Tagged: tints-and-shades
I have no idea how anyone managed to smack this street furniture so hard, or what direction they came from to do it. It's a pretty straight 30mph road right there, and this is only one side of the dual carriageway. Never seen so much as a near-miss there.
Underpass
25 Nov 2020
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
Coincidentally, I deployed the word "corral" in an email the other day. I double-checked my spelling first, though.
And Back Down the Hill from the Flu Jab
21 Nov 2020
This is my return from getting my annual flu jab at Christ Church, as explained in more detail in my wander up the hill.
Avoiding the Accounts
26 Nov 2020
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 Long Lunchtime at the End of the World
27 Nov 2020
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...
Saint Peter's House was designed in 1952. Architecture of this era often seems to go hand-in-hand with wildly optimistic mosaics that try to make a low-ceilinged grey concrete block a bit more attractive.
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.
In full flow. The flat top of the water to the left of the overflowing rim sits above a semicircular-profile concrete trough that's designed to calm the water and channel it into the fairly calm wide flow you see here to reduce the erosion it would otherwise cause.
"I'd like to buy an owl, please."
"What?"
"Someone told me you sold owls?"
"Who?"
"See! I can hear one!"
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...
The old WHS is no longer standing; the entire block has just been demolished as I write this, on 14 Feb 2021, including this wall, which was standing up until some time last week. I wonder what they did with the metal cabinet, which I've always thought of as a somewhat disreputable TARDIS.
Ten O'Clock Shop and Can't Dance Coffee
30 Nov 2020
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.
Fruitless Coffee Excursion
01 Dec 2020
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.
Nothing New
02 Dec 2020
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.
Cliftonwood and a Secret Garden
03 Dec 2020
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.
