Shopping Break?

After the dry frost and cold of last week, today is relatively warm, windy and very wet, so I took myself off to the local town centre for some window shopping.  Although it was busy I wasn't that inspired. The impact of war in Europe, recession  and COVID has seen the move away from high street shopping to out of town stores and online  purchases, resulting in many empty shelves and more and more shops being turned over to food outlets, pop-ups or even services (our COVID/Flu Vaccination centre occupies one of the larger units, and another is being used as a job searcher support).  Maybe I'm typical of the problem as after a mooch around and coffee (both enjoyable in their way) I headed to a local retail park where I had a far more successful shopping experience.

The local council has at least installed some festive cheer, and the large bauble outside an entrance to the shopping malls was provided as somewhere to sit and perhaps take some selfies or cute family Christmas shots. However, as you can see it was rather wet and what people passed by were heading directly into the dry!

Thanks to Carolina for hosting today's Mono Monday Challenge; "Christmas where you live"