bravo victor golf uniform

Everyone else is doing their My Favourite Ryder Cup Moments bit at the moment, so I'm going to get in on the act as well. I actually came to the Ryder Cup a bit late; while my earliest live TV golf-watching recollection is of the end of the Duel In The Sun at Turnberry in 1977 (when I was seven), I don't specifically recall watching any live Ryder Cup coverage until 1993, when the USA won 15-13 at the Belfry (their last victory on European soil, as it happens) to retain the cup they'd won back in The War On The Shore at Kiawah Island two years before. My Ryder Cup history since then goes something like this:

• In 1995 I happened to drop into The Ship on Lower Park Row in Bristol on a Sunday evening for a pint on the way back from somewhere (probably on the way up to my flat from the railway station), only to discover that they had the golf coverage on and they were about halfway through the singles. Several hours later I staggered out and home having witnessed Europe come back to win from being behind after the doubles for the first (and, until 2012, only) time in Ryder Cup history. Nick Faldo's nerveless up-and-down from 93 yards to beat Curtis Strange was the key moment (combined with a calamitous sequence of missed putts from Strange), and Philip Walton's nervy stumble over the line a while later clinched it. This is probably my favourite Ryder Cup experience, just for the general happy unexpectedness of it all - firstly getting to see it at all, and then the result.
• I watched the climaxes to the Ryder Cups of 1997, 1999 and 2002 at home, but I couldn't say for certain that I watched any of them strictly live; it might have been the BBC's highlights package a bit later.
• I can certainly say that I watched the highlights package for the 2004 Ryder Cup, having done a bit of Likely Lads-style keeping my head down to avoid finding out the result. Plenty of schadenfreude as it became clear it was going to be a record-breaking rout, but it's never quite the same as a nail-biting finish.
• 2006 saw the first of two occasions where the Ryder Cup weekend coincided with the Swanage weekend; in this case (largely by luck) we'd just got to the pub after the traditional Sunday walk when the key singles matches started finishing, so we were comfortably settled in with a pint when Henrik Stenson holed the match-winning putt. Again, as great as that was it was another rout for Europe (18.5-9.5, the same score as in 2004), so the nail-biting element was lost.
• I honestly can't remember watching in 2008, though since Europe got their arse plated up and handed to them I could just have blotted the experience out. I expect it's more than likely I saw at least some of it.
• In 2010 the Ryder Cup took place at Celtic Manor, a mere mile-and-a-half from our house. Anticipating traffic gridlock and general chaos we decided to go on holiday to Turkey for the week, returning on the Monday, the day after it finished. Inevitably this plan was scuppered by the Welsh weather as the match had to be concluded on the Monday. Swings and roundabouts, though, as we had some hours to kill between checking out of the hotel and getting the coach to the airport and took ourselves plus bags off to the local sports bar, which just happened to be showing the golf. Not only that, but the nail-biting finish to Graeme McDowell's match with Hunter Mahan that delivered the cup back to Europe took place with a few minutes to spare before we had to shoot off and catch the coach. 
• In 2012 the match once again coincided with the Swanage weekend; this time we were back at the campsite having a barbecue when the climactic Sunday action happened, so we had to keep up with events via Andy's smartphone and a rather intermittent mobile signal. The interminable waits for the BBC Sports page to refresh added an element of suspense of their own.

So what to expect from 2014? Well, I'll be at work on the Friday and at a wedding on the Saturday, but you can rest assured I've cleared out my V+ box in anticipation of recording much of the coverage for later watching. I fully intend to dedicate a big chunk of Sunday to watching the singles, though.

And who'll win? Well, home advantage counts for a lot - only six of the seventeen matches since 1979 have resulted in "away wins", four for Europe and two for USA: USA in 1981, Europe in 1987, USA in 1993 and Europe in 1995, 2004 and 2012. Both teams look very strong, though I suppose there is a question mark over the European wildcards - Westwood and Poulter have both been picked on past Ryder Cup form rather than on having done anything much this year. As for the rookies, Jamie Donaldson is a very solid player these days, Stephen Gallacher is a reserved type who needs to show that he's not intimidated by the raucous atmosphere, and Victor Dubuisson is a mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a garlic baguette.

