get thee up into the high mountain

Christmas Day dawned with not a cloud in the sky, so I headed over to Wales and Ysgyryd Fawr, just north of Abergavenny. I was up there last year, too, but it was misty and windy then. Today it was cold but clear, although the massif of the Black Mountains, just across to the west, had a great fug of fog on top of it, and the Blorenge looked like it was wearing a hat of the same stuff.

There were other walkers, and we exchanged Merry Christmases as our paths crossed, sharing that sense of felicity in being there.

But it was a bit cold for eating lunch (a big lump of tortilla in my bag) on the top, so I drank my flask of hot chocolate and came down again.

Next stop Skenfrith, and St Bridget's church.


I love this church. The windows add gentle hues of yellow and green to the sunlight on the floor's memorial inscriptions. Restoration has touched lightly upon it. And I had the place to myself, in a sense.

blooming cold

With the snow fall the other night, there was plenty of evidence of our local foxes; there were prints up and down the road and the back garden. Though I have yet to hear foxes screaming in the night in this part of the city; while my friend in Clifton says that she has heard them often, recently. It's a good sound for the winter, a feral sound cutting through the night.

The roads are icy, so I've been walking or cycling when I want to get to places; Uncle Jim always reckoned that the best vehicle for snow is a motorcycle combination, and when I had a combi I had to agree with him. The narrow wheels cut through the snow more readily than wide car tyres; and you can do controlled pirouettes down the road, if it takes your fancy... sadly, the combi's long gone, and I rather missed it, these last few days.

I finally got the Trav warmed up and defrosted ready for some vital errands, yesterday. Stuck a big piece of cardboard down the front of the radiator, to help keep the temperature up, and scraped and wiped until the windows were finally clear; there was as much ice on the inside as there was on the outside.

Then I looked up and saw that blue sky was appearing above me, and realised that the fog was lifting (or rather, descending), which would hopefully leave the house riding above a sea of mist over the city. So I dashed up onto the roof...



Out and about, there was solid traffic converging on the city centre as people got into a spending frenzy for Christmas.

I was approached by two women, one with a pram, asking for money. I think they were Romanian gypsies. I gave one of them two pounds. She then retreated, and the one with the pram continued asking for money, pushing forward a piece of paper explaining how needy she was and gesturing to the baby. I told her that I'd given the money for both of them. A cropped-headed young man angrily said, "You shouldn't give them anything- they were here yesterday." Which produced mixed feelings; I wanted to do the opposite of what he'd said, because he was hateful; but I also resented being asked for more.

squiffy chocolate

I've been decanting the damson vodka, because it's that time of the year. Which has left me with lots and lots of damsons that are pretty well soused in vodka. So I've been making my own alcoholic damson chocolate bars.

First, remove stones from damsons. I use one of those cherry pitting devices, which you can see there to the left of the plate.

Then chop up the damsons.


Meanwhile the chocolate that you put on the stove to melt, using a chocolatier if you have one, will have been melting. Well, duh.


So you pour it onto a tray that's got a piece of greaseproof paper on it.


And then you scatter the damsons over the chocolate.



And then you cover the damsons with more chocolate.



...and, well... that's it really!

traveller's joy

The Seven Sisters are a group of Scots Pines on a barrow on Durdham Down, just across the road from where I live. Except that there are now only three of them.

The Old Man's Beard (or Traveller's Joy, or indeed Virgin's Bower) is very conspicuous just now, especially when the low winter sun lights up the white fluff. I must have another go at drawing it; the fluffiness is just not fluffy enough in this picture. Damn.

In the middle distance, a Fieldfare. We used to get great flocks of them on the Downs; you can still see the occasional one, anyway. They're winter visitors from Scandinavia.

And that's my solstice/Christmas/(insert your choice of winter festival here) card. And if I don't have your address, you won't be getting one in the post. Unless you e-mail me your addy. In which case I'd love to.

Happy wossname!

the smell of gingerbread in the morning

I once made gingerbread decorations for the Christmas tree. The tree looked very nice, and very tasteful. Too tasteful. My smelly lurcher, Grommet, pushed the tree over and ate all the decorations, then stood there looking gormless and guilty. It's just what lurchers do. It's a 'force of nature' thing.

