Tag Archives: High Street

Amazon puts paid to Charing Cross Road relic

At the Porcupine on Friday – infamous home of Intel roadmaps – I could not help but notice that an antiquarian shop that had been there since times immemorial, well OK for a while, has been displaced by a corporate chain.

Enter Patisserie Valerie in the Charing Cross Road, where formerly a fine bookstore was.


Personally, I blame Amazon more than I can blame Patisserie V. Although, however, PV is beginning to become a high street menace rather than the charming place it once was, in Soho, W1.

And a Tale of Two Cities. There’a  PV in Oxford too.  What can match the splendours of Oxford, now garnished by a Patisserie Valerie, aussi guv. ♥

Flash floods hit Oxford – sewage liberated hits streets

THE VERY ODD BBC Oxford reported that thunderstorms we had in North Oxford this afternoon hit the centre big time, with flash floods upsetting the applecarts in the Cornmarket and the High Street.

Sewage flowed, said the reporters on BBC Oxford, as the drains overflowed. Well, the Cornmarket is pedestrianised, and the High Street goes downward to the Isis. Perhaps the City Fathers of Oxford should not have got rid of the ancient buildings and replaced them with obnoxious 60s buildings.

Well, that’s what Colin Dextor, creator of Morse reckons in his books. And I cannot help but concur.