Monday 31 May 2010

ALERT - Moldy Peaches at Moose Coffee

Another sunny Sunday in Crosby looking for a bit of pleasure.


Ended up in Moose Coffee, as we seem to every once in a while, and it was top. 


Crosby is never going to win a 'Cosmopolitan suburb of the year' award and can sometimes feel a bit samey, but if you're eating delicious waffles, coffee in hand and reading about second-homophobia in the papers (poor Mr Laws) what more could you need for a reviving afternoon?


They didn't have any actual moldy peaches, in fact I'm not sure if they had any fruit at all - Moose Coffee is not the place for dieting and you need to be in good shape to knock down platefuls of lovely bagels, eggs, pastrami, cheese, ice cream, chocolate spread, maple syrup and more eggs. But hey... you could always borrow some wheels from Crosby Cycles and bike it home.  I imagine frequent visitors must all weigh 20 stone - but perhaps that is part of the genuine American feel. I think we would be more regular (visiting Moose) if they had some salad, on which note the toilets are clean and spacious, and the staff attentive and friendly, even to pesky 3 year old kids.  


I would honestly recommend anything from the menu, but the pastrami bagel is great - blueberry pancakes and vanilla milkshake to follow perhaps?




Regarding mold I think they actually have 5 stars for cleanliness in that rather weird Sefton Council hygiene award scheme.  The Moldy Peaches actually provided some suitably groovy American/New York background music helping the vibe, and if I knew lots about computers I would make their songs play here - http://www.myspace.com/themoldypeachesfans/music-player?sindex=2.2&shuffle=true&amix=false&pmix=false&plid=28974&artid=12227320&sseed=1468&ptype=3&stime=0&ap=1&rpeat=false 
If this works you might like the first song, but 'Who's Got the Crack?' could be a gentle anthem to hum as you mill around Crosby looking for other cheap thrills....


http://www.moosecoffee.co.uk/


http://www.crosbyherald.co.uk/news/crosby-news/2010/01/28/help-crosby-shops-get-through-a-tough-trading-year-68459-25700034/

Saturday 29 May 2010

Sainsburys can afford better

We heard someone say that Sainsbury's could not afford to do anything better than the pile of white tosh they are proposing for Crosby Village, because of the recession and all that. You know.... the property market has collapsed and nobody has any money, etc etc, wouldn't you be pleased if anybody made any investment in your community now??


Well we all need to eat, which is what makes supermarkets such a win, win, win deal for their owners. Things have to be really bad before the rest of us stop buying food.


Sainsbury's recent full year financial results 2010, http://www.igd.com/analysis/channel/news_hub.asp?channelid=1&channelitemid=14&nidp=&nid=6842 , report a 17.5% increase in profits to £610 million, on £19.96 billion sales.....hmmmm. Considering most of us are pleased to still have a job or be breaking even, it seems like the supermarkets are laughing all the way to the bank as others, like local businesses, fall by the wayside.


Sefton Council had budgeted gross revenue expenditure of £546m for 2008/9, and from the governmental news we imagine this might be the high water mark for sometime. So yes, Sefton's entire annual budget for all our local public services is less that Sainsbury's annual profits. With these kind of figures big corporations surely must pay more than lip service to their social responsibilities. 


Going back to Sainsbos big profit numbers - reading their exciting annual report 2009  http://www.j-sainsbury.co.uk/ar09/ states they have 16,191,000 square feet of sales area in the country. Their proposed new Crosby store at 50,000 square feet (20% bigger that the nice new ASDA in Bootle which is 41,100 sq ft) will only be 0.3% of that national total - but 0.3% of £19.9 billion sales is still a whole truck load of money (£61m sales per year with nearly £2 million profit per year). With these figures, and the amount of money we have put through their tills in Crosby for years, you would really think they would pay the local community a little more respect with the quality of their proposals. After all as they claim in their annual report.....








.......  their own goals 3,4 & 5 are surely relevant to development projects and in terms of their current idea of 'making a positive difference to our community' .. frankly it's corporate BULLS**T.


Sainsbury's people - PLEASE TRY HARDER, your not 'Making Sainsbury's great again'

Thursday 20 May 2010

Birkdale

Getting even more tenous now, but its only 3 stops on the train. This is an amazingly great bistro .. go.

the sea, the sky

Stating the bleeding obvious this, but there cannot be that many places where you get sunsets like this, over a coast which is so close to most of us.

Maybe it's just volcanic ash or pollution from Runcorn, but every cloud......

Formby Pool

Bear with us, this is not Crosby, but sometimes we have to stretch our wings, and one of the best things about Crosby is it's closeness to Formby, without being so dull perhaps. Bit of a dilemma really, Crosby should be wonderful, considering the coast, the train, the schools, the parks, the houses, the closeness to the city but it's not quite, why?

Anyways Formby has lots of lovely things, and apart from the Pine Woods their swimming pool must be one of the loveliest it the country. Swimming there, with their clever changing rooms and views to the park outside, feels like a little Scandinavian oasis.

Better still swimming for kids and the over 60's is free after 2pm at the weekends (or at least it was last time we went). 

Compare and contrast to the rather strange spaceship/shuttlecock, round outside, pool shaped inside disappointment that is Crosby Pool - with its ridiculous crap cafe - didn't anyone notice it was next to a BEACH when they built it, and that it could have been NICE.