The sun is out again, although not with quite the same force as we felt it in Oxford. I'd have liked to use the next few hours to explore - I hear Isambard Brunel built an impressive suspension bridge nearby - but the cheap shoes I bought yesterday are fighting against my unusually shaped feet and, at the moment, winning, leaving the heels and tops of my feet feeling something like good carpaccio: raw and tender. So instead I'm sitting on a bench just off the High Street, outside a Methodist church that lays claim to some kind of historical significance, while some cheery whistling workmen paint the wall behind me a not completely repulsive shade of lime green.
We ended up getting a good night's sleep in the Rock and Bowl hostel last night. I'd had this nightmare vision that we'd come back from playing to find some unpleasant-smelling homeless guy had helped himself to the bunk I'd carefully made and done some terrible thing between those precious clean sheets. But as fortune would have it we had the 12-bed dorm to ourselves, and aside from being startled awake by the fire alarm going off a little before 9, it was the soundest sleep I've had for a while.
It might have helped that we were out pretty late. After we'd finished playing we met a couple of American tourists. I could easily have offended everyone at the bar by asking, "so... you're American... you're about to go on holiday... you can go anywhere in the world... and you choose to come to Bristol. WHY?!" Luckily though everyone took it in the good humour I intended it in, and their answer, "we like Banksy" gave some insight into what might be Bristol's greatest export.
Bristol - 15:00
We're leaving for Portsmouth in an hour, and I slightly regret that I haven't given Bristol more of a chance to endear itself to me. If the weather is decent tomorrow I will have to suck up the pain and take to the streets of Portsmouth in sandals, because a week spent obsessing over England's identikit shopping centres will neither provide the kind of insight into life outside of London I'd hoped for, nor for that matter make for very interesting reading...
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