In the Tony Minchellas cafe at the boating lake by Sandhaven. Great location
Having a strawberry cheesecake with a little tub of ice-cream and an Americano, 9 GBP.
When the waitress asked if I wanted ice-cream with the cheesecake I assumed she meant a scoop of vanilla not a strange cross between whipped ice cream and the real thing. As Mr Whippy style ice-cream goes it's better than average but as Minchellas markets itself as an Italian gelato maker it's still disappointing.
But I wasn't actually expecting much as I had a scoop of rum and raisin in a waffle cone at another Minchellas a week ago and it was also a disappointment, any significant quantities of both rum and raisin.
The cheesecake is nice
And there's no WiFi.
I keep hearing of the cost of living crisis in the UK but everywhere I go I encounter people who are plainly spending more on eating and drinking than I do. Quite a lot of them look like they are consuming vastly more too. The cafés and bars seem to be quite busy too.
So does this mean that news of the crisis is overblown or is it evidence of a dramatic division between have and have not with those most severely affected just staying at home and hence invisible?
I know I can't afford the seats at all those FIFA World Cup games, yet the stadiums were packed.IMO There's definitely a division between the have and have nots. I haven't been able to travel for pleasure in a long while. Only time will tell if things get better or worse.
I enjoyed your morning at the cafe. The cheesecake looks good alright!!
South Marine Park is a quite grand Victorian Park with a boating lake, miniature railway, cafe (where I had a snack), playground, plenty of open grass, a bandstand, steps up to a promenade with four statues, lots of trees and flowers,
On my walk to the beach I passed Westoe cemetery; on the railings were several copies of this sign:
Why should a cemetery ever be closed to the public? Especially one such as this which seems to consist largely of grass and graves no longer visited. I noticed similar notices at the cemetery adjacent to the Forest Fields in Nottingham where the gets are closed at night. In both cases there is only one gate so it can't be used as a route.
I did enter Westoe thinking that I might walk through it towards the beach until a kindly woman passing by shouted to me that the gateway I had just passed through was also the only way out.
It seems to me that such rules can only be capriciously enforced. What benefit is there in such a rule and why are such cemeteries that are no longer used for burials not simply treated as public open spaces that can be accessed from more than one corner?
