A Bury Happy Place to Live

Welcome to Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, which is the home of my Almost Average Household. It's a gentrified town, full of history and vibrancy, where visitors from the North, South and East are welcomed by the beautiful sight of the cathedral tower, which was only added at the turn of this century.

The three buildings shown below are all located on the historic Angel Hill and include The Athenaeum, (which was designed by the famous architect Robert Adam), the Abbey Gate, (which was burnt down in 1327 and then rebuilt by the townspeople) and The Angel Hotel, (which was regularly frequented by Charles Dickens).

So what's with the tour?

Well I thought it would make a nice break from the usual talk of rubbish and thought it would be a great opportunity to put The Rubbish Diet into context. So far, the only thing I've revealed about our wonderful medieval town is how great the council is at recycling. But there's so much more to the place than St Edmundsbury Borough Council's wheelie bins and the Household Waste Recycling Centre.

As it was market day yesterday, I took some photos on my travels, to give a pictorial account of a fairly typical shopping day in the life of Almost Mrs Average.

I know I am such a lucky girl to have all this on my doorstep. Maybe this is the reason I am always happy. It would be hard not to smile when surrounded by such beautiful buildings on such a sunny summer's day.

Above is the gorgeous building which plays host to the stationers WH Smith, which I use for greetings cards. Of course, I always choose cards that don't come with plastic wrappers and this is one of the rare stores that have such a range.

The photo to the right is of the Bury St Edmunds Art Gallery, another building designed by Adam, which I try and frequent as much as possible when time permits. It provides space and inspiration for bursts of creativity when needed and it's the place where I often bump into the fabulous artists of Rojo Art, who make some beautiful things from junk.

Here are some photos of our award winning market, which comes to Bury St Edmunds on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Some days there are around 10 fruit and vegetables stalls offering a really wide choice, from your bargain "£1 a basket" through to more expensive goods.

My favourite is John Webber's stall, where you are guaranteed very friendly service with a really warm welcome. Jenny who you see below is always a breath of fresh air even on a cold rainy day.

While wandering around the market, it is noticeable that many of the customers are of the older generation, partly because of the weekly coach trips that come in from far and wide. And as you can see amongst the older folk, there's a fairly good mix of those who bring their own shopping bags and those who don't.

"Say Cheese", to our local cheesemongers, which is always a popular stall. Even so, it only took about 5 minutes of waiting patiently to get served.

I love these two stalls below, picking up some fresh bread from one and local sausages and eggs from the other. To the right, you can see the new Abbeygate Gates, the latest "Marmite topic" to be featured in the Bury Free Press, our weekly paper. The local townsfolk are often split over stuff like this, either loving or hating them and never the twain shall meet.

So having bought a load of apples, bananas, tomatoes, carrots, satsumas, strawberries, carrots, peppers, cucumbers, grapes, grapefruit, spring-onions, cheese, bread, sausages and eggs, you might wonder how I could possibly get it all home.

In my beloved trolley of course, full to the brim as ever and it's what a girl needs to tackle a market shop. I used to push a metal trolley around the supermarket. I now regularly pull my gorgeous handbag-on-wheels around the open-air market. How things change eh!

And the best bit! The contents in my gorgeous trolley came to just £23. Much cheaper than the supermarket and with no excess packaging apart from the small plastic bag for the sausages.

So to celebrate, I couldn't resist the opportunity to drag it along to a regular haunt to treat myself to some cake!



Yes, it's a big piece of cake I know...

But remember...it's the bin that's on the diet and not me!

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Further info:

• More photos of Bury St Edmunds can be found at the Suffolk Cam website.
• Visit the Tourist Information site for the full lowdown on Bury St Edmunds.
  
• Stories about life in the town can be found in the local paper the Bury Free Press.
• My favourite (and less serious) take on life around town can be witnessed at the Living in Bury St Edmunds blog, written by my wonderful friend Ruby.
• Bury St Edmunds is also home to the Greene King brewery. A visit to this area just has to include a tour of the brewery.
  

