Saturday in Bristol

[rhythmaning]

I woke up with a bit of a hangover; not too bad, but noticeable.

I can’t do hangovers so well now. Last time I had visited Bristol – a couple of years ago – I had the most almighty killer of a hangover that I have had for many years. K was giving G a surprise party, and I was the alibi: I had to keep G out of the way for the whole day. This meant touring various pubs, a bottle of wine over lunch, and another pub just before the surprise, whilst all the other guests gathered in some out of town location. By the time that party started, I was already half cut – I had been drinking for seven hours – and by the end, I was completely smashed; I remember taking control of the CD player and repeatedly playing “Protection” and “Unfinished Sympathy” by Massive Attack; I think someone had to wrestle the CD remote from my hands before I was lynched. Then to cap it all, back the K&G’s house, I suggested we open the bottle of whisky I had given them. Bad idea. The next day I felt my mind had left my body for dead. I did not contribute much to the social brunch they had, preferring to lie as quietly as possible on the sofa and hope that no-one noticed my whimpering.

Still, this time it was not too bad. I had a bath (friends with en suite spare rooms – marvellous), made myself some breakfast and coffee, and sat reading the paper. K was out taking her daughters to ballet, and G was out swimming with his son.

Later, G and I walked into town. Bristol is hilly; some steps – the Christmas Steps – wound down a steep escarpment, showing the modern city built on the walls – the bricks – of the past. There were bricked up windows and niches for monuments and hidden histories.

We went first to the covered market, in part of Bristol city centre that avoided the fire-bombs of WW2: the Georgian and Victorian buildings in crowded streets. Most seemed to have been turned into pubs or restaurants. The market felt like Camden Lock thirty years ago: slightly out-there clothes, food stalls, second-hand books and record stores, and things that you couldn’t think anyone would want to buy (though that doesn’t seem to stop them).

We walked down to the waterside – though central Bristol seems to be surrounded by water – through a large, almost-complete Georgian square – bigger than any I remember seeing before: a large open space. I wonder if providing gardens was seen as a way of demonstrating wealth for Georgian merchants or developers – like saying, “I have so much land I leave it open for everyone else”?

We stopped at the Watershed – an arts cinema – for a drink in the bar. My second surprise of the weekend was when G asked for a mineral water. I was almost dumbstruck: not having a real drink in a bar? Water?!!!Jeez – this really is a reformed character! I was most taken aback.

We talked a lot – like I say, it was two years since I’d been to Bristol, and with family commitments, he hadn’t made it north. It had been a traumatic year or so, two – his mother had moved from north London to Bristol to be near her remaining family, and last year she died; G and K were still clearing out her flat, which can’t have been easy. There were the mid-forties job hassles as well – the corporate stretch seemed as much as a pain as it is for everyone else; and I don’t have the additional angst of worrying about educating three kids.

This was a recurring topic: getting the kids to the “right” school. G and I both went to grammar schools, and though – yes! – he voted for Thatcher in 1979, he is left at heart, and I would have expected him to be against private schools; but he is working out how to send his kids private, along with most of our contemporaries. I am in two minds about this: if all the bright middle class kids go private, state schools are bound to be pretty poor (though surely they could do better than what they seem to churn out now); but if it were me, I would want to do the best for my kids – and let them join their friends in the private system.

From the Watershed we wandered across to the Arnolfini, Bristol’s contemporary arts centre. There was some kind of festival going on – “Inbetween Time”. There were groups of festival goers hanging around.

There were several exhibitions on, the theme – tying in to the festival, apparently – being “This Secret Location”. We went into three exhibits that I recall. The first consisted of still photographs coupled with a video installation; the photographs showed trees full of crows, or maybe fruit bats (I think – possibly – I don’t know) – this was called “Still:Waiting2”; the video piece was the same image, but flocking birds/bats; apparently, it changed as viewers switched in their seats – one guy kept getting up, sitting down, getting up – so that the video reset itself. I saw no art.

