Secret Essex Treasure

There's a secret place I like to go to in Essex which sells old stuff. Its a sort of antique centre in the middle of nowhere. Some of it's junk, some of it's horrid, I don't know what some of it is but some of it is like god damn treasure to me. It's pretty much one of my favorite places to go sniffing around. As I sold my car last summer and The Wig does not drive, we get the train there which is exciting enough on its own. The station is so small that it only has one platform which services the trains in both directions. (Bit dangerous....?) To get onto the main road you have to walk through a section of secluded woodland which is totally hidden from public view. This is why I'm absolutely forbidden to go there on my own. If you were a flasher or worse, you could definitely do some flashing in this cut through without getting caught. It's pretty dodgy. So The Wig offered to accompany me there today as a treat. Or if I was a more cynical character I would say it was bribery to keep the peace for the fact that he went to see Tron the other night and left me home alone with a throbbing head. Either way it doesn't matter. I wont bear a grudge. The most important thing is that today, we went to my favorite place. Yippppeeee!

Obviously the first thing we did when we got there was have lunch. Luckily for us, there is a nice pub in the middle of the antique centre. It's always really busy and we hadn't booked (rookie mistake) but thankfully they took pity on us and managed to squeeze 2 small tubbies into the corner. They could probably smell our fear when we thought they might be full up. Pathetic. Anyway, we both had Scampi and chips and it was delicious. I scored the lunch 9 chips out of a possible 10 which is extremely high for a Gastropub.

Once we had built up our strength, we were off and as expected, I wasn't disappointed. Subsequently, I have come home with the following booty:

1 x Old Bottle £14
1 x Old Tin £5
1 x Old lead Cat / Dog / Teddy bear head on lion body thing £3
9 x Old Postcards £3 (for possible use for something for our wedding in approx. 2025)
1 x Old pack of photos £1.25 (to make general cards / gift tags with)
1 x Old Paul Macartney album £4
1 x Old Wings album £3
1 x Old Abba album FREE!!! *

* When we were in the record section, Abba was playing, and because I'd been singing along to it whilst I was browsing, they gave me the album free when we left! Amazing! You wouldn't get that in Rough Trade would you?

So, all in all it was a pretty successful trip out to the Motherland, and we are now back in Hackney, listening to the new records on my mums old record player. A lovely end to a lovely day.