We went to Downtown at Grantham today. It’s a shop the size of an aircraft hanger with an attached garden centre. You can buy expensive furniture, expensive tat for Christmas and boring books . Unusually, you can still buy tools and seeds in the Garden Centre. Most local “Garden Centres” are big on giftware and a bit light on the gardening side of things. It attracts old people like a moth to a flame.
It isn’t really my natural habitat. It was OK when it used to do a lot of discounting and the book section was larger, but over the years it became ever more dull and we stopped going. When my sister suggested meeting at a halfway point it seemed a good idea.
We ended up spending four hours there – from elevenses to a late lunch. It started with tea and cake and ended with lasagne and chips. In the middle I bought a cheap diary, a few Christmas presents and sat around as the womenfolk shopped. At one point a confused elderly gent tried to follow me into the disabled toilet. As I tried to pull the door shut he pulled it open. It was a bad bit of design – as my door opened it covered the door to the Gents and was a bit awkward from a social point of view. I have checked for the etiquette of such a situation but there appears to be no recommended way of coping, so I merely pointed out his error and pointed him to the correct door.
Cropwell Bishop
We went home via the creamery at Cropwell Bishop and bought Stilton for Christmas, plus a block of Red Leicester and some Christmas chutney. The picture is from pre-Lockdown days – the last time we went. It’s peculiar that you can’t produce Stilton in Stilton, because of the legal protection of the brand, but the Nottinghamshire based dairy is allowed to produce Red Leicester and Shropshire Blue.
We arrived home just as dark was falling, covered the car windscreen in case of frost and settled down to watch TV and eat pizza.
We saw a perching buzzard, fieldfares and redwings an even a small flock of geese in a roadside field (though we couldn’t be sure what species as we only saw them as shapes through a hedge), so it was quite a pleasant run.
Cropwell Bishop Creamery