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I LIVED NEAR A SERIAL KILLER


A sensational title I know but it is actually true.  Whilst staying with my parents this weekend I walked from the outskirts of the city into Gloucester and as I walked I remembered my bedsit there in the 1980's. 

When I first left school I worked for a few years before going to college in Birmingham to study photography, and so I lived in Gloucester in 1986/7. My bedsit was in a big Victorian block on Belgrave Road, which was two roads up from Cromwell Street where Fred and Rosemary West lived. I regularly cut up Cromwell Street on the way to work and probably walked past the Wests or their children. They were charged in 1994, Fred with 12 murders, Rosemary with 10. Oddly a friend knew the psychiatrist assigned to Fred after he was arrested.

The picture is the only one I took on my walk. The scrambling plant is a pyracantha often called Firethorn, not because of it's colour but because it is a poisonous plant with toxic thorns that cause a burning skin rash on contact. The plant also produces hydrogen cyanide and the berries can be fatal if ingested.

I promise my next blog entry will be more uplifting!

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