My life in verse

If you get a chance, watch Robert Webb's exploration of TS Eliot's poem The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock. Webb - of Peep Show and Mitchell and Webb fame - takes a tour round the poem, Eliot's story intertwined with Webb's own relationship with this wonderfully restless and evocative work. It's the wrong end of the day but here are the opening lines:

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question...
Oh, do not ask, 'What is it?'
Let us go and make our visit.

B is for...

Bristol's gone Banksy mad. Queues tumble down the hill that the city gallery is perched on; the enigmatic artist's unexpected exhibition has got write-ups in all the national paper; pubs and cafes are filled with chatter about our local celeb. I haven't been yet, but don't worry. Becca's Blog will be Banksy-ed.

The power of Facebook

On Wednesday I went to see A Hawk and a Hacksaw - that's a band not a pub. Hailing from New Mexico, they played Eastern-European-inspired folk on violin, accordion, tuba, guitar, and... one second... what is that? A violin? A trumpet? A horn? More penetrating in tone, coarser in sound, more intriguing in design than your regular violin with a wooden body, this odd instrument had everyone in the audience guessing. I put out a Facebook plea: does anyone know what you call a violin crossed with a trumpet? The replies came flooding in: a violet; a trumpolin. Then a YouTube link to a man playing one on a Belgian street. I was getting somewhere. Accounts of people seeing them in Venice and Paris followed. Then the genuine name: the stroh violin. And an offer to buy one and bring it back to Bristol. Watch this space. I might have a new hobby.

ps For the curious: the stroh violin was designed in 1889 by one Johannes Matthias Augustus Stroh. In place of the wooden body of the violin, which resonates to produce the sound,there's a metal resonator and amplifier - the trumpet or horn part of the violin - to do this job.

Behind closed doors...

The Easton Arts Trail offers a compelling mixture: art by local Bristol artists and a chance to nose around other people's houses. It's a natural human impulse, after all. Just what does go on behind the net curtains? Well, on the evidence of this trail, quite a lot. I saw hugely detailed line drawings of Bristol scenes, Eastern-inspired wood cuts, colourful pottery and characterful photo portraits. Creative could be Bristol's middle name. And there were suprises aplenty beyond the front door. The biggest wasn't the politically-motivated painting in which a cow had its patches turned into a map of the world, with Israel a blood-spattered bulletwound, nor the bleak stories by former drug addicts that accompanied a poignant set of black and white photos exhibited in the community centre. (Isn't Bristol a cheery place?) No, it was a coincidence that stopped me in my tracks. I've only been to Easton once before, for a French conversation evening that bordered on the surreal - anyone for a discussion of the pros and cons of post-capitalism in French?. As we sauntered down a road of terraced houses, I told my trailing friend about the odd evening and the people I'd met there.But even though I'd just been talking about it, I was taken aback to be faced with a larger-than-life portrait of one of the French post-capitalists in the very next front room we entered. It was as if my words had conjured him out of thin air and translated them into bold brush strokes. As if some unknown force had sussed out the fact I was looking in on other people's lives and turned it on its head. A forgotten fragment of my life enlarged and put on display.Not to get too philosophical, this odd little coincidence made me think of that often repeated question. Does art reflect life, or life reflect art?

You know you've made it when...

... your birthday is celebrated on Google, and seen by billions of Googlers the world over. So many happy returns Mr Igor Stravinsky. You may be long gone, but Google has done you proud. Three cheers for The Firebird and The Rite of Spring!

Wheel good

A while back, I wrote about Bristol being named the UK's first cycling city. And I wasn't happy. 'The hills,' I cried, 'The hills. ... Bristol: the cycling city. An oxymoronic concept if there ever was one.' Well, as is every girl's (though not always the law-abiding cyclist's) right, I've done a u-turn. Bristol: the cycling city is actually a pretty darn good idea. Yes you have to deal with a few hills, but as long as you've got gears, you'll probably get there in the end, and most likely be rewarded with a spectacular view. And really, when you're puffing and panting your way up the testing slopes of Park Street, no one's going to shake their head at you if you just get off and push. So here are five reasons to ride your bike in Bristol:
1. Bristol obeys the 30-minute rule (which I've just invented). Just the right size for zipping around by bike, I'd bet that you can get anywhere you like in the city within half an hour. So that's far enough that you'd think walking would wear out your shoes so instead you'd fork out hard-earned pennies for the bus, or drive (and waste the next half an hour hunting for a parking space), but not too far that you feel like you should have put in some training before you set off.
2. The three Fs of cycling: it's fun, it's fast and it's practially free. Could also add in 'it's the future' but the hackneyed nature of the phrase might make you gag.
2. One of Brizzle's most popular waterside venues is Mud Dock - cafe and bar by night, bike workshop by day. QED.
3. Venue magazine - a local mag and proud of it - devoted a whole issue to the cycling cause. What Venue says, goes.
4. Taking to the roads by bike is the only way to make continental Europe jealous of England. Paris, Lyon, Amsterdam and Copenhagen, to name a few enlightened cities, are all cycling mad with a network of cycle lanes rivalling the human circulatory system. And they have free bikes. Well, we can show them that Britain's not so traffic-filled and polluted. As the UK's first cycling city, with £22.8million of funding, a new 'Hourbike' scheme (that's pay-as-you-go, free-for-the-first-half-hour), and as home to edgy dressing, Bristol has got a chance to be the two-wheeled envy of fashion-conscious Europe.
5. And then there's the environment. Or should that be then there's the economy? Either way, cycling is good for the environment and good for the economy (at the very least your own economy - cycling should save a few pennies).

On your bike!

Russian Fairy Tale (A short prelude to Petrushka)

'Why are you a-bowing, slender mountain ash? Bending your head down to the very ground?'
Across the wide river, standing just as lonely, a tall oak waits for her.
'How can I, a rowan, reach that great oak tree? With my slender branches, I would press him tightly
And with our leaves twining, whisper daily, nightly.
Oh you dark autumn moon.
I have no father, I have no mother
No one to call my own.'
The little rowan cannot cross the river. It seems her fate is sealed:
Sway alone forever.
The moon listens and fills the night sky; her beams fall like snow.
The little rowan slowly, very slowly, floats across the water.

This fairytale accompanied an improvisation by pianist Joanna MacGregor at this year's Bath Music Festival.