St Laurence's, Stroud

How strange it looks with a truncated tower! Nonetheless, it's the only pic I took today, so it'll do

After ab easy start this morning, I took the wretched Minnie Mouse suitcase to a charity shop (see yesterday's blip) and headed through the churchyard to the Lansdown Gallery. I'd hoped to see an exhibition by the artist Kirsty Limburn, called Remembering Joel, about her son, who died in 2018 at the age of 25. Kirsty and I met on a business start up course in 2002, and I got to know her and her son Joel a bit. He would have been 9 then. I don't know what happened to him.

Sadly, Kirsty and her exhibition were not there, apparently she had put her back out and had to cancel. I went to another exhibition instead, by a well known Stroud tutor, n which there was a portrait of me (weird!)

Then I had to go up to the suburb of Uplands to meet a mum outside a playgroup, to pick up her children. I'm going to be looking after them for a couple of sessions per week, and their brother for part of that time. The boys dragged their feet on the way home, but apart from that we had a fun-filled time and got to know each other a little. I even had two hours with them on my own. They are very sweet, in the way that uncorrupted youth can be.

The walk home from the job is going to be terrible, though! Twenty minutes, nearly all uphill. I need to learn to drive. Could I bear to try that again? Cycling in Stroud has drawbacks, because of the number of hills. Maybe electric is the way to go?

Later, we went out and set up the our stalls at the market hall.n preparation for tomorrow. I cooked herby chicken nuggets from scratch when we got home. Then I walked around the cemetery, to catch the last days of the sun. The longest-living person I could find was one Ivy Watkins, who died in 2007 at the age of 99 and a half. What a pity, thought I, that she never made her century.