Altercation at the Job Centre

I was walking past the job centre yesterday and saw a young man outside dressed casually, smoking a cigarette.
'Beautiful day isn't it.' I remarked.
'What're you talking to me for!?' He shouted.
This was not the reply I expected from a young man trying to get onto the job ladder. So I put on my best condescending tone and said;
'Excuse me! Who - do - you - think - you're - talking - to!?'
'Move on old man. You don't know me.' he practically spat in my face.
But I stood my ground till he huffed and puffed and skulked off down Stert street; cigarette in hand. When he was gone I went inside the job centre and gave them an exact description of him and said I had seen him working as a cash in hand contract cleaner at the trading estate. That'll show him, no more dole money for you sonny Jim.

Big Window is Too Big

Being an honest man, I must start this blog with a quick retraction. I was kindly told after commenting on a rival Abingdon blog that it, in fact wasn't tax payer's money that forked out for this mess in the precinct; but money from 'Scottish Widows'. I'm sure if you walk the precinct at night you will see her slender form swathed in black, pulling down her trademark hood to tut at the absolute pigs ear they've made of it. What gets me most about the precinct refurbishment is the giant window at the end. We're used to this size of window on the trading estate but not in the town centre! And to make matters worse; looking at the plans I can see they originally intended for the window to be even bigger. Thank goodness for corner cutting making these wannabe Michaelangelos see sense.

Abingdon people want their windows to look like windows; not gaping giant portals into another universe. To add insult to injury, there is a window right next to it that is just as big. What sort of enterprise needs gargantuan windows this big? The only enterprise I can think of; is the starship enterprise; I can easily imagine Captain Jean Luc Piccard and Lieutenant Wharf staring out of one of these oversized pieces of glass into the depths of another solar system. I'd compare this so called precinct 'facelift', to most of the surgical procedures performed on the late Michael Jackson's face; botched and irreparable.

Abingdon's Precinct Ruined Forever

Town planners have used millions of pounds of tax payers money to surgically remove any last shred of character from Abingdon's precinct. Not only does it have a 'Greggs' and a 'Pound Shop' but it has now had a cheap looking homogenised makeover to look like every other precinct in the country. Just go to Didcot, Kidlington, Wantage or any other small town in Britain and you will see that their shopping precincts have had the exact same tasteless facelift. Some may have a 'Greggs' and some may have a 'Percy Ingle', some may have a 'Starbucks' and some may have a 'Costa'; but basically they are all the same place.

They built that fake castle in Oxford; could they not have applied the same principles to Abingdon's precinct; at least giving some shops tacky faux tudor facades. Instead of this gaudy red brick and yellow sandstone theme that seems to be pervading all of England's shopping centres. If you have eyes and any grip whatsoever on aesthetics you will see that it looks horrible and needs to be torn down to ruble and left as blitz-kreig-esque memorial to the days of yor.