Saturday, December 17, 2011
Christingle
Half a dozen or so beach huts have appeared in Epsom Market, offering festive fare of various sorts. Hand made stollen (rather different from the version sold by Lidl), hand made fudge, football scarves and various foreign looking eatables.
However, this was not good enough for us. We went to see the festive fare on offer at Chessington Garden Centre (http://www.chessingtongardencentre.co.uk/). Just inside the main entrance there is a large room, with twinkling black tent cloth hanging from the ceiling, full of Christmas decorations of one sort or another. From there, you penetrate into the shop proper where you are tempted with various gift suggestions, some with a garden flavour, some without.
You then get to what was for me the highlight of the show; a display case perhaps eight feet long and 4 feet wide chock full with Lemax village ware. Model houses, model shops, model hotels, various model people engaged in various model activities. A small model train. All made to a high festive standard, with a vaguely German flavour but with English signage, presumably made in China, and if you don't go to Chessington to buy them you can always go to http://www.alles-mini.de/shop/. Some of the offerings were quite amusing, rather in the way of the buildings in the Bekonscot model village noticed on 12th July. But not so amusing that we actually bought any of the stuff.
From there you get into the restaurant area which I am told is the highest turning over department in the place. I didn't look too closely but I imagine it is much the same sort of thing as you might get at Hampton Court or the better class of National Trust house. But I was impressed by the large laminated wood beams holding up the roof, the sort of thing that you can see these days in school halls and swimming pools. Very much the better class of shed, more or less completely displacing what had once been an impressive display of plants from hot countries, probably from the time when the Garden Centre had educational aspirations.
We declined Santa's grotto, although we have had good reports from those who have small children to take, as we did not. Should any readers want to make the trip, they might want to book online to avoid disappointment.
A good deal of the outside is given over to garden fittings and furnishes of various sorts. Posts, ponds, statues, stones, posh bricks, tubs, trellises and all the rest of it. If you look hard you can even find some bamboo canes to hold up your runner beans. A reasonable chunk of what is left is given over to garden food. Bales of peat and bales of the finest compost.
We ended our visit at the aquatic centre with its large and impressive range of fish. Disappointed that the small but impressive display of exotic water plants and plant like water animals seems to have been displaced by wares of greater commercial promise, including various plastic water plants. But we suspect it is a good place to buy fish as we have heard that they take the selling of fish seriously, rather in the way that a rescue dog centre gives candidate rescuers a good going over before releasing any dog. All of which prompted a discussion in the TB last night about what a pain it must be to be selling expensive and lovingly made/reared merchandise to complete plonkers who have plenty of money, but little proper appreciation of what they are buying. Not for me.
However, this was not good enough for us. We went to see the festive fare on offer at Chessington Garden Centre (http://www.chessingtongardencentre.co.uk/). Just inside the main entrance there is a large room, with twinkling black tent cloth hanging from the ceiling, full of Christmas decorations of one sort or another. From there, you penetrate into the shop proper where you are tempted with various gift suggestions, some with a garden flavour, some without.
You then get to what was for me the highlight of the show; a display case perhaps eight feet long and 4 feet wide chock full with Lemax village ware. Model houses, model shops, model hotels, various model people engaged in various model activities. A small model train. All made to a high festive standard, with a vaguely German flavour but with English signage, presumably made in China, and if you don't go to Chessington to buy them you can always go to http://www.alles-mini.de/shop/. Some of the offerings were quite amusing, rather in the way of the buildings in the Bekonscot model village noticed on 12th July. But not so amusing that we actually bought any of the stuff.
From there you get into the restaurant area which I am told is the highest turning over department in the place. I didn't look too closely but I imagine it is much the same sort of thing as you might get at Hampton Court or the better class of National Trust house. But I was impressed by the large laminated wood beams holding up the roof, the sort of thing that you can see these days in school halls and swimming pools. Very much the better class of shed, more or less completely displacing what had once been an impressive display of plants from hot countries, probably from the time when the Garden Centre had educational aspirations.
We declined Santa's grotto, although we have had good reports from those who have small children to take, as we did not. Should any readers want to make the trip, they might want to book online to avoid disappointment.
A good deal of the outside is given over to garden fittings and furnishes of various sorts. Posts, ponds, statues, stones, posh bricks, tubs, trellises and all the rest of it. If you look hard you can even find some bamboo canes to hold up your runner beans. A reasonable chunk of what is left is given over to garden food. Bales of peat and bales of the finest compost.
We ended our visit at the aquatic centre with its large and impressive range of fish. Disappointed that the small but impressive display of exotic water plants and plant like water animals seems to have been displaced by wares of greater commercial promise, including various plastic water plants. But we suspect it is a good place to buy fish as we have heard that they take the selling of fish seriously, rather in the way that a rescue dog centre gives candidate rescuers a good going over before releasing any dog. All of which prompted a discussion in the TB last night about what a pain it must be to be selling expensive and lovingly made/reared merchandise to complete plonkers who have plenty of money, but little proper appreciation of what they are buying. Not for me.
# posted by Jim @ 7:50 AM 
