Only in Tetbury

... would the phrase "you're looking very smart" cause me to look up and see this apparition! From what I heard of the conversation, and I wasn't really listening, I think the young man was on his way to a church. But red tails? Surely more synonymous with hunting than anything else ... I felt as if I'd stumbled on to the set of a Hugh Grant film.

"Tetters" or Tetbury, Cheltenham and Cirencester are probably the towns that put the posh into Poshtershire. Tetbury is a sort of theme town full of antiques shops and the Prince of Wales' shop, Highgrove something or other. There is a chemist, an in-town co-op and three charity shops, but it's Mecca on the antiques-and-coffee-shop trail, as well as Heaven for touring cyclists. I got some jewellery stall and Market house shots, which I will add to the blipfolio just as soon as I've tweaked them, but this laddie in red was my top choice for today.

I got a book for £1, and another for £2, and then I headed out of town to the big Tesco's because Tetbury town centre is overwhelming. The streets are packed with through traffic, mostly Land Rovers and heavy farm vehicles, and some of the shops are dolls' house tiny. I went into a cheese shop to get some Vignotte for CleanSteve, but everything was priced by the pound, and combined with the ripe aroma, was enough to make me feel like swooning. CleanSteve says he won't buy cheese in Lidl if it is more than £5/kilo. These were around £22/lb, approximately £45 per kilo!

Tesco's didn't have a caff, so I walked back to town, and took the no 29 Cotswold Green bus home through Minchinhampton again. The Cotswold green buses take very rural routes, to the east of Stroud, to isolated hamlets and housing estates in the middle of nowhere, so they're a great way to see the countryside provided you are not in a hurry. I've travelled miles and miles by bus this week in search of different streets and market houses to blip, and enjoyed nearly every minute. Next week I will be back at work, so the streets will be the more usual ones, unless I get a Stagecoach bus pass and take the afternoons as my bliptime.

Update: six Tetbury pics addded to my market houses blipfolio section

Further update: a poem (cinquain) I wrote to link with the image:

Red Wedding

Striding
between pillars
of white, the bloodcoat
searches for a church. Redemption may
follow.

PS I think our family is a bit biased against "Tetters" because my niece once went to boarding school for a term, and Tetbury was her nearest town. Dull as dull for a 14 year-old, and she didn't get on with the polo-pony-and-pearls school set, or the clique of girls who wore so much fake bake and makeup that they were called The Plastics!