This is part of my project to document places in my local area lest they vanish into the mist. This was on an early morning after a night of rain, just at that moment when the pre-dawn light painted the sky a deep blue.

Hopefully, the bakehouse on the right won't vanish for a while. The owners redecorated only part way through last year to get rid of the Covid era front window that customers were served through. It went back to a more traditional indoor counter arrangement, as it was pre-Covid. Some seating has returned too. The rock like wall is an aesthetic addition. You wouldn't do that unless you planned to stay for a while.

There has been a bakery (more of a cake and pie place) here since... well, take living memory and double it. OK, that's an exaggeration but when the current name was adopted in 2016 local press reports said it was the first name change in 40 years. The previous name was Flemings Cakes, though I can't find much about them since their glory days predated social media. The current owners (Sara and Steven White, hence "Sar-even", geddit?) bought the business in 2010 but traded under the old name until 2016.

My experience is that the pies there aren't on a level of making you pine and yearn for them. I've encountered only one such pie place in that category, and I'd have to drive a long way to get there. But they are well above average for the most part. Fresh is always best. The only issue is that no matter whether you go early, mid or late lunch time, it's a crapshoot as to which pies will be in stock and which won't. Your tastebuds need to be flexible to buy lunch here. But if they have the beef, potato and pea ones up... damn, I think I may be yearning.

On the left we have the relatively new (mid-2024) Aura Sweat Wellness Studio. Up until late 2023/ early 2024 it had been, for about 20 years, Steel City Cycles, a bicycle shop which I wish I had documented in this series. Still, they're not gone; they've moved to Thirroul Plaza, so they can wait for another time.

Let's talk Aura Sweat. Their headline service is a Finish sauna for 1-2 people. If that's too hot, there are a couple of infrared saunas. Some include Chromotherapy (the use of light colours to stimulate moods). In theory I probably need something like that because my hour-plus per day exercise routine has been causing parts of my body to get a tad creaky. The only problem is, I frickin' hate heat. But they do also have an Odin ice bath which can go as low as 0 degrees Celsius! (Why isn't that ice? Because 0 is the freezing point of PURE water under SPECIFIC conditions. You CAN have liquid water at 0 degrees.) This supposedly reduces muscle inflammation (uh-huh, uh-huh, need that...) boosts recovery (uh-huh, that too...) and enhances circulation (couldn't hurt...) Formula 1 drivers take ice baths before a race to cool their core temperature. Much as I like things coooooool, I do recall seeing Carlos Sainz in an ice bath (with his rubber ducky), violently shivering, which makes me balk a little. For contrast you can combine it with a sauna, which is pretty much what Kimi Räikkönen does. Less because he was an F1 driver, more because he's a Finn.

A further service is a sensory deprivation float pool. Dosed with magnesium salts to create a massive amount of buoyancy, you float in a pool only fractionally cooler than your body temperature. This reduces stress, helps with pain relief, etc, etc. I have done this a grand total of once, in 2006. It was the one and only time in over three decades that my mind (eventually) switched off. No writing computer code in my head, no calculating financial statistics, no data analysis. I just... let go. I've never done it before, or since. It might be worth trying again.

So, what do I think of the place's survival chances? Eeeeeh, I'm not sure. I hope it goes well, but discretionary spending is very constrained at the moment. In an ideal world they would have been providing a massage service as well, but... look at the size of the place, it's not huge. What they've squeezed in already is pretty astonishing.

Maybe I should play my part by booking a visit to their float pool...