A surprise visitor to my blip

Woodpeckers rang me soon after she'd left on her walk to work, via the centre of town. She said that the sun was shining and the regular Friday market in The Shambles was very lively and colourful. She often alerts me to good blip potential, for which I am always grateful, and as I certainly needed some inspiration today, I set off soon after to explore.

We had been talking about blip anniversaries, as she'd completed 200 blips consecutively earlier this week. I'm really pleased that having decided to start blipping she is enjoying it so much; the camaraderie, the writing, the looking for a story in pictures and words, seeing our world with fresh perspective and understanding. Actually that is how I feel about it, and answers Helena's question to me last night, about how I regard Blipfoto.

Going to the Friday market used to be a regular event for me, even before I finally moved to Stroud nearly ten years ago. It has been a market for 700 years although it is much diminished since Stroud's role as a market town has declined since the rise of motorised transport. Today there were a dozen stalls including the WI market early in the morning until 11am, selling home baked cakes and jam, as well as an array of home grown plants. Other offerings come from a very good organic vegetable stall, a fishmonger, a fresh cheese merchant and of course the wonderful Mary's bric-a-brac stall, which she has been running for more than thirty years. She started out selling secondhand school uniforms, then gradually expanded into secondhand fabrics, furniture, cutlery, ceramics and books amongst many other items. She is a Stroud treasure, and in her mid-80s she has no intention of stopping.

I had brought my prime lens, which I've hardly used recently since getting my wonderful zoom. So it was interesting to walk about, finding the right spot to catch constantly shifting street scenes. As always happens, I kept bumping into people I know from all walks of local life and must have had a dozen conversations. I waited for the sun to clear some rooftops and illuminate the stalls in The Shambles, with the spire of the church standing high in the sky in the background, and the Old Town Hall forming one side of the market area. John Wesley used to preach there in his ministry. At one point the Deputy Mayor, John Marjoram, stood talking in the Shambles just as I had 'pictured' him on Monday evening, when he stood in front of a painting of the Old Town Hall.

There was a spring in people's steps with the relatively warm air of this bright winter's day. I tried to get a picture of Mary and her stall after she gave me permission, but n odd middle aged man in a fluorescent hi-visiblity jacket seemed to always move to be in the centre of my picture, staring at the camera. this wasn't what I wanted. So I walked away for a few minutes, to see if he would then go too, round the corner to Church Street which is actually only an alley from the High Street wide enough for a horse and cart.

It was quite dark between the old tall buildings, as I tried to take a picture of an old bulging wall and stone window frame of the corner building. Just beyond it is an even earlier window frame, probably medieval, where the window has been blocked off. I once took a picture of poster that had been pasted up (officially) inside the framework, as part of a series of poems around the town. It was one of Woodpeckers' poems commissioned to celebrate the Bi-centennial celebration of Isambard Kingdom Brunel's birth and his enormous influence on the Stroud Valleys, with the building of his railway to Cheltenham, along the Golden Valley. (I have added her poem below).

As I took a couple of pictures, my eye caught a mother and her child walking up the High Street and entering the corner shop. My second shot caught just the child in her red coat, and as I took the picture, I instantly thought of Richard Donkin's blip earlier this week! I'm sure if you check his picture you will get the connection. In the last year I've been lucky enough to meet Richard and several other blippers, including Lozarithim, Enzo (in the Old Town Hall), Hillyblips and especially Horrigans, who encouraged and helped me when I first started blipping. There are other blip friends I would love to meet, but know that it is unlikely, but you never know. Maybe one day we can visit Helena's sister Tanya, in New Zealand, to see the amazing scenes she portrays from there.

I've looked back at my pictures and they mostly please me, and I can see I have improved on some techniques, but could be so much better! I enjoy the journal writing too, if I have the time. I'm not very good at commenting though, so many apologies to my visitors. But I do try to visit and check on the lives of blippers, as far as they are revealed. I expect I will continue on, but probably a bit more intermittently. But that is what they all seem to say. I may even write a biography one day.

Thanks for getting this far and I really appreciate your company. For those who have not discovered the late Molly, do visit one of my favourite blippers.


Flying Hearse

The great do not sleep. Furious schemes
unfurl, project, disobey the body's meek pleas
Plans are sketched, abandoned. Objections arise,
- considered, overruled. Enemies melt into friends.

'Great things are not dome by those who sit
and count the cost of every thought and act'
He stands seductive, makes his case,
'I am not the Cheapest, but the Best'.

Alone he rests in 'flying hearse'
With built in bed: time saved for rails.
His walking stick conceals a rule, measuring
Breadths of bold broad gauge.

No screw's unturned, no stone unseen, no worker acts
Without his will. Married to matter, steel and stone
Vision his mistress, Quality his North Star.
Only his dreams have doubts.

The great do not sleep. Isambard builds a French bed
Six-foot square for tall tomorrows, visions of bridges ....
He seldom sleeps. A the Sign of the Angel the Brunel bed stands
Mecca for modern Men with Plans.

Helena Petre - aka Woodpeckers
Stroud 2006

EDIT:
Woodpeckers has added some background information to this poem in her comment below, which explains a lot, and wittily as usual. Thanks, H!