Public transport, as usual, conspired to be sub-optimal - admittedly my cunning plan to change onto a local train in Bristol relied on the second leg of my journey from Oxford arriving on time (and preferably a minute or two early), so it was pretty much doomed from the start - a taxi was a reasonable and surprisingly cost-effective alternative. I arrived in good time to scrounge some of the take-out pizza Jane and her flatmate Hannah had ordered as well as some rather tasty home-made crystallised ginger cookies washed down by plenty of Gin & Tonic.
A goodly while later, after Hannah had collected a couple of her friends who are down from Liverpool for the weekend, we caught a taxi across town to a party in honour of Hannah's finishing work at the restaurant (where Jane and I ate last time I was down). A pretty standard affair - music, some half-hearted dancing, plenty of alcohol (including the obligatory unidentifiable punch). The only memorable happening being when a middle-aged - and fairly drunk - American chap (almost certainly the only person there older than me) butted into our conversation to bemoan the fact that we were listening to the Doors on the grounds that was what he listened to at parties when he was at college in 1982 and that we should be listening more modern, for example the Stone Roses who, according to him, are "The Doors of the Modern Age" and the greatest band in the world. We politely agreed until he went away.
Unfortunately, no one had remembered to bring the number of a taxi company, so when we left the party, we were of trudging through the rain in the hopes of picking one up before we got too far. While someone was getting cash out, I quickly investigated a small internet kiosk just standing at the side of the suburban road, which apparently would allow anyone to send email anywhere - nifty, but I didn't have time to write even a short one on the nasty touch-screen keyboard. A little way further down the road, we passed a small bakery which was all lit up - presumably doing the baking for the next morning - just as the proprietor was heading in. Being peckish at this point, Jane quickly went after him and he was more than happy to sell us large slabs of something biscuity topped with chocolate despite it being almost 2am. Result! Even the rain slackened off considerably while we munched them as we walked down the road, and shortly we managed to hail a taxi to get us the rest of the way home.
This morning, needless to say, we all got up fairly late, so after a leisurely breakfast it was past midday before we headed into town. Pretty much immediately, we came across a charity yard sale a hundred yards down the road from Jane's flat. The elderly folks running it were doing a pretty hard sell, one lady in particular talking up a pair of Thai fisherman's trousers (success), and desperately trying to close the deal on a second-hand beer brewing kit (failure). Another gent tried very hard to interest me in a very large stuffed toy of Stitch (as in Lilo and ..., the Disney movie) it was a good three-four feet tall (and about the same in the other directions), but even my pointing out that I'd probably have to buy the thing it's own ticket even if I did manage to get it onto the train only just put him off...
After escaping from the sale, we carried on into central Bristol, first stopping at a cafe which had a small exhibition of pictures that Jane had taken and processed as part of a photography course she did - and very fine they were too, an interesting series of black-and-white portraits. After this we went on down to the waterfront where we picked up some falafels (deep-fried balls of chick-pea mush, served with salad in a pita ) for lunch. We sat on the edge of the Quay opposite a very large but frankly unattractive yacht (worth $30 million, can take 16 guests and owned by an American millionaire who's in town for a week or so, we were told by a passing woman).
After finishing our drinks, we went into a modern art exhibition. The downstairs artist had a few interesting drawings and one piece which appeared to be torn and crumpled pieces of paper scattered randomly on the floor (actually it's sheet aluminium, and apparently the placement is meticulously measured each morning). The upstairs artist was ... different. Seven pieces had been done by putting nine candles on a sheet of paper and then burning them all the way down leaving coloured blobs of wax with stumps of wick in them. There were a number of what were basically just rubbings of woodgrain or similar, and a set of photographs with ink splotches on them. Then there were the coloured things - a table completely coloured with a black marker pen (which, frankly, could just have been a black table), a plain carrier bag entirely coloured red and a five pound note done with a gold pen. The crowning achievement surely is the wardrobe covered from top to bottom in black masking tape. Hmmm...
After such cultural excess, it was back to the flat for some of us, with more fun ahead this evening...
