Dystopia Manor

Too late to catch the bus to Dursley, but still searching for an 'edgy' blip, I caught the bus to Nailsworth, the least edgy town for miles around! It occurred to me that a plan might form while I was travelling. As indeed it did. I got some snacks in town, then headed over the cattle grid, past the natural health clinic where I sometimes work, and along the Watledge road. It's more Cotswold Life than Moss Side along there, but the skies were blue and hey! there's always an old mill or a factory within shouting distance. At the manor house opposite a holiday place that my sister once rented, my eye was caught by the particularly sterile 'low maintenance' garden of pale chippings, and a central pillar supporting a sculpture of a horse's head.

"Looks as if the Mafia has paid them a visit"

I thought, and began snapping away, trying to remember whatever it was about light metering that I had been taught last night ( the house was very pale, and the sky very blue, and my camera has no manual setting anyway). I fully expected the Lord of the Manor to come stomping out waving a football boot or a Kalashnikov, but no...

Then I turned, and saw this convex mirror, and thought,

"Yeah, that's it. It could even be my college SP".

Still the Mafia and the Footballers did not bother me. (In a second, I will add the horsey statue to my blipfolio). I then saw the bus sailing along the valley far below, so walked down the path from the haunted manor house to the back of Dunkirk Mills (an old mill, now converted into luxury flats, but retaining a small museum pertaining to the textile industry of the five valleys). From there I went along the old railway line as far as Frogmarsh Mill, where I once had a massage room with a view over fields of sheep and a teasel tower. If I win the lottery, I'll rent that room again, for creative purposes.

Caught the (next) bus back to Stroud, walked along the canal again, read the newspaper with my free coffee at Waitrose, walked home. Probably about 4 miles' walking today, on the edgy street blip (ha!) and spring trail, not counting walking to work. Have to check out an amazing blog I read about; something to do with a made-up town called Scarfolk, and pastiches of scary public information films and posters from the 1970s. It's gone viral, so you may well have heard of it.

Think once
Think twice
Think Bike!

PS I wrote a poem that goes with the colour of this blip, but not the house. See my blog here.