Bristol is awesome…but….

The architecture here in Bristol is absolutely breath taking and I said so to the driver who was taking me to the BBC this morning for a radio interview, after a sleepless night of which I will tell you later, I was gazing at the most stunning tall houses, with ornate balconies and intricate stone gargoyles and the driver told me that whole city was built on the ‘Slave Trade’ money of past centuries! There was even ‘White Lady Street’!
So maybe I was apprehensive about staring at them now and enjoying them as I imagined all those poor African’s being dragged from their beautiful sun kissed lands and being sold to build White Lady Street.
How awful?
I suppose that’s the Empire for you, the sun may never have set on the Empire but the shame did.

So to tell you more about last night, I got a call from husband telling me there was an important email from NZ and so I grabbed my laptop and headed off into the night streets of Bristol trying to find any where that had WI/FI, but there was literally no place to be found, honestly, I was walking about the wee winding streets clutching a silver laptop waiting to be mugged!
I was so fucked off and angry I stomped back to the smelly room and tried to sleep.
Which brings me neatly to the sleepless night, I hear you thinking…Oh no Janey not a nightmare story…No... It was noise, fucking irrepressible noise that did it. Firstly, the hotel walls are made of papier-mâché, the room smells like old ladies pants and the room overlooks a city street, never mind that the room is also so small it would make Ann Franks house look like a Palace.
Then to top it all at 5am a shop alarm went off, I lay there silently hoping I could turn into our Scottish Lord Watson and just set fire to the place. (Lord Watson is a Scottish MP who is in prison for wilfully setting fire to hotel curtains, maybe he was pissed off it had no broadband and was noisy?).
Then I finally fell back asleep only to hear a pecking noise at the window, I got out of bed and there in the sunny day break was a smelly arrogant pigeon pecking at my window! Who the fuck lived here before? Mary Poppins?
I opened the window… (As if it would actually tell me what it wanted, I looked at it with anticipation). It simply cocked its bird flu head and flew off…even the pigeons are here to irritate me!
Today I wandered the city, which honestly is really beautiful and so trendy YET no one had wi/fi…I was beginning to feel that anger creeping back into my blood stream, even the BIG internet centre had no wireless connection!
I finally gave up and felt so low and desperately frayed, then I spotted a guy in a café with his laptop, I rushed to him excited the way Dr Watson must have greeted David Livingstone in the dark jungle and blurted out “Do you know where I can get wireless connection? Do you get it here?”
He told me there was a great place called the Watershed down on the water front that does woderful food and free wireless….so here I am and they DO!
I love this place….still hate the slave thing but I love the watershed in Bristol.