Autumn

Hot water bottle weather has arrived. Yesterday a thick mist settled over Bristol. Walking in Ashton Court, one could imagine a place far more isolated... All is grey, and there's a fine spritz of rain. Illusory rain. Put out your hand and you can't feel it on your skin. But touch your hair and it's fluffing, curling, fed by a hazy damp. The view of Bristol between the trees is obscured, sound deadened. The only noises are conkers thudding on the grass as they quit the trees, and the brutal unexplained crack of twigs. Birds, all black of course, punctuate the cloud. A cyclist lurches up the hill, his flourescent yellow jacket a sudden jar on the landscape. He pants by and is subsumed by the gloom as soon as he appeared.

Language thoughts

The human mind's a funny old thing. Particularly when it comes to words and language. How can you be a different person in one language than another? I'm not sure, and it's probably overstating the case to say you become completely different, but I think you do find out other parts of yourself in another language. Even if you aren't fluent, you find unexpected turns of phrase that perfectly encapsulate an idea, a word that fascinates. Different parts of your character are drawn out. I read an article recently that suggested not learning another language is denying what it is to be human. Why should your life be defined by the first language you happened to speak? Sadly I've a long way to go before mastering French - ho-hum - and often feel put to shame by the multi-lingual talents of others, but still the sense of finding a part of yourself in another language is tantalising.

I've found a little corner of France in Bristol in the form of a French meet-up group. In the quasi-French surroundings of Café Rouge, sipping admittedly overpriced red wine, we started to chat about who dreams in what language. I remember proudly, and excitedly, noting in my diary the first time I had a dream in French when I was living there - it felt like some kind of milestone to Being French. Of course, English still won out, and once back in the UK all ze lovely French words faded. One French girl at the group, though, said she never had dialogues in her dreams, they were all very visual, so could happen in any language. The human mind - an intriguing thing.

19th-century Facebooks

Facebook's sticky tendrils have extended themselves around the globe in the past five years, enmeshing people in its web of photos, status updates, 'likes' and tags. But behind it all is a human desire to be remembered by others that's nothing new, especially if the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) exhibition of photographer Camille Silvy is any sort of evidence. The 19th-century Frenchman came up with all sorts of technical innovations in the field of photography - exposing several negatives onto one film to get London in twilight, fog and bright sun - but I found his day books most immediately fascinating. The NPG owns twelve of them, chronicling every sitter that came into his Bayswater studio. His subjects who ranged from actors to aristocracy were all caught up in the rage for cartes de visites - small photo calling cards that people handed around, collecting friends. The craze swept the UK. Meet someone? Hand them a card picturing yourself. Sound familiar?







Three cartes de visites of, respectively, Adeline Patti as Lucie from the opera Lucia di Lammermoor, fellow Adeline, the actress Adeline Cottrell and fellow opera singer Caroline Marie Carvalho-Miolan.

By night...

... Clifton Suspension Bridge...