Bristol is a weird place, it has an odd magnetic nature. I remember a social worker telling me that they recommended that families didn’t move elderly relatives out of Bristol because they hardly ever reacted well to it.
A few weeks ago we went back to my home town of Bristol to meet up with some old friends who were over from the states. As we drove in Curly Headed Boy said ‘Oooh Bristol is lovely, why don’t we live here Mummy?’. I must admit I felt at ‘home’ immediately. However much the place has grown up (it now has an aquarium and a science museum), it still felt the same. It’s such a colourful place. St Albans is lovely and all, but people do tend to wear the same colours, have the same coloured cars, and look pretty similar. Bristol is a mass of difference.
I popped out to a chemist and suddenly was faced with something I hardly have in St Albans; someone SMILED at me, before I smiled at them. Wow! It’s not that people are unfriendly where I live now, it’s just that they are more reserved. Plus local Bristollians look like me, there’s a lot of the ‘hobbit’ look as I call it; short, with curly brown hair, and rosey cheeks.
It took me a day to remember something that is most different. It hit me when we went to a local festival (which was by pure chance, as we didn’t know it was on), and I realised that in St Albans I’m always ‘doing’ things with the kids. But in Bristol as a child, it was more that you would go somewhere and meander around in a chilled sort of way. You kind of look at the docks, or the downs, or the ‘stuff’ and meander around with a pile of other people just meandering around. It was a big reminder of enjoying ‘the simpler things in life’.
Hopefully at the moment I am enjoying the ‘simpler things in life’ on a beach, paddling in the sea with Little Dimples and Curly Headed Boy. I’m assuming it is really sunny where we are in Cyprus (did I mention my excitement at our first every family summer holiday in a previous post?!), so I thought I’d send you some sun! So here is the video wednesday with Katrina and the Waves ‘Walking on Sunshine’. (I’m particularly fond of her because she played a gig for us at Uni, and she has sooooo much energy, she was really fab).
