Tagged: fixture
A quick lunchtime jaunt for coffee. I've often wondered about the dots on the wall of the underpass. Apparently they're not intelligible Braille. Maybe it's Marain :D
This is my return from getting my annual flu jab at Christ Church, as explained in more detail in my wander up the hill.
This is now the Bristol School of Dancing. Their website says:
Built in 1893, it stands in the garden of 20 Vyvyan Terrace and it is rumoured that it was once a Swedish diplomatic building that contained a gymnasium. This is probably why on either side of the main entrance the words “Swedish Gymnasium” are carved.
encaustic | ɛnˈkɔːstɪk |
adjective
(in painting and ceramics) decorated by burning in colours as an inlay, especially using coloured clays or pigments mixed with hot wax.
The Maneki-neko (招き猫, lit. 'beckoning cat') is a common Japanese figurine which is often believed to bring good luck to the owner.
A trip up the hill to get my winter flu jab. I'm not sure I really needed it this year, what with avoiding Covid—I haven't had so much as a sniffle in more than a year—but seeing as they offered... Instead of the doctor's surgery on Pembroke Road, they'd taken over Christ Church, presumably to give more room and ventilation for the necessary social distancing at the moment. As usual, it was their typically efficient operation, and I was in and out in about three minutes.
On the way there and back I snapped as much as I could, but I wanted to be home in time for the first online Times Crossword Championship. As it turned out, I needn't have bothered, as the technology at the Times couldn't keep up with the demand from competitors, and their system just collapsed under the weight of page-views. They tried again the day after, and it collapsed just as badly. Maybe next year...
This wander is split into two parts, as I turned my tech off to go into Christ Church for my jab. The walk home can be found over here.
I took the day off my day job to do my accounts—or at least do enough bookkeeping to send them to my accountant. I hate doing the books. I woke up late, tired and with a headache and decided to bunk off for a walk around Cliftonwood, Clifton Village and Clifton instead, taking in a couple of good coffees along the way. Thanks, Foliage Café, and Twelve for the flat whites.
The Hillsborough Flats are a lot prettier from the back than their frontage on the Hotwell Road suggests, I think.
In Bristol, as in many other large cities, "1B" normally means "someone managed to cram a tiny extra flat into somewhere improbably and now the postman needs help finding it."
No, not that one. This one painted many bits of Bristol that I'm interested in, including several views of the Hotwell House.
I took an extra-long break at lunchtime today as I'd taken the day off my normal day-job to do the accounts for my previous side-job, which is still generating paperwork, though not much in the way of money. This took me through some undiscovered bits of Cliftonwood, including Worlds End Lane, which unexpectedly leads to White Hart Steps. That's certainly not where I expected the end of the world to lead to...
You'll have trouble getting the bus up the White Hart steps.
Edit to add: According to my friend Jess (a very reliable source of information about Cliftonwood who's quoted in this Bristol Post article about the bus stop) it was put in 15 years ago as part of the West Bristol Arts Trail...
A long ramble, starting with trying to find the Hot Well of Hotwells and leading up the side of the Avon Gorge to the Downs and then through Clifton for coffee.
Has some local socialist been throwing rocks through the Clifton Club windows? Or maybe some descendant of WG Grace (a former member) was re-enacting some cricketing action a little too animatedly at the dinner table...
I had to return a faulty AirPod Pro to Apple (there's a first-world problem!) so I just took a quick trip up the hill to the nearest UPS drop-off point, The Ten O'Clock Shop, which is famously open until 11pm. Unfortunately it's a fairly cramped little place and neither of the staff were wearing masks, so I made it a very quick drop indeed and got out of there as quickly as I could.
I grabbed a quick coffee from Can't Dance, a stall that's—as of yesterday—in a tiny converted cargo container on the edge of Victoria Square; up until this week they were running from a little trike parked in the same place. Hopefully the new premises will let them see out the winter without worrying quite so much about the weather.
I tried to fit in a few extra streets from the surrounding area on my there and back, but that was basically my wander today: a quick little shopping trip.
I've always liked the windows along here. From what I can remember, the little circles at the top can be opened, too, as well as the larger main windows as you'd expect. I could be wrong, though. Not much call to open the windows on a cold day like today.
I'm not sure I've ever noticed this clock before. It is, as with many Bristol clocks, non-functional.
Unfortunately by the time I got to Greville Smyth Park I was already about halfway through my lunch-hour, and the queue was too long to wait to actually get a coffee. Is that a fruitless excursion? Presumably a coffee bean is technically a fruit...
This kind of vague musing was sadly overshadowed by my delay at Ashton Avenue Bridge on the way back, where someone—hopefully still a someone, rather than a body—was being stretchered up the bank of the river, presumably having just been rescued from the water. As I made my way home the long way around, avoiding the cordoned-off area at the back of the CREATE centre and its car park, I saw an ambulance haring across the Plimsoll Bridge, siren running, presumably on its way to the BRI. I'd like to think that was a good sign.
This may be the very first time I've gone for a One Mile Matt wander and not actually gone down any new roads, trod any new steps. I just wanted a coffee, frankly, so I went the same old way to Imagine That in the marina and back again.
As I understand it, these are the numbers assigned to the people (who am I kidding? men.) who lived in the dockers' houses on Avon Crescent; the houses still have their separate numbers.
I love the isolation of Cliftonwood -- the geography of it, with its solid boundary of Clifton Vale to the west and Jacob's Wells Road to the east mean that you tend not to be in Cliftonwood unless you've got a reason to be there. It's not a cut-through to anywhere, at least not from side-to-side, and you can only really exit to the south on foot.
I sense that I'd be happy living in Cliftonwood -- like my bit of Hotwells, it's a quiet little area with a sort of quirky feel to it. Plus it contributes the colourful houses that are the backdrop of about half of all Bristol postcards ever made :)
I found the "secret" garden especially interesting, just for the fact that it really does feel quite secret, despite the obvious name on the gate. I've lived a half-mile from it for twenty years and I don't think I've ever noticed it before, despite exploring the area a few times.
Something about this seems Greek, possibly because a Greek capital Rho looks like an English "P".
It's a great pub. Friendly, welcoming, family-run, extremely good food. Only been a few times. I hope it weathers the Covid storm.
