Category: Blackburn

Off our Trolleys

Sometimes on my way to work, and most Saturday mornings, I can be found doing an early shop at Blackburn’s Morrison’s. 

My most convenient time for shopping is their eight o’clock opening time.  It’s a strange surreal experience, joining the throng of workers and pensioners on a week day.  But the other way round on Saturdays and Sunday.

Around ten to eight a gathering begins to build up.  It’s always the same old faces, some of whom can be seen at this time seven days a week.  People start looking at their watches and peering through the glass as eight approaches.  A flash of white flannel comes walking down from the other end of the store.  It is a chap with his key to open these glass doors.  Everybody then files in, heading towards the aisles.

This where almost a line in the sand is drawn.  Nobody enters these aisles until the eight o’clock bell rings.  It is like Wildebeest on the edge of a crocodile-infested river.  Shoppers stand on this edge, as though a killer weather balloon is about to rise up from around the aisles to smother them if they cross the threshold.  Nobody dares set foot into this shopping area.  Figures in green can be seen walking around.  Nobody wants to be told not to enter the forbidden zone.

I watch all this from one of the benches across from the shopping trolleys.  Unlike the majority of Morrison’s early morning shoppers, I generally slip in via their Salford sliding door.  This always seems to be opened before those Railway Road and car park entrances.  It means I get to sit down and watch all this drama.

When the 8.00am bell clangs, it’s straight to the sell-by counter for me.  My legs get me there before the majority of Morri’s punters.  Most of them are unhappy about shelves being swapped around again.  And then it’s a quick walk round the store, before landing at an open till.  My timing is usually good at this time of day.  I often catch them as they just open.  Staff are still tipping bags of coins into their till trays and are nice and friendly.

I hate shopping, even worse than that – I hate paying for it.  So my visits here are as quick as possible.  Sadly, it’s a necessity for me.  But for a lot of other people, it’s what gets them out of bed and the highlight of their day.

Tilting at windmills, outside the Quarryman’s

Noel Harrison the actor, singer and former Olympic skier recently passed away.  In my childhood, he accompanied April Dancer – ‘The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.’.  But I will always remember him for singing that memorable Michel LeGrande/Alan & Marilyn Bergman song: ‘The Windmills Of Your Mind’.  Used for the 1968 film: ‘The Thomas Crown Affair’.

It’s funny how some songs stick in your mind.  This is especially so since the construction of a dozen massive wind turbines on the south-east side of Blackburn.  These near 400 foot high monsters would be well-placed in one of my tall stories.

Not everybody is happy with them.  Some local residents have had TV reception problems and others find them a blot on the landscape.  But from my vantage point, outside my front door up Blackburn’s Revidge Hill, I find our new windmills a pleasure to behold and very therapeutic.  It needs to be a reasonably clear day, without too much mist, and then I can see their sails going round when the wind blows.  It’s even better on a sunny day.  I can see flashes of sunshine as each sail turns.  Considering they must be at least four miles away from my house, it is a brilliant sight.

Maybe wind farms are not the answer to our spiralling energy needs.  But I’d sooner keep looking out my front door at a dozen working wind turbines, creating green renewable energy.  No chance on Oswaldtwistle Moor of another potential Three Mile Island, Chernobyl or Fukushima waiting to send us into nuclear oblivion.