Home To Let Bargains Cash Charity Coffee

It seems a long time ago that we had the balmy summer days of Stockport Town Hall Centenary 2008 with the street party celebrations of all things Stockport. It’s now the gloomy, recession hit winter months of 2011 and Stockport town centre is resembling a retail war zone. Woolworths is long gone, having sold up at the end of that centenary year. Stockport is currently the proud location of poundworld, Poundland and Pound Empire. Everything on sale in Stockport is now a pound. What a disaster if we join the Euro. As Greece found out. But there is more to Stockport than pound shops. We have charity shops; most of them are represented somewhere in the back alleyways. We have cash generators and cash converters just in case you are unfortunate enough to go shopping without any cash. Or pounds. Betting shops and casinos are still going strong as you can always win some cash if you have very little to start with. The only people making real money are the signmakers who must have put up a thousand billboards in Stockport with the words ‘Offices To Let’. If you need an office, come to Stockport fast. Lease a swanky, town centre office for £5 per day. After work, you can stroll to Primark and buy a crisp, white shirt for £3, then over to Little Underbank to have your hair styled for £4.50. But an economic wasteland leaves room for the green shoots of another industry to push through the grey concrete into the aeroplane-blue skies of the sandstone valley. And this industry is the coffee industry. In the nineteenth century it was hats at Christy’s. Each century has an industry. Last century BC means ‘Before Coffee’. Not that the industry is making coffee, it’s more consuming coffee. Vast quantities of it. Even in recession-hit times you can nurse an overpriced cup of hot, brown water all morning with free Wifi. Now that’s what I call a bargain! Anyway, click on the Album links above and wallow in the post-industrial, pre-apocalyptic film set that is Stockport Town Centre.