It's Three Time!

Three baby goslings on Dawlish Lawn

Most people have two-centre holidays, we love the thrill of the hunt so this weekend we had a three-centre vintage shopping Saturday.  It wasn't planned that way but due to the lovely weather (er...not!) it spurred us on to visit Brixham, Paignton and Newton Abbot all on the same day. Not surprisingly we were absolutely exhausted by the time we got home but a medicinal rum and coke helped.

We got over to Brixham no problem at all, having done it very recently for the shiver me timbers pirate festival. In fact you could almost say we rode in style as we were the only ones on the bus!  When we got to Brixham the rain and the wind from the day before had triumphed though and the 1940s car boot sale which we'd been looking forward to had sadly been cancelled.

Vintage Russell and Bromley shoes

It didn't put us off having a good look around the shops however and we found a pretty vintage Jane Shilton "Japelle" black velvet evening handbag (it's made in Hong Kong so we reckon dates from the late 1970s/1980s) and a very fancy pair of Russell & Bromley two tone with golden buckle court shoes (leather and suede) which have a real 80s glam look about them.

Jane Shilton "Japelle" handbag

We'd heard on Saturday that the Paignton Picture House were hosting a very hi-tech arts installation where you could experience what it must have been like to go to the cinema at the turn of the century when a 21 piece orchestra would strike up and play during the film. Sound designer Chris Timpson had done a great job of recreating the atmosphere brilliantly using some well positioned speakers and you even got to interact with it all by moving around from one chair to another (now that's what we call musical chairs!). 

Paignton Picture House

The Picture House is beautiful and there are so many original features still intact.  If only cinemas were like this nowadays!



That much needed pint kept us out of the rain!

A quick whizz round Paignton avoiding the rain and sheltering in shop doorways was the order of the afternoon, with a swift pint of The General at Spooneys of course.

RP Ellen of Oxford Street Shoes

Then it was on to Newton Abbott, where we continued with our day's task of seeing how many CDs we could buy! Our previous record had been 15 but we surpassed that on Saturday by buying 22!  We firmly believe CDs are due a revival, especially after beatboxes and cassettes went all hipster.

The future is buying CDs!

 They have great artwork, a lot of them come beautifully packaged and they're indestructible (well compared to tapes anyway!)  The gems we picked up included 4 Ozric Tentacles CDs, a Kings of Mambo compilation and a triple CD set of Donna Summer;s Greatest Hits.  In Newton Abbott we also picked up a beautiful pair of RP Ellen of Oxford Street London slingbacks, perfect for the summer...when it arrives...or if not when you go abroad to get away from the rain!


Time to get back to Dawlish and to end what was an exhausting but fulfilling day, despite the weather, we were welcomed home by the 3 baby goslings on The Lawn. A perfect ending to an imperfect day!  (NB please see the top photo!)