The hole in my mouth

Apparently it's a shame because, so said Mr Saunders, they're really nice teeth. Unfortunately, there just wasn't quite enough room for them. The first wisdom tooth came out today, and I've made an appointment for the other one. Unfortunately, I'm now a private patient, because I never bothered to re-register when I expired (personally, I think I'm too young to expire, but that's another matter), so I had to pay lots of pennies for the privilege of losing something. He asked me if I wanted to keep my tooth, so I said, "Too bloody right I do! You're not getting that as well; if you want, I can bleed myself dry to save you the bother!" No, I didn't really say that. It was more like, "Ooh, yes please!" It's not like there's many NHS dentists left anyway; I might start collecting them, they'll be worth a fortune one day. I've also got several chipped teeth now (although none of them are giving me problems), presumably as a result of gritty Tanzanian rice.



Talking of holes, though, someone's come up with another plan for Exmouth, so they can turn it into a real shithole (erm, I mean, so they can develop it). Apparently building on all the town centre car parks, and adding an ASDA bloody Walmart will make the town centre a more pleasant place to be. From reading the Journal today, it's pretty obvious that their entire reasoning is based on what brings in the most money for the district council.

They want, for example to sell Foxholes car park on the sea front to housing developers, because it's nearly empty for most of the winter, and only brings in £10,000 a year for the council. WE'RE A BLOODY SUMMER HOLIDAY RESORT - OF COURSE IT'S NOT VERY WELL USED IN THE WINTER, BUT IT DOESN'T MEAN WE CAN DO WITHOUT IT IN THE SUMMER, DOES IT?!! It's a cheap car park anyway; how about varying the charges seasonally, so it brings in more money in the summer, but gets slightly more use in the winter?

They want to build an ASDA Walmart on the Estuary car park, which is the best and most used car park in the town centre, and knock down the existing leisure centre next to it. There's just a few problems with this one. There's no room in this car park for more traffic from ASDA customers, especially if you make it smaller. There's not yet any concrete plan for building the new £5m town leisure centre, so it looks quite likely that there will be no such facilities available in the town for an indefinite period, assuming that ASDA are better at implementing their building projects than our council are (it wouldn't be hard - and to be honest this is probably a pointless rant because most plans get forgotten about pretty quickly here).

The other problem is their excuse for building a bloody great supermarket in a town centre that can't accommodate it. Apparently, it's because Tesco, on the outskirts of town, are performing at 52.8% above the company average, and so need competition, because they're drawing customers away from the town centre shops. Er, hello? ASDA will not function as a town centre shop. ASDA will just draw more customers away from the town centre, too. And why? Because most of the small shops are not very good. Because the town centre layout is not very pleasant. The problem isn't Tesco drawing in customers. The problem is that most of the town centre shops aren't very interesting, and the town centre isn't that nice a place to walk around (how about some good areas for tea shops and sitting down? - pedestrianise the Strand like they've been talking about for years, and get rid of those godawful raised flower beds). The problem is also that they've been building housing estates for years on the outskirts of the town, without providing any amenities for them, so they have to drive to the shops anyway, so they may as well go to Tesco. So all ASDA will do is bring more traffic into the town centre. People will park, they will go to ASDA, they will get back into their cars and drive away again.

The only decent parts of the proposal are to improve the boat ramp and to build a leisure complex incorporating ten pin bowling (and possibly the town leisure centre) on the sea front - this will be on the old open-air swimming pool site, which has been derelict for almost as long as I can remember. I feel much better now, thank you.