Pandemonium

Our Annual Expedition to Bristol - or Brizzle for the locals. {g}

Last week at this time, we were at Leigh Court near Bristol. This is an ex-stately home where Jonathan and Chloë will tie the knot next St. George's Day, so Chloë's parents had arranged for us to have a look around it in the morning. The happy couple announced their engagement a few weeks ago to cries of "So what kept you?" and "Well, it's about time!"

We first met Chloë at Jonathan's graduation, and took an instant liking to her. They seemed so right together from the off, and I've been dropping hints for a couple of years already.

Last September, we stayed in a hotel in Clifton which was very pleasant except that it was on the top floor and there were no lifts. This brought home to me just how unfit I was then! 8-O Jonathan and Chloë had a one-bedroom flat at that time. This year, they swapped it for a terrace house with two bedrooms. This is in Bedminster. Mick, a friend from the Grimsby and District Quiz League, commented later, "Bedminster was a slum when I lived in Bristol!"

This was about fifty years ago though, and times have changed. Yes, it's small, but the phrase, 'deceptively spacious' seems apt. It certainly seems bigger on the inside than it does from the outside. Unlike post-war housing, when room sizes were pared to a minimum, Edwardian builders had no such notions. There is even a little garden at the back. 8-)

The house is quite high up, and the road is narrow and almost precipitously steep. Parking one's car is definitely 'interesting' - interesting as in the words of the old Chinese saying (curse?), "May you live in interesting times..."

The position does give a good view over Bristol though, made much more interesting (in more conventional parlance) when there is a hot air balloon event on the other side of the valley. At night, when the flaring gas illuminates the balloons, they look quite spectacular.

So— we drove down on the Thursday. The weather was magnificent, even for September, and we took it with us all the way to Bristol. The forecast for the weekend, however, was dire: Friday - showers; Saturday - wet and windy; Sunday - wetter and windier. 8-( Presumably this was the tail-end of one of the hurricanes that had been battering Caribbean islands and the Florida coast. Fortunately for us, these weather systems lose most of their power as they track across the Atlantic - usually... cf. October 1987.

We really wished we'd gone the previous weekend which had seen splendid weather, but Rod had a business trip to London on the Friday. 8-( The journey down was pretty well trouble-free - amazingly. There were very few road-works on the motorways, even on the M1, and traffic flowed smoothly, much to our surprise. We also found the most pleasant service centre we've ever visited.

This was on the M42 at Hopwood Park. It's set in (adjacent to?) attractive parkland, and is almost completely screened from the motorway. As it was sunny and warm, we took our food outside to eat. The food is pretty standard for motorway services but the scenery was grand. We sat beside a large lily pond with fountain going, and lots of pied wagtails flitting around. Nice. 8-)

Getting from the motorway to Bedminster once we reached Bristol was not so easy. Fortunately we have sat. nav. She's called Selma (from 'Quantum Leap'). We picture her, Pratchett-style, as a little demoness who lives under the dashboard surrounded by piles of maps as she announces all the various turnings and lane changes in a calm unflustered voice.

Occasionally though, we detect a distinctly minatory tone as she says, "Make a U-turn if possible." Then we imagine her, panic-stricken and furiously thumbing through the jumbled piles, trying to recalculate the route when we go wrong. And we do. Often. But she always manages to get us to our destination, however circuitous the route...

On Friday, Jonathan and Chloë were both working, so we went to Yeovil to pick up our friend Vivien who is, technologically speaking, living in the Dark Ages. Yeovil is about as far from Bristol as Waltham is from Lincoln - around forty miles, but it takes twice as long to get there. Literally. 8-( And that's without any diversions.

From there, we went to one of my spiritual homes, Glastonbury - hippy Paradise. 8-) The other is any good bookshop! We had lunch at the Bay Tree, an attractive café with an excellent attitude to employing people with disabilities. The girl who took our order had Downes syndrome. She tried so very hard to get everything right and it was clearly quite an effort. Bless! She did it too, and the food was excellent. 8-)

After lunch, Rod climbed to the top of Glastonbury Tor while Vivien and I went shopping round all the ethnic and 'New Age' hippy shops. I bought a distinctly phallic-looking crystal and a base with a lighting unit in it that lights the crystal with changing colours. Cool! 8-) I also bought an encyclopaedia of crystals and 'The Celtic Book of the Dead'.

Those showers? Well, it rained while we were having lunch, but otherwise, the weather was benevolent. Couldn't help singing, "Always take the weather, the weather with you - everywhere you go-o-o..."

Saturday morning, as I said, saw us at Leigh Park. In the afternoon, we went shopping in Bristol where I naturally gravitated to Waterstones. {G} Did I buy any books? Well, duh! The ones I went for are 'Cosm' by Gregory Benford and two Lindsey Davis crime novels involving her Roman detective Falco. This, despite her assertion that writing science fiction is dead easy compared to writing historical crime fiction on the grounds that "sci-fi writers don't have to do any research". So... totally ignorant about sci-fi then! {scowl}

As I like historical crime fiction, I also bought a couple of books by Peter Tremayne whose 'detective' is the red-haired Sister Fidelma, a seventh century Celtic Irish nun. Combining my appreciation of both sci-fi and crime fiction are the latest two Thraxas books by Martin Scott. They also add in a fair dollop of humour too. {G} Finally, the girl at the cash desk said I was entitled to a free book, (how did I not notice that offer?!) so I hastily added Robert Rankin's 'The Witches of Chiswick' to the pile. I liked the title, and hey, it was free.

