Abingdon Country Market to close in September

4 Replies

Country Market
Abingdon Country Market were letting customers know that after 72 years their last market will be on September 11th (at the Salvation Army in West St Helen Street).

They have very much enjoyed running the Market, and have loved baking for the people of Abingdon. It is with regret that they have taken the decision to close.

The reason is a change to food standard regulations. Natasha’s Law will come into force on 1st October 2021. The law was introduced following the death of a teenager called Natasha, who suffered a fatal allergic reaction after eating a baguette bought from Pret a Manger. Businesses will need to label packaged food with a full ingredients list and allergen information.
Country Market
The person I spoke to at the Abingdon Country Market agreed this is needed for bigger businesses but will find it too difficult to do as a small concern (see example of Lemon Drizzle Cake above). Currently Abingdon Country Market provide allergen information on each package and know the ingredients of their own products. The full ingredients list and allergen information will be a large overhead where only a small number of each cake or preserve are made every month.
Country Market
Another difficulty is maintaining an ingredient’s list where ingredients can change unexpectedly. If a certain margarine is used in a cake, then the full breakdown of the margarine ingredients are shown on the cake, and where ingredients change, or an alternative is used, the change will have to be noticed and the label changed as a result.

The Country Market have known about the new law since 2019 and have waited to see whether there will be a dispensation for small producers before taking the decision to close.

I don’t know whether such labelling will be needed for cakes sold at church and school fetes.

The next group litter pick

Leave a reply

Litter Pick
The next group litter pick, organised by AbiBinit!, will start at the Peachcroft shops on 11th September.
Litter Pick
Their last group litter pick began near the Reynolds Way shops on Saturday 7th August.
Litter Pick
I was working on that day, and cycling home I was surprised to see a lot of blue bags – far more than those on this picture.
Litter Pick
The nearby garages will be demolished in the next month.
Litter Pick
The Abingdon Bridge charity supported local young people in creating a wall full of murals on the other side of the garages. Only those murals made from tiles, signed by young people, have survived. The murals painted on boards did not survive. They got replaced by newer murals, painted on board, which have not survived.

Joymount

4 Replies

Last week we held our monthly Abingdon share a poem group. I now have three more Abingdon poems to put forward towards the Ten poems about Abingdon book. I hope to get about 30 poems from which somebody, as yet unknown,  can choose 10. Here is the first. It was written using the voice of a house. It is interesting in poems to become an object or animal and use its voice …
Joymount
Joymount

For years now I have sat here
Gazing at the garden,
Watching it grow, and growing too, more slowly,
Feeling my timbers harden.

Once, younger and smaller,
I looked over fields,
Glimpsed St Helen’s spire and the outskirts of Abingdon,
Listened for the church peels.

Back from the road
And out of public view,
Snug in our orchards and meadows,
We Northcourt houses were few.

Now the trees have grown
That they planted long ago,
Cutting the view of those passing in the road –
How quickly they grow.

And now, clean on their straight walls
There are young roofs all round,
No wisdom in them, no bending to fit the years,
Crowding my ground.

They have driven off the squirrels
That played once in my trees,
Have turned us old ones into town houses
Yearning for a country breeze:

Just a handful now, The Old House,
The Farmhouse, cottages and pub,
The young one, posh behind its red wall
Yet still we form the hub;

And round us the old hamlet
Can still, though only just, be seen:
Some old walls, lichened roofs, uncertain chimneys,
Some trees and grass between;

But Abingdon has reached out,
Snatching our open spaces,
Squeezing the hamlet, deafening our ears,
Removing its grace.

And I am left, enclosed, to enfold my humans,
Their bickering and laughter,
And feel the thump of their feet
Tickle my beams and rafters.

As ever, I keep them warm
Till their time is done,
And guard them like a hen on her clutch,
Winking at the sun.

© Justin Gosling