After three hot September days, there was heavy rain last night with lightening and thunder. The gap between the lightening and thunder was first thirteen seconds and then eight seconds. It did not get any closer. As a rule of thumb there are five seconds for a mile.
This evening the clouds are lit up by a Harvest Moon – the full moon nearest the Harvest Festival.
Pascal and Debbie retired a few weeks ago. The shop closed for a couple of weeks during the transition. The new team in charge are working hard to continue the success that Pascal and Debbie created on East St Helen Street. I see the lights on each evening as they prepare for the following day.
They had a stall under the County Hall during Heritage Day. Best Wishes for the retirement and the continued success of the business.
This advert is from Marie in Abingdon sixty years ago, at a time when the business was just twenty years old.
There is a ten day exhibition in Abingdon Museum celebrating eighty years of Marie, the boutique in Bath Street Abingdon. The exhibition features corsets and lingerie dating back to Victorian times. There are also old photographs and artifacts from the original Marie shop.
Sixty years ago, the Wootton Road shopping centre opened with five new shops. The shops served the post-war estates that had spread through Fitzharris and Wildmoor. The shopping centre contained a newsagent, greengrocer, butcher, general grocer, and a wool shop / draper.
Visiting the shopping centre this evening, sixty years on, two of the five shops have been merged into one, and an extra shop has been added round the side.
The shopping centre now has: a sports shop, self-service grocer (two shops), a telephone and fishing tackle shop, hairdresser, and tattooist round the side.