There is the Tiger Woods factor, though - the last time he failed to make the team was in 2008 when he was recovering from knee surgery, whereupon a young USA team featuring six rookies won handsomely. The idea that the Ryder Cup format suits neither him nor his team-mates (when he's on the team) is probably an over-simplification, but there seems to be something in it.

A neutral would probably say that another nail-biting finish resulting in a narrow victory for the USA would be the best thing for the long-term health of the competition. To that I'd say: you're probably right, but can we leave that till next time, please?

wotcher cock

Say what you like about corner-shop Spar mini-mart places - yes, people go in there in their pyjamas and slippers, but they're conveniently located and open if not exactly all hours then certainly a lot of hours. More hours than Waitrose, certainly, and in any case I'm more likely to have a sudden need for milk or bread at an inconvenient hour than I am to have a sudden need for lark's tongues or wren's livers.

My local Spar is particularly convenient, as it's quite literally just across the road. It is staffed by some slightly eccentric people, though (and customered by some slightly eccentric people as well, some of them in pyjamas, but that's another story). One of the slightly eccentric things they do is fling chummy endearments at people while handing over change, in that lovable proletarian way that makes uptight middle-class people like me uncomfortable and at a loss for a response - maintain a regal silence and be thought of as all hoity-toity, or weigh in with an ill-judged gor-blimey-strike-a-light-what-about-the-Arsenal-then-bunch-of-wankers-if-you-ask-me-I'm not-racist-but-I'd-send-them-all-back-I'd-pull-the-bleedin-lever-meself and just look like a cock.

Top choice among the terms of endearment on offer from the (almost exclusively female) staff at my local Spar are the ubiquitous (and regionally non-specific) "babe", and a word that could be "doll" but which is actually almost certainly "darl" (as in "darling"), which I think is a typically South Wales usage. All of which set me to thinking: there must be some regional pattern to these things. I recall having to take regular-ish business trips to Chesterfield a few years back, and the endearment of choice there was "duck", just as I vaguely recall it was when I lived in the Nottingham area as a child.

So here's a quickly cobbled-together regional terms of endearment map, with no claims to be comprehensive or indeed accurate, but just to illustrate the sort of thing that could be done with the appropriate research. As always, click for a bigger version:

It would be remiss of me to miss the opportunity to plug the still fascinating Strange Maps at this point; a tangentially related (in that it involves the British Isles - and yes, I know my map omits Ireland) entry is here - a map of the British Isles based on the distribution of first letters of place names.

Another map link shortly; firstly my ramblings about eccentric local supermarkets reminds me of the branch of Somerfield (it's now a Co-op according to Google StreetView) at the top of St. Michael's Hill in Bristol, next door to the legendary Highbury Vaults. In addition to toilet-related celebrity encounters this was also the scene for the following immortal piece of staff/customer dialogue, just in front of me as I queued up:

Vaguely Oriental-Looking Guy: Hello.
Slightly Eccentric Checkout Operator: AAAAH! WE MUST NEVER FORGET THE SAMURAI!
VOLG: Erm, yeah. Um - I'm not Japanese. 
SECO: Oh, right. Three forty-six please. 

Comedy gold. Anyway, this other map: in similar vein to the ones linked here, here's an excellent spoof London Underground map illustrating the secret to writing a story for the Daily Mail. The associated article is here.

that is rather slippery of you, agent sainsbury

I was in my local Sainsbury's the other day when I noticed a peculiar thing: I'd picked up a box of red wine and I thought it looked a bit squarer and squatter than usual. Closer examination revealed the reason for this: it was only 2.25 litres instead of the usual 3, or, to put it another way, the equivalent of three bottles instead of the usual four. This seems to be a general change of policy for Sainsbury's as most of the other boxes had been changed to the new smaller size as well. Rather cheekily, though, the prices didn't seem to have been adjusted down by the requisite 25% (for instance £12.99 for the Australian Merlot is the equivalent of £17.32 for 3 litres), nor was there any signage up saying WARNING: SMALLER BOXES or anything like that. I deem this to be a rather sneaky money-making exercise on Sainsburys' part, and, more importantly, a bid to restrict my wine consumption. This will not do.