Grommet was safely planted in a friend's garden some eight winters back. He was dead at the time, obviously.

So I figured we'd be safe to have another go at the gingerbread, for our small tree that we bought from the BTCV stall at the CREATE Christmas Fair, where the old hippies go for their Christmas nick-nacks.

Things started pretty well...


But then disaster struck, although we did not recognise it at the time. I got a phone call from someone on Freecycle, offering me a bike workstand that I'd put in a request for. But I had to dash off and get it there and then. Katie retired to her computer, and failed to hear the clockwork timer announcing that it was time to take the gingerbread out of the oven.

I got home to smoke, open windows and a really rather upset Katie.

And some very blackened gingerbread.

Making the best of it, we painted it with some white emulsion we'd pulled out of a skip, and then painted the decorations with bright acrylics.



And now we have a very nice tree.

hunting for the pavement cyclist

If the Bristol Evening Post is to be believed (stop laughing, you at the back, please, I said 'if'...), the very fabric of our society is threatened by hordes of rabid cyclists disobeying the Highway Code like there was no tomorrow. Mere anarchy is indeed loosed upon the world.

So I went hunting for 'em.

First I went down the Gloucester Road. It was slow going, because the traffic flow was impeded, as it always is, by cars parked where they shouldn't be, like these.


Oh look! Cyclists. I wonder if they're anarchists? But damn, they're cycling on the road. And smiling for the camera. Little tinkers.


I had a good look at the sign on the other side of the road here, because there were so many cars parked here that I began to wonder if parking was actually allowed. No, it isn't.


And then I went over to Cotham Hill, which has been in the news lately after a lorry crushed a bicycle and injured the rider.


It was a normal morning. A lorry was parked up on the pavement, and pedestrians were stepping out into the traffic to get round it, as you see here.


Another lorry that had been making a similar delivery further up the hill came down, then reversed around the corner and went back up the hill because it couldn't get past the first lorry.


Pretty normal sort of day for Cotham Hill, really. The driver of that car W837YOC is to be commended for their courtesy, by putting on their hazard lights when parking where they shouldn't really park. A small gesture, but it says "This really is an emergency! If I don't get my hands on a skinny latte very soon, I won't be responsible for my actions!"


Then up Whiteladies Road. All these cars are parked on the double yellow lines on the approach to the pelican crossing.

And this is a popular place to park, higher up, so that you can dash into the bank or the Building Society.

I didn't bother photographing the cars parked on the double yellows that go with pedestrian refuges along Whiteladies Road. In fact I've only uploaded a few of the photos, because otherwise we'd be here all day.


Oh yes. Pavement cyclists? Sorry, I didn't see a single one. Unless this woman counts. She's evidently got a bicycle somewhere near by... I wonder if she parked it dangerously? What do you think?

easy journeys to Planet Stupid

I never really thought of myself as a cycling activist, mostly because I'm not a cycling activist. On the other hand, the simple act of cycling is apt to radicalise the most moderate of people, as it puts you on the receiving end of some pretty stupid and/or aggressive behaviour from drivers. And, of course, some folk seem to find the mere existence of cycling offensive, perhaps because it doesn't buy into the whole package of values and assumptions that go with car kultur ...

Be that as it may... the comments section on any newspaper website is the natural habitat for any amount of rich and strange pondlife, but I was compelled to put my wellies on and wade in last week over on the Bristol Evening Post's internet site. The Evening Post seems to have decided that a pro-car, anti-bike stance is where it ought to be, and so its stories tend to follow that bias. Hence last week's Your (sic) dangerous, rude and need educating, Bristol cyclists told, followed by a piece by Mike Ford, Even blind people can see how badly cyclists behave.

It all starts here:

Blind and partially sighted residents have called for the safety of pedestrians to be given high priority as the city plans to spend millions on projects as part of the Cycling City initiative.

They have told their MPs that near-misses have left many not confident about going out and they fear the city's status as the country's first cycling hub will only add to the problems.

..and by the time it gets into Mike Ford's hands, it has become this:

It's not my style to make or condone sweeping, generalising statements like this; but when even blind people can see how badly cyclists behave, surely it's time for cyclists to hold their hands up and admit maybe they need to change their attitudes?

