Many things
Nov. 30th, 2021 02:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustBack on the train, northbound this time, and not as busy, thank goodness. Yesterday was full of many things, which I am still processing: what follows is ordered by chronology, not importance -
- and is disordered by geography. It turns out that my anticipations were built on false assumptions (that we would be within the urban area of Bristol, and that refreshment, entertainment, transport would be easily available). I assumed that Bristol Parkway was just another railway station somewhere in the city: this was ignorance on my part. It was built in the 1970s as a sort of park & ride facility - a giant car park with its own railway station. So I've learned something.
The Bears had arranged to catch a morning train out of London, and to meet an old friend, now living in Bristol, for coffee. Said friend had at least warned them not to expect pleasant cafés in the vicinity of the station, and with his help they had identified a pub not too far off. We agreed to meet them there for lunch: it was, said the internet, 1.7 miles from our B&B, which seemed manageable, especially since the alternative was a mile's walk to a bus stop which would deposit us several hundred yards from our destination. It turned out to be perfectly walkable, even smartly dressed, but disconcerting. From a village street we turned into a country lane barred by a 'road closed' sign, whose hedgerows gave way to a bridge over a motorway, beyond which it ran through a housing development in progress before depositing us on the banks of a gleaming new multi-highway, all gleaming black carriageways and traffic lights (not in use). On its further shore was a COVID testing site, and a pleasant wooded path through an actual lived-in housing development, leading to a village - and there on the far side of the village green was the pub.
The Bears weren't there, of course: they had arrived to find the pub shut, and and found instead a community café across the green. But we made contact, and it turned out that their friend, whom we had known slightly a quarter century ago, had not yet exhausted his reserves of sociability, and was happy to join us, for lunch, and back to the station, and for coffee at the station.
Whence we caught the bus to Frenchay - and again, I had pictured somewhere much more urban than this turned out to be. Not a village, either, too many grand houses for that, and high walls. But the Friends Meeting House faces onto a green.
I wish I could describe the funeral as an oasis of peace in this day of many things, but I didn't feel it that way. The failing's mine, no doubt: I heard people afterwards saying how moved they had been, and I believed them. I felt a certain tension between the Quaker practice of speaking spontaneously when moved by the spirit, and the desire of people at funerals to say things they had prepared (or indeed to read out things prepared by other people. Writing this, I'm not sure what the problem was, and I've been to other Quaker funerals and not felt this (I suspect they were more visibly structured): just me, and how I was feeling, probably. Anyway, people spoke, people read, two people sang (and one of them was over ten years old) and from the mosaic a sense did emerge of the person Felicity had been, the mixture of kindness and generosity and domestic virtue with a career in teaching physics, and a mathematical orderliness of mind that saw her becoming treasurer of one voluntary organisation after another.
After the service, there were refreshments and cousins - many cousins, of several generations, down to the two babies who were the great-grandchildren of my late cousin S. People were very kind about our having travelled from Durham, which I didn't feel I deserved, since R. had managed to get back from Taiwan. The usual conversations regretting that we only see each other at funerals; and the pleasure of connecting with the people who, however occasionally, travel to Sunderland to watch football.
Back into the Bristol night to walk back to our B&B; not a long walk, but with another of those dark glistening highways to cross (this one with functioning pedestrian lights, hooray!) and a tricky last stretch of unlit highway along which the footpath kept switching from side to side of the road. By the time we got home, I was ready to take my shoes off and go no further.
Butdurham_rambler had made a booking with the White Horse, and research declared it to be within five minutes walk. Surely we could manage that? Down the road, under the M4, across the stream... The White Horse turned out to be well worth the effort: a gastropub, surprisingly busy for a Monday night, but happy to indulge two customers who wanted to select random menu items: olives to share; tomato, pepper and pesto soup for both of us, very tasty and comforting; parsnip salad for durham_rambler; cheeseboard for me, no cheeses that I felt I hadn't met before but all impeccable and a good counterpoint to Jean-Luc Colombo's 'Les abeilles'. It may say something about how I was feeling that I opted for a bottle of côtes du Rhône; usually I would feel that this is something we drink plenty of at home, let's try something different, but this really appealed, and I was happy with it from the first sniff to the last drop.
And that was that. This morning we had time in hand - I had thought we might enjoy the opportunity to look around the area, but that didn't seem to apply. We vacated our room, booked a taxi, waited and read in the sitting area, lunched at the Upper Crust at Parkway (better than I had expected) and now we are on the train. Homeward bound, mission accomplished.
