The Abingdon Arts Festival will begin on March 8th and the final event a Pop Fest with Los Pacaminos will be on April 8th.
It will begin with various musical performances in the Market Square. There will be lots of jazz including a concert by Stekpanna joined by George Haslam from Abingdon. George seems to get jazz bands to come from faraway places like Argentina, Germany, and now Scandinavia. The festival will also see the unveiling of the Charter Wall Hanging… Theatre includes:
Half a Sixpence – by Abingdon Operatic Society
Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads – by The Abingdon Touring Theatre Company
Three Sisters – by The Old Gaol Theatre Company
Macbeth – by Abingdon Drama Club
And much much more…

Trinity Church still displays the banner that was first put up during the G8 conference last July. The Baptist Church had a similar banner but it got taken down some time ago. The Baptist ‘Poverty is History’ is History.

The building of the new Co-op has come to a halt.

Last year, the Co-op unveiled a wonderful new space age design for their new store. Lovely shiney curved front. A lot of local people didn’t like it much and put up a fight to get the design changed. But the Co-op pressed on. They pulled the old store down, and started on the foundations.

For three months it has looked like the picture, just waiting for somebody to add the shiney top.

However, bigger things are happening. The Oxford and Swindon Cooperative Society has merged with other Cooperative Societies to form the Mid Counties Co-op. And work has come stopped whule they do a gigantic stock take.

The only notice says “Private Property – Keep Out!” instead of “We apologise for the Inconvenience….”

This once was the site of the Kingfisher Primary School.

Their departure has left an empty plot with a long wall of boarding along one side of Blacknall Road.

On it, people leave each other memoes. Things like “I love you M” and “I’m on the other side smoking Pot. Come and join me” and other things I cannot even remember.