I DID IT!!!!

26 November 2011

At last I have finished NaNo.  I have validated my effort Finding Our Way and sent it off for validation.  It's a winner!!!  Mind you, everyone who registered and does meet the 50,000 word target in November is a winner.  To be honest, I didn't find it all that hard really.  My main concern was the amount of gaps in it.  Still, it's a challenge taken on and met.  Enough of that ...

Today it is apparently Black Friday, yet another piece of American silliness that the media is hung up on.  Here it is late November and the shops are worried that not enough of us are going and spending our dosh with them.  They are worried that it will be a quiet trading period this Christmas.  I seem to remember that from last year too, and the year before that and the year ... well you know.  So many people are also worried about the decline of the High Street with the massive supermarkets first taking the blame and then the out of town shopping centres.  Well, Jan and I tend to travel around quite and bit and the town centres seem to be well crowded and well used.  Yes, there are empty shops and stores  but there still seems to be plenty of trade going on.

Yesterday I went for a ride around Dorktown on my scooter because I couldn't remember seeing any empty shops in Dorktown apart from the old Woollies and M&S sites and one other in Abbey Street which sold tatty 'fancy goods' for next to nowt which burned some time ago.  In the end I found another 7.  I don't know how many shops there in town but such a low number of empty units seems pretty good to me compared with other local towns.  OK there are also 10 charity shops too, but so what?  They are meeting a need and that's OK with me.

Some time ago some councillor was saying that we need more shopping malls of the size the Ropewalk on Queens Road - here's the entrance ...  

 

It has around 15 units in it I think, I never actually counted them so I can't say for sure but currently 2 are not in use.  But why do we need another Ropewalk sized mall when we have so many empty units now?  And just where were they paling to put it?  Ah well, there's a car park at the back of Wilkos along with a disused office block too.  Not only that but the central post office sorting office for the town is on the same block.  Across the road is the central library.  The suggestion as I remember it was to demolish the lot, including the pub next door to Wilkos and the library and put this new mall there along with more promised social and meeting places.  The idea was dropped I believe through lack of interest!   
The recent uproar about changes to the library system has been bad enough without trying to knock it down.  These councillors live on a different plant to me I'm sure.  Of course, it's not their money they are playing with is it?  It's our money, the council tax payers.  If they had to put THEIR money where their mouths were, I'm not sure they would so swift in coming out with such ideas.