A homage to loading screens.
In which we wander around Bristol
Thursday’s post was verging on being Photo Post Of The Week itself, what with, well, the amount of photography in it. It didn’t feel like a real Photo Post, though, so I didn’t try to turn it into one.
Having said that: this week, the photos aren’t too dissimilar in feel to what I showed you on Thursday. Bristol being a character in itself.
In which we track down a TV location
Bristol often pops up on the telly. Famously in Casualty, Teachers and The Young Ones; slightly less famously in Only Fools And Horses.* Just lately, though, I’ve noticed a lot of trailers for a new BBC3 series, Being Human. Not only is it obviously filmed in Bristol – and south Bristol at that – but the city is practically the most distinctive character in it. Lots of shots of typical Totterdown terraces; with steeply-sloping streets, and brightly painted houses with rooftop parapets. I suppose that, as you arrive in the city, Totterdown is a rather prominent and visible area, what with the way it looms over Temple Meads like a pastel-coloured precipice.
After I’d seen it a few times, in fact, I wondered if I could recognise locations on the trailer. The pet shop window near the start, for example:
That’s an easy one, to be honest, because you can just about make out the shop name in the window. It’s “Ollys Pollys Pet Shop”, on St John’s Lane. Here’s a photo I took the other day, also with the lamp post in the way:
Spotting the location of the house that the characters are sharing is a bit trickier, but not much. At the end of the trailer the camera pans upwards to show the skyline behind their house.
Over there in the background, underneath the darkening sky, you can see some greenery, and a building that looks rather like a mosque. If we assume that we’re right that this is Totterdown, then that must be the Green St mosque, and the greenery behind it definitely is the right shape to be Victoria Park.** So that means we must be somewhere between St Lukes Road and Wells Road. We’re looking for a very typical Bristolian corner terrace, as you can see from this shot:
And a little bit of map-research and field-walking will take us right to it:
It’s on the corner of Windsor Terrace and Henry St, and looks rather dilapidated on the outside – peeling paint on the lintels, as you can see, both in my picture and on the trailer if you look carefully. Intriguingly, some of the downstairs windows are former pub window glass, etched, with words like “Wines & Spirits” on them. Being new to the area, I have no idea if the building was a pub at one time or not. Don’t worry: I’m not going to do this with every single scene in the show. But it was fun to discover the location: somewhere that looks very, very typically Bristolian, without being what you’d say was a real landmark.
* The outside shots of Nelson Mandela House were actually of a tower block in Bedminster, about ten minutes walk from where I am right now.
** Which I thought was called Windmill Hill park, because, well, that’s where it is. It’s rather interesting in its own right, because it contains a Troy Town maze built out of brick, built to commemorate the city’s clean water supplies. I keep meaning to write something about Troy Towns.
In which we have history in words, and archaeology in pictures
Over on the bookshelves – but not the bookshelf I talked about the othe day – is an interesting little local book by an artist called Cleo Broda. It’s called Symes Avenue: Building On The Past, and it’s about the rebuilding of the centre of Hartcliffe, and the ways in which public art was involved in the rebuilding; particularly, community art which celebrates the area’s history.*
Hartcliffe doesn’t have a particularly long history as a residential centre in its own right: it was built from scratch in the 1950s and in many ways was and is a typical 1950s council housing estate. Shiny and sparkling for the first few years, the first decade even, it decayed. By the time the term “social exclusion” came along, Hartcliffe was a prime example; so the 2000s plan to knock down the old, mostly boarded up shopping street and replace it with a new supermarket and community centre was definitely a Good Thing. The book concentrates on efforts to preserve memories of the estate, record oral histories of its origins, and generally recapture the optimism felt when it was first founded.
Quotes from the oral histories collected during the project fill the cover of the book. Reading through them, I noticed one in particular:
The stone circles at Stanton Drew are three miles from here as the crow flies
I’d heard of Stanton Drew, at some point in my education. And I knew that Hartcliffe was right out at the edge of the countryside. So – look, I’m finally getting to the point – one day, we went out there. To take photos of the stones.
In which, for the first time ever, a gruntlebeast is captured on camera
You might have noticed the little mascot of this site – up there in the top right, at the time of writing, although that might change given time. Really really long-time readers might remember me explaining what it was, back in the mists of time. It is called a gruntlebeast, and, because of the considerable lack of evidence for their existence, is often believed to be mythical, invisible, extinct, very very shy, or possibly any combination of those four things. You will, I’m sure, have noticed the distinct lack of sightings of gruntlebeasts mentioned in the news.
However: things have changed! The Symbolic Forest Militant Invective Laboratories have, after many years of trying,* apparently managed to capture footage of a gruntlebeast in the wild. Indeed, the footage seems to confirm the conjectured “partially invisible” hypothesis, and also possibly the beast’s legendary shyness. See what you think:
Apologies for the low quality; but, well, if it wasn’t low quality, it wouldn’t be a proper controversial mythical-creature sighting, would it? The next task: get some evidence for its famous “Arrg kxrrt!” hunting call.
* well, you saw how old that last blog post was
In which we visit Weston-super-Mare
The summer holiday photos might well all be up online now; but there’s still a bit of a backlog.
In October it was surprisingly hot and sunny; so we had a day out at Weston-super-Mare. Most of the beach was cordoned off for some motorsport event; so we ended up taking pictures of warning signs and derelict buildings.
In which we visit Penzance
One new year’s resolution I didn’t mention yesterday: finally getting all of last summer’s holiday photos online. I didn’t mention it, because, well, it should be finished already by the time you read this. Not really worth calling a resolution, to be completed so soon.
In which K makes decorations
As it’s Christmas Eve, and everyone is rushing about doing their last-minute shopping and getting ready to hang their stockings up, here’s a suitable photo. Some of this year’s decorations, under construction on the dining table.
In which I spot a train
We discovered, the other week, that occasionally, just sometimes, if you drag yourself out of bed early on a Saturday morning and get down to our local railway station (1 train an hour if you’re lucky, to Weston-super-Mare), you can see something a bit more interesting than normal…
If one of the trains had been travelling a few seconds later or earlier, I’d have got a great photo of the equivalent 1930s and 1970s express engines passing each other.* As it was, the modern train is a blob in the distance. Ah well. Maybe I’ll get up early tomorrow too.
* With the added, slightly confusing detail, that both of the trains involved (not the engines) have the same name.
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