Walkers the Bakers at the centre of Stroud

After yesterday's deflated feelings I had to attend a regular meeting to discuss the progress we've made with Lansdown Hall, and particularly the Gallery; when I regard it like that, I am more cheerful.

As I described yesterday, the rear of the Subscription Rooms has its good and bad aspects, so when I left the council offices not far from here, I suddenly thought of my blip for today. It is the exterior of 'Walkers the Bakers' at the junction of Kendrick and Threadneedle Street, which you could just see through the right hand window in yesterday's blip.

As I mentioned then, this family business is thriving and their care is shown by the way they have restored the external window and door frames, adding multiple colours to the decorative plaster mouldings at the top of the doric columns at the main door (go LARGE for the full vivid glory!) The whole row of shops in this block must have been late Victorian, or maybe Edwardian, I think, and they have wonderful moulded panels surrounding all the upper external window frames. It is great to see such attention to detail in functional architecture.

Above the shop is the location of The Old Lady Teashop, which I used to regularly frequent. It is rather as the name suggests, old fashioned and genteel, but extremely popular and a focal point for people to meet when in the centre of town.

I was rushing when I took this shot, and had to juggle a plastic shopping bag, my camera bag, a long umbrella (as it had only just finished raining) and my camera, whilst standing in the middle of the street. I asked the shopkeepers for permission which they gladly gave. I was about to leave as my parking ticket had run out, when a friend walked out of the shop, and he inquired about what camera I was using, so I had to tell him about blip too. His job is as a video cameraman, so perhaps Peter M. may join us here too! It would be good to have another viewpoint and from a local village up the Slad valley.