Now, personally speaking, I get really annoyed by people who cycle on pavements too. But then, I have about as much in common with them as I have with the spoddy young man with the spiky gelled hair who rorted past me in his car, dangerously fast, and with that farty noise that tells you that he's spent loadsa money on an exhaust pipe that sounds aggressive, over in Clifton the other day. I have no particular desire to change my attitude to either; they're all idiots.

Maybe I should take direct action against them? I did step in once to prevent a couple of drongos from stealing something off a bike outside the University. It was definitely a high-adrenaline activity, and not one of the many people who passed us during this confrontation stopped to offer help. Still, as a goodwill gesture, I promise to stop and Have A Word with the next pavement cyclist I meet, if Bedminster Bigmouth will undertake do the same with antisocial drivers, whether they be the ones who park dangerously outside schools or on pavements, run red lights, or do any of the many things that drivers do and shouldn't; though obviously he might have a problem catching them, in which case he could always ask for some help from that mighty defender of motorists' freedom, the Association of British Drivers, which is apparently one bloke with a Fiat Panda. I think we could respect such a public-spirited gesture from these vociferous fellows putting their money where their big mouths are...

Here's a small taster of the quality of debate...




..and then there was this 'contribution' from Owen...



..."Very odd," I thought, coming as it did directly after my post. And then, shortly after, this...



Note the clever use of brackets there. "(S)he". By the way, if you were in any doubt, the incident described by Owen on Whiteladies Road was presumably a made-up story so that he could introduce the Little Britain reference.

Some people are transsexual. Get over it.

Barry comes to live with us

The menagerie at Schloss Marland continues to grow apace. On Monday evening Katie and I rescued

2 Frosty the snowmen
2 Father Christmases
Bungle from Rainbow
That dog off Tweenies
an elephant
Rosie off Rosie and Jim
Some big kitten with huuuge eyes that looks like it's terminally constipated
a unicorn
that fatuous looking hippo off Rainbow
a gibbon
a pony

-they had been bundled into a Clifton skip. Obviously we couldn't leave them there.

The next thing you know, we're hearing from Mal.

I've been a member of RSPST (Royal Society for the Protection of Soft Toys) for years as you know Dru - all those rescued birds and monkeys in my van! Have a problem at present rehoming a life size gorilla called Barry with a slight armpit problem. He's been round at Annie's for a while but she wants him out as there's no room for a Christmas tree with him 'galumphing about'. Could Katie find it in her heart to offer him a warm bed over Christmas?

...well, you can guess what the answer to that was.

running the gauntlet

A normal morning on Cotham Hill. The usual vans parked on the double yellows. In the background, a lorry is lurching forwards and backwards, manoeuvring into the narrow entrance of the builders' yard. Pedestrians seize their moment and dash through the gap when it offers itself. Nobody is helping the driver out by waving him back, watching his blind spots. It's about 10:30; the chaps at the yard are probably having a cup of tea.

Forty eight hours earlier, just about to the minute, a cyclist and her bike were crushed under a lorry at this exact spot. It was a bigger lorry, an articulated one; it was swinging into this same entrance when it caught her. Of the comments on the Bristol Evening Post website, a lot of them seem almost to gloat that a cyclist has been badly injured, assuming that she was doing something that she shouldn't have been doing, and reckoning that she'd got what was coming to her. The general attitude is: lorries are dangerous, and the drivers can't see very much from their cabs, so keep well clear or you've got no-one to blame except yourself.

As I commented on the website,

....it's the 'elephant in the room' thing. And it's not just an elephant, it's a visually-impaired elephant. And it's not in the room, it's on the streets.

When I worked on a ro-ro ferry, lorries were not allowed to move around unless under the supervision of crew members with hi-vis gear and radios. And yet it is apparently thought perfectly acceptable that an articulated lorry should be allowed to manoeuvre through one of the busiest parts of town without any sort of control or assistance.

rad graf

At Katie's school, Ther Kidz thought that it would be nice to have a graffiti wall. And, after due representation and consideration, the school agreed that a graffiti wall they should have.

So they employed a graffiti painter to come to the school and paint the graffiti wall with graffiti.

And here it is.

