07 Dec 2020
I realised that if Hopper Coffee in Greville Smyth Park was in reach during my lunch hour, then perhaps Mark's Bread at the end of North Street would be do-able, too. And I was right. I also managed to cross Clift Road, with its pretty gable bargeboards, off my list, and encounter a dapper gent walking his dogs while playing loud jazz music from somewhere under his jacket. That's North Street for you.
Pleasingly, a year and a half after I took this picture, Know Your Place Bristol tweeted a World War I-era photo postcard from the archives that has a very similar perspective on the same road (Direct KYP link)
I thought this was especially relevant as the tweet mentions that the road is otherwise unremarkable; the interest is in the fact that someone turned this presumably quite average street scene into a postcard whose image survives today, more than a hundred years later. I'd like to think that someone in a hundred years time might be interested in the quotidian scenes that comprise the vast majority of my little project here. Will this street still be here in a century? Will it still be lined with cars, or will transport perhaps have moved on into a new phase where streets are back how they were in the early 1900s, with no visible cars? (I doubt it, as that would require a massive change of mindset and the provision of decent public transport in Bristol, neither of which seems very likely...)
19 Dec 2020
A nice walk home in the dark early evening—we're only a couple of days away from the winter solstice—found me getting a bit lost in Southville as I tried to knock a few new streets of my list. Happily getting lost in Southville at this time of year is in no way unpleasant, and just lets you look at more Christmas lights, really.