Hard Facts Community

It's that time of year again.

Great pic!

I went to the Tewkesbury Abbey Christmas market on Saturday, in worship of the god of music (Jay's brass band were playing) rather than Mammon, or any other god, and it was lovely. I must post a pic

I should have added that the pic is a still from a video posted on Facebook by the Hampshire Chronicle.

Juliet in her Tewkesbury Town Band sweatshirt outside the East Door





... and one of the stalls selling overpriced tat, I mean, luxury Christmas goods, between the glorious Abbey pillars (it was not all overpriced tat to be fair, we won three nice things on the prize-every-time Tombola, £1 a go; and the cupcakes were nice, but £1 each!! and they got very squashed in my bag.

I think these Christmas markets are all the same. MYF and I went to Ely market last weekend. It's half in the cathedral and half in a tent outside. The tent had mainly food and drink - everything from pies and pasties to hampers and gin. We had tickets to get into the cathedral but you had to queue even with tickets and we couldn't be bothered to stand in the cold for half an hour so went to the pub instead! We did venture in when we returned around 4 pm and were really glad we didn't queue - it was, as Merry says, overpriced tat. Some things were ridiculous - a cardboard Christmas tree about 4 inches high was £5. I could have made the thing from a cornflakes packet and spray painted it for about 10p.

The one thing we found of real quality at a reasonable price was a pie shop. Their pasties in particular were delicious although a little pricey at £2.50 each. I negotiated 5 for £10 which I was happy with. I did them a favour too as they were selling hot pasties for £3 and people were bitching about being charged 50p extra because they were sat in a hot cabinet. They are then liable for 20% VAT so that takes a £2.50 pasty to £3. So their beef was with HMRC.