The newish curiosity shop

Today's post is brought to you by the Chipping Campden Tourism Promotion Board.

R and I were so bored with home by today that we needed to be somewhere else - and where is there that's more guaranteed to cheer you up on a cold, dank day with a lowering sky than Chipping Campden? Our previous favourite café seems to have gone off recently, but we had excellent coffee and cheerful service in di Stefania, and then walked the town looking for interesting things for me to photograph.

The whole place is still rocking the Christmas decorations, and I was tempted to put together a collage of excellent door furniture and furnishings for this post; but we both really liked this shop, which is one of many on the High Street that sell things you absolutely don't need, but really want to buy - because lifestyle. And it has a nice wreath too.

As we were driving back up the hill out of the town we saw a definite contender for kookiest Christmas decorations of the year: someone has used baubles to create faces on the pair of topiary birds flanking their gateway, and then wrapped scarves around their necks. It was weird, but still deserved a solid 8 for effort, I felt.