Wrexham County Borough 127 - The local artists fill an unwanted gap/Cafe de Galles a croissant breakfast /what do you "buy" for man who has everything ?

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It is extremely noisy in Cafe de Galles. It feels like the local Womens Institute or a few friends have dropped into town for a coffee and a natter. And natter they did . The cafe is quite small and felt really crowded . The noise was overwhelming and it was extremely hard to hear ourselves think . But it was somewhere we wanted to have a coffee and breakfast for a while . Of course it was somewhere we never quite round to visiting . Well today we did manage that visit. Possibly the wrong day but there it was . A chance and you cannot turn those down.

It was a dull day and we parked up on the local supermarket car park . Something I would never had done years ago as I always felt it wrong to park up in the supermarket if I were not shopping there . Today we were early and the free parking after 11 had not started. Just 9.45 so the choice was either park up nearer and pay for an hour or twos parking or go for the free 3 hour parking at the local supermarkets . As long as you don't overstay your welcome it is a good place to park . Making sure we drove the car with no name it seemed to make sense . I had already parked Ziggy there whilst I swam so returning in Ziggy was never going to happen. There was plenty of room to park up . Especially choosing the furthest point away from the shop. Too far for some to walk to the supermarket and back with shopping bags . That meant loads of empty spaces for us . However you know full well that by the time you return to the car you will be hemmed in from behind. Cars to the front of you and to both sides as car owners have this desire to nestle up closely rather than park in an empty part of the car park . I have never worked that one out in all the years of parking cars and motorhomes . Herding we call it . A sense of security in numbers . Who knows? It is one of those great mysteries in life.

We were heading across town. Down lovely Charles Street with an abundance of flowers still giving their best . Sad about the empty shops . Bumbles coffee and clothes shop . Long gone and now a derelict building . Why not turn it into flats and at least make it look loved. and lived in ? Up to Henblas Street . Old Palace Street in English . No palace there nor ever was as far as I am aware.

Into the optician . The reason for coming to town today. The visit was uneventful and over and done with in pretty quick time . None of the hanging about in the chain store opticians waiting for the reception to check you in . Moving from chair to chair as you closed in on the lady who would test your periphery vision . Back to the chair whilst you waited to move on to the image photography. And so the dance from chair to chair continued until you arrive at the optician . Of course it is never over at that point . There is still something else to do with someone else before you start to look at frames and talk lenses . Today one man booked us in . One optician covered everything and we were in and out within quarter of an hour.

And so to the cafe. We walked past what was currently a derelict piece of land. Not massive but it once housed a snooker hall and part of a music hall turned cinema . At times it is turned into a giant sandpit for the children to play in . The fences were decorated with knitted messages left there months ago for the last visit of the committee who decided which town or city would become City of Culture. It looked slightly bedraggled today and in need of some TLC. We never did get the City of Culture . Bradford beat us to it .

Henblas Street opens out onto a square which if it were placed in a sunny country the chairs and tables would be out. The residents and visitors would sit out and enjoy the sun. It had scope to be fair and the council had bought the land some years ago with the view of doing something with it .

They had tried over the years to beautify it and bring it back into use. Perhaps a little more vision or thinking out of the box was required . Someone with vision. Someone living out of town was needed . Hold that thought . As we left we noticed the council had allowed the local grafitti artists to paint decorated canvases for the brick wall which provided a backdrop for the site . Those always fascinate me as they interpret what they think and see in paint.

Cafe de galles offered coffee and croissants and we sat in the noisy interior just talking away as best we could . "Health is the greatest gift " so said the Buddha . We talked about that a lot . Perhaps it is something you talk about more often as you get older . "Contentment the greatest wealth " he concluded . With a hot double espresso , a panini filled with bacon and cheese and a hot croissant we were content . Did we feel more wealthier today ?

A few days later the site without a name was mentioned again in the local newspaper . The guy from a long way away had given a thought to how he could celebrate his best mates 47th birthday . He himself had been gifted a urinal one year for his use at the local football ground . He was presented with a song about his name the second birthday that came up. H had rented a blimp with a birthday message to be flown over the football ground for a few days, So what could he buy or gift to someone who has everything and probably wants for nothing ?

It turns out that Rob McEllenney co- chairman of the football club had approached the council with a view to using the land and presenting a park to the town/his best friend . I guess it was a joke to call it the Ryan Reynolds Memorial Park . Filled with pop up shops, an outdoor cinema , space to sit and play it would tidy up that corner of the town. Green lanterns would be installed to commemorate the film Green Lantern. It all sounded a joke . It was not April 1st though and the local newspaper admitted that Rob McEllenney had indeed talked about how it could be funded , how it could be maintained and the council appeared to have given a green light to the project . What a lovely birthday present . A present to the co-owner to develop and to the town . We wondered how it would progress . We hoped it turned out the way we imagined . And if so our co-owners continue to surprise us with the way they manage to involve themselves in the regeneration of Wrexham .

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