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On becoming an Urban Trolley-Dolly (and other adventures)

There's been much excitement in the Almost Average Household over the last few days.

We've been expecting... but not in the antenatal sense. Our deliveries have been much more straight-forward and far less painful.

I have become a regular visitor at our local market, but I have found the weight of the shopping quite strenuous. So this week I treated myself to the mother of all trollies, a beautiful black & white beauty. We're talking a gorgeous huge handbag on wheels.


I took it out on its inaugural trip into town today and it was a dream. I admit to feeling a bit self-conscious at first, as being a lady in my thirties (only just, I know) I didn't think I was ready for the Trolley Dolly Club quite yet. However, what we must remember is that we can learn a lot from our elders and trust me, after my outing today I can confirm that there are many advantages in simply wheeling your shopping around town rather than lugging it about with increasingly extending arms in a back-breaking fashion.

Before I actually left for town this morning, I also took delivery of my second arrival....The ORGANIC FRUIT & VEG BOX, which I ordered from our milkman last week. It was pretty hard to contain my excitement.

I rushed indoors...opened the box....

...and had a good rummage through the paper bags...




It was a bit like a lucky dip and really before ordering I should have thought twice about Mr A's vegephobe tendencies. It's not that he doesn't like vegetables, but there are some that make a distinct negative impression, bringing back childhood encounters of the culinary kind that he would much rather forget.

The carrots passed muster and surprisingly the cabbage and parsnips somehow managed to go unnoticed, but one look at the swede brought about the familiar turned-up nose accompanied by the fiery comment,

"I hope you're not going to try and make me eat that!"

I guessed that was the end of the swede. Not even I could give it much of a welcome, with my own faded memories of having to eat it mashed and mixed in with potato. What a funny vegetable, loved by some but disliked by many. I thought the best plan of action was to give it to a friend of mine who is a fabulous cook as she can do wonders with extraneous vegetables.

As soon as I handed it over, she quipped,

"Veg box delivery?"

I smiled and nodded my head and she quickly revealed that she'd already taken delivery of an unwanted aubergine from her daughter this week.

"Good", I thought, blessed in the knowledge that I'd discovered an excellent orphanage for unwanted vegetables, which should be a pre-requisite of any responsible veg-box customer.
However, if Mr A is fussy about winter root vegetables, I think I may have to hold off regular orders until the summer, when more salad options are available.

In the meantime, remembering that Mr A was out for the evening I decided to start as I meant to go on and I dug into the veg box in the hope of using the ingredients to make some fresh vegetable soup.

I flicked through a recent issue of the Good Food magazine, which offered a range of ideas for simple soups and in no time I found inspiration to make use of an onion, some carrots as well as some old peppers that were almost at death's door.


My "new adventures in soup land" were pretty much a success. It really was just a case of bunging in some vegetables with a dab of olive oil, adding some vegetable stock and just letting it all simmer before giving it a whizz in the blender. And cor blimey, some tasty soup appeared. However next time, I'll just remember to add less to the blender to prevent it spitting at me and perhaps blend it a little longer to avoid complaints about chunky carrots from the junior posse.


The great news is that I've avoided any form of plastic packaging today, so as far as The Rubbish Diet is concerned, progress is looking good. Thanks to the market shopping and the veg-box delivery, the only thing that I will have to throw in the black bin is the flimsy plastic bag, which contains the beef joint that I picked up from the butchers today. Everything else was provided loose or in a small paper bag that can be composted.

So, with the aim of Zero Waste, that's not bad, especially as it's only a couple of days before the official start of Zero Waste Week. More on that tomorrow.

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Working out at the market

For the last few weeks I have been in training. As with any diet, there comes a time when the weight-loss won't happen unless you put in extra effort to shake off some pounds. Determined to hit my Size Zero goal I have been exercising my new regime twice a week...but not at the gym....oh no...I'm not that kind of girl and anyway, the gym is not what this kind of diet needs.

My twice weekly workout has been down at our local market and boy oh boy, for a molly-coddled consumer like me who has been brought up on a diet of supermarkets, the market has taken some getting used to.