Purely for research purposes I dropped into Tesco yesterday to check out the competition, and I see no evidence that Tesco are adopting the same policy, I'm glad to say. Just on the off-chance that this was just a clear-out of old stock I picked one up; compare the relative shapes and sizes below.


[Quick footnote: I meant to link for comparison purposes to this earlier post comparing the (formerly) standard 3-litre pack to the gargantuan 5-litre one I acquired in France. Surely bigger is the way to go, if only to increase the wine/packaging ratio? It's more environmentally friendly, after all.]

more bristalgia

Here's a couple more things in similar vein to the last post:

• firstly here's another demolition film, this one showing the dismantling of the old Severn railway bridge in 1967, seven years after it had been partially demolished by having two barges driven into it - just in case that wasn't destructive enough they were both laden with various highly flammable and/or explosive materials, so you can imagine what happened next. Ironically the bit that wasn't instantly destroyed in the accident seems to have been pretty tenacious as it took until 1970 to finish the dismantling job. All that's left these days is a few stumps visible at low tide and the stone base of the swing bridge section that used to span the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal.
• a more recent bit of disappeared Bristol is the old flyover that you used to have to go under on the bus to get to Temple Meads railway station. Built in the late 1960s as a temporary relief measure it was only demolished in 1998 when the grandly-named Temple Circus Gyratory was built, so I remember it well. The idea was to provide a one-way-only short-cut from Temple Way to Redcliffe Way (which ploughed through the middle of Queen Square at the time). I only went over it in a car a couple of times, but it was very narrow and bumpy and frankly rather alarming. Anyway, some nostalgic photos can be found here, here and here. If you can't get your bearings I've helpfully drawn in virtual green crayon on a map, below.

viaduct? vy not

Talk amongst yourselves for a bit while I indulge my odd obsession with maps, industrial architecture in general and old railway remnants in particular. I was trying to remember, in the aftermath of going out cycling for the first time since last year, where it was that I'd been cycling in the Newport area a while back and gone over the top of a quite impressive viaduct. Eventually I remembered that it was on the cyclepath between Pontypool and Blaenavon - my recollection is that I came here for a quick bit of bike-checking and training in advance of the Forest of Dean trip back in May 2008. That seems about right as I remember it was one of the first excursions I did after getting the car in April.

Anyway, the viaduct in question is properly known as the Garndiffaith viaduct, apparently, and does indeed carry a cyclepath over the top, although it's my recollection that it's heavily fenced on either side of the track which spoils the view a bit - presumably this is not so much to prevent suicidal cyclists from cycling the four miles or so up from Pontypool just to hurl themselves off the parapet as to prevent local ne'er-do-wells from lobbing chunks of masonry onto passing cars down on Viaduct Road. Like the nearby viaducts at Hengoed and Cefn Coed it's built on a gentle curve; whether this is something enforced by Welsh geography or just Welsh architectural whim I have no idea. Anyway, the Cefn Coed link is from the fascinating Forgotten Relics website, something of a guilty geeky pleasure for those fascinated by abandoned bridges, hidden tunnels and the like. So much so I've added it to the sidebar.


While much remains to be sought out and casually trespassed on, much stuff has inevitably been obliterated by the ruthless utilitarian jackboot of progress. Here's a good example from my long-time place of residence, Bristol: the bit of the Frome valley now occupied by Eastville Tesco, Ikea and junction 2 of the M32 was previously spanned by the impressive Clay Bottom viaduct (colloquially known as Thirteen Arches viaduct to locals), which ran east-west across the river valley (while the M32 now goes north-south along it). The only evidence nowadays that it was ever there is the continued presence of its smaller sibling a few hundred yards further along at Royate Hill. Ignore the Google aerial view which suggests that some horrific tectonic incident has befallen it, it's still intact and in fact these days houses a miniature nature reserve.