I was delighted to find that Bristol has a branch of 'Whittard's of Chelsea', purveyors of tea and coffee, so I bought some more Old Brown Java beans, some Monsoon Malabar and some Pico Duarte.

Disappointingly, they don't sell Kopi Luwak. That's the one where the beans are collected after they've passed through the innards of a civet. It is allegedly the most expensive beverage and supposed to be extremely good. On the plus side, Jonathan and Chloë will now have no problems about what to buy me for my birthday and Christmas. 8-)

In the evening, we went out for dinner at a converted warehouse called The Shed with Jonathan, Chloë and Chloë's parents who are very friendly and entertaining. The food was excellent and we had a very pleasant time.

Wet and windy? There was a little light rain when we left but otherwise, the weather remained fine for most of the day. "Always take the weather, the weather with you - everywhere you go-o-o..."

On Sunday, Jonathan and Chloë were up early to take part in a ten kilometre 'Fun Run'. Now there's an oxymoron if you like! Held at Badminton, it was for cancer research, but they both said they were actually looking forward to the run, and that rain, if it fell, was good for running. Sometimes, I wonder if there isn't an insanity gene somewhere in this family...

Well they got rain. I think whoever 'up there' who really likes us and had spared us a drenching, (a heartfelt "Thank you!" here) had saved it all up for the runners. Voice of God: "You want rain? You got it!" Apparently, although rain is good for running, you can have too much of a good thing. Temporarily at least, these two drowned rats came round to my way of thinking. {eg}

In the meantime, we were waiting in for the appearance of our friend, Chris, whom I came to know through u.m.r.a., a newsgroup dedicated to 'The Archers'. This is 'an everyday story of country folk' that has been aired daily on B.B.C. Radio 4 for over half a century, m'lud.

Sadly, the erstwhile jolly and friendly newsgroup became infested by several thoroughly unpleasant people who made a point of misconstruing, twisting, and then adding spin to what other posters said, till it bore little or no relationship to the original post, merely serving to make that poster look like a nasty piece of work - real bullying tactics. 8-(

At one point, they had a serious, ignorant and totally unjustified go at Chris. I defended her and came in for a lot of flak myself. As I posted there for pleasure - and that was not pleasant - I left, but Chris and I have remained in contact and are still friends several years on. 8-)

She 'phoned about mid-morning to say she was stuck in a traffic jam. Apart from the 'Fun Run', there was also a half-marathon being run through the centre of Bristol and the Council had closed all four bridges across the Avon for the duration.

Unfortunately, they hadn't bothered to advertize this terribly well in advance. Not only that, but, in the absence of sensibly placed 'diversion' signs before the turnings into closed-off streets, drivers weren't aware of this until they were trapped in the jam. As Chris said, had she known, she would've gone round via the M4.

Fortunately, there aren't many people in Bristol - or the world, come to that - whom Chris doesn't know, and as she's such a delightful lady, they all (u.m.r.a. bullies excepted) seem to love her and want to help. One of these was a police motor-cyclist who happened by and escorted her out of the jam with blue light flashing. 8-)

By the time we left JonathanandChloë's, it was early afternoon as we'd been talking non-stop since Chris arrived. She is highly intelligent, erudite, very well read and a real raconteuse with a vast fund of entertaining stories. Unlike most people who can talk a lot, she somehow manages never to repeat herself and is never boring. This is a real treat! {beam}

We ended up at Sainsbury's cafeteria as Chris knew that at least it would be open at that time on a Sunday and we were all pretty hungry by that time. It had stopped raining sometime earlier - "Always take the weather, the weather with you - everywhere you go-o-o..." - so we went for a wander around Clifton village, still talking. {g} Well, we only meet about once a year...

We attempted to buy tea and coffee at one bijou eaterie but having given our orders, the manageress suddenly noticed that there were only two chairs available for the three of us. No problem, Chris pointed out - we'd bring in a chair from outside. The manageress looked at her as if she'd suddenly sprouted a second head. This apparently was a problem, so we walked out.

We subsequently found a very nice coffee shop which sold 'wicked coffees and mean teas'. Wish I could remember the name as I'd love to give them a plug. It was a great place with a couple of humorous guys in charge, and we settled down there for the rest of the afternoon.

In the evening, we stayed in and chatted with JonathanandChloë, and watched a D.V.D. of 'Bridget Jones' Diary'. It was okay, but the embarrassment factor was a little too far over the top for me for it to be genuinely funny. Anaïs's 'Doctor Jackson's Diary' is much funnier. 8-)

We set off on the return trek on Monday morning. The journey, again, was without any particular problems apart from a bit of a downpour at one point. Mostly the clouds looked more sulky than actually threatening, and by the time we arrived home, it was sunny again. 8-)

"Always take the weather, the weather with you - everywhere you go-o-o..."

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