Katie did run past some of her fellow pupils the idea that maybe a graffiti wall should be a place for free expression. By... Ther Kidz.

"Oh, we'd only make a mess of it," one of them said.

finding a rhyme for 'antlers'

Quiet times here, as I recover from last week's surgery. I went to Kings Weston House yesterday. It's a fairly modest stately home, as stately homes go, and it looks out across council estates to the chemical plants of Avonmouth. I was gawping through the window and the woman at the desk inside beckoned me in, so I mustered John Terry, who had come along for the adventure, and we admired the staircase, and then saw this, which I, as a keen amateur ornithologist, recognised instantly as a Giant Irish Deer.

As he's been extinct for about 8000 years, I think it's a bit showy having hunting horns mounted next to him. Apparently he was a Souvenir Of Ireland.

a ward

Sometimes life throws something unexpected at you.

And sometimes life kind of swoops down out of the blue, plucks you up and whirls you away to an entirely unexpected place.

I woke up at 0100 on Tuesday with pain in my stomach. It got worse, and I started vomiting, which didn't ease the pain. And it got worse. And worse. So I checked the NHS Direct website for symptoms, and the closest match to what I was experiencing seemed to be in heart attack country and I though, "No, that's not a heart attack."

So I phoned up the number and described what was happening and the helpline person said "Go to hospital", and I thought how embarrassing it would be to turn up and find out it wasn't anything important.

And I also thought of my father sitting up all night suffering the symptoms of a stroke and not doing anything about it and how that contributed to shortening his life.

So we drove through the rain to the hospital (I didn't know how long this was going to take, and I didn't want to leave Katie on her own) and got there at about 0400. The A&E department had people hunched around outside smoking or sitting in the waiting area enveloped in their own personal miseries. We waited. I was writhing by now. We went through to an examination room and I was checked over, then given a hospital gown to put on and a tube in my arm, into which someone pumped morphine. It was by now fairly apparent that I wouldn't be going home soon.

I phoned Brendagh, and she came and rescued Katie.

As the day went on, I got x-rayed and ultrasounded. The ultrasound images showed that I had gallstones, and the gall bladder was apparently inflamed. It was explained that the usual procedure in cases like this is to remove the gall bladder. So I was put in the queue for emergency ops, and went onto NBM (nil by mouth), which is very thirsty work, especially after two days, let me tell you.

I settled into life on the ward, zonked on Tramodol. There were some nice folk there. People are often at their best when their worlds are being turned upside down, or they are working in that sort of place.

Meanwhile, out in the world, people were sorting things out, and after what must have been a miserable and worrying time for Katie, she was being looked after; and the car was collected, along with the parking ticket it had picked up; and a phone charger arrived and I was finally able to talk to people again, including Richard, who had been expecting me in Birmingham that evening for a reading event at the library theatre...

I was in a different theatre the next day...

And now I've got four little sticking plasters on my abdomen, where they put the various things into me. The nice surgeons explained that my aching shoulders were a result of them inflating my abdomen with CO2, to make it easier to tinker around in there, and I decided that, while I was very grateful to them for doing it, I wasn't sure I liked to hear about the precise ins and outs of it. Must have looked v funny, all inflated, though.

"So, how are you feeling?" they asked
"Pretty good, thank you. Ready to go home... no offence..."
"None taken," they said. Beds are at a premium in the hospital.

I said some fond farewells. And set off home. And collapsed into the Guild cafe when I realised I wasn't really up to walking.

And got rescued by Brendagh.

ghost

At the last tally, I know of three cyclists killed in Bristol this year. And ghost bikes have appeared in the city. If you haven't heard of them, ghost bikes are painted white overall and installed at the scene of a cycling death, as a memorial and a reminder that cyclists are vulnerable.

So I was a bit alarmed to spot this bike on Cotham Hill last night, as I hadn't heard of any new fatalities. But it turns out that it was put there by some students, to advertise their "Social Enterprise Project".

False alarm, then. Apparently, the bike is not white but sky blue, and symbolises 'aspiration and ethicality'. Still looks like a ghost bike to me. And, knowing the facts behind the appearance of the bike and nine others (thanks, Niall!), the thinking behind their installation seems at least muddled, and plain wrong. Fail!

in the bag

Lucy was asking "What's in your handbag?" so I've dug out this pic from a few years ago.

