Fridays are different...
Went to the cinema last night, in Hamilton.
It's funny how you can always tell when a place is starting to die. The minute the big stores start opening on the outskirts, that's when the charity shops start to appear in the centre. After them, the cut-price jewellers. The ex-catalogue shops. The 'bargain' stores that open for a couple of weeks and then disappear again.
In Hamilton, it's gone a stage further. Many of the shop fronts are now boarded up, and the 'To Let' signs have started to appear. And so, a bit like an old tree, it's started to rot from the inside out.
There used to be some quite nice pubs in the middle of the town. Decent beer, a bit noisy on a Friday/Saturday, but basically good fun. Now, the place looks a bit like a cross between Faliraki and downtown Baghdad...
In the middle of it all, it was nice to find that some places have managed to survive. A nice little Italian bistro, for one. Quite pricy, but the food was excellent. Fresh pasta, fresh veg, simply cooked and presented. Great wine list, too. And at the end of the meal, they offered us a wee glass of limoncello...
After that, we toddled off down the hill to watch Pirates of the Caribbean:
It was a lot better than I'd been expecting. There were, admittedly, a couple of points where I found myself thinking: "they've only done that so they can have a CGI sequence..." But it was certainly far better than the reviews suggested.
The weirdest thing, though, was the intermission. Yep. Halfway through, the lights go up, and a guy comes in pushing a trolley, bedecked with tubs of ice-cream and bottles of pop. It was like being back in the 50s...
_
It's funny how you can always tell when a place is starting to die. The minute the big stores start opening on the outskirts, that's when the charity shops start to appear in the centre. After them, the cut-price jewellers. The ex-catalogue shops. The 'bargain' stores that open for a couple of weeks and then disappear again.
In Hamilton, it's gone a stage further. Many of the shop fronts are now boarded up, and the 'To Let' signs have started to appear. And so, a bit like an old tree, it's started to rot from the inside out.
There used to be some quite nice pubs in the middle of the town. Decent beer, a bit noisy on a Friday/Saturday, but basically good fun. Now, the place looks a bit like a cross between Faliraki and downtown Baghdad...
In the middle of it all, it was nice to find that some places have managed to survive. A nice little Italian bistro, for one. Quite pricy, but the food was excellent. Fresh pasta, fresh veg, simply cooked and presented. Great wine list, too. And at the end of the meal, they offered us a wee glass of limoncello...
After that, we toddled off down the hill to watch Pirates of the Caribbean:
It was a lot better than I'd been expecting. There were, admittedly, a couple of points where I found myself thinking: "they've only done that so they can have a CGI sequence..." But it was certainly far better than the reviews suggested.
The weirdest thing, though, was the intermission. Yep. Halfway through, the lights go up, and a guy comes in pushing a trolley, bedecked with tubs of ice-cream and bottles of pop. It was like being back in the 50s...
_