How did they get rid of the bigger one? Well, they blew it up. If you don't believe me, have a gander at this fairly remarkable bit of old footage from 1968 which shows them doing exactly that (the picture above is a still from the same film). The excellent SABRE maps website provides before and after maps for comparison.

parking fine! well that's all right then

Anyone regularly leaving the M5 at junction 16 as I do will know that there is currently a certain amount of seemingly purposeless digging and traffic cone activity at the Aztec West roundabout, and a corresponding reduction in the number of usable lanes. All the more surprising, then, to see a sign very like the one reproduced on the left here as I left the motorway. The irony was positively Morissettian.

That might in itself not be worthy of mention were it not for the coincidental fact that not 24 hours earlier I'd seen a link posted on Facebook to this lengthy list of similar amusing road signs and vaguely related stuff. Enjoy.

obey the turd commandment

Two things spring to mind seeing this headline on the BBC website:


Firstly, that's not particulary newsworthy, surely? Prisons are big obvious things that you ought to be able to spot, and avoid, no matter how pissed you are. "Urinating student avoids own shoes" would be more remarkable.

Secondly, given the seriousness with which this is all being viewed (and I'm not suggesting pissing on war memorials is OK or anything) I feel I should in all conscience come clean and make the following confession: I have urinated in the fountains outside the Victoria Rooms in central Bristol on more than one occasion. I'm not proud of myself, and it was nearly 20 years ago, but there it is. I feel better now. I'm afraid I can't confirm whether or not my friend Mario ever followed through on his promise to symbolically confirm his rejection of organised religion by having a shit on (or perhaps even in) a church. I seem to recall that the Victoria Methodist Church and the Tyndale Baptist Church - both a short distance from the scene of my own micturatory misdemeanours - were the two most likely candidates.

Korea opportunities

I took a lunchtime trip into central Bristol yesterday to visit the Kin Yip Hon oriental supermarket, which I've mentioned here before. I'd run out of my favourite Korean Shin Ramyun noodles, and this is the only place I know of that sells them. Tragically, however, they only had one packet left, so I had to stock up with a pick'n'mix selection of other brands instead.

Now I'm sure these will all be very nice, but they're just not the same. So I got to thinking: surely in these multicultural times there must be an online Oriental supermarket of some sort? And, well, it turns out there is. In fact I expect there are probably several, but the one I visited is here, and the particular product I was after is here. Postage and packing costs are relatively high, especially when you consider the unit price of a packet of noodles is 45p, so I'd recommend buying in bulk. I bought 30 packets. Yum.

they're everywhere!

Follow-up on a couple of previous posts:

Firstly my post about the various Lounges around Bristol: I missed a couple of Bristol ones; firstly the original Lounge in Bedminster, and secondly the Banco Lounge in Totterdown. Since posting there have been a few new ones (following my shrewd prognostications about "future expansion"): the Velo Lounge in Bath, the Juno Lounge in Cardiff and the excitingly named TBC Lounge in Penarth (opening early 2008, by which time they'll presumably have thought of a name for it).

Secondly, my much more recent post describing my thrilling near-meeting with Robert Glenister in Sainsbury's. A couple of other thrilling celebrity encounters from my years in Bristol:

• I once gave directions to the Bristol Old Vic to DS Jo Morgan from The Bill, shortly after she was gunned down and killed in the line of duty.
• Me and my old friend Jonny stood next to The Sundays at the bar in the Highbury Vaults. I very foolishly said to Jonny something like "don't look now, but that's The Sundays over there", which needless to say (certainly needless if you know Jonny at all) prompted much conspicuous meerkat-esque looking around and shouting "where? where?", all slightly embarrassingly. Harriet Wheeler has a weirdly enormous head, incidentally.
• I'm pretty sure I passed Kathy Sykes (that's Professor Kathy Sykes to you) on Blackboy Hill a couple of weeks ago. And she gave me a rather lovely smile, which was nice.
• I once sat opposite Derek Thompson aka Charlie Fairhead from Casualty on a British Airways flight from Glasgow to Bristol.
• Sticking with the Casualty theme, I also once arrived back at Bristol Temple Meads on a train to find all the station signs had been covered up, slightly confusingly, by ones saying "Holby Central". No sign of any camera crews, but they must presumably have just finished filming.
• Still sticking with the Casualty theme, I once queued up behind Christine Stephen-Daly aka Lara Stone from Casualty in Somerfield on St. Michael's Hill. Strangely enough we were both buying toilet rolls, though I couldn't think of an opening conversational gambit to take advantage of this. Something along the lines of "Aha! I see you.....go to the toilet as well. We've got so much in common!" perhaps. Perhaps not.

