and the road were covered. Lovely!

Now I’d intended to go to sleep at that point, but I decided not to. I really wanted to see more of this, and get some photos at least. It’s the first time we’d had proper snow for quite a white. We’d had snow earlier on in the year, but…. it wasn’t quite right. It was more hail than snow, and wasn’t that photogenic, if you know what I mean. This was proper snow, the fluffy type, the stuff that piles up on the top of things, sticks to tree branches, and gives everything that wintry, frosty look.

It was definitely the first time I’d seen it since I got the “new” phone with the decent camera, so I decided to break my duck, and actually head out of the gravel driveway for only the second time this year, and the first time for purely a leisure walk. The only other time was Wednesday, as I met up with “somebody”, as he’d ordered some beers and got them delivered to Mercuryvapour Towers.

I’m lucky enough to have a small park area not too far from where I reside, so this was the perfect opportunity to blast out of the camera, At just before 8AM, I donned my coat, and headed off for the first proper “leisure walk” of 2021. I was well aware that the paths were going to be extremely slippery. It appears that the temperatures had dropped again since the snow had fallen, as there was a slight crust of ice forming over the snow. I took no chances, and walked in the middle of the road. The small amount of vehicles that had went through the commoners’ suburban streets had thankfully melted a walkable path. It wasn’t just me who had this idea, as there was another set of footprints oddly going through the middle of the tracks and not actually on them. Surely you might as well have just walked on the path? Oh well. Makes it look like Fred Flintstone’s headed out to get the paper…

It was early, there weren’t going to be many cars about, and if there was, I’d hear them a mile off, crunching through the ice. I was also painfully aware that I hadn’t put my phone on charge for any period of time, therefore it was cooking at about 15%. Considering it was about to take the amout of pictures that it did. For the record, it conked out literally as I got to the front door.

I had a very brief walk through the afore-mentioned park area. As I was taking photos, I had a brief chat to a lady who I hadn’t seen for a good long while – I’m sure I’ve mentioned her in my (unpublished) ramblings, but she’s from the Birmingham area, and used to always get the bus at the same stop as me. The last time she’d seen snow like this, was just after her son was born, and it was just outside Coventry.

There wasn’t that much more to photograph to be fair. The sun was starting to break through the clouds at this point, making way for a typically sunny, if a little chilly, spring day, and just a few hours later, any trace of the snow ever existing was to be confined to memories, and of course, these photos.

On a side note, whenever it snows, I always pile up a little bit to see how long it lasts. I’m not talented or patient enough to make a snowman, but somehow, I managed to accidentally sculpt a silverback gorilla facing away from the camera…

Let’s hope it starts warming up soon, eh?

EDIT: As I’m sure some of you will be wondering (lol, righto), and my usage of the word “fall”, the title of the post comes from the Don Henley song “A Month Of Sundays”. It was the B side to his big hit “The Boys Of Summer”, and also featured on the CD pressing of the album “A Month Of Sundays”, but not the LP pressing. Whenever there’s snow in April, or November, the whole section of that song plays through my head… “Late pring snow and early fall sleet, I held the leather reins in my hand, felt the soft ground under my feet”. It was on the fery first CD album I ever bought and was going to be part of my “10 albums in 10 days” blog, but I never finished it.