Contents:

PDA
Car keys for my old Ford Sierra
Keys for everything else
Moleskine sketchbook
Fineliner pens
Fruit drops
Hair gunk
Specs
Nurofen/Rennies/Rescue Remedy
Make-up stuff
Credit cards
Kipling bag
Mobile phone
Conkers
Gerber Multiplier
Tissues
Richard Beard's "Manly Pursuits"
Purse

Must get an up-to-date pic sometime...

our lady's well, Hempsted

I went to the Midlands by the old road on Sunday, along the A38 from Bristol to Gloucester and then to Tewkesbury. (After Tewkesbury I cheated and took the motorway, because it gets complicated after that). I wanted to look at Llanthony Secunda, the daughter establishment of Llanthony Priory, established on the outskirts of Gloucester when the monks evacuated from the Black Mountains during one of those periodical times of troubles-with-the-natives. But first I stopped at Hempsted, a village on a sort of extended island between the Severn and the Sharpness Canal, to look at a holy well. It's marked as Lady's Well on the OS map.


View Larger Map

It was a surprisingly peaceful spot; from the map, I'd been vaguely expecting something quite suburban. But the door on the west wall of the wellhouse was gated and locked, and the floor inside it was dry. Apparently the water had recently been channeled into a cattle trough in front of the structure, but there was no sign of it today. Though there is a cattle trough at the bottom of the hill, as you can see from the aerial photo.

There was much commotion from a large flock of jackdaws in a nearby row of trees; and to the north-east, great clouds of gulls and crows wheeling over a landfill site. But to the west the sun was declining over the Vale of Severn, a kestrel flew by, and a buzzard mewed.

I never did find Llanthony Secunda, because I got lost in some dispiriting industrial estate instead.

a Miranda sort of day

I kept bumping into Miranda today. I just thought I'd mention it.

First it was on Anji's blog, where she posted about Hilaire Belloc's Tarantella, you know, the one that goes "Do you remember an inn, Miranda?" (By the way, you can hear Mr Belloc reciting it here, if you can bear to watch that extremely creepy animation of his face....)

And then someone on a forum I use linked to Miranda on BBC iPlayer. This is a comedy starring Miranda Hart, who is quite large and, in this show at least, keeps getting mistaken for a transvestite, with hilarious results.

And then Kaptain Kobold, over on Flickr, was getting ready for a trip to Miranda, which is a suburb of Sydney, Australia, which is where KK lives. Australia, that is.

Sometimes things happen in threes. I wonder what it all means?

that Tesco emotion

some folks don't cover their mouths when they cough, y'know

Lordy, I had a little epiphany yesterday. And it happened in Tesco, too.

I'd popped in to get some Baldwin's Sarsaparilla, the soft drink of choice at Schloss Marland, and went hunting for two-for-one offers while I was at it, and the other stuff in the World Foods aisle, which is a useful indicator of who is moving to Bristol from where; the Polish section got quite big a couple of years ago, and is still chugging quietly along although there are now dedicated Polish shops out there. Anyway, so I had to have some Zywiecka sausages. Oh, and some processed cheese with ham in it. The Polish one, not's Tesco's Finest, which does sound a bit off-putting.

And then I used the self-service check-out. And everything scanned and I managed to pay for it and leave without the system freezing up on me and ordering me to wait for assistance, which has happened every damn time I've used these things in the past.

Which was a good thing, because the assistant who was detailed to do that was being harangued by a tall young man with dreadlocks and a Home Counties accent; something to do with carrier bags and packaging. I think he was trying to raise her consciousness. I wonder what he was doing shopping in Tesco in the first place?

Anyway, it was a glorious moment, and even Natty Tarquin couldn't spoil it, though I had to keep looking back as I left to make sure I'd not really messed up somehow.

almost silence

Armistice Day. At eleven o'clock, I pulled down the sash window in the kitchen and leaned out. Big Ben chimed the hour from the radio beside me, and a jay on a chimneypot on the house opposite rasped a response to the chimes. Then after the fifth chime it cocked its tail and dropped into space, unfolding its wings as it went.

Robins singing. The hum of traffic. A door slamming shut.

Then the radio came to life again.

