Deedee's Blog: Returning to the new normal

Ooooooooooooh hello loves, it’s me, Deedee, the local octogenarian blogger from the Cleveleys area. Yes, I’m Cleveleys through and through, like a stick of Bridlington rock. Well! What a few months it’s been! Last time I blogged (that’s internet speak, by the way, and an abbreviation for ‘write on a blog’) it was May and we’d just been locked down a month. How time has flown! Summer has been and gone early and we’re still arguing about masks.

Shopping isn’t quite what it used to be. On the positive side, the fresh bread and cakes at Lidl are wrapped up, because I always suspected that the kids were coming in and licking the icing sugar off the top of the doughnuts. On the down side though, there’s hardly any room to social distance in that place, and even with a mask on I’m having palpitations by the time I get to the frikadellen. I just heard that Cleveleys Aldi is closing for 12 weeks while they have an extension done, so perhaps the aisles there will be a bit wider when it’s done, but I don’t know, I’m not so sure about those foreign supermarkets like Aldi, I’d rather stick to Lidl thank you very much. Have I mentioned they do a copy of a Bounty bar? Just like the real thing, I tell you.

Tourism seems unaffected though, as the beaches here at Cleveleys have been absolutely packed! Funny that there have been so many people coming here even while nothing was actually open. Three months of lockdown seems to have reminded people that you can make picnics, make your own fun to the beach, and not actually have to pay anyone anything when you go for a day out. I wonder how that will affect the Cleveleys economy? Because if your shop wasn’t open throughout the whole pandemic because you don’t sell essentials, now you’ve got the combined problem of all your customers not having much money because of being out of work or furloughed, and the fact they’ve spent the last 3 months sorting their houses out, having a good old throw away, and they likely don’t want to fill it back up again with rubbish from a bargain shop or tat from a charity shop that somebody else just threw away. Maybe those nice people who do all the tourism for Cleveleys should change their name from just ‘Visit Cleveleys’ to ‘Visit Cleveleys, spend some money here, and if possible write a strongly-worded letter to the council about the punitive business rates on the high street so that other shops besides charity ones have a chance of surviving on it’. Yes, something snappy like that. And if you are a visitor coming to Cleveleys, please put some money into the local economy. Spend it with independant businesses that are trying really hard to create something new, because we've actually got a few of those, buried among the charity and bargain shops, if you take the time to look.

Well, I think that’s the world put to rights - now it’s time for my daily constitutional, a nice brisk walk to Rossall and back followed by a poo if I can manage one, I’m still a bit bunged-up. Hope this isn’t that ‘new normal’ everyone keeps talking about. Oooh, and don’t forget to try them Lidl Bounty bars! Byeeeeeee!