The first post
Every blog has to start somewhere. My first entry came about after I paid a visit to an ice skating rink i Bristol with my wife and son – and the sister-in-law and her daughter. It wasn’t a terribly enjoyable experience and I felt compelled to explain why. If, in the quiet hours of the night, I start to question why we moved here – I remember this post.The sister-in-law is down with her daughter for the weekend so a load of us piled over to Bristol to go ice skating. They’re digging up the M32, and have erected no less than five speed cameras along a stretch of road about four miles long, so the traffic backed up onto the M4. When we started approaching Bristol it appeared they’d decided to knock a good chunk of it down, hence more roadworks. Took us an hour to get from the motorway to the centre.
What a thing of beauty Bristol Ice Rink is, a joyous celebration of pre-formed concrete, urban decay, graffiti and total utter and complete neglect. Incredibly, there was a queue of about 300 Bristolians keen to overlook the fact that it’s a staggering shit-hole of a place and we were charged just under 16 quid for the honour of two hours skating. After a lap prolonged by the fact that Jack is four years old and has never skated before, and I was sent to get drinks. All the vending machines were broken so I had to queue up at the delightful Rinkside Cafe (curly chips and beef burger with processed cheese slice, four quid to you guvnor) to get a carton of Ribena. Twenty five minutes flew by and I was served by a cheerful young lady with Tourettes Syndrome. I returned with the Ribena to Jack who’d had a grand wig-out.
Refreshed after our delightful devon cream tea, I visited the toilets. What an amazing sight they were, like some post-apocalyptic shit-house, replete with even more inventive graffiti, missing doors, no bog paper and, in one of the bogs, a turd so impressive it must have taken several hours of concentrated effort to expel.
The two hours flew by and before we knew it, we were being invited to leave the ice, so the next session could begin. We returned our boots, made our way down the Georgian ballustrades to street level and returned to the car, where we charged £7.20 for the honour of wading through human piss in the stair-wells. By now it was getting on for rush hour and we joined the caravan of despair threading its way out of the city towards the M32 and that quiant, quiet little B-road called the M4.
Tired, exhausted and not a little exhilerated, we collapsed onto the sofa at home, hopeful that fair England would continue to offer us up so many delightful experiences in the weeks to come. This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise, This fortress built by Nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war, This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands,– This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.
Wed 22 February 2006