Another day on the Home Bargains Airfix Treasure hunt. The saga continues.
I started work at 2pm, which meant I had to be up earlyish to get buses into town. Getting up early is difficult at the best of times but nursing a hangover from the several pints and two double rums I downed last night after work made it doubly so. Still, there were Spitfires to find and I was going to get up to do it. Fortified by some paracetamol, weetabix and a brew, I was off.
Three buses later, I was in Blaydon. The two P40 gift sets were gone, but they'd restocked with more Spitfire PR19s and F22s. They were nabbed, a total of nine, along with four Typhoons. Plus the usual smokey bacon crisps to keep me going. Next target - Gateshead, two buses away via the hated Metrocentre.
Quick dash through the town centre and I find that they've restocked. Vampires, the fountain, Higgins boats and Hawks. Managed to dig out their last Typhoon and swiftly left.
Bus drops off past the top of Grey Street, in the middle of a car show - Bentleys, BMs, Jags and Astons. Had to drool over the latter for a bit but retreated to the bus stop to go to Wallsend, my last hit of the week.
Another journey into the pit of despair, past derelict waste ground, slack jawed yokels glaring moronically over fences with the cold dead eyes of a drug restrained thug. A wizened old crone got on the bus at Byker and her shrieking was a joy to behold, tales of how she loves Dettol and cheap bleach is for idiots and gone in 24 hours and I love me Dettol. On and on this tale went, round and round in the same dizzy, tedious and dreary circles until finally she got off at a stop under a bridge, no doubt so she can rejoin her trollish family. A silent cheer went up around the bus before it plunged further into the heart of darkness that is Wallsend.
I worked there for three years in the late 80s/early 90s and time has not been kind. It's still a dump, building sites and boarded up shops, a high street full of low rent charity shops, bargain food stores and takeaways. An air of silent misery and despair fills the place. The Forum, covered over and much brighter than it was when I walked through it for three years, seems smaller. Again depressing but a vast improvement on the cold, damp and windswept place it was and comparing favourably over the Galleries.
Into the store. Hawks, fountain, Higgins boats but no Vampires. Dinahs, a Dauntless or two and a solitary Gladiator. Grabbed it, paid and swiftly left. Back onto a bus for town and off to work.
And so ends my journey for this week.