Lastly, relating to the same post and the brief mention of Hustle: it's diverting enough entertainment, but if you want proper brain-scrambling twisty-turniness on the subject of confidence trickery and the "long con" in particular, then you should watch David Mamet's House Of Games and The Spanish Prisoner. And they don't do the annoying thing that Hustle does of trying to make you like the con artists, or give them some self-justifying back-story. They're criminals. Deal with it.

yarrr!

Just so you've got plenty of time to rustle up an eye-patch from a piece of black card and some old knicker elastic, glue a stuffed parrot to the shoulder of your overcoat and practise brandishing a gold telescope and saying "yarr-HAAARRRRRR" a lot, this is advance warning of International Talk Like A Pirate Day, next Wednesday (September 19th). More info here, as well as here for UK residents.

It's a pretty self-explanatory festival, really, just involving, well, talking like a pirate. Hints can be found on the websites above, but broadly speaking think Robert Newton as Long John Silver in the classic film of Treasure Island, or possibly Tom Baker (pictured right) as Captain Redbeard Rum in Blackadder II, but definitely not Johnny Depp in the Pirates Of The Caribbean films (save that for International Talk Like Keith Richards Day, as soon as someone invents it).

So, if you work in a call centre, say, try amending your usual anodyne phone greeting to something like: "Yarrrr! This be Brian of the good ship Acme Insurance. How can I be helpin' ye this fine seafarin' day? A free tot o' rum wi' every policy, yarrr. You don't get that with the scurvy dogs at Direct Line."

There's a Bristol connection, for those that don't know, which is that the Admiral Benbow pub at the start of Treasure Island is generally accepted to have been based on the real-life Llandoger Trow down by the Floating Harbour, a pub which is very much still open today, though missing a couple of end gables after these were blown off by the Luftwaffe, the filthy swines. It's all been tidied up and made good now, though.

Plenty of piratical events are planned, both on the high seas (well, maybe) and for the more landlubberly inclined. Personally I'll be splicing the mainbrace, sinking a noggin of rum with a comely serving wench, and trying not to get keel-hauled (those barnacles really smart). Yarrr!

subterraneamania

Did a bit of sightseeing as planned: the Rocks Railway is, to be honest, a bit underwhelming as you can't see down the tracks to the bottom station because there's a World War 2 blast wall in the way (the tunnels were used as an air-raid shelter), but nonetheless interesting, while the caves are much more extensive than I'd imagined, and really quite impressive. Photos of varying quality (as I was aiming the camera in the dark most of the time) can be found here.

missed one!

....and it's one which ties the previous two posts together quite neatly: Secret Underground Bristol tells the story of lots of fascinating things which are buried under the streets of Bristol, including the two I mentioned in the previous post, as well as things like the River Frome which runs unseen under the centre of the city, and Pen Park Hole, a massive (60 metres deep) underground cavern situated roughly here. No chance of that one being opened up to the public unfortunately, as you'd be not so much "wandering round" as "plummeting to your death".

zowie Cavie

If you happen to be in Bristol this weekend you might be interested to hear that it's Bristol Doors Open Day tomorrow, when lots of places which are ordinarily inaccessible to Joe Q Public like you and me open their doors so us nosy parkers can have a good old snoop around. Too many places for anyone to visit all of between the hours of 10am and 4pm - barring of course Father Christmas, who can do every house in the world in a single night, and of course God, who is omnipresent, so in a very real sense he's visiting all of them right now - so you'll need to pick some sites of interest to you. I quite fancy having a look around Redcliffe Caves (pictured left) and the remains of the old Clifton Rocks Railway. See you there!

hot festival action

Well, as it happens we got a glorious sunny day on Saturday, sandwiched between a slightly damp one on Friday (but not enough to make it seriously muddy, luckily) and a torrentially wet and horrible one today. So my sacrifice to the mighty and merciless sun gods was answered, which was nice. And no-one will miss a couple of goats, so it's a victimless crime, really.

