Ipswich Town Signing Tells It As It Is!
Ipswich Town’s new signing, Aaron Maclean is reported to be critical of the shopping in the town centre.
T’was ever thus! And it’s not just the shopping, but the pubs and restaurants as well!
When I first started drinking in the early1960s, I was living in Felixstowe. At that time pubs in Suffolk closed at eleven, but those in Ipswich closed half-an-hour early. So no-one in their right mind invested in pubs in the town. What made matters worse, was the great rush out to the county to get an extra half-hour of drinking time.
Before, I was a coeliac, when C and I lived north of the town in the 1970s and 1980s, we rarely ate there and if we did it was usually in the Golden Panda, a restaurant where we knew the owner and the establishment gave a name to one of our horses.
Although, we both worked there, except for Boots and Marks and Spencer, I doubt we ever bought anything of substance there.
Now I just go for the football and always arrange any meal before I get to the town, as it is a veritable gluten-free desert. People have tried to open decent restaurants but only a couple have lasted. If you want a good meal, you go a few miles outside the town.
Ipswich suffers too because of rivalry with Bury St. Edmunds. Ipswich has the trains, the football club, the port and perhaps a better hospital, whereas Bury has a cathedral, the beer, much better shops and a pro-business Council. The only other thing better in Ipswich is the street sculpture and the art galleries. Ipswich used to have Suffolk’s only airport, but it shut that, as the Council decided it was just rich men’s indulgences.
I blame the Council of the latter part of the last century. They were so anti-business, that even though we had created a hundred or so jobs in the town, we got no co-operation and help, as they wanted real manufacturing jobs. Their great saviour was Robert Maxwell, who effectively did nothing for Ipswich except shut Ransomes and Rapier.
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The Anonymous Widower 
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