In the cool

A quick afternoon post written in the cool of the office after a morning roaming, idling, around Rochford square in melting heat with my good friend, Mr Hairy Suit.
Bag carrier deluxe.
I like Rochford square simply because it is a square. Small shops, the butcher, bakers, ironmongers and charity shops wall around the space, the square, where centuries ago people were burnt at the stake.
It hasn't an atmosphere, it's not a place of dread, I never feel the pain of the murdered I'm just enthralled and tickled by what I see and overhear. And buy.

On the left next to Yeo's the jewellers, is the Haven's Hospice charity shop. Gleadells butchers is where I once paid £7 for three lamb chops. I am not a frequent visitor. Tuesday is market day and there's not an inch of road to be seen, it's covered with covered stalls selling cold meats, plastic handbags, garish watches, flowered laundry bags and fresh fish. A stream of for hire taxis hog the road by the water trough waiting for wilting old ladies. The trough is as dry as dust of course.

How the Square used to look.

Today, after tea and toasted teacake in the Beehives Tearoom, Mr H and myself bought secondhand firstly from St Teresa's charity shop. She has no job there in reality, she is long gone but a small clog of noisy bustling matriarchs manned the till gossiping merrily. I imagined their ancestors screaming for scorched  hair when another witch was tied to the pole.
Anyway therein I bought two VHS tapes. 20p. James Bond's Die Another Day and Bruce Almighty. A theme running here?

Then out and away from the incensed fumed shop and into another place of value buys. The Horse Sanctuary charity shop where two women and one sitting down man condemned youth and Coronation Street.
More VHS tapes, a pink spotted blouse for an absent mum (too weak to shop) and a blue handled fish slice.

Mr H was a true gentlemen uttering not a sensible word or making any kind of huffing and puffing sound as he laboured in 90 degree heat carrying me bits. His doe eyes said it all. He loved it.

In then to the RSPCA shop where I squealed for joy on finding a decent deep fat fryer.

Oh home is where we now needed to go, back to an ailing mum and tea.

Mr H and myself made idiots of ourselves by sitting in the garden watching a butterfly and wondering when we'll be able to go camping.

Now I must fly, mother is drifting in and out of sleep, I creep in every ten minutes to check her pale face and to reassure her, if she's awake, that I'm only along the hall and to ring her bell if she needs anything. She rarely rings.
Which is great because it means I can pop a DVD on whilst making a Quiche Lorraine... in my quiet sun lit kitchen.