Anyway, we got the festival bus over from Clifton, got the picnic blankets down, cracked into the pork pies and cheese and got stuck into some serious drinking, mainly based around the beer tent and the Pimm's bus, the latter handily located about 50 feet away from where we were sitting. Hic! The beer tent sold excellent Gem as well as the organic blonde beer Wild Hare - this goes down very well indeed on a sunny day, I can tell you. The Bath Ales website is a bit too Flash-y for its own good so I can't link you to the beer page directly, but you should be able to work it out. There were occasional distractions from the bands on the main stage as well, though the only act we made a point of watching was the very wonderful Beth Rowley in the acoustic tent at 8pm. Once she'd finished we had to decide whether to head back to the main stage for The Fall at 9:30pm, or head off back into town to beat the rush at the end of the day. Having experienced the nightmare that is getting out of Ashton Court with 40,000 other people in previous years we decided to make a break for freedom, and we were vindicated in this decision to the extent of being back in the Pennyfarthing on Cotham Hill by about 10pm, enough time to wind down with a few pints of Wadworth's 6X.

Found the time to take some photos as well - here they are.

Finally - 40,000 people eating Thai curry and drinking ale is going to generate some waste products to be disposed of - luckily the organisers had enlisted the help of the redoubtable Andyloos to cater for all of their human effluvia disposal requirements. Sadly the festival-goer wasn't presented with anything up to the standard of The Millennium, just your bog-standard (geddit?) plastic cubicle. No indication on the website as to whether they're any relation of Rebecca Loos, ex-"personal assistant" (hem hem) of David Beckham and occasional pig-masturbator.

here comes the sun, lalalala - no, it's gone again

It's the Ashton Court Festival this weekend (more details here and here) - Bristol's very own mini-Glastonbury, only cheaper, with better beer, and no bands you've actually heard of to distract you from the serious business of sitting around in a field getting drunk. I've been for the Saturday for each of the last three years, and the weather has been cloudio (but dry and warm), scorchio and scorchio respectively. Good form, then, but this year's forecast isn't looking too good. Sunday looks worse, mind you.

Not to get all misty-eyed and nostalgic, like I occasionally do about early-1990s trips to Glastonbury, just to annoy people, but when I first went in 2004 it was a fiver to get in (way way back it used to be free) and you could cart in as much booze as you liked; this year it appears that tickets cost £12 on the door, and, more disturbingly, you can't bring in your own booze any more! All out of the festival organisers' control, as it's one of the conditions imposed in order for the festival's licence to be granted, but still, it's a bit of a pain. Luckily the very excellent Bath Ales are one of the local sponsors of the festival and have a substantial beer tent selling a range of their excellent wares (Gem is probably the one to go for, unless it's absolutely roasting, in which case SPA might be a better bet). So I should be all right. Slightly tangentially I find it just very slightly disturbing that the hare logo on the bottle is rather reminiscent of the animated filmic rendering of The Black Rabbit of Inle. No? Just me, then.

Actually, looking at the line-up I see the mighty Fall are playing at 9:30 on Saturday night. I generally make a point of not remembering anything after about 6:30 on these occasions, owing to spending too much time in the Bath Ales tent, so don't expect any reports on whether they were any good or not.

presto! bistro fiasco

There's a chain of bars stealthily taking over Bristol, building by building. They're called "The X Lounge" where X is a short word ending in "o". So far there's The Deco Lounge in Clifton, The Tinto Lounge in Horfield and The Porto Lounge in Fishponds. Arguably just a little bit poncy (and they don't sell proper beer, dammit), but all very nice inside; quite a nice place for, say, a hungover Sunday brunch or something like that.