- and is disordered by geography. It turns out that my anticipations were built on false assumptions (that we would be within the urban area of Bristol, and that refreshment, entertainment, transport would be easily available). I assumed that Bristol Parkway was just another railway station somewhere in the city: this was ignorance on my part. It was built in the 1970s as a sort of park & ride facility - a giant car park with its own railway station. So I've learned something.
The Bears had arranged to catch a morning train out of London, and to meet an old friend, now living in Bristol, for coffee. Said friend had at least warned them not to expect pleasant cafés in the vicinity of the station, and with his help they had identified a pub not too far off. We agreed to meet them there for lunch: it was, said the internet, 1.7 miles from our B&B, which seemed manageable, especially since the alternative was a mile's walk to a bus stop which would deposit us several hundred yards from our destination. It turned out to be perfectly walkable, even smartly dressed, but disconcerting. From a village street we turned into a country lane barred by a 'road closed' sign, whose hedgerows gave way to a bridge over a motorway, beyond which it ran through a housing development in progress before depositing us on the banks of a gleaming new multi-highway, all gleaming black carriageways and traffic lights (not in use). On its further shore was a COVID testing site, and a pleasant wooded path through an actual lived-in housing development, leading to a village - and there on the far side of the village green was the pub.
The Bears weren't there, of course: they had arrived to find the pub shut, and and found instead a community café across the green. But we made contact, and it turned out that their friend, whom we had known slightly a quarter century ago, had not yet exhausted his reserves of sociability, and was happy to join us, for lunch, and back to the station, and for coffee at the station.
Whence we caught the bus to Frenchay - and again, I had pictured somewhere much more urban than this turned out to be. Not a village, either, too many grand houses for that, and high walls. But the Friends Meeting House faces onto a green.
I wish I could describe the funeral as an oasis of peace in this day of many things, but I didn't feel it that way. The failing's mine, no doubt: I heard people afterwards saying how moved they had been, and I believed them. I felt a certain tension between the Quaker practice of speaking spontaneously when moved by the spirit, and the desire of people at funerals to say things they had prepared (or indeed to read out things prepared by other people. Writing this, I'm not sure what the problem was, and I've been to other Quaker funerals and not felt this (I suspect they were more visibly structured): just me, and how I was feeling, probably. Anyway, people spoke, people read, two people sang (and one of them was over ten years old) and from the mosaic a sense did emerge of the person Felicity had been, the mixture of kindness and generosity and domestic virtue with a career in teaching physics, and a mathematical orderliness of mind that saw her becoming treasurer of one voluntary organisation after another.
After the service, there were refreshments and cousins - many cousins, of several generations, down to the two babies who were the great-grandchildren of my late cousin S. People were very kind about our having travelled from Durham, which I didn't feel I deserved, since R. had managed to get back from Taiwan. The usual conversations regretting that we only see each other at funerals; and the pleasure of connecting with the people who, however occasionally, travel to Sunderland to watch football.
Back into the Bristol night to walk back to our B&B; not a long walk, but with another of those dark glistening highways to cross (this one with functioning pedestrian lights, hooray!) and a tricky last stretch of unlit highway along which the footpath kept switching from side to side of the road. By the time we got home, I was ready to take my shoes off and go no further.
But
durham_rambler had made a booking with the White Horse, and research declared it to be within five minutes walk. Surely we could manage that? Down the road, under the M4, across the stream... The White Horse turned out to be well worth the effort: a gastropub, surprisingly busy for a Monday night, but happy to indulge two customers who wanted to select random menu items: olives to share; tomato, pepper and pesto soup for both of us, very tasty and comforting; parsnip salad for durham_rambler; cheeseboard for me, no cheeses that I felt I hadn't met before but all impeccable and a good counterpoint to Jean-Luc Colombo's 'Les abeilles'. It may say something about how I was feeling that I opted for a bottle of côtes du Rhône; usually I would feel that this is something we drink plenty of at home, let's try something different, but this really appealed, and I was happy with it from the first sniff to the last drop.And that was that. This morning we had time in hand - I had thought we might enjoy the opportunity to look around the area, but that didn't seem to apply. We vacated our room, booked a taxi, waited and read in the sitting area, lunched at the Upper Crust at Parkway (better than I had expected) and now we are on the train. Homeward bound, mission accomplished.
