Symbolic Forest

There’s been lots in the news lately about Britain’s 2018 World Cup bid getting into an embarrassing sticky patch, the FA chairman resigning after some unflattering private conversations were published, and of course there’s speculation that the bid may be over before it’s barely begun. Well, hurrah for that, I have to say.

I’m guessing that England’s bid has some rather flaky patches hidden underneath the glitz, anyway. This is because part of it involves Bristol, and the flakiness of Bristol’s part of the bid has already been well-publicised locally. To summarise for non-Bristolian readers: the bid depends on a new football stadium being built on a greenfield site. Part of it still doesn’t have planning permission, and campaigners are still trying to block the rest. The football club have previously claimed that they could only afford to build the thing by also building a housing estate – permission refused – and by selling their old stadium site to Tesco, which generated a rather big local anti-Tesco campaign. Tesco, presumably not wanting to be seen on the losing side of an argument, pulled out of the deal just before their planning application was due to be heard. Their place has been replaced by Sainsburys, who have a shiny website but not much else likely to swing opinion in their favour.

I’ll nail my colours to the mast straight away and say that I’m not in favour of the World Cup coming to England. I’m not in favour of it existing at all, in fact; but if it has to exist, I definitely don’t want it getting in the way of real life. Particularly, though, I’m not in favour of having to pay for it, which undoubtedly all of us will, especially if we live in a Host City. I’m also not really looking forward to having my home city turned into a corporate-sponsored advertising opportunity for a couple of months; because, let’s face it, if you follow the money-trail then the World Cup is nothing to do with football and everything to do with advertising the highest-bidding corporations; part of that involves turning the host cities into corporate monocultures where anything referring to those corporations’ competitors is strictly forbidden.

The local press sneaked a darkly threatening line into one of their recent World Cup stories: the bid is legally binding on the city council. In other words, if England is unlucky enough to make a successful bid, that’s it. It goes ahead, and the city council is bound to deliver what they’ve promised. If Bristol City FC are telling the truth, if they really can’t afford to build a stadium without a supermarket, and the supermarket plans get thrown out, then presumably the city will somehow have to find a way to build it. The council could be in a nasty trap, either to approve an unpopular and unwanted supermarket or to fund a stadium they’re obliged to ensure exists. Of course, there may be a way for them to get out of it; I really do hope there is.

That’s one of the problems, I suppose, in making a bid for something on the grounds that you have a nice stadium which doesn’t exist yet and doesn’t have funding in place. Presumably the people at FIFA who are going through all the bids with a fine-tooth comb will spot that England’s bid depends on at least one stadium which consists solely of pretty pictures and promises so far; and will want to know what’s going to happen should the money to build it not turn up as expected. Fingers crossed. Even so, I feel like patting Lord Triesman on the back; when it comes to England losing the bid, everything will help.

Keyword noise: Ashton Gate, Bristol, Bristol City, football, Football Association, Lord Triesman, Sainsburys, Tesco, World Cup.

Regular readers – if there are any left – might recall that back in January I spotted some TV filming going on in our neighbourhood, that turned out to be for a drama about prostitutes, drugs, etc. that wasn’t set “specifically in Bristol.”

Well, indeed. Because it turned up on the telly last weekend, and it turned out to be Five Daughters: a drama-documentary about the Ipswich prostitute murders of 2006. Apparently, the film-makers thought that Bristol’s distinctive Victorian terraces look just like Ipswich’s (former) red-light district. Or that Bristol’s highly-distinctive market, on hilly Corn St, looks just like Ipswich city centre.

Now, I know telly is all about editing, and it’s not actually real. But, even so, we were slightly amused by moments such as: a car driving past the same restaurant (“Al’s Tikka Grill”, also known as the “Hungry Bite Cafe”, on Ashton Road) three times on the same journey, twice shot from the same angle.^* Or, the way that Ipswich seems to consist solely of Ashton Road, a handful of roads off Ashton Road,^** and Corn St. The way that they had used a real BBC Bristol reporter for their mocked-up news footage; and the way that the programme cut from clips of real news footage showing the real Ipswich, to shots of supposedly the same location, filmed in Bedminster and looking entirely different. I know it’s a drama, and I know their budget might have been a bit stretched, but I would have thought the crew would have put slightly more effort into suspending people’s disbelief.

* Well, he could have driven round the block

** There was also the A-One Cafe, near the junction of Duckmoor Road and Luckwell Road, and very definitely the A-One Cafe, its name visible all over the place.

Keyword noise: Ashton Gate, BBC, Bedminster, Bristol, documentary, drama, Five Daughters, Ipswich, Suffolk, television.

I had hoped that a thunderstorm would clear the air, get rid of some of the humidity, cool things down a bit. Unfortunately, nothing changed. We had the thunderstorm, and half an hour later the ground was dry and the weather was still hot, muggy, and sticky to the touch. Oh well. Summer isn’t nice when it’s too hot to think.

Things I was going to blog about recently but haven’t: the rather silly “let’s bring the World Cup to Bristol” proposals, which seem like nothing more than a plan to blackmail the council planning department into letting Tesco build a new Ashton store, two minutes down the street from the Sainsbury’s that’s already there. Plus, the Easton Arts Trail, a rather enjoyable wander round which, already, was nearly a fortnight ago. Not to mention pictures of old trains from the weekend before that, and all the other things we’ve been getting up to lately apart from the strange foreign dirty movies. If it’s too hot to leave the sofa, it’s definitely too hot to blog

Keyword noise: art, Ashton Gate, Bristol, Bristol City, Easton, Easton Arts Trail, heat, hot, July, seasons, summer, Tesco, weather.