Armageddon has safely arrived...

in Shrewsbury.

It seemed like a good idea to go, if you think about it most things do seem like a good idea as you step out on your next new adventure.  Time and jaded experience whisper a different tale in your ear.  Being deaf you don’t listen and besides you really do need to go to Lakeland and purchase yet more plastic to bugger up the ocean?

Now hindsight, that wonderful flash of inspiration you only really, really get when you have totally cocked up, comes into play...

Why go?  The oceans are already struggling at man’s attention without your two penn‘orth? 

It will be good for the dog to get socialised in a town she doesn’t know... 

What?  Double Wot??

I hang my head in shame!

We parked, she had a little wee on waste ground, we were good to go.

Her little wee was the best bit of the trip.

The town was heaving with carefully social distancing people all wearing masks and two metre wide sumo wrestler suits to ensure folk kept their distance. (As you might guess that bit is a stonking great fib?)

The roads were being dug up, scaffolding crept up the buildings  like a Quatermass growth not dissimilar from the Coronavirus.  Kids screamed, those mechanical pointed digger toothpicks gave throat in the hands of hairy chested tattooed monsters of the road.  Gangs of blokes seemed intent on crumbling the roads in harmony with our world that is falling in on itself.

‘All for social distancing innit!’

We pressed on, dog was not happy, neither were we.  Did we turn around and go home?  Oh dear no, we pressed on like the intrepid explorers we mistakenly thought we were.  All was calm in Lakeland, the shelves were oddly bare, looking for all the world as if the plastic eating locusts had graced the store with their gobbling presence?

We decided it would be good to round off an exciting day by getting some luncheon.  We found a  suitably caring of the planet caff serving organical food and sat outside on the road right by the bus stop where in the olden days buses would have stopped to offload their passengers.  We waited and waited and eventually our food arrived in a paper bag and drinks in plastic beakers?

My chops had just fallen greedily onto my roll when my nose sniffed the air... smoke!  Two women at the next table had just arrived ordered their food and decided while they waited to light up.

Ever so gently I could feel my inner Germaine Greer stir.  I got up and walked over and said

‘Excuse me, (alright not very Germaine, she would have dispensed with that gentle form of address) there is a sign that says no smoking or vaping is allowed!’

Disgruntled they screwed into the ground their rolled up pound notes  and grumbled to themselves about me.

A fitting end to a magical day.

Is it any wonder I flirt daily with becoming a recluse?

We  breathed a huge sigh of relief  as we drove away vowing never to return.

Not one of your better trips LL?