Bristol diary - part 6. Safe from harm

Did you know that lobsters can live for up to a hundred years in captivity? I learn this while admiring Patrick the Giant Lobster at Bristol Aquarium. He's fifty.

I love watching cute clownfish, very 'Finding Nemo', diligently attending to the tentacles of anemones (and that's not easy to say).  A group of schoolchildren are so excited that they beat out a rhythm with their feet on the wooden floor which could be mistaken for an African drum ensemble, and we watch delightful rays and wrasse get their lunch together.

It's an education... as are the exhibits in the waterside M Shed... dinosaur bones, a book bound in the skin of an executed man, posters, bus tickets, shoes, fossils...oh you know, loads of other stuff too... I forget now...all from this lovely city.  On one of many screens in the museum I watch TV news footage from the 1980 St Pauls Riot.

Later I ascend Christmas Steps, look in some unusual shop windows...

...then find the mysterious scarlet painted door that opens to The Red Lodge Museum, where portraits in the oak panelled rooms seem almost alive (they always make me feel funny, like you know their subjects personally).

I wander again, take some very random photos...

"Nice things in stock"... 

Yes

stop off at St Nicholas Market to absorb it all for one last time.

Records!

Unfortunately I don't make it to half the places I wanted to... I never get to Stokes Croft, or take a tour round the SS Great Britain (a queue earlier was too much).  And now it's my last night here.  I'm catching a bus to meet my friend and see the UWE art students' degree show at Bower Ashton tomorrow morning, and then getting the train home after lunch.  I'll just have to come again.

Same time, same place, next year?

Bristol diary - part 5. Hell is round the corner

... So I'm standing outside the Arnolfini with three men, one of whom is holding a hand-made contraption up to my face, like a miniature slide viewer/binoculars thingamajig housed resourcefully in cardboard (!)  Kind of Blue Peter-goes-hi-tech... an old cornflakes packet perhaps... some sticky-back plastic.  I haven't a clue what's about to happen.

This is all new to me

The 'proposition' was to help test out a new app they're developing and be interviewed about it.  Why... what were you thinking it might be?!

 “Tell me what you think,” says the smiley tall chap with the floppy hair. He has a rather lovely voice too, now I can't see him, what with this whatchamacallit covering my eyes.  "Say what you see..."  I don't think this is going to be an episode of Catchphrase.

In fact I can't see anything. Nothing at first, just blackness. He and his bearded cohorts could be rifling through my handbag for all I know... or filming me anyway even though I declined... or drawing an ejaculating penis on my back in chalk... maybe all of the above... but I trust them! Then I see just this, a pair of doors, painted like so:

and the words 'The Garden Of Eden' above. I'm being taken towards it and the doors magically open outwards and let me in.  Oooohhhh!

This is what I see, but I see it opening out in front of me slowly in 3D...  all around me...

...and I'm riding on the back of a huge fish.

If I look down I can see the top of the fish's head. And as I turn my head... tilt it left, right, up, down again, I see creatures and trees and weird and wonderful things. Well, various elements of this section of Hieronymus Bosch's triptych (The Garden Of Earthly Delights). I'm asked to describe my experience as it happens... it's strange, spectacular, a little unnerving, travelling through a surreal parallel world, and I'm not in control, I'm on a ride, seeing an elephant on the left, a white giraffe on the right, birds flying all around... All the while with my feet firmly planted on Bristol harbourside on a sunny afternoon, near a couple sitting on a bench eating cheese and tomato sandwiches (that's if they're still there. I can't see them any more with this contraption over my eyes).

It finishes as I'm taken back through the black door.  Fortunately I don't have to continue my virtual journey through the final section of Bosch's triptych as pictured below; his vision of the underworld might have freaked me out a bit.

So it's ok, hell isn't round the corner.  My hotel room is!

Bristol diary - part 4. Wandering star

...I keep on walking.  It's around the next corner.

Ah, the famous Clifton Suspension Bridge! 

I'm enthralled by Brunel's elegant structure. It's currently undergoing work; on my side here the brickwork is draped in green tarpaulin and scaffolding and I can't seem to get a great photo - but never mind, just seeing it is enough.  I think it's beautiful.

The drama of the Avon Gorge makes me feel momentarily breathless for the second time today.  And everything else around here, big and small, is a joy to witness: the water, the views, the wild flowers, a friendly cat even (what's it doing up here?) and a blaze of fluorescent yellow as some miniature hi-vis jackets gather in the distance, worn by a troop of tiny schoolchildren.  (Either that or it's a gang of vertically-challenged scaffolders.)

I stop walking and just look for a while.  My camera seems redundant.

On the way back I get lost – I was going to say 'slightly' lost, but surely you're either lost or you're not?! - and meander the tranquil residential roads of Clifton (I think) in completely the wrong direction(s), not that it really matters.  I have the navigational prowess of a concussed butterfly.

But once I get back on track (the friendly couple who are pruning a tree and whom I ask for advice suggest I keep the sun on my right hand side, and it works) I recognise Queen's Road.

Here I stop off at the Royal West of England Academy of Art but it's being refurbished, so there's only one small room of drawings on show. Still, I enjoy them... as well as coffee and a slice of cake (orange and frangipane, since you ask).

I've been out for nearly four hours and decide to head back to the harbourside.  Outside the Arnolfini Gallery (also being refurbished - it's not my week!) I'm approached by three men, mid-thirties probably. Two with beards (of course, seeing as nearly every man in his thirties has a beard), one clean-shaven with floppy hair. They have intelligent faces, friendly smiles and, hmm...  a film camera and sound equipment...