At Newbridge Grammar School, several of the older teachers had fought in the war, though they didn't talk about it. On Armistice Day, Latin Jones, the deputy head, would give a little speech in assembly, about his time in the jungle and his dead comrades, always ending with Binyon's verse from For The Fallen:

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.

Although we knew that war was definitely a Bad Thing, we were (or at least I was) ardent for some desperate glory. Fortunately, probably, that desperate glory eluded me. And now people young enough to be my children are fighting and dying.

Katie's school re-scheduled the minute's silence, as the official one coincided with their break time. So they had it at twelve o'clock, instead, and switched off their monitors for a minute.

getting knocked off the bike

On 30th September, I was knocked off my bike in Clifton. I was turning right into Worcester Road from College Road, and a car that was waiting to emerge from Worcester Road pulled out into me, knocking me off the bike, and injuring me.


View Larger Map



Last week I got a phone call from the Collisions Support Unit, telling me that they were not going to charge the driver with anything, as they had received a witness statement claiming that I had been going too fast, and that I was not signalling, and that I was cutting the corner. None of this is true, so I was really rather upset. I wrote back to them, as follows:

To: Collision Support Unit

Avon and Somerset Constabulary

Re; ROAD TRAFFIC COLLISION Worcester Road junction with College Road, Clifton, Bristol. Time: 12:30 Hours Date: 30^th September 2009

Dear Sir or Madam,

I refer to this incident, when I was knocked from my bicycle and injured, while turning into a side road, by a car emerging from that side road.

I received a phone call from a member of your unit on Wednesday 4^th November, advising me that you did not propose to take action against the driver involved in this incident. I understand that a witness has given his opinion that I was to blame, alleging that:

1. I was riding too fast
2. I was not indicating
3. I was cutting the corner

I am very concerned by this, on the following grounds:

1. In my opinion, I was going at a safe and appropriate speed. What is ‘too fast’, and why did the witness think that I was going ‘too fast’?
2. I was indicating, precisely as described in my statement. As I was about to turn into a junction where a car was waiting to emerge, it would have been foolish of me not to signal my intentions. I am a cyclist, a car driver, and a sometime motorcyclist. I understand the importance of making my intentions clear to other road users. I always indicate before manoeuvring when riding my bicycle.
3. It would have been impossible for me to cut the corner even had I wanted to, as the Ford Galaxy that was waiting at the junction was straddling the white line at the middle of Worcester Road, the side road into which I was turning. The position of the car can be seen in the photograph which I attached to my statement.
4. I understand that the witness in question was working in a house opposite the junction. The house is set back from the road, with a courtyard at the front, and the witness’ large white van was parked in that courtyard. He came across to the scene of the collision, and spent some time talking with the driver; I was sitting on the ground in a dazed condition, and missed what was said. I question how much of the incident he actually saw, and what grounds he had for venturing his opinion that I was at fault.

I appreciate that you are busy, but I feel that I have been wronged. As it seems that I shall be denied the possibility of cross-examining the witness at a hearing, I should be most grateful if you would question him further to clarify what he actually saw, as I am sure that he would not willingly be understood to have said something which is not true.

Yours sincerely,

Drusilla Marland

...well, I heard back from the police this morning; a police officer phoned me and said that they were not going to take the matter any further, as they can't just go around interviewing people who have sent witness statements in, in case it discourages them from doing it, or something. So I (and indeed the police) will never get to ask the mystery man why he said what he said.

a brush with the archivist

More from the Little papers, pulled out of a Clifton skip fifteen years ago. Here's an incident from 1950, which all started with a piece in the Bristol Evening World, a long-defunct newspaper. Well, actually, it all started with the Blitz...

1. Transcript of feature in Evening World 8/9/50

FUNGUS BRUSHER

Historians, like many other writers, are often condemned to a remote, hermit-like existence when getting to grips with their subject. Maybe that is why, among other things, "dust" and "cobwebs" have been traditionally associated with the writing of history.

And now along comes an historian to add another description of his work - "fungus brushing".
Bryan Little who has just completed a 200,000 word book about Bristol, carried a little brush with him every time he examined ancient documents in the City Archives.