Molly-coddled? Bet you've not heard that phrase associated with supermarkets before but it's TRUE.

Let's consider the following factors: easy and often free parking; trolleys that young kids can sit in; shopping in a warm environment; the luxury of filling a trolley as high as you can and wheeling it straight to your car after paying with a credit card (which actually doesn't feel like paying with real money at all). Even better, with online ordering there is the option of doing all this from the comfort of your own living room, without lifting a finger, apart from when you need to click on the mouse.

That's a lot of comfort to throw away in the face of market shopping, which offers none of the above luxuries and indeed I hadn't considered them luxuries before I'd embarked on The Rubbish Diet.

However, every diet requires a change of habits, which if successfully applied leads to a much healthier lifestyle. Perhaps it's time to look at the evidence and how shopping at the market provides its own recipe for success, despite taking me out of my comfort zone.

1. No car park - no worries: Turn the lack of easy parking into a positive, with a healthy walk from the town centre car-parks or even ditch the car and take the bus.

2. No trolley for the kids - I say if they are too small, leave them in the care of another responsible adult while you shop in peace. Older children can be taken along for the experience and to share the load. Okay, they might complain a little bit, but you should be able to bribe them with something trivial.

3. No shelter from the wind and the rain: at least you can get in and out within a 30 minute pit-stop or 10 minutes if you're quick. You'll feel lucky compared to the poor stall-holders who have to stay out in those conditions all day. Feel happy in the knowledge that you've made it worth their while.

4. No credit card machines: Take the opportunity to use some real money. Take along £20 and I bet you'll find it hard to spend it all. Not just for frugality's sake, but the thought of having to carry it all home.

5. As for the carrying bit: be happy in the knowledge that unless you invest in a pull along trolley, your body will develop biceps in no time at all.

6. And finally, the actual point of this exercise is to work towards Zero Waste and therefore reduce packaging. To achieve this, just take along your own reusable bags and you can put your unpackaged produce straight into them. If you're offered extra bags or packaging that can't be recycled, ask for an alternative. Stall-holders are great people who will be happy to help.

We are lucky to have a great market in Bury St Edmunds, which was recently highly commended in a competition run by the National Association of British Market Authorities (NABMA), thanks to a nomination from our very own Ruby who writes the Living in Bury St Edmunds blog.

Before The Rubbish Diet I felt that I was too busy to visit the market, or I was put off by the thought of taking the children. With work flooding in and new projects on the go, I am now probably busier than ever but I have been pleasantly surprised how easy market shopping is. I just fit it in around lunch-breaks and pick things up elsewhere as I go along. Saturdays are now spent enjoying an hour to myself, picking up fresh produce in town. It's no longer a hassle. In fact it's now a treat.

The Stall holders are getting used to my requests to reduce packaging and some of them, including the fruit and veg stall just along from the Early Learning Centre are now offering their own reusable bags (as shown in the main photo).

I'd like to give a big 'thumbs up' to William Lewis who owns the Say Cheese delicatessen trailer for responding to my packaging request with great enthusiam. Rather than wrapping the cheese in plastic film, he offered me greasproof paper, which can be composted instead. The other great news is that following advice from his daughter, he has switched over from plastic bags to paper bags. Result!


The other news that I've picked up on this week, which will be of interest to Londoners is that the London Assembly has published a report, which is proposing the "Hundred London Market Strategy", to protect and promote markets throughout London. More information can be found at the NABMA website.

The only market strategy that I have in mind is to perhaps invest in a shopping trolley. Having carried my shopping from the market to the car parks in the far reaches of town, I feel that I have developed arms like Mr Tickle. If ever you've seen images of Mr Tickle, you will understand what I mean. The character's arms can stretch upstairs, downstairs and in all directions.

So this morning, I am able to make a coffee in the kitchen with one hand, while being on the Internet in the lounge with the other. You never know, I may even be able to dispose of whatever little rubbish we create, without having to even leave the house.

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