Epsom Town

Having been cycling rather than walking for the past year or so, I had noticed that my walking muscles were not all they might be. Walking was more tiring than it ought to be, so a bit more walking is clearly in order. And then, the plague seems to be on the wane, so walking through Epsom High Street is no longer as anti-me or anti-social as it was in the days before vaccine. So, all in all, I thought it reasonable to resume walking the Ewell Village anti-clockwise. So today was the first time for a long time: quite a hot morning and it took maybe an hour forty rather than the hour thirty of before.

The number of people in town seemed more or less normal for an early weekday morning. Mostly with masks present if not actually on. Laine Theatre Arts appeared to be up and running again, with a herd of young people, mainly young ladies, appearing from behind their building on the northern side of East Street. While small groups of school children were generally not minded to give way on pavements: if you did not care to walk through them, you stepped out onto the road. Luckily this last was not usually a problem. While giving way on the pavement was not an option on the stretch a bit further along East Street which was under repair: with only a yard left there was nowhere to go.

Then walking presents different opportunities to cycling, which on this occasion included a nearly new Metro collected from the pavement near Ewell West railway station.

And being a little hot and having forgot to carry any water, I treated myself to 750ml of 5,000 year old water from Buxton, called St Ann's. In a plastic bottle which claimed to have been made from other plastic bottles. Luckily, the chap in the shop thought to tell me that the bottle I had originally picked out was sparkling, not what I wanted for these purposes - with the down side being that flat was cold. 

Plus two screws to add to my collection. One for the large collection of wood screws, the other for the rather smaller collection of engineering screws. A form a collecting which I think is still OK. But maybe I will graduate to litter picking more generally in due course, a habit which a number of older people round here picked up in their decline, over the years. Which when taken seriously with plastic bags and shopping trolley, possibly a symptom of dementia...

PS 1: nearly home, somebody had put out a selection of pre-school play stuff for passers-by. Brightly coloured plastic. Annoyed with myself now for not looking at it more carefully than I did. At least one item might have been useful.

PS 2: rather to my surprise, St Ann's Well in Buxton is a bit of full-on heritage which still exists, and looks as if it really is mixed up with the bottle of water I bought today. See reference 1. And given that Buxton is in Derbyshire, entirely right and proper that they should go for the well dressing last noticed at reference 2.

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Ann%27s_Well_(Buxton).

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/05/up-north.html.