Art & Stuff have mostly closed down although they do still have a notice saying they could be open by appointment. It has been good to have an Abingdon Antique shop where people were welcome to browse and occasionally buy stuff for almost six years.
Both Gromit the dog, and Gromit’s owner, will be doing Vintage and Antique fairs, but are retired from the 9-5 shop-keeping life. Best wishes to them both and thanks for all the art and stuff.
I have started seeing children’s books, left outside, in Abingdon. They are left in clear bags with a note from the person who donated them. In the last 24 hours I have seen three such books.
The note says You have found a book. You can either read me, leave me, or take me home.
This is the initiative of the Look for a book Oxfordshire Facebook Group. The group began on Saturday 10th August 2019.
Read it Daddy, a fellow Abingdon blogger, has been blogging for over 9 years at https://readitdaddy.blogspot.com/. His speciality is reviewing children’s books, sometimes more than one a day. He will know most of these found books.
On 22nd July Read it Daddy reviewed a book by an Abingdon author – Nicki Thornton.
Nicki used to be the co-owner of Mostly Books. Looking at the window at Mostly Books I see they have lots of children’s books including some about Starting School.
Meanwhile at The Bookstore in Abingdon there are a lot of children’s books in the corner window. They even have one that I recognise – Starting School By Janet Ahlberg and Allan Ahlberg.
A new Tea Room is to open in East St Helen Street. The signs are up and there are notices in the window saying there looking for part time staff who can do Saturdays. The Tea Room facebook page has the same details.
Belinda’s Jewellery Box was in this premises before moving to West St Helen Street. Rosie’s Tea Room in West St Helen Street closed a few months ago and will, I believe, soon become a French Bistro.
Walking in Abingdon this afternoon my wife commented how bad the pollution from traffic was down the Vineyard.
The air pollution used to be concentrated in the town centre shopping streets before the Abingdon Integrated Transport Strategy (AbITS), implemented in 2006, started holding traffic outside the town centre in roads like the Vineyard and Ock Street.
On investigation I found that the VWHDC council monitors levels of pollutants around the town centre. Monitoring tubes are fixed to lamp posts. They are exposed for a month at a time and sent to the laboratory for analysis and reporting.
One monitoring tube is in the Vineyard, and like most of the tubes around Abingdon town centre it shows a slowly decreasing trend in nitrogen dioxide levels.
This data is available at https://oxfordshire.air-quality.info.