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.

Ah, the Bridge...

 

Phew!

Picasso and Kaufmann

But perhaps don't rush to fill a seat at the new Charlie Kaufman film Synecdoche. Meaning 'simultaneous understanding', the film hinges around a search for - er, well I'm not entirely sure. The meaning of life? Escape from loneliness? I'm not even sure what questions were being asked. We're all actors in our own lives? What's true and what's false? Everyone is the same as everyone else? We can see everything at once? After 2 hours and 4 minutes I was left confused. I prefer Picasso's take on simultaneous understanding: cubism. Ok so it's not always easy to see what you're looking at, but I think the idea of looking at everything at once works better on a canvas than on screen.

Picasso's Variations

Down the stairs in the National Gallery's Sainsbury Wing, in the rectangular middle room, hangs this painting. There's probably someone sitting on the low wooden bench in the centre of the room looking at it right this second, mesmerised by the wonderful organised muddle of colours and angles. Make sure at some point before the exhibition closes on 7 June that that person is you.

Sublime Schumann

Just heard the Takacs Quartet and Marc-Andre Hamelin perform Schumann's Piano Quintet at Bristol, St George's. One of those performances written on the memory in indelible ink. From the striding opening chords to the sorrowful sighs and hypnotic triplets of the second movement, from the outpouring of scales in the third to the final flourishes of the finale - not a foot, finger or pizzicato wrong.

Fantastic Mr Fox

Last November I wrote about Bristol's urban foxes. Now here's the photo evidence.

Animal Farm

Just watching Bill Bailey's Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra. Saint-Saens's The Swan from Carnival of the Animals on cow bells. The man's a genius!

Run Bristol

Tomorrow is 10k day. Suddenly this sounds like a Very Long Way. Yes, the two friends who I'm running with and I have run the full distance before but that was when no one was watching. When we didn't have 'Champion Chips' clamped to our trainers to time to the second, nay the millisecond, how long the torture lasts, rather than estimating - generously - from an unreliable clock. When we didn't have to be ready and raring to go at 8.30am (OK - I'm stretching the truth here. The race doesn't start until 9.30, but runners are meant to be hanging round doing impossible stretches from this ungodly hour) and when we weren't branded with race numbers, like cattle going to slaughter. 10k. 10k? 10k! 10k... However you say it, from the start that finish line looks far away.

Down in the woods...

Uncle Bulgaria

At St George's, Bristol, last night. Included hats with red flowers, clapping, stamping and dancing in the aisles.