Time to go home, and from London, journeys home invariably start at King’s Cross. Platform 5 for us today, though still with half an hour to go from this point in time before the 9:40 departure to Bradford Forster Square, changing at Leeds.
Our journey home from Bristol is being done via London, as we had cause to visit the capital for the David Bowie archive and exhibition which has recently set up home in the V & A’s ‘East Storehouse’, built on the former Olympic Park site. And here it is. It is like some giant retail warehouse, a huge Ikea or B & Q, only for art, not flatpack furniture or tins of paint. And, in fact, B & Q might well be more clearly organised. Obviously there will be some logic behind it (I guess the people running the V & A do know what they are doing after a century or more of professional work in this area) but it’s certainly not obvious to the casual visitor. All the various stairways and walkways just add to the impression of this being some giant labyrinth, a massive Escher print.
“The future belongs to those who prepare for it today”, says the text on this latest bit of street art. Well, I’m saving for retirement — or trying to. Will that do, do you think? I guess I’ll find out at some point, for sure.
Wells, in Somerset, advertises itself as “England’s Smallest City” thanks to the presence of this big lump of medieval architecture, which, other than a lot of shops devoted to servicing the thousands of tourists that were there today, seems to be all it has — though that doesn’t mean it was an unpleasant place. But when it comes to finding a picture to epitomise the day then the cathedral has to be it, really. With a bit of a football reference thrown in.
Maybe not perfect, but definitely a potential case of right clothes, right light, right timing. The River Grille can get its free advertising despite its wholly unnecessary extra E.
In Bristol’s Arnolfini art gallery currently resides an exhibition by Jonathan Baldock, called Held, which, according to the Guardian anyway, is “a tense world of folkloric psychedelia and pagan aesthetics that is weird, threatening and utterly compelling”. Well, OK, maybe I didn’t quite get it myself but Clare was not the only visitor who took the chance to get up close and personal with the exhibition’s centrepiece, entitled Bear Hug and which one was specifically allowed to engage with in this way — as long as shoes were removed. Apparently it has a heartbeat, so is a multi-sensory huggy experience.
Up until Tuesday afternoon Bristol was the largest city in the UK that I had never previously visited, but it can now pass on that honour to Coventry. A first full day here revealed many things of interest but to illustrate them I pick what is almost certainly the city’s most depicted feature. Why not, though? I am partial to a good bridge and in the Clifton Suspension Bridge, the place certainly has one of those: this is an extremely handsome and impressive construction, even now. The road deck is nearly 250 feet above the water below — how does one even start going about such an enterprise? OK, build the towers first, but then what? But that is why I am not or never will be Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who designed it — though did not live to see it completed.
Having bummed around at home for two days I felt a need to broaden horizons, and the remainder of my break will be spent somewhere else: the first destination being somewhere I have never been before, and over the next few days you can find out where. We arrived there in time for dinner, only, but it was a good one, in a style of cuisine that might or might not be apparent from the crockery above and the kebab cooking away on the left.
Vegetables sometimes grow in our allotment but in some years they don’t: it’s still not raining and 2026’s vegetable crop has been reduced to a few sad and scraggly-looking beetroot plants that may or may not have edible roots underneath them. But fruit: that, we can produce. After the loganberries and jostaberries, the next tranche of free food appears to be ready.
I’m on holiday. Even the chores can wait. Meanwhile, a movie marathon: four Kubrick movies in one day, starting with Eyes Wide Shut (which would be better if Mr. Kubrick had lived a little longer to edit down the last three-quarters of an hour, but that’s just opinion). Everything except Ms. Kidman stayed in this position the whole day, more or less. (And the others? Dr. Strangelove, 2001 and Barry Lyndon, in that order. Finishing time around 10pm.)
Being 42 