Anyway, I'm sure they've got big plans for future expansion, so they'll be needing a few ideas for names for all these new establishments. So here's a few suggestions:

an open letter to FirstBus

It takes a lot to get me all riled up and hot and bothered, but Bristol's bus transport providers FirstBus have managed it this week. The day-to-day unhelpfulness and surliness of the bus drivers in the face of the no doubt wearisome burden of a whole load of ordinary Joes trying to get to work and the occasional foreign student trying to get to college washes over you after a while; you just pop in the iPod and bury your head in the newspaper. Our trademark British politeness and acquiescence and reluctance to cause a scene helps the poor old passenger absorb a fair bit of abuse as well.

Those who know me well know that I'm a pretty placid and laid-back sort of bloke most of the time. The problem is that while I have a very long fuse, it is attached to a barrel of TNT the size of Belgium. So when I found myself having to physically prevent myself from SMASHING SOMEONE'S FACE IN this morning I felt that venting a bit of spleen might be a good and healthy thing to do. And then I thought: why inflict this just on the poor and innocent public? So the open letter I reproduce below has been sent to FirstBus themselves (contact them here if you have any complaints of your own), Venue and Reclaim The Buses, just to put the cat among the pigeons.

Dear Sir,

I work up near Aztec West, and habitually take the bus from one of the stops a short distance up the Gloucester Road from Zetland Road Junction - generally the 309/310 Dursley/Thornbury service, but occasionally the 73 or 75 if necessary.

I boarded the 8:50 310 service from Zetland Road Junction this Tuesday morning, February 4th. Generally I'm pretty conscientious about having the correct change, but on this particular occasion I only had a £10 note. On being presented with it the driver, who seemed to be of European extraction, attempted to explain to me in broken English that (despite having a half-full bus) he couldn't change my note (I was attempting to buy a £3.50 FirstDay ticket at the time), and that I should wait for a subsequent 73 service to see if they could provide change.

I explained, as politely as I could, that this was not an option as there was no guarantee when the next 73 service would turn up, and, in any case, the 73 takes around 50 minutes to make the journey from Zetland Road Junction to Aztec West while the 310 takes only around 25 minutes. After much shrugging from the driver I suggested that maybe he should give me a change ticket for the £6.50 he owed me. He agreed and we went on our way.

This morning, February 6th, I boarded the earlier 8:20 310 service from Zetland Road Junction, confidently brandishing my change ticket. As soon as I produced it the driver, exhibiting all the charm for which Bristol bus drivers are known, said “no, no, I don't want no change tickets”. Mildly surprised, I asked him what he meant. We don't accept them, he said, company policy. My mild surprise gradually turning to incredulity, I asked him to clarify – was he really saying that I could be issued a change ticket on a 310 service, but that I couldn't redeem the ticket on the same service a couple of days later? Apparently so. In order to redeem the ticket I would have to call in, in person, at Bristol Bus Station.

Now I seem to remember, not so long ago, a series of posters proudly proclaiming First's change ticket policy – displayed on most buses behind the driver's enclosure. “Passenger change tickets.....your right.....our pleasure” was the catchy slogan.

It's difficult to imagine what leverage the simple paying customer might have, given your effective monopoly over Bristol's bus services, but here are a couple of suggestions:

Except where it conflicts with your own stated regulations (not accepting £50 and £20 notes, for instance) it is your responsibility to provide change to passengers who can't provide the exact fare, or, failing that, to provide a workable alternative system (as the old change ticket regime was).

The current system, if it was explained to me correctly, is unworkable. It cannot be right to expect the passenger who, through no fault of their own, can't provide the exact fare, to make a separate trip to cash in a change ticket in the centre of Bristol, a round trip, for some, of several miles. It certainly cannot be right for drivers to issue change tickets without clearly explaining the elaborate redemption process which now exists.

If the current system is not as it was explained to me, then some urgent re-education of your drivers is required. While you're at it some very basic customer relations skills training might be in order as well. Bus passengers are not an inconvenience to be endured, tutted at and generally abused, they are in fact the lifeblood of your transport business without which it would cease to exist.

