Category Archives: stokes croft

resolutions

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Every neighbourhood needs one of these, I think. It says it’s a Resolution Tree. I have no idea when it sprang up, but I do know that it wasn’t like this in the early hours of 2012 when we tottered past on our way home from a fabulous fancy dress party organised by my brilliantly inventive friend, Penny.

But there it was this morning, luggage labels flapping in the breeze like the flags on the SS Great Britain (which is no so very far away). I stopped to read one or two of the resolutions, some of which were surprisingly graphic descriptions of things the authors wished to take up, others, like these two, were rather sweet and endearing.

Some seemed predictable enough, until I took a closer look …

I thought the last bit read “work less”, but it doesn’t does it? Anyway, it left me wondering what my resolutions should be. I didn’t make any last year, just a long To Do list.

NB: Any local readers who want to fill in a resolution tag will find the tree at the bottom of Nine Tree Hill, next to Sofa Riot (now closed) and opposite Cafe Kino. 

the last of my anemones

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Each time I think they’re over, a hidden bud bursts open and my anemones are
in bloom again. But this, I feel sure, is the last flower from my plants for this year.

But just around the corner, on Cheltenham Road, these anemones are still in flower and they are a source of great envy. The light was bad when I took the photograph, but I think you can get the picture –  just look at the size of those plants, the vast number of beautiful flowers, not to mention the buds yet to open.

No one looks after them, they are in a neglected front garden right by a bus stop on a busy, fume-filled thoroughfare. Mine never looked this good. Why is that?

Envy is a terrible thing, and I feel it all the time in relation to other people’s gardens and their plants. I’ve come to the sad conclusion that I am not a very patient gardener, which is a bit of a problem when you’re less than a year into starting a garden from scratch.

 

a cat, a goose and a declaration

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I spotted this cat on a windowsill as we drove back from the allotment, its bright yellow eyes having caught my attention. It was a second or two before I noticed its companion.

Just round the corner from the cats, this local landmark, the two-headed goose, looked particularly peculiar and wonderful against Sunday’s clear blue sky.

And finally, though this may not be the best bit of graffiti on Stokes Croft (in fact I can assure you that it isn’t), I think you’ll agree that it has a certain charm. And it’s certainly one up on the usual so-and-so loves so-and-so 4ever.

P.S. The last episode of Botany: A Blooming History is on tonight, BBC 4, and the first two episodes are only available for another week on i-player. If you are remotely interested in plants do watch them. I was so touched by the idea that early botanists believed that plants ate soil in order to grow; stunned by the extraordinary names that plants were burdened with before Linnaeus streamlined the system; and this morning my first thought on waking was about tomatoes tasting sweeter when grown in a factory’s waste carbon dioxide. That all sounds rather nerdy, I know, but trust me, the series is brilliant and Timothy Walker’s enthusiasm will carry you along.

the best laid plans and all that…

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It’s Friday, and this is supposed to be the weekly post in which I sing the praises of a wonderful Bristol-based someone or something, but I’m afraid that will have to wait as things have gone a little awry here.

First, the decision regarding what colour we should paint the back of the house remains unmade – the back wall is dotted and splodged with various shades of pink and orange as though it has a nasty skin complaint. More samples are required, more opinions will be sought. Second, I am finding it extremely hard to get my head down for my next set of exams. There are a number of reasons for this, and I won’t bore on with them now, though no doubt they’ll crop up in another post. Third, Matilda’s twelfth birthday party is tomorrow and I have no idea how many children are coming – she’s at secondary school now, so I don’t know who any of the children are, I don’t have their home phone numbers so no means of contacting them. Grrr. But whether two or twelve turn up, there’s still a cake to be made (this one will be put on a high shelf, beyond Sybil’s reach), and a lot of stuff to be shifted, tidied, sifted and perhaps even chucked out.

Oh, and we have mice. The cupboard under the sink is filled with their droppings and the cats keep catching them and bringing them in. Otto ate one for his breakfast this morning – in just two or three crunches apparently. So things aren’t going well for the mice either.

So, no write-up today, but I have something lined up – a favourite place on Colston Street. I’ll try to post it after the weekend. Meanwhile out in the garden things are fattening up and filling out, which is nice. My experimental pea shoots are poking out of the soil, so I will shove more seeds in around them to keep the crop going.

Have a lovely weekend.

PS the door panel in the photograph is on Stokes Croft. Initially I was struck by how lovely the layers of paint looked, and then of course it reminded me of my inability to make up my mind about the colour for the back of the house. Today it suggests to me that perhaps there is beauty in indecision – ah! the art of the positive spin.

decisions, decisions

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The back of our house will be painted next month. The scaffolding is booked, as is the decorator, so now we have three weeks in which to choose a colour.

I find this sort of thing incredibly difficult. It took us months to find the right shade of yellow for the hall, and our sitting room was covered with a patchwork of test squares for nearly a year. My feelings about the colour we painted our bedroom change daily, swinging from “it’ll do” to “I must paint over it now!” Meanwhile, in our new kitchen – now a year old – we still have bare plaster walls.

What hope is there for the back of the house?

