Launderette, with cloud and chimney options

Grafitti was going to be my subject of choice today, following the lead set by Boldsans. Either that, or a Lego display by a brilliant child at the after school club. I did indeed photograph the grafitti, and spotted some amusing shop signs for Boldsans that I may save for another time. After various to-ings and fro-ings, I ended up in the village outside Gloucester where I work (until tomorrow evening), and at the school I found the last of the Lego display being dismantled by the child's mother! Too late.

If only I hadn't been trying to blip the blasted bullocks in the orchard again...

Later, back in Stroud, I went to an amusing and inspiring award ceremony at one of the special schools where I work. For those students whose academic achievements dare not encompassed by GCSEs, etc, there are ASDAN and AQA awards in a huge variety of subjects. Our school seemed to have excelled itself in scooping up Open College Certificates and Awards in Music. No thanks to me...

Leaving the school, I was struck by the thought that of course I should have blipped the school's new sensory garden, but it was half past eight at night, and only one, brightly clad, child about, sans parents: therefore no one to ask for permission. Anyway, I thought, I don't have my camera...

But as I strolled back through town, now mercifully free of raindrops, I had a rummage in my Mary Poppins bag and there, along with a concealer stick, a packet of tissues, a sheaf of bus timetables, a pencil, and a spare but grubby jumper, I located the camera. Just in time, I snapped the setting sun in the window of Stroud's Soap and Suds.

I do believe, in some small and fuzzy region of my brain where the beliefs about toys coming to life at night are also located, that launderettes have another, secret function. This one was pretending very hard not to, with its straight rows of chairs and gleaming machines straight out of the 1980s, but I'm not fooled. I'm going back there

at dead of night,
when the clock on the old Co-op Building strikes thirteen,
and the CCTV camera ceases.

Wolves will be let loose
from the police station, and the Launderette will
open

its doors
to
Night.