Community Centre
Here's the Community Centre and council offices, with its big car park and direct access to the Trans-Pennine
Trail. It used to be the old St. John's Church of England junior school. When I was little, there was a rather spooky air raid shelter next to it but that is long gone now and replaced by a Learning Centre building for computer classes. I was one of the softies at Spring Vale. We thought the St. John's kids were hard.
It is a popular place for jumble sales, discos, etc. and the car park is much enjoyed by skate-boarders. These days, dodgy-looking characters hang around here (or by the church) after dark, in baseball cap or hooded uniform, and try to damage the roof by bouncing a ball on the tiles. The picnic area is in the car park, right next to the TP trail for the weary walker to picnic. Strangely, the car park sign says 'Community Centre. This is not a public car park'. If not for the community, then for whom?
Fast and Slow
A speed camera at Thurlstone panics someone into making skid marks. Safe, eh? Similar ones in Denby Dale are regularly destroyed. The next shot is of the unsung heroes who do the local refuse collection service in their Phoenix bin wagon. Binmen to you and I, on an ever-increasing round, God bless 'em. This website has it all.
End of an Era
This
picture shows the boarded-up window of Swallow's hairdressers, which was in their
family for three generations and famous for having one style - 'short
back and sides'. These days it's back in fashion. Donald Swallow was a quiet and placid man, often seen around in his brown Macintosh
raincoat with a trilby hat and black plastic glasses. I think that he often went to the British Legion until he passed away around 2000. The shop is still boarded up in 2008.
The shop had one long pew down the side (like a church pew) and there were two chairs with a razor strop in the middle to sharpen up the cut-throat razor. A glass topped case in the corner by the window had the unfathomable things. Donald's old dad cut my hair when I was knee-high to a grasshopper but I never understood the laughter if he asked me if I would like 'something for the weekend'. Adults were unfathomable in those days. For years after it closed, there was just a single red pot of Brylcreem in the window. The window is boarded up but is the Brylcreem still there?
The phone box picture is here because BT (UK phone company) has announced that it is going to remove thousands of these (May 2008). I wanted to get its picture before it went. This one is in Shrewsbury Rd. right next to Penistone Church and there are at least three other ones in Penistone. But what a missed opportunity! Camera in hand and I heard a propeller aircraft as I took the picture. I turned off the camera and looked up to see that it was a Lancaster bomber. I caught an out-of-focus shot.