Yours faithfully, blah de blah, etc. Have some of that. It won't make a blind bit of difference, but I feel a bit better now, and that's the main thing.

reasons to be fearful, and tearful

I've uploaded some more photos to the gallery, if you want them. These include:

• Some photos from when Hazel and I went up to my Mum & Dad's place in early December. Things to note: a couple of dead things. Suggestions for what they might be gratefully received - my current thinking is that the corpse at the bottom of the picture might be a hare (or a very lanky - and slightly manky - rabbit) and that the skull might be a (smallish) badger. Apparently the ridge down the middle of the skull is a badgerine feature. The two creatures appear to have been dead for different amounts of time, so I don't think there was a cross-species life-or-death single combat situation, thrilling though it might have been to watch. We also encountered a dead sheep, but it was even less photogenic than the carnage depicted here, so I skipped photographing it.


• The IPL ball from mid-December. My friend Andy very kindly invited me along as his guest as his wife was off on a separate Christmas jolly in Germany at the time. For those not in the know IPL are an IT company based in Bath - not wanting to plug the competition or anything, but to be fair they do lay on a Christmas ball every year with a FREE bar, which is nice.


• Various pictures of parsnip-peeling and Christmas-pudding-igniting action from Christmas at Emma and Ray's place in Reading.


• Photos from New Year - the majority taken in The Butler pub near Doug and Anna's flat in Reading on December 30th; the others in my flat in Bristol on New Year's Eve - except for the last one which was taken in the very exciting Giant's Cave in the Avon Gorge on New Year's Day. Things to note: the obligatory giant inflatable penguin (see right).


• Stag do pictures (see a couple of posts back).


• Pictures from our "training" walk around Cheddar Gorge a few weeks ago (see several more posts back).


• Pictures from our partially successful trip to Dartmoor. Most of these are nicked from Andy's photo gallery, of the rest a few are Robin's and about 10 (all taken on day 1) are mine.
  

look at the slip roads on that

It's amazing what you can be reduced to looking up on the internet when you're bored.

Out of the window of the office where I work I have a panoramic view of the Almondsbury Interchange which is where the M4 and M5 cross. It's a complex junction, pretty busy at morning and evening rush hour, but rarely totally gummed up.

So far so relatively mundane, you might think, but you'd be wrong. It turns out there is a whole branch of civil engineering, planning etc. and needless to say several websites dedicated to motorway junctions, and apparently this one is a particularly sophisticated example of the genre - so much so that there are only two others like it in the country, one at the far eastern end of the M4 where it meets the M25, and one at the junction between the M25 and the M23 on the way down towards Gatwick Airport.

Now that is, if not exactly Absolutely Fascinating, then at least Quite Interesting. Isn't it? No? Please yourselves.....

Shipham-shape and just south of Bristol fashion

Robin and I decided on a last-minute Dartmoor training hike on Sunday, as it was a nice day, so we (the two of us, and Robin's girlfriend Alison) went over to Cheddar Gorge. Well, actually we parked up in a little village called Shipham here, and walked south-east along the West Mendip Way which eventually brings you out at the eastern end of Cheddar Gorge. Slight moment of deja vu on the way as we inadvertently crossed the path of a walk we did back in September - luckily, as it happens, as we were able to redirect another group of walkers who'd made the same elementary navigational error that we'd made at the time.

Then we walked up onto the clifftops at the south side of the gorge, tested out Robin's new compact meths-powered camping stove (basically a smaller version of my Trangia) by heating up some soup in it (that's what I'm drinking in the photograph) and then started down towards Cheddar village.

At which point it started to get quite slippery and muddy, and I lost my footing and did a highly balletic (though perhaps not as graceful as Darcey Bussell) splits routine, gently stretching various ligaments and coaxing several leg joints into new and interesting shapes, with the accompaniment of various crunching and twanging noises - imagine the sound made by an upright piano being thrown into a skip. My left hip is a bit sore today, but I don't think any major structural damage has been done, luckily.

Then we walked back up the road from Cheddar to Shipham - bit of a sting in the tail as it's uphill almost all the way. You could probably make this last leg (no pun intended) a bit more interesting as there are some footpaths, but we were a bit pressed for time at this point.