the corn poppy: #shops

Saturday, 16 May 2015

High Street

Please take care getting out at level 1

Become tobacco free sounds like good advice. However this is a window display encouraging you to vape. There is only one good reason to smoke. Most reasons for smoking (destroyed lungs, cancer, smelling like an ashtray) are not good reasons. But James Dean, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and Jimi Hendrix all looked cool when smoking. So that's a reason to smoke - looking cool. On the other hand the cool quotient is outweighed by the fact that cigarettes will kill you. So what about vaping? There is not a single reason in the world to vape. Nobody ever looked cool vaping, not even Rob Delaney. Become tobacco free, stay nicotine free. Grow up and quit smoking; evolve, don't vape.

There is probably a formula whose factors include the number of charity shops in a High Street plus money lenders and cash converters, number of empty or boarded up shops, number of food bank users, the working population etc to give a numerical value to how hard the Austerity budget is biting. This High Street in the supposedly wealthy South UK would suggest it's hitting hard.

hard

It's not all doom and gloom,

there's always room for Candy

(In Candy's room there are pictures of her heroes on the wall)

I visited a dyslexic acupuncturist once. He stuck all these noodles in me.

[insert witty caption here]

underpaid elf (anag. 3,5,4)

Look back in Anga

Church of Mammon

Church (converted for housing)

Selfless ethical

Tuesday, 25 February 2014

stokescroftmurals.co.uk

Community is important; knowing your neighbours, popping to the shops, nattering over the garden wall. But what do you do when the shops have almost all closed down? Call stokescroftmurals.co.uk to paint new shop fronts on the shutters of the closed down shops. Works a treat!

These pictures were all taken around Princes Street, Northam, Southampton. Still looking good, even if Northam hasn't yet won Britain in Bloom.