Month off

Back again.

I've been trying to detox, but it's no good.

I saw 21st Century Mummy's post about Tickety Boo and the cakes on offer therein and knew I had to get out there again.

Nero in Abbeygate Street was the bad boy - and I now have a card full of little stamps to enable me to get a freebie next time I go down there.

Popped to one of those huge out-of-town shopping centres last night and the appeal of good old Bury St Edmunds was really missing.

They are impersonal, shopping wastelands - not a bit like Hatter Street, St John's Street or Langton Place, all of which I love.

Frankie & Benny's

This is the men's - quite a shock to the system when you first go inside...

Frankie & Benny's got my custom in recent days - and what an impressive set of toilets (men's and women's).

The men's are a riot of black and white (very this season, I gather, darling) and the tops of the walls are decorated with old newspaper cuttings.

In the women's, apparently (I didn't venture in, but had a spy) there is the option to learn a dash of Italian while you, err, do whatever women do.

The coffee (espresso) wasn't great though - bit stewed and bitter. Probably had it on boil for too long. Not strong enough, either and no water provided with it.

And while we'er on it, the £10.95 sharing platter was a real disappointment. The chicken wings were ok-ish, but the chikcen pieces were more frozen nugget appearance and taste. One of the reasons for going for the dish was the lure of the onion rings - and, sorry, they were very poor. Need improving. If you were a school report, you would get C+ (Could do better).

Atmosphere nice, kids' meals ok and bottomless kiddie drinks were well received by both young and old.

Well fancy that . . .

Coffee shops are now Britain’s fastest-growing retail business.

There are already more than 3,000 on the High Street, clocking up sales of £1.3bn a year — and experts say those numbers will double by 2017.

As a nation, we polish off 70 million cups of coffee a day and health specialists YorkTest reckon as many as one in 20 of us has an intolerance to it.

Well fancy that . . . now Waterstone's is moving to the new Cattle Market development and Debenhams is moving in, too, does that mean we will get two 'new' coffee shops in Bury?

Hold on to your cups - we could be heading for a coffee price war.

RIP

Another reference on today's Google alert for coffee - I'll raise a cup to you later, Alf.

Alfred H. Peet, the son of a Dutch coffee merchant who pioneered a revolution in roasting exotic dark beans that led to America’s love affair with high-end coffee, has died. He was 87.

Alfred H. Peet is often called the “grandfather of specialty coffee”.

The cause was cancer, several friends said. His death was announced Friday by a representative of the company he founded, Peet’s Coffee and Tea Inc.

Did you know?

My Google alert on coffee tells me today:

Coffees and tea

• Decaffeinated coffee is only 97 per cent free of caffeine.

• While the average iced tea has 47 milligrams per 12 ounce serving, Snapple contains 31.5 milligrams per 16 ounces and Lipton Brisk has only 9 milligrams per 12 ounces.

Sweets

• Dark chocolate has considerably more caffeine than milk chocolate. A 60-gram bar of Hershey's Special Dark has 31 milligrams; the same size milk chocolate bar has 9 milligrams.

I'll be ordering some of that Hershey's stuff - they make those delightful little 'Kisses' shaped like a bell dome and wrapped in silver foil. Scrummy.

Costa blank-er

Sorry, Costa...Tickety Boo has been my best espresso this week.

You tried, you tried hard, but despite a very competitive £1.70 for a dopio you left me unimpressed.

The natty little biscuit selection (four for a little over £2.50 in a pretty little box) did almost tempt me but I had my eye on your off-centre saucers and a sniff of coffee.

Ms Bean had a dash of Earl Grey, which probably stole my attention.

Never mind - I'm sure you will redeem yourself soon.

Walking back to work, I see the new Cattle Market is starting to take shape - there's the beginnings of a shop next to Palmers Homestore.

Anyone know what that's going to be?

Boots and W H Smith have excellent sales on, too, at the moment.

I nearly fell for the under-a-tenner yoga starter set in Boots but just managed to say a laid-back 'no' in time.

And I can't resist stationery ( 'e' for envelopes ). Erasers, books, diaries, rulers, folders - my desks are full of them, all at reduced price, but none of them touched.

What a consumer.

Summertime

Everywhere you go, everyone you talk to ... 'where's the summer gone?' they ask.

For sure, it ain't in Bury today.

It's grey, it's mizzling, it's overcast.

The Parkway multi-storey car park attendant - who keeps that place so very tidy - gave me a cheery-ish 'Morning', but I think the weather had even gotten to him.

Those cheery, new little 'publicity' signs bordering the Cattle Market didn't even make me smile this morning.

I should imagine some PR firm in the smoke was paid thousands to come up with the idea of cutting out an arc shape for people to look through.

Very clever.

(The fact the design apes others should, of course, be overlooked by any lawyers.)

I might pay a return trip to HaGa today, on Moreton Hall. Went earlier in the week and they had a very reasonable crockery set (6-piece) which I snapped up...and there were other things which my sticky fingers really wanted to pick up, too.

Spending always brings a ray of sunshine to a damp day.

Along with the first coffee of the day, which I'm just off to make.

(The picture is from my summer trip to Thetford's gig by The Feeling - it was sunny that day)