Let's Chat About The Centre Of Cardiff (Without Pictures...I'm Blaming My Wife)

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

You may remember a few posts back that I mentioned in passing that having been to centre of Cardiff during Easter I'd hope to return in a few weeks to chat about it with pictures as my phone was dead at the time.

Well that day was yesterday. Wife/daughter, both of whom are old enough to know better wanted to see Disney On Ice which was being held in the Motorpoint arena in the centre of the city. I, just old and wanting nothing to do with Disney other than apparently audition for the role of Grumpy was not going.

They had wanted to go by train to Cardiff Central and then I was to pick them up when the performance finished. That was the plan. However the best laid plans of mice and women were foiled when they were slow to get ready and so wife decided to drive there to save time. This meant that I couldn't do what I'd intended doing which was to provide a snapshot portrait with pictures of the capital city centre.

So what I'm going to say now is a brief portrait of what I saw. It is based on a trip we did in the Easter break on a Sunday to see Cardiff Castle. So in no way am I saying this is scientific. Just an impression.

Let's then begin by one fact. I did not go to the centre of Cardiff because I didn't need to. If you live outside of Cardiff you don't visit the centre  (obviously excluding working there) unless there's a reason to. Thing is the reasons are reducing.

When we were there a few weeks back we went to the Toys R Us in Queens Street that was going to close a few days after out of curiosity. But the bigger shock came when we left the store. For opposite the Burtons store had also closed down.

Now Burtons obviously has it's problems (as I've mentioned before the Barry Town branch has also closed). But it would appear that the concept of a "flagship store" in a city seems to have lost it's allure. Currently the only Burtons store in Cardiff I'm aware of is just in an out of town place occupying the first floor of a Tesco's supermarket.

We were walking along St Mary's Street as well. Looking around as we were had time to spare and we noticed a few things as well as shops closing down. There was a feeling that the centre of Cardiff had gone a bit shabby. Not the Chip Shop alley One Night Stand Shabby. No. Shabby in the sense of being tired, drained.

And there was also the homeless. The centre of Cardiff always had homeless people there. You get that, cities do provide them whether intended or not with shelter and the chance of more money from the coins of kind strangers. What I hadn't seen before (and remember that this was during the day) was the fact that there were definitely more of them. Some chatting away together. Some alone. And one man who just seemed to spontaneously chat to anybody nearby. I have to say I made sure we avoided that man. Not because he was homeless, but that I wasn't sure whether he was drunk.

So why am I going on about this then? Well as I've discussed before Cardiff Labour Council appears to have taken a snobby attitude with regard to neighbouring boroughs. If this snapshot is in anyway typical for the City Centre now then perhaps they should deal with the problems within the city than acting superior to those around them.

Until the next time.