Yes, snow changes everything. I walked over the racecourse to look for a Christmas tree - Wyevale had nothing below £40, Asda at the Marina had sold out, the Open Market prices started at £35. Price fixing all round.....even the lovely Turkish grocer's at the bottom of my road had upped its prices by around 200% from last year. I found one for £20, much against my better judgement and lugged it home on my head since the car's frozen to the ground.
It was quite literally a slide down to Asda from Wyevale, over the racecourse, down into Whitehawk. Our utterly irresponsible council - Brighton and Hove - barely deserves the title given its complete disregard for anyone's safety. Every pavement is a sheet of ice, and Brighton is a hilly place. But the path down into Whitehawk is like an Olympic toboggan run, smoothed to perfection by the limbs of elderly residents and their shopping trolleys as they slide ever downward.
I cleared the pavement in front of my house but no-one else saw the need. A man was clearing the pavement by the community garden on Lewes Road as the police attended yet another accident in a side street opposite. Virtually every street off mine is blocked by some lunatic who tried to drive. A fire doesn't bear thinking about.
But it's clearly not the council's concern. No grit in sight. Last night I spotted my first gritting van speeding up the road with its lights flashing. When I went outside to walk to a friend's I wondered what it had been spraying. There was no evidence of grit. Perhaps it was trying to persuade the city's population the council was doing something.
However, on to Tesco.
We have a beautiful, now frosty, community garden in Lewes Road that used to be a derelict petrol station. It's right next to a very handy Co-op that's been doing a good job for years, and opposite a Spar. Tesco apparently wants to open up here. We don't want Tesco and its bullying imperialism. Let's remember its attempt to silence criticism in Thailand by taking a local journalist to court. Let's remember its profits this year and question how they were arrived at. Tesco attempting to set up in Lewes Road is a blatant attempt to close both the Co-op and any other local business. It should not be allowed to happen.
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