{"id":25761,"date":"2020-07-30T10:53:21","date_gmt":"2020-07-30T10:53:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abingdonblog.co.uk\/?p=25761"},"modified":"2020-07-30T10:53:21","modified_gmt":"2020-07-30T10:53:21","slug":"coffee-and-counting-at-abingdon-market-place-with-john-betjeman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/?p=25761","title":{"rendered":"Coffee and counting at Abingdon Market Place with John Betjeman"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/imag20\/20073002.jpg\" alt=\"Abingdon Market Place this Morning\" \/><br \/>\nToday I had my first coffee and croissant on Abingdon Market Place since the start of the lockdown. When I sat down, the outside seats at R&amp;R, Costa, and Throwing Buns were in sun; and the seats at Java were in shade.<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/imag20\/20073005.jpg\" alt=\"Abingdon Market Place this Morning\" \/><br \/>\nI noticed the usual queue outside the National Westminster Bank &#8211; a very popular bank. Pablos Lounge have reopened this week.<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/imag20\/20073004.jpg\" alt=\"Abingdon Market Place this Morning\" \/><br \/>\nI started a survey of face masks to see what was the most popular colour: 3 blue, 1 pink, 1 black and counting &#8230; then noticed a man with a Black Sabbath T Shirt taking a selfie in front Abingdon County Hall Museum.<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/imag20\/20073001.jpg\" alt=\"Abingdon Market Place this Morning\" \/><br \/>\nThe doors of the museum appeared to be open but, looking later, I discovered that was only the outer doors. In the interim, the museum are publishing some lovely pictures of exhibits on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/abingdonmuseum\/?hl=en\">Abingdon Museum on Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I flicked through a book, purchased at the British Heart Foundation, and edited by John Betjeman and John Piper, called &#8216;<em>Murray&#8217;s Berkshire Architectural Guide<\/em>&#8216; <\/p>\n<p>At one point it says, &#8216;<em>Despite the fact that the huge industrial city of Oxford is only six miles away, Abingdon remains resolutely Berkshire. Not even the presence of the MG motor works and a large, noisy aerodrome kills the essentially market and country quality of this meadow-set, river-bordered, old brick town.&#8217;<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today I had my first coffee and croissant on Abingdon Market Place since the start of the lockdown. When I sat down, the outside seats at R&amp;R, Costa, and Throwing Buns were in sun; and the seats at Java were in shade. I noticed the usual queue outside the National Westminster Bank &#8211; a very [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[96],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-market-place"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25761\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}