Hidden Stroud, Part V

This looks desolate ! Perhaps I am being a little too much influenced by Cold Comfort Farm. I seem to have created a minor stir yesterday with my truly awful image of classic novels being displayed on the sci-fi shelf at a local library. I wish to make it clear that I think this was a mistake, rather than a library initiative to introduce more people to the classics. As for whether Jane Austen and the Brontes would have approved of the recent wave of sequels to classic novels featuring sea monsters, werewolves, or even vampires...who knows? I was after a cheap laugh. Some dull days that's the best kind.

This pedestrianised area is called Swan Lane, and runs down from the top of Stroud High Street, behind the shops, to meet up with Union Street. The Faery Shop, which I blipped a few weeks ago, is in fact the restored mediaeval town hall, one of the first buildings in Stroud to be restored by the Stroud Preservation Society, of which CleanSteve is a trustee. This area is to the rear of the faery shop, and houses this planter - the only jolly bright thing I saw on my way to work this morning - and an ancient well, which doesn't really look at all well-like and would be hard to blip, with my limited skills. I think it has some kind of cover over it to stop drunkards pushing each other in. Just round the corner is the Swan Public house, and the patterned brick detail belongs to the building that houses Inprint second-hand bookshop, also visible on my faery shop blip.

CleanSteve says that at one time, several centuries ago, the well would have been an important water source for the town. Opposite the Faery Shop is a ghastly cubical 1960s building, which was an electrical shop, then Connexions, now a charity shop called Tranzform. The former electrical shop owner told me that on the site there was originally a coaching inn, with an enormous fireplace, or forge (could I have dreamed that last bit?) below street level. As Stroud high Street is steeply sloping, and undermined by streams below street level, I have some difficulty in imagining horses and coaches cantering down, all the way down the High Street and Gloucester street to Beeches Green, which my sister TML blipped last week.

At work, we had mass today for the whole school. I imagine it must be a bit like mass at Lourdes, with the wheelchair users outnumbering the walkers by three to one. The children and adults took part in some jolly singing and shouting, and my small part, which was to wheel one child up for the offertory procession, and another for communion, passed without a hitch. For which I was grateful, for an out of control motorised wheelchair in a confined space is to be avoided at all costs. I learned a bit more signing, too, mainly 'God' and 'love' and the latin for 'thanks', which is signed as 'thumbs-up'. The inclusion of latin was a bit of a surprise, but some people tell me it is making a comeback.

Later, I went to the office and found out that I am NOT required to have another CRB check. As I have five already issued within the last year, including one for the school where I work, this is a relief. On the other hand, I don't yet have enough to paper my sitting room wall.

Please note that this blipper has a dry sense of humour.

Hidden Stroud part 0
Hidden Stroud part I
Hidden Stroud part II
Hidden Stroud part III
Hidden Stroud part IV
Stroud High Street/ Faery Shop