The next bit featured someone – a punter – sitting in a chair, attached to electrodes; a computer program measured their heart-beat and their skin-resistance (much as a lie detector, perhaps), and generated concentric circular patterns from them. This piece, “Cardiomorpholgies”, was quite interesting, but I questioned where the artistry was: what I saw was generated by the computer (still – the Mandelbrot set is beautiful – is it art?) – was the artist the programmer? Was it simply that the artist had the idea (like Duchamp, perhaps)? It was interesting for a few minutes, but I bore easily, and I moved on.

The last piece I remember was the most interesting: Whiteplane_2 (note the underscore) consisted of a floor of light squares, and a ceiling of light, so the whole room was bathed in light. We had to take our shoes off to avoid scratching the floor. It was a bit trancey – there was a kind of white noise soundtrack; a lot of people were lying on their backs, staring at the lights in the ceiling. I could not help of thinking of a 1980s disco – the floor was pure disco lights – coupled with something from “Close Encounters” – the lights kept changing in response to the soundtrack. But for me it felt really artificial – I felt I was meant to get lost in the colour (like the feeling I had when seeing installations by James Turrell or pigment-sculpture by Anish Kapoor (such beautiful depth) – and yet all I could think about were tacky 80s discotecques. (No that that I went to any, of course… I was far too cool.)

The most interesting thing I saw at the Arnolfini was the bookshop…

We left and walked up past the cathedral and up towards the main university area, dominated by what used to be called the Wills building (it may have been renamed in an effort to put people off smoking) with its squat tower. The city centre seemed quite vibrant – it was very busy, full of what I would guess were students.

We explored Fopp for a while – I had introduced G to the discount music store (and I think there is one in London) last time I was there, and he is now addicted. He bought some DVDs and a couple of Talking Head re-issues.

We had lunch – a late lunch – in Wagamama. A friend of mine was involved in designing the first few outlets – clearly a chain – though I doubt she is any longer involved. They haven’t reached Edinburgh, so I was curious. The food was reasonable, and good; but a bit too much “do it this way”; I couldn’t help but feel a little uncool because I didn’t know the score.

We made our way back up Whiteladies Road; I had thought this was named together with Blackboys Road as something to do with the slave trade, but G put me right – it was actually named after a convent, where the nuns dressed in white. (Yeah, but Blackboys Road… that is the slave trade, right? Our glorious history.)

Picking up some meat for dinner, a couple of bottles of wine, it was late by the time we got back to the Georgian mansion.

We watched the first half of “The Godfather” – a film I had never seen, despite my adoration for other movies by Coppola (viz., Apocalypse Now; One from the Heart; the Conversation; I mean, I even thought Tucker was good!). When I say I had never seen – well, the thing is, I have never watched it; but nothing in it came as a surprise – I clearly knew the story, I had seen lots of key scenes, I even knew large chunks of the dialogue. So whilst it was interesting to see it pieced together, it lacked the wonder, the immediacy it must have had when it first came out. It was like I was always waiting for the next set piece, the next bit of dialogue.

We broke of whilst G cooked steak and chips. Me, I don’t cook chips – that is why we have chip shops. I have been put off by cookbooks which say they have to be fried twice – or is it three times? – at different temperatures, at very precise different temperatures. G made excellent chips, just frying them once – sacre bleu – but they were great. He also made a pretty good steak, but he used more butter to do so than we get through in a year. K stood watching – she had eaten with the kids (no doubt with a half mind to all that butter) – but the food was excellent.

I found it very hard not to backseat-cook. I think I peeled the potatoes and pulled the cork from the wine, but that was the limit of my input; when I am cooking – which is most nights – well, I like to do things my way, and I am in control. Not that I am a control freak, of course. Of course not.

We drank the rest of the wine, watched the rest of the movie, talked the rest of the talk.