Don't know what gets into me when I travel alone but it seems I'm up for anything. Well, almost.

So I say “Yes!” to their proposition (but “No!” to being filmed whilst doing it...)

Bristol diary - part 3. Roads

The day starts with the most wonderful room service and a morning in the lovely company of another friend I haven't seen in ages.  It seems like this trip is as much about some personal (re)connections as everything else. I'm even feeling a bit overwhelmed - the combination of only having just arrived somewhere new and already the pleasure and associated poignancy of reunions.  I have the rest of the day to myself so I go for a  long walk... to get my bearings... psychologically as well as geographically.

I wander across town from Welsh Back to Clifton, taking various detours.  It takes as long as it takes; for once, time is of no importance.

Living amid the flat fields of East Anglia, it's also easy to forget what it's like to be elevated, to look down on rooftops and trees and to see for miles, and the first time I glance out from Brandon Hill at the view the vastness of it adds to my slight dizziness. It may not be that high up in the scheme of things, but it's SO different from home, and I just want to take it all in.

View from Brandon Hill

Cabot Tower, plus squirrel on bench

As I leave the main thoroughfares behind and venture into the back streets, it's very quiet, I barely see a soul...

... apart from around a corner where some students are packing up for the Summer.  The car boot is open and a pile of assorted ephemera being loaded into it by a dutiful dad.

I feel an unexpected sort of envy, witnessing them right at the start of their adult lives...who knows who they'll meet, where they'll go and what they'll do - they don't even appreciate it yet.  What must it be like to stay in digs on Royal York Crescent with those odd little storage spaces under the arches?  I love looking into them through the barred gates and at the stalactites of ceiling plaster plus all sorts of randomness: a discarded door, the figurine of a duck.   I believe this is one of the most expensive addresses in the city.  

I keep on walking.

Bristol diary - part 2. Be thankful for what you've got

Until recently we'd lost touch, but Bristol has brought us together again - we work out that we haven't seen each other for ten years.

She has Scoliosis (an abnormally twisted spine) which affects her posture as well as her breathing and makes her prone to really horrible chest infections. Apparently Frida Kahlo was one of the first patients to have had the same spinal surgery that she herself had in her teens. In spite of her disability, or perhaps partly because of it, she's plucky, determined, gregarious and driven. We meet up this evening, my first night here, and head out for something to eat.

Pink Floyd and Nick Drake are being played on a small boat moored on the floating harbour where we're served tapas by smiley well-spoken student types who may quite possibly be a little stoned.  We chatter merrily, catch up on a decade's worth of life - and it's lovely (even though the toilets are out of order).  Afterwards I see her off by bus and walk back to my hotel in the dark; the city centre streets, though alien to me, still seem busy and safe.

Earlier in my room I'd been looking out at this unpretty view, and I like it. It's that easy shabby reality which contrasts with the more antiseptic aspirations of corporate hospitality on my side of the glass.

 There are Christmas snowflake decorations stuck to one of the windows of the buildings overlooking the back yard, (saves putting them up again in December I s'pose) and feral pigeons flirting on the ridge tiles... and gulls! All of them make me smile.  We don't get many gulls round my way, so I poke my head round the voile to observe this one who appears to be posing for a fashion shoot or something.

Yes, yes, these pictures could be taken almost anywhere, I know - but I'm glad it's here!

Bristol diary - part 1. It could be sweet

So I'm heading for Bristol!

I know that little of what I'm going to do over the next few days is out of the ordinary to most people. But, right now, it is to me! (I'm out of practice.)

I have a piece of paper with an online booking reference on it but there's no office at my local railway station.  The guard says I can get my physical ticket issued at the connecting one and she reckons the four minutes I have between arrival and departure should be enough.  Should be.

...Two stops later I run up what feels like a hundred deep concrete steps to cross the bridge over the tracks, down the other side, more steps up to the ticket office, wait to be served.  Hand my paper to a surly-looking girl behind a greasy glass window.

“I've only got four minutes...” I say (not demandingly... more sort of desperately) and by now I've probably already lost three of them.

"It will take as much time as the machine takes to issue it and no faster,” she replies in monotone without smile or understanding and I have to press my face up to the pane to hear, making me feel disadvantaged, like a small child.

“I know...I just meant...”

She says nothing.  Maybe she's just having a shit day.

At the same time, the rumble... the elongated squeal of metal brakes... look over my shoulder... aargh, no minutes now, no time to wait for a machine.

“Oh! My train's here!"

Surly girl shrugs, hands me back my papers; I race back down jarring steps and make it into the carriage a split second before the doors close, without a ticket.

I'll spare you more detail but of course it's not straightforward. After much hassle I have to buy a whole new ticket when I get to London, even though I've paid for one online already and have all the proof.  Fuck it.  Because of this delay I only just catch my Bristol train and I'm flustered as well as out of pocket, so it kind of gets me off to a bad start.

But for now, never mind!  My frustrations drop away as we accelerate out of Paddington. I'm on my way now, on my way West, where there are hills! And warm accents where they pronounce all the 'r's!  Through Didcot Parkway and Reading stations where huge red kites (the bird, I mean!) circle above the tracks.  Onward through Chippenham and then Bath Spa, where the memory of once sleeping in a condemned squat by the railway line resurfaces vividly as we pass boarded up cottages behind overgrown buddleia (I'm sure it's the very same terrace). I disembark at Temple Meads late afternoon.  Excited!