The skip outside the Abbey Grounds has been filled to overflowing. There is even a child’s buggy on top.
There is a display in the museum explaining the new sculpture that will be located outside those gates near where the skip is. It is designed by the sculptor Michael Fairfax and is shaped rather like the traffic cone. It will be called the MLFMMVI Needle (MMVI is 2006 and MLF may be Michale L Fairfax).
Inside, the scaffolding is off Trendell’s Folley, and some new tension wires now hold the two sides together. A path is being built around.
At the Gateway end there is till a lot of banging and shovelling going on as workmen position slaps and corner stones.
Behind the fence, and under the arch, the work continues, most of it in a foreign tongue. A lot of builders (as well as Tesco workers) come from Eastern Europe now that the EU has expanded.
Work has also begun on the Old Abbey House car-park which will be re-laid and-, by creating a ramp, accessibility to the Information Centre and Town Council offices improved.

Just three pictures from this early morning. First a panaroma (press to see it big).

On the left is Burford Bridge over the Thames. Salters have moored one of their large boats off Nagshead Island. Alongside is another large boat – a travelling home which is for sale.

The stream that side goes under Abingdon Bridge with the Old Gaol behind. (In the Abingdon Herald this week it looks as if the District Council have made progress, and the first stage in planning the Old Gaols future will soon be presented.) To the right is the Upper Reaches Hotel in bright sunshine.
Crystals have had another broken window. Allegedly, a drunk put her boot through it. That shop brightens up the area so such a shame.
There is a County Council scheme to merge the Dunmore schools, not something many people from that area seem to want. So a campaign has begun, and here they are setting up in the market place this morning.

Abingdon now has four greeting card shops in the precinct. Birthdays (top right) opened a week or so ago. Birthdays used to be where Costa is now. They went away and have returned. Many Happy Returns!

In Tesco from7.30P/M there were people singing carols and listening to bible readings near the Customer Service Desk. This is all part of Radio Oxford’s Big Christmas Carol, with venues all round the Oxford area. There were possibly forty people, but not a huge crowd, at Tesco. But it was broadcast to everybody in the shop.

More numerous by far are the Christmas lights that have appeared over the last few days. This garden has cut-out reindeer, and a blue-lit tree (the picture does not do it justice).

A few doors down is this brightly lit front garden in Saxton Road.