Roll up, roll up

For Late Night Shopping in Newhaven. It was only a few years ago that local shopkeepers decided that it would be a good idea to institute a Late Night Shopping event in the run up to Christmas. As I recall, it started with the shops themselves, and a lovely Rotary Club Santa's Grotto. Local organisations set up stalls with tombolas and raffles and gifts for sale. Then came the twirling teacups and the bouncy castle, and now - I've just been down there and bring you this report from the front line - it's a full blown fairground, crammed into the pedestrianised high street, complete with an inflatable slide as high as the surrounding buildings, big wheel, loads of other rides, rip-off stalls, two rifle ranges, screaming girls and huddled, smoking, boys. You can't see the shops, and now I come to think of it, many of them weren't open anyway.

So it's no longer really late night shopping, rather, Newhaven Town Centre Fairground, one night only (thank god). Worst of all, there was no Rotary Club Santa's grotto.

There was a candy floss van

And, rather less explicably, in December, an ice cream van.

There were a few local organisations represented, but their small, unilluminated, stalls were lost in the general melee, or relegated to the outer darkness of the bottom of the town: Newhaven Square.