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Book Review - 'Outloafer' by J.R.R Withers

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From the pen of J.R.R Withers, author o f The Shoe Seller’s Daughter, Tess of the Espadrilles and War and Peep-toes comes an incredible new novel. Deftly combining the genres of romance, historic fiction, sci-fi, and the 1997 Pavers catalogue, Outloafer is the incredible story of Claire Startrite, a shoe-saleswoman from Cleveleys who discovers a mysterious circle of brogues on the beach and finds herself magically transported to 18th century Scotland where she has to adapt to a life before Hush Puppies. She soon falls in love with a young highlander, Hamish Briza, and together they embark on an adventure filled with heart and soles. Enjoy this exclusive excerpt from the book: Claire slowly opened her eyes, gradually coming out of the daze. What had happened to her when she entered that mysterious circle of shoes? The sand beneath her was wet. If only she had worn her galoshes! She looked around. In the distance was a man she didn’t recognise, walking towards her in Highland brogans.
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MORVERN MEETS THE EYE.....

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Morvern Care Centre,  South Promenade,  Cleveleys  (Photo credit-  @pensionerbob) At the beginning of this week we were informed of a rumour that the Morvern Care Centre was trying to keep quiet the fact that staff were testing positive. We contacted the owner Raj Shah and asked: Cleveleys News <cleveleysnews@gmail.com> (Mon 7 Sep 12:44) Hi We've heard reports your care home is in lockdown due to a COVID-19 infection. Can you confirm if this is correct please? Thank you Mr Shah replied 12 minutes later saying -  Raj Shah <raj@morverncare.co.uk> (Mon 7 Sep 12:55) No, this is false news. You can imagine our relief. There was something odd though - that same morning a relative of a Morvern resident had told us the Morvern were not allowing visitors because one of the staff had tested positive. In these unusual times, this alone wouldn't be a surprise - of course some staff are going to test positive. It's a good thing that staff are being tested, and a good thing
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Deedee's Blog: Returning to the new normal

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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, b
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Deedee's Blog: More tales from isolation

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Hello loves. No “ooooh” from me today, as I’m saving my breath. You never know when that nasty virus will come and take your breath away, do you? It’s a serious business this Covid-19 malarkey, especially if you’re elderly and vulnerable. “Lockdown lunacy” my son keeps calling it, no idea where he's got that from, and frankly I think he’s talking twaddle. When you look at the number of deaths per population it doesn’t always seem so serious, but the clever people at Cleveleys News that let me write this blog (lovely lads, I say lads, they’re probably retired but still younger than me) pointed out last week that when you look at the numbers of people in hospital in comparison to those coming out of hospital alive, the ratio isn’t good at all. It’s the old and vulnerable that get hospitalised with this, and despite the best efforts of our lovely NHS (I always give them my clap you know), once you’re poorly enough to be in there, the odds aren’t good. Keep isolated, that's what
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Slim Chances

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Dr Jen Durr, Cleveleys News Medical Correspondent Want to know about a diet that will guarantee you lose 257 pounds in one year? Easy. The one that costs £4.95 a week. I know - not the kind of pounds you were hoping to lose. Modern life makes it all too easy for people to get massively, massively overweight. Cheap foods full of saturated fat and sugars coupled with hours every night spent sedentary in front of a Netflix box-set is pretty much a recipe for obesity. We binge on TV, and we binge on food. Statistics for Blackpool published in 2014 showed that 31% of adults were obese and 44% of adults were just plain old-fashioned overweight, meaning that a whopping three-quarters of all adults in the area are heavier than they ought to be. No wonder then that Blackpool’s local amateur publication The Gazette has teamed up with Slimming World to promote their diet regime through a series of inspirational articles about local people losing weight. Dieting is big business. Sli
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Deedee's Blog: Splendid Isolation

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Oooooh hello there loves, it’s me, Dee Dee, local blogger here once again to tell you how things are and how things should be. Well! What a year 2020 is turning out to be, eh? My son assured me that Brexit would fix Britain’s broken politics, but I voted for it, we got out of Europe, and now we’re all locked inside our houses fearing for our lives! Not at all what I was promised, and I shall be having some stern words with our lad about this just as soon as I come out of isolation. He’s naughty, he is. As I can’t go out to find things to moan about, I’ll just have to moan about things in my house instead. So - bacon. Why does a load of white flob always come out of it during cooking? It makes a right mess of the pan and isn’t very appetising. Something should be done. And don’t get me started on toilet roll (you don’t need to, I’m going to talk about it anyway)! I know lots of people are complaining they can’t get it, but spare a thought for people like me who spent the best part of a
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YOUR LETTERS - 20th December 2019

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Where’s the money? All we hear about these days is austerity, and that there is no money for public services; and how Brexit is going to bring us even more financial woes. Yet, the answer to all our financial problems is staring us in the face. In 2017, then Prime Minister Theresa May famously said that we don’t have “ a magic money tree that we can shake ”. Surely the solution is to get one of these trees! I think it is shocking that the leaders of our country would go on record to declare the existence of such a magical tree and yet make no effort to obtain one! This is Britain! We used to rule the world, and if we wanted something, we went and took it! Well, we want one of these magic money trees, so lets bally well go out and get one. I imagine they grow somewhere mystical, like Peru, or Stonehenge. Dave Sceptic Bispham Political correctness has gone mad I was quite dismayed to read that Blackpool Council are adapting a number of roads so that they are accessible to “
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