Dark

The clouds down on the Pennines.
If you look really closely you may see cars on the Snake Pass road, a flock of pigeons in the air and not a parking space to be found.

Pizza Express is newly opened today but I don't think that's why- its just always like this.  I suppose its typical of everywhere that has an M&S food store&cafe, a Wetherspoons pub, 3 bargain clothes stores and now two Pizza places and a Bistro all crammed together in a tiny corner of a small town.

Taken in the middle of the afternoon and it was almost dark already then.

Other much more attractive Independent shops and cafes are nearby including high quality Butchers, higher quality Bakers, excellent Greengrocers, warm friendly Wholefoods and health store, lovely yummy Deli/fine foods store plus an indoor Market with lots of interest but visitors seem to just cram into this corner to see all the shops they can also see in the next town and the next ...

Nowt as strange as folk ( as they say)

Today I had a central heating system that went haywire and failed to switch off - creating a hot house.  New batteries in remote control system seems to have fixed that. In the old days a wired system would just have worked.

Tonight I have a mobile phone which receives calls but won't let me send any - it appears I have barred all outgoing calls ( some how?).  Its so long since I made an outgoing call that I have no idea how long it has been like this but it rejects my attempts to change the settings. You know I'm really not sure I need a mobile phone after all I think I'll go back to smoke signals - plenty of steam coming out of the central heating system :-)