Cleveleys News

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....

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 bein...

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...

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...

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...

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 ...

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 “...

To many, the Blackpool Tramway is a charming throwback to bygone days. Not only is it one of the world’s oldest electric tramways, it is the last surviving first-generation tramway in the UK. Nostalgia is one of Blackpool’s most lucrative commodities, with many visitors trying to revisit the holidays of their youth or recreate them for their own children so no wonder then that Blackpool Council want to expand the tramway beyond the promenade and have already begun extending the tracks through the town towards the railway station. But when accidents occur, as they did at the 2019 ‘ Ride The Lights ' event when a 14-year-old boy got stuck under a tram leaving him in a critical condition, it seems logical that we should pause and ask ourselves whether we should be moving backwards by expanding this Victorian method of transportation or moving forward with something much safer. At the hugely popular (and otherwise brilliant) ‘ Ride The Lights ’, Blackpool promenade is closed to cars fo...

Rough Justice We hear a lot about a lack of justice these days. I say make the punishment fit the crime. If you’ve stolen something, the public should be allowed to take their pick of your belongings; if you don’t pick up your dog’s poo then you should have dog poo pushed through your letterbox. Also, if you’ve lied on Twitter that the nitrogen used in fracking is completely safe because a percentage of our breathable air is nitrogen anyway then you should be forced to breathe only nitrogen and see how long you last. And have dog poo pushed through your letterbox. Oh and before you ask, yes, I am a regular contributor to Thornton Cleveleys Chat on Facebook. Tom Opinion Thornton McDonalds Yet Again Once More Now that the McDonalds in Cleveleys has finally been green-lit, the town can look forward to experiencing the Big Mac, Large Fries, Huge Belly and Massive Neck. Jilly Junter Cleveleys Cross about Norcross The work being done to Norcross roundabout to improve the traffic flow will...

McDonald's restaurants. That’s what they call themselves, but they don’t really fit the dictionary definition of a restaurant, do they? “A place where meals are prepared and served to customers ”, says the Cambridge Dictionary. Well, it’s questionable whether anything is prepared on the site. For a start, the fries arrive at the franchises pre-chipped, pre-coated in sodium acid pyrophosphate (to stop them greying, apparently), partially cooked and flash frozen. They get dumped in hot oil on the premises, but that's hardly “preparation”. Then there’s the question of “serving”. If getting your purchase handed to you on a plastic tray while you stand waiting at the counter before finding your own sticky table at which to consume your sodium-acid-pyrophosphate-coated (but deliciously golden-looking) fries, and then clearing away your own rubbish and tray counts as “service”, then I guess they are a restaurant. That’s also assuming you consider what they sell to be “food”. Love them...

Obliging Oystons Dear Cleveleys News, I would just like to say that amidst all this negative talk about Blackpool Football club and owners the Oystons people forget about the good, charitable things the club does. I run a charity that cares for vulnerable people in society and when I contacted the club to propose a visit we were quickly invited and warmly welcomed by the owners. We watched a game for free, and they really got involved, sitting right in amongst us. Then they gave us a free VIP tour of the stadium, even giving some from our party private tours. They were so kind and insisted we visit again very soon. So perhaps they aren't all bad and people should not be so quickly to say unkind things about them. Ben Karlow, Lancashire Home for Vulnerable and Easily-Suggestible Ex-Beauty Queens and Former Swimsuit Models (a registered charity) Brexit and Breslaw Dear Cleveleys News, I can't understand all these people moaning about us leaving Europe and saying that we won'...

Oooooh, hello loves! It's me, Deedee, your favourite post-retirement blogger (well, I never actually retired because I never actually worked but that's immaterial, well I think so anyway) here with another blog about my fantastic life in Cleveleys, which I reckon is the best town in the whole of the Fylde, apart from Lytham, obviously. Ooh, and probably Poulton as well. But it's definitely up there in the top three. Anyway, I'm here once again to tell you what I reckon about things and what you should reckon about them too. This time the thing that has caught my attention is toilets . Even though some people don't like to admit it, we all go to the toilet, even her royal majesty the Queen, although I imagine hers is diamond-encrusted. And speaking of toilets that are encrusted, have you seen the state of the Danfo loos in the old Tesco carpark? Goodness me those things need a good scrubbing with some LIDL bleach and a loo-brush. 20p they cost which is a lot of m...

Royal Fail Dear Cleveleys News, Don’t you think our Royal Mail service is in a terrible state? Over the Christmas period I did not receive ANY Christmas cards at all; in fact I can’t remember the last time I received any post at all! Okay, so I live entirely “off the grid” in the back of a Ford Transit van after faking my own death at sea to avoid creditors and none of my family or friends know where I am or even that I am still alive, but still, it is a shocking service and we deserve better. John Darwen Ford Transit Fracking After years of protesting against Cuadrilla’s fracking operations on the Fylde, the dirty, smelly corporation have finally upped sticks and left. Good riddance to them! And thanks for saving our land and future must go to the diligent and committed protestors who have sat outside the site this entire time in all weathers, 24 hours a day. Finally they can go home to their cold, dark yurts and have a bath in cold water, presumably in one of those outsi...

2018 has been another incredible year for Cleveleys News. So many tweets to choose from, but we let our readers decide and here are our TOP tweets, as "liked" and retweeted by YOU. JANUARY The year began with the sad news that Teletubby Tinky Winky had died. Blackpool Tower is lit purple tonight in memory of #TinkyWinky RIP. pic.twitter.com/kbktmytr8R — Cleveleys News (@cleveleysnews) January 23, 2018 FEBRUARY New electronic signs started popping up around Blackpool. A few other people on social media tried to copy us, but this was our original (and obviously, the best) tweet. New electronic signs around Blackpool will give travel advice to motorists. pic.twitter.com/eaSvaeaiDm — Cleveleys News (@cleveleysnews) February 21, 2018 MARCH The news in March was dominated by goings-on at Blackpool FC with a public feud between Owen and Karl Oyston, and bailiffs being called by Valeri Belokon. Owen Oyston "not fit to run football club" says Karl. #Oyst...