Do you do crash-back?

I'm informed by reliable sources that the extensive damage to the front of Co-op Thorne is the aftermath of a late-night stunt performed by a wannabe Lewis Hamilton in a heavy plant vehicle. Earlier reports of a ram-raid attempt on the store's cash machine can now be dismissed.

Apparently, some loon took a JCB from a building site close to the new health centre on Fieldside (without consent) at one in the AM and, after a spin, decided to do some late-night shopping!

I mean I know they have a new in-store policy discouraging the use of carrier bags, but surely, a simple Robin Reliant with a thoughtfully-cleared boot space would have surficed!

These environmentalists - they always take it just that little bit too far!

And they call this a market town?

On my merry journey to Thorne South Station this morning, I managed to drag my weary head approximately one inch higher, (could have been more, but didn't have a ruler on me) than it would usually be at such a post-bed, lust-for-sleep point in the day and noticed that Thorne Market Place, once a hotbed for dealers, bodgey, dodgey and old-codgey, has become a weird, almost post-apocalyptic excuse for retail.

Thorne Market Place, it seems, no longer has a place, purely because there doesn't seem to be a market for it (oh.. the irony).

Where once stood a fair old few of the old-style corrugated-roof market stands - regularly flanked with pegs, kegs, shirts, skirts, food for dogs and rolls for bogs (It was going so well there until I committed that appalling rhyme crime!) a select few tout their wares on market days on what can only be described in equivalence to a branch of Woolworths standing solitarily in the Gobi Desert.

I noted an elderly chap with several cardboard boxes, brimming with bric-a-brac, oddly crammed into the right hand corner of the marketplace, in an area where space surely cannot be rationed. The other trader was possibly flogging fish, or sweets, from a van!

So that's market day in Thorne! And to think (at the age of 11, I bought my mum a watch from that there hub of trade - a Christmas present, a watch, which claims a notch on the Powers Family record of funny conversations, due to my secretive statement  - "Mum, I've bought you a present. I'm not telling you what it is, but I've set it to the right time!")

Ho-hum

Merlin's

JUST  'yonder' of the traffic lights on King Street/Fieldside, Thorne stands what was, to my parents, 'the old picture house' or cinema.

Quite how cool it would be to watch the new Indiana Jones movie in there in its present state is debatable. 

The ticket office would equip each audience member with a shroud of spiders' webs. 

And if they should need to pee as the film rolls, they would have to queue for the toilet in the 'car park' at a row of smashed and stinking p*sspots!

The fact is that the former cinema building on Fieldside, Thorne, which briefly became the teenage hormone-fest 90s nightspot that was 'Merlins' is now (and has been for some time) a 'From Dusk 'till Dawn-style' greyed-out block of nothingness with a crappy stadium-style protective fence across its front, which has surprisingly secluded four old toilet bowls from the eye of the vandal for the past three years!.

Polski

Witaja Thorne.

Ten historyczny rynek (rynkowy; popyt) miasto jest jewel w Yorkshire's korona.

Prosze ciesza sie tym (to) miasto (miejski) i ignoruja miejscowych idiotow.

Welcome to Thorne

Hello, Bonjour, hola, and....... witaja Thorne

Roughly translated from the English, the French, the Spanish and finally, the Polish - spoiling them (or you - if you are a Pole)  there with the Polish phrase for 'welcome to',  I'm actually saying hello and welcome to Thorne.

Ordinarily, my cynically-directed digits would be far too easily directed to my keyboard with the old 'Welcome to Thorne... You're welcome to it' cliche, but I actually believe this small, historic market town, teetering on the boundary of South Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire is a place of interest and charm. 

Why else, as a seasoned traveller, having lived elsewhere and visited great and glorious places, would I choose to return to and live here? 

As is the case in many British towns, Thorne has its undesirables, ugliness and crime, but there is a plethora of history, both human and natural. 

Each story having a fascinating background. 

Thorne Moors (Humberhead peat levels) are a point of special scientific interest, where several limited insect species thrive. And if that's not enough, the moors also boast the largest UK colonies of Britain's only venomous snake, the adder. A fly species, called the 'hairy canary' is on the brink of extinction Europe-wide, but thrives on Thorne Moors.