Shropshire 30 - Shrewsbury /black and white buildings/a Wilfred Owen monument /the English Bridge

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There is a Zen saying " Sometimes, simply by sitting , the soul collects wisdom" Today I was doing a lot of sitting . A year ago to the day I was driving to Shrewsbury to have the car serviced . Today I was doing the same thing . Sitting in the car, driving and just thinking about life in general . Truss had gone . Two candidates now stood plus Boris who had rolled back off his holidays and put his hat in the ring to become our new Prime Minister again . The sun was shining . Last year the weather was very different . Cold and miserable . I was looking more forward to spend time walking the streets of Shrewsbury today than I did this time last year .

I arrived at the garage . "Welcome - car service " "Just let me take you to the desk " I sat down and was invited to have my first espresso of the day. "How are you today ?" The pleasantries always flow . The receptionists are blond and young . I wondered if they spoke any German . I wondered if there was a tick list of all the attributes you needed to work for BMW. Would I fit the bill ? "So what are you doing today ?" "Do you still ...............? " "Yes we do " I was handed over a ticket for a free return ride on the Park and Ride bus into Shrewsbury . My plan was to sit in the garage for a few minutes , drink my coffee and read the local magazine I love Shrewsbury to see if there was anything I had missed that we could perhaps visit over the next few weeks . I checked out the John Cooper Works steering wheel . Not much different to mine . And at a cost of over £659 fitted . I wouldnt be changing mine then .

The walk up to the bus took me past the painted sheep, across the supermarket car park . I exchanged my voucher for my £2 bus ticket . Time to sit and think again . Where should I go first ? Down to the English Bridge and to the Abbey . We had visited the Abbey twice before and walked down Wyle Cop with its lovely black and white timbered houses . Why did we not keep anything black and white in our city ? I had never really taken much notice of the shops on the way down . The windows were full of pumpkins or white plastic cobwebs . The odd large black spider and a witches broom . Halloween just round the corner and all the shop displays reflected Halloween or they showcased Autumn . Orange , brown and deep crimson displays of garlands made from leaves adorned shop doorways; The Christmas lights were up and Shrewsbury looked jolly.

As I crossed the English Bridge - there is a Welsh Bridge too - I looked over at the grey cold looking Severn . The bridge was impressive and I had never really given it a second thought before . I had crossed it heading for a work course in the local college . How to do drugs . Well not quite but how to work with customers with drug addiction problems . The bridge looked off but I read that it had been rebuilt in 1926 using the original stonework . The arches had been lowered and the roadway dropped . It was an impressive bridge nevertheless . A boundary stone marked the meeting of two separate parishes My next port of call was the Abbey Gardens .. I found some gardens which were closed until later that morning . Inside there was a flurry of activity as the site was being filled with more pumpkins, more cobwebs and the children were expected on a pumpkin treasure hunt or something similar . Something to avoid I quickly thought to myself . The Abbey too was closed until 11am . As it was only 9.30 I had little choice but to wander the graveyard . There were few memorials which seemed odd in such a wealthy city . The graveyard had been cleared at some time for ease of maintenance which made it rather sterile .

I wandered round the back to a strange memorial . Flat grey a sort of shapeless thing I usually would pass by without a thought . However something caught my attention and with time on my hands I wandered over . It was a memorial to the First World War poet Wilfred Owen. The sculpture was called Symmetry and it was symmetrical and was designed by Paul de Monchaux and commissioned by the Wilfred Owen Society in 1993. Thoroughily modern it was sculptured from granite. and had a line form the poem Strange Meeting engraved on one side . "I am the enemy you killed, my friend" That stopped me in my tracks . Apparently it imagines the experience of one soldier confronting another. The sculpture was supposed to echoe the scooped tunnel the soldiers met within. Having never read the poem I had to relate my thoughts to what I saw and read around the memorial . The shape supposedly echoed the structure of the trenches and the pontoon bridge where Owen died . I thought it needed a lot of imagination to see that in the sculpture . Another use for the structure was as a bench . I did not sit on it . The granite felt very cold and uninviting . Instead I headed back over the English bridge towards the centre of Shrewsbury . A ghost sign advertising motor cycles caught my eye . Again I wondered how long it had been there , how it had escaped being painted over and how many passers by even noticed it .

I climbed up the hill back to the shops . I had an idea . With the drivers birthday coming up I need a small present . A sort of birthday stocking filler . On the way down I had spied an Italian shop . The windows full of Italian goodies from cheese to cakes , from sweets to puddings . Just my sort of place . A home from home and I knew exactly what I wanted to buy . The only problem was that I could not remember what it was called . I scoured the window and nothing was to be seen . I went through each letter of the alphabet in the hope that the name of what I wanted to buy would miraculously appear . Instead I had a blank mind . I could see it . I could almost taste it but no name could I conjure up . I walked in and smelt the hams , the lovely Italian pastas and started to describe what I was wanting to buy . The young girl serving listened intently - it is round I said . It is small and full of fruit . It is made in Siena . She looked blank so I perused the shelves and just as I was going say it is full of nuts , we eat it at Christmas, it is covered in dusted icing sugar the elderly lady who had been on the phone shouted Panforte . That is what you are looking for . Armed with two very expensive slabs of this amazing sweet confection I heded out of the shop for breakfast .

To carry on the Italian theme I called in at La Piazetta and ordered a double espresso and a croissant . You will be flying said the young lady as she served me the third espresso of the morning . I would indeed be flying but it was a lovely treat to be served real Italian coffee and sit at the table and just people watch and collect wisdom . Just as my saying said I should do .

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