Ashburton

Ashburton, like many provincial market towns, was once a prosperous place and there are plenty of rather run down but large town houses left over from those days of prosperity.

One of them has found a new life as an alternative school, the entrance to which is snapped left. A mixed secondary school where the scholars have as much say about things as the teachers. For which you pay around £10,000 year per head. Without having delved far into reference 1, something which may work on a small scale but something which may not prepare children very well for the real world - for which I still believe in the value of regular comprehensives. I associate to the remark from TB, albeit in a different context, about what happens when the lunatics get to be put in charge of the asylum.

More important for me, having got up early this morning, I find that Ella the Baker has cut her working week down to four days and is no longer open on Tuesdays. Maybe the long hours as an independent baker are getting to her.

But a plus has been the reminder about how nice it is not to have brown scum sticking to the sides of one's tea cup, a consequence of the soft water supplied hereabouts. Maybe we will be moved to reactivate our Brita contraption. Maybe we will be moved to buy in bottled water for the making of tea. But maybe not, as the latter involves plastic bottles eating up the environment and I dare say the former is just as bad, but disguised.

Reference 1: http://www.sands-school.co.uk/.

Reference 2: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=tb. TB once providing a regular crop of wisdom about the world.