Day 26: The Boring Postcard shot

...actually, it's more than day 26 of my street photo challenge, as I started on March 28th. Today I went to blip the Subscription Rooms, and realised why I had never done so before: attempts at blipping civic buildings usually result in boring postcard shots. And blipping street shots in my own town leads to people who are bigger than me making funny faces at me. Scary!

Rumours of the death of the off-licence, aka Stroud Wine shop, that I reported on yesterday, turned out to be greatly exaggerated. This morning, at the same time as yesterday when the steel shutter had been down, the shutter was up, revealing the wine world in all its miniature glory. Was it all just a weird dream?

This public building is opposite the wine shop, and was built in 1832, as its name suggests, from money raised by public subscriptions from townspeople, to create a venue for entertainment and meetings. I did actually gig here with Adrian Mitchell the night of our trip to the offy, but enough boasting .... I also acted in several plays put on by the Stroud Football poets in the 1990s. Yes, Stroud has it all. The Beatles played here, too. The building to the left is the Baptist church. I used to give blood here, in the hall. On blood donation day, not as part of any religious service, I hasten to add.


I've put an overlay on this image in the Distressed FX app, but no filter, as I wanted to leave it relatively unchanged. I think you should just about be able to make out that the hornbeam tree, to the right of the image, is coming into leaf. Every year the leaves fall onto the paving slabs and are slippery when mixed with a bit of rainwater, but there is a strong feeling that it should remain there, and Stroud practically invented tree protests, so there it stands. Somewhere in the history of photography there is an image of a bomb shelter on the sub rooms forecourt, but it's hard to find.

Just had to interrupt this blip owing to the sound of a 'domestic' on the pathway leading down to the woods. Sounded if a woman was going to get hurt. We went out to investigate, but our neighbour, Steve, told my partner, Steve, that the police had already been called. Steve dones not talk to me, because I am not a man, and I am not called Steve. It's a bit like Trumpton here: we've got a Steve, Steve, Martin and Steve, all living next door to each other. The police are here now. On a beautiful evening such as this, people are still in danger of violence. I hope he doesn't get away.

P.S. The police came, but the bad'un got away. I hope the woman is ok, but I am not optimistic.Steve (immediate neighbour) says the guy is crazy.