Hemlock Well House, spring lane

Today I have mainly been cleaning and disinfecting toys and mats. I told you my life was dynamic and high flying. Today the maths cupboard, tomorrow the universe...

Half term begins tomorrow at 4 pm. I'll be doing some volunteer stewarding at the weekend, in return for a ticket to the Cheltenham folk festival. Owing to mistiming, I am also hosting a gathering of about ten people on Saturday evening! More of than anon.

This is Hemlock Well House, or part of it, in a dark corner of Lower Street and Spring lane. It's a formerly grand house curiously located. The front door gives on to a narrow sloping lane rather than Lower street, the thoroughfare. This suggests that Spring Lane was once rather more important than it is today. To my mind, there is also a connection between the spring at the other end of the lane, 1/4 mile away, and the original hemlock well, of which I could see no trace. Not that I looked hard: the lane was busy with pedestrians and buggy-pushers, and sloping. I felt too obvious.

Sounds scary, though, Hemlock Well ... perhaps a wealthy wizard lives there.

It has taken me forever to write this as I've been re watching an old but charming DVD of Thomas Hardy's Under the Greenwood Tree, made by the BBC in 2005. Oddly, I had just decided to rent the DVD, when the book was mentioned in my current class ("Reading paintings"). A sensitively made drama, but then again I am drawn to the work of Thomas Hardy, which I am sure I mentioned last October, while visiting Dorset.

So cold now (but still no snow) that I am thinking of cutting my losses and going to bed early. This is totally unlike me. Perhaps I am sickening. Or have drunk from the Hemlock Well...