2nd Lockdown Oddities and End of Transition

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2nd Lockdown
The busy Abbey play area can be seen beyond this backwater. One of the last things to reopen after the first lockdown were the play parks. This time round the play parks have been kept open and at weekends look busy.

Before reaching the play area I saw a man litter picking. He is a key worker and does many hours litter picking as well as his work. He now counts the face masks he picks up. Last week he counted about 400.

A friend reported going to visit B&M on the Fairacres trading estate yesterday but then decided not to join the large queue. B&M have done very well during both lockdowns as they sell both essentials and non essentials.
2nd Lockdown
Businesses have received letters telling them to prepare for the change to trading and employment rules as a result of the end of the one year transition period.

Abingdon Farmers’ Market – with risk assessments

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Farmers Market
There was the Abingdon Farmers’ Market this Friday (20th November), and there were about a dozen stalls.
Farmers Market
I see their Covid-19 risk assessment included:
* All traders wore face-masks
* Food and drink could only be taken away
* No samples of produce
* A one-way system
* No groups larger than 6
Farmers Market
My blog risk assessment includes not taking any close up photographs to avoid getting in the way, and taking just a few pictures while walking once round the outside.

Abingdon man ends up on London Bridge

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William Mandeville
William Mandeville, of Abingdon, led an early rising of ordinary folk. An account can be read in Chronicles of London Bridge by Richard Thomson, available in google books ( https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=n2MuAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA238&lpg=PA238#v=onepage&q&f=false  ).

It is diffuclt from this account to judge the justice of his cause. A rebellious association was formed in Abingdon by William Mandeville, a weaver and bailiff of the town (April 1431) who called himself Jack Sharp, of Wigmore’s lands in Wales. The object of this rebellion was ostensibly against the priests, for Mandeville confessed when examined, that it was ‘intended to make priests’ heads as plenty as sheep’s heads – ten for a penny,’
William Mandeville
William Mandeville is commemorated in a short street in Abingdon – off the Oxford Road
William Mandeville
Perhaps fitting for a rebellion that ended in execution, Mandeville Close is a Cul-de-sac. There are half a dozen houses on one side of the road, and a Beech hedge on the other.