"That brush was very necessary," he tells me "because some of the documents were coated with green fungus which had to be cleared before I could read them."
Mr Little has now started a 30,000 word book about C......

2. Letter from the City Archivist

The Council House
Bristol
Archives Department

25th September 1950

Dear Mr Little,

I have just returned from a holiday and have been shown a newspaper report of an interview which you had with a Evening World reporter.

In view of the statements you made concerning the care of the records in this department, I should be glad if you would call to see me at this office.

Yours sincerely,

Elizabeth Ralph

City Archivist.

3. Notes made by Bryan Little (for the interview with the City Archivist?)

No interview given (nor is it stated that it was)

(a small part of an informal talk at lunch)

made it clear that this only applied to a tiny proportion of lesser matter damaged by water in the blitz. Hitler guilty not Council.

All the priceless treasures intact etc

Brush lent not brought on all occasions

Steps now taken to put right

Gratitude

Personal apology to Cttee

Joint statement

would have been easy & fitter

4. Draft of letter to Evening World

The report, in your issue of 8/9/50, of my remarks on the condition of a small proportion of the City Archives, has only just come to my notice. In fairness to those who care so well for Bristol's historic treasures, I would like to make the following points clear by way of exact record and explanation.

The damage, by damp from water necessarily used to combat surrounding fires during air attacks, affected only a tiny fraction of the less important records, and all the widely famed archives of the city are intact. Though inevitable in the conditions that prevailed it reflects in no way on the arrangements made for the storage and preservation of the City's documents; the cause of the trouble lay solely in the war. Ample steps have now been taken to put matters right.

Moreover, it would not be true to say that a brush was taken down on all occasions when I examined old documents. It was unnecessary to use it more than once or twice, and on these occasions it was kindly lent to me by the staff of the archives department to whom I owe a deep debt of gratitude for this and much other vital help.

Betjeman and Bristol

Letters from John Betjeman to Bryan Little, rescued from a skip a few years ago. Click on images to see large.

a bit wild

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

Leigh Woods, on the Somerset side of the Avon Gorge, can be a bit variable in its wildness. At dawn you may meet the local wildlife, as Geraldine Taylor often has. On Friday around lunchtime, you are more likely to meet a dog walker trogging along behind her labrador with a mobile phone clamped to her head; or a jogger clad in inappropriate lycra; or indeed Brendagh and me, out for a little walk along one of the ostentatiously-waymarked paths. In our case, the Purple Trail (all-ability path, surfaced).



We met a stone. It's Welsh slate, carved with the words AND STONES MOVED SILENTLY ACROSS THE WORLD. It was put there by Alyson Hallet, who got the idea for it when she was up on Cadair Idris, and met an erratic boulder. And, since then, has been dumping carved rocks around the world. I feel ambivalent about this sort of thing; air-freighting rocks, and carving them so that you are imposing your idea upon them and upon the people encountering them, if you see what I mean... I was at Bristol Central Library for a reading by Alyson a couple of years ago, and she seemed very nice; but I wondered how I would feel if I came upon one of her rocks while i was out and about, and finally I did, yesterday. What I got from the experience was a vision of the bureaucracy and machinery of public art behind the positioning of this rock, here, with these words on. So... on the other hand, I really enjoyed finding some of Peter Randall-Page's sculpture embedded in the land around Drewsteignton way, especially with the prospect of a pint of Speckled Hen (or 'funky chicken') at the Drewe Arms afterwards. But that didn't seem to be trying to tell me anything.



It's been a long time since I've been in this part of the woods. There has been a fair bit of woodland management going on, and for the first time I managed to get a clear view of Stokeleigh Camp, an iron age fort which, along with the one on Observatory Hill on the other side of the gorge, dominated the Avon. Last time I'd been to this bit of the woods, you couldn't see the Camp for the trees.

We scrambled over the banks and found that some Devon Red cattle had taken up their night quarters there. They've recently been introduced to the woods. We didn't see them, just the evidence of their passing. As it were.

I commented that there had been talk of clearing the trees from Observatory Hill, too. "It's always the archeologists who want to do that," said Brendagh. "It's like shaved pubes in the porny business".



Walking to the top of the cliff, we heard a buzzard mewing from the treetops. And then a peregrine calling, down in the gorge. Slightly wild, then.