Gloucester

When will these early mornings stop! Today Mick needed to be on his first train at 7:46am, this would take him to Birmingham. Second train to Crewe, Third to Chester, Fourth to Bache from where he had a 5 minute walk to the Countess Of Chester Hospital where he had an appointment at midday.

Way back when we had our eyes tested in Chester, Mick mentioned to the optician that sometimes his eyes feel bruised. His father had glaucoma which can be hereditary so Mick gets a free eye test each year. He had the usual pressure test, but because of his comment the optician wanted him to have further tests which Boots couldn’t do, so he was referred to the hospital. They hoped he’d be able to be seen within a couple of weeks, therefore we’d still be around. Eventually he got a call saying that as it wasn’t an emergency his appointment was likely to be in 16 weeks. Well we weren’t going to be hanging around Chester for that long! In the end his appointment came through with an 11 week wait. Already having left Chester we decided to carry on with our plans for the beginning of the year.

Tilly and I stirred ourselves to wave him goodbye and wish him luck, hoping that the tests he was going to have wouldn’t pop his eyes or anything like that. It being a sunny morning we got on with things.

Today I was finally going to open my Etsy shop to see if I can sell a few of the things I’ve been making of late. I’d already got the process going a few weeks ago, but had wanted to take some good photos which I did last week. So with Mick out of the way for the day I sat down and concentrated, in between Tilly twanging the bolts on the back door wanting to go out! It took a long time to get things listed and I think I still need to do a bit of tweaking but the majority of it was done by mid afternoon. RedLockMakes

The weather outside had changed from sunny to very strong wind and sideways rain at times, so I lit the stove. Boats had been moving this morning and by the time the sun came out again the pontoon was full, NB Henry Thomas moored up behind us.

As the sun was out and I’d got bored of trying to promote my shop on social media, I decided to head out for a bit of an explore before Mick returned home.

I headed over towards the Cathedral walking through the dock buildings. The National Waterways Museum is here. Our entrance tickets to the museum at Ellesmere Port will give us free access, but it is currently closed. Hopefully it will reopen at the beginning of May so that we can visit before we need to head back up to Droitwich.

Narrow streets open up onto Westgate a shopping street and then behind here stands the Cathedral. With hardly a cloud in the sky it looked very magisterial the pale sandstone shining out. Details around the windows looked like intricate icing on a wedding cake. When we return this way we’ll be going to have a look inside. I found an interesting wool shop which sadly had just closed before I got there and around the corner was The Tailor Of Gloucester shop.

Back in 1998 when I was assisting Roger Glossop, designer for the premier stage production of Brassed Off, he was also in the process of working on refurbishing the shop that Beatrix Potter had used in her illustrations for The Tailor of Gloucester. In his workshop stood large models of mice all painstakingly created for the tailors shop. In 2001 the shop opened which was owned by Frederick Warne and Co, publishers of Beatrix Potter. So I was interested to have a look. When I reached the outside it was fairly obvious that things had changed, a plastic model in the window was not of the same calibre of the mice i’d seen being made. They were about to close, so a look around inside will have to wait, but I suspect it’s nowhere  near as magical as it had been.

I wondered up to meet Mick from his eighth train of the day to hear how his day had gone. He’d had a periphery vision test done amongst other things. When he got to see the consultant, he had a very very close look in his eyes and suggested that some photos were needed for which Mick needed to have some eye drops. Whilst these were taking effect, stinging all the time, he waited. Then he was called back in to be told that they wouldn’t be able to take the photos and the main chap didn’t now think that they were necessary as he couldn’t see anything wrong. All that stinging for nothing. If his eyes hurt again in future he is being sent a letter to show an optician to enable him to have a pressure test done.

It was a long way to go to find out nothing was wrong, but worth it. He’d also retraced much of our journey over this year as the trains followed the canals. He went over the Wolverhampton 21, saw Venetian Marina, Beeston Iron Lock and Castle, Bournville, Edgbaston Tunnel, Astwood Locks and got to wave at NB Blackbird.

0 locks, 0 miles, 7:46am, 8 trains, 1 etsy shop, 8 pairs socks, 13 items, 3 nearly 4 tests, 0 photos, 1 clockwork orange moment, 2 eye balls still intact.

Severn River level at 9am today (at Bewdley a mile upstream from Stourport) 0.802m,

level at Diglis, Worcester at 9am today 0.735m,

level at Gloucester Docks at 9am today 0.814m.