Desperately Searching....

I had to go into Hereford today to do a few things I can't do in Hay (like buy a train ticket - yes, I know I could do it on line, but it gives me an excuse to get out and see somewhere different).
I'd been reading in the Hereford Times that the council there were thinking of closing some of the public toilets to save money. This is after they gave vast sums to the developers of the old cattle market to get the new shopping centre built - they could afford to pay what appeared to be essentially a blackmail demand ("more money or we can't/won't build the new shops") but they couldn't afford to pay to keep toilets open for the comfort of shoppers visiting the town centre. Apparently they have tried to get local businesses to open their customer toilets to the general public - I'm not sure what success they've had with that, as I passed one cafe with a sign in the window that declared the toilets were for customer use only - and I'm sure that's a new sign.
I wasn't sure whether they had actually gone ahead and closed the toilets, so I nipped round to the bus stops at the back of Maylord Orchards to find that, yes, it has already happened, and those toilets are closed. So I headed for the one to the side of St Peter's Church - and that too is closed. So I went further, past the old Magistrate's Court to Gaol Street Car Park, and at last, success!
Call me cynical, but I did find it interesting that the toilets near the bus stops have been closed while the ones in the car park remain open, even though the car park is much further from the centre of Hereford than the bus stops.
The centre of Hereford remains in a depressing state, with lots of empty shops - not helped by the rebuilding where there was a big fire. Maylord Orchards is half empty now (so no wonder the developers are finding it difficult to find tenants for the shops they are building on the cattle market) - but I did have a gorgeous cup of hot chocolate at the Coffee Bean Cafe, just by Gaol Street Car Park, and the Graphic Novel section at Waterstones has increased in size since I was last in there. I treated myself to a story based on Joss Whedon's shortlived TV series Firefly - The Shepherd's Tale.