Last Saturday afternoon in Spennymoor:

I was driving back from a couple of hour's walking around Bishop Auckland (a favourite market town with some well-stocked charity shops) when I noticed that Spennymoor, a satellite village of Durham, was only a minor left detour on my way back home.

I remembered that an old-fashioned ironmongers called Defty's was situated on Spennymoor's main street, with a rather nice faded beige and red fascia (see above.) I was happy to see this was still intact and that Defty's dimly lit shop interior still smelled of oil, damp sawdust and turps. I took a photo, and walked further on, noticing that many of Spennymoor's shops had already closed at 1pm. Surly gangs of track-suited Charva youths roamed the depressing precinct beyond a boarded up Kwiksave supermarket. Where was evidence of the current thriving economy here? On my way back to the car I caught sight of a British National Party poster blatantly displayed in the main window of a large pub and had to take a photo of it. Its message "We're voting for change, we're voting BNP" reminded me not to over-romanticise the places I record in this blog...