Also the following
....and!
I went to Bristol this week. Bristol and I really don't get on. But forgive and forget. Or forgive more than anything, because I'll never forget the times I've spent in Bristol. Like the time I got lost because the falafel was too hot and I ended up at the wrong train station and had to get a train to Temple Meads in order to get back home. Like the time I had to hide all my deoderants in the bushes outside the Academy. Everyone's done that. Like the time I missed the last train (the last train missed me) and spent the night on the streets a la Chelmsford with no company except the best of Warren Zevon and the best of Uncle Tupelo on opposing sides of a C90. That was the night I found out where the Thekla was, and I found out where the mechanical cows lived. There were also times where I walked in the fountain and was sick on the station platform, times where I've been late for being a dinner lady because I wasn't sure what side of Bristol I was on. More recently there was the time I stayed on when I was planning to go home, and we got rained on more than I've ever been rained on.
This time was different because I was on my own, was going to stay on my own, wasn't going to share wine with any homeless people, and was intending to be home before bedtime. I think because of the connections to Bristol with former love life greatest hits, birthday adventures and crazed mentalists (or any combination of the above) I've always been apprehensive about the place. The last time I went anywhere near Bristol was driving through the city centre with my parents in the rain and taking photographs through the drandrop mottled car window of people waiting at the zebra crossings and bridges. I enjoyed going in the station at Temple Meads because they have those three-in-one hand washersoaperdriers which are a novelty when you're about three years old but once you're old enough to realise dry, soapy hands are a nightmare for turning the pages of a book on a crowded train. But I didn't feel like getting out of the car.
The river was frozen over in places, which was a rare pleasure because you don't often get to see rivers frozen over, partly because the freezing temperature of putrid bile is a lot lower than pure water, but there were crazing paving cracks and dark grey veins of ice all around the edges of the dockside. These were all very pretty and cold, but the real highlight was looking around the grey hulking mess around the site of "@ Bistol" a 21 century hokum museum that nobody outside of Bristol understands and/or cares about. Outside this endeavour is a courtard flanked on several sides by crap grey fountains, a big crap round metal ball that makes your reflection look like a National Geographic outtake, and some miserable little chain restaurants. This was all covered in dirty brown ice, slobbered liberally over the fountain edges and floor, and if I'd been trying to impress someone, or was waiting outside the school gates rather than on a walk through Bristol at 10am, I'd have make spinny circles and vampire bat slides across the drain covers. I really wanted to, but these are the sacrifices of solitude. I did take some photographs of some stuff I saw on the floor, like painted question marks and bourbon biscuits and green and brown slime.
Since my epiphany somewhere about two months ago that buying second hands books regardless of the likelihood of reading them at any conceivable point in the near future, second hand book shops and charity shops have been heaven to me. I think also since the realising that unlike with music, rooting out the 'classics' and the 'cult classics' is actually a very good thing, rather than a waste of effort. For example, many great novels were published in the 60s, 70s and 80s by brilliant American authors, some regarded as cult best sellers. The comparable bands would be like, The Doors. No thanks. For this reason, the second hand boat I'm sailing is good, because I'm almost guaranteed to find exactly, or near as damn it, what I'm looking for. On this occasion, I was trying to find Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, for no reason other than that it's apparently absolutely impossible to read; the literary equivalent of those jigsaw puzzles with nothing but a giant close up image of a plate of baked beans, tomato bubbles and everything. I also quite like the covers of the Thomas Pynchon reissues, which of course, is the most important thing. I didn't find Gravity's Rainbow in the Oxfam on Park Street, but I did find one of Pynchon's other books. The man at the counter who looked like a bookworm, and I could tell this because he was wearing a fleece from Millets, started talking about Gravity's Rainbow and I realised the exact conversation I had played out in full in my head like a screenplay for a fantastically boring film about myself, was taking place. It seems that you can strive for individuality and a semblance of ubiquity, but when it comes to second hand books and nerds, we're all on a level playing field. I ended up buying nine books in Bristol, I won't bore you with the details, but finding an orange-spined edition of The Kingdom By The Sea was a little exciting. Oh, I said I wouldn't bore you.
I went to some old haunts; The giant Fopp down in Broadmead has now become a giant CEX, a cross between a shoplifters paradise hookey street metropolis and a seedy above-street-level boxing club. There were three copies of 'Hats' by The Blue Nile shelved in the H section. I checked the P and A sections for The Blue Nile albums I didn't have. I also walked underneath that big building by the roundabout, the one that cars can drive under, and nobody knows what the building is actually for. I walked past that building with the graffiti skull on it. I went to the depressing blue funk that is the new shopping centre, Cabot Circus, which is up there with the worst places I've ever been. You can see the almighty air of disappointment surrounding Cabot Circus from space, you know. The only part of it I liked was the wall opposite the outside of the mens toilets. I also went to The Commericial Rooms, which is a classy Wetherspoons near the centre of town. I realised I never wanted to work in a bar, especially not this one, when the poor girl was subjected to three simultanous idiot customers complaining about their drinks. I sympathised so much that when I found out the only soft drink available with my meal deal was J-2-0, I didn't grimace until I saw she wasn't looking. And I drank the J-2-0, of course. In the spirit of exorcising demons, I sat on exactly the same table I sat on the last time I went there. I didn't even realise this until I left, despite the fact the table was right next to the kitchen, and is the table that the kitchen staff usually sit at to eat their complimentary food. They probably spat on my lamb burger before they skewered it.
I finished The Girl Who Played With Fire in the cinema in Cardiff. One of the plus points of turning up 90 minutes early for a film you've told people you're only going to see "because there's nothing else to do" is that you can pretend it's a mistake and have an hour and a half to yourself to read, and the bar in the Cineworld in Cardiff is perfect for it. The downside is then running into someone you know at the cinema and explaining you've turned up 90 minutes early to see Role Models, and look like the ultimate loser.
Which of course, I am.
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