I confidently predict an expensive mistake. But in order to feel slightly better about this mistake when it happens, I’ve decided to do some thorough research, by which I mean I’ve been photographing every painted house I see. And in Bristol that’s a lot of houses.

Later, in a month or so, I will comfort myself with these photographs – they will be evidence of my dedicated research and, more important, proof that the mistake was unavoidable. That’s the theory anyway.

Any thoughts on colour preferences gratefully received.

not exactly hidcote

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Today I saw our neighbourhood in an entirely new light, and wandered through corners of the city centre I didn’t know existed. It all started with an email from a friend. What were we up to on Sunday? Would we like to go to a performance art event, Bodies in Urban Spaces, which was starting off in our local park? It’s free, she added, as a final inducement. But free or not, and tempting though it sounded, I had my heart set on going to Hidcote today. But this morning, after rather a late night, Hidcote had lost its allure. The strange happening, however, suddenly became very appealing. Having seen some of the performers walking the route earlier in the week, I had a vague idea of what the piece might entail, but nothing prepared me for quite how funny, disturbing and beautiful it would be.

I’m not sure that there’s any point in trying to explain the photographs, or the performance, but each pose was set up ahead of our arrival and then, when the audience moved on (a hundred or so, I think we grew as the performance progressed and passers by decided to tag along for the ride), the performers would leap down, or up, and run to the next location, often having to duck and dive through the throng.

It was all very strange. I found the single figure poses particularly unsettling, whilst the upside down figures looked like shop window dummies arranged as part of a student prank. The whole event lasted just over an hour, during which time we walked through Montpelier, Stokes Croft and Broadmead, marveling at the physical skill and strength of the performers and admiring parts of the city we don’t usually notice. A surprising substitute for a day at Hidcote perhaps, but inspiring and full of beauty nonetheless.

it’s that man again

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Do you remember this squiggle man from many months ago? He’s returned to the neighbourhood. Last week I caught him lurking in the little lane that links Richmond Road to St Andrew’s road (above). Then, a few days later, I spotted him on a corner, halfway up Nugent Hill. He certainly gets about.

Where will he pop up next? I’m hoping he might make an appearance on our road.

happy easter

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I can’t say that this has been the best school break. I didn’t put on my supermum t-shirt once this fortnight, and truthfully I would have been in breach of trade descriptions if I had. Frayed tempers were the order of the day in this household, with mine being the most ragged around the edges. I have taken ranting to a whole new level: the turbo rant or, to put a more positive spin on it, I am now an Olympic ranter. The topics on which I ranted were many and diverse, but included old favourites relating to the state of the girls’ bedrooms, their inability to get ready and their fondness for squabbling.

This is probably a slightly unfair account the last the two weeks – friends came to stay for the first weekend which was lovely, and of course the weather has been glorious, but one way and another we were all rather tired, and not being able to use the garden* for the whole of last week was the final straw. Things eased up towards the end of the holiday, general happiness levels were restored and I redeemed myself by making chocolate nests.

* the garden is now terraced and I will post a progress report soon.

friday treats

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Along with its graffiti, Stokes Croft also boasts a high concentration of cafes. This one, which doesn’t seem to have a name, is the girls’ favourite now that they have discovered the joys of the macaroon. We bought a selection yesterday as a Friday treat.

I might have posted a photograph of the ones they chose, had they not been crushed by the hot little hands that carried them home. Another time perhaps.

compare and contrast

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Stokes Croft is a vast open air gallery with an exhibition that changes constantly. When the sun is shining the graffiti artists are out in force and it’s sometimes hard to work out what is emerging and what is being painted over. The photograph below is of the same hoarding a few months ago. In the time between taking these photos several other works have been and gone.

As I’ve said before, one of the things I admire most about the artists who work along this stretch is the time, passion and effort they put into their creations knowing that it will all be replaced by another’s work a few weeks later.

On Tuesday I wandered down Stokes Croft with my friend Penny, on our way to the Arnolfini, and the contrast between the two could not be greater. The art along Stokes Croft is eccentric, beautiful, baffling, entertaining, sometimes hilarious, occasionally hideous, but rarely dull.

Sadly that can’t be said of the Arnolfini, though I have to admit that the current show raised a rare laugh for its preposterous title: Cosima Von Bonin’s Bone Idle For Arnolfini’s Sloth Section, Loop 2 of The Lazy Susan Series, A Rotating Exhibition 2010-2011.

I’m afraid I can’t show you anything much of the show because just after I snapped this, I was asked not to take any more photographs.

I asked why that was and they couldn’t really explain, though they thought it was at the request of the artist. Anyway, camera back in my bag, we wandered, in desultory fashion, around a series of oversized stuffed toys, past some rather dull wall hangings, and in amongst an odd arrangement of cages. What did it all mean? We consulted our exhibition guides. Apparently we were trapped in a complex web of references to high art, popular culture, craft and notions of domesticity all of which were meant to be challenging bourgeois constructions of femininity. Good god, when did the cutting edge of contemporary art become so blunt and tedious?

Oh, and there was a video piece too. Isn’t there always?