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| Tribe of Frogz |
I pop my head out of the rabbit hole for just a minute to feel the
breeze on my face. It gets a bit stuffy down there sometimes, the darkness is
infinite and the falling sensation starts to get a little tiring. I can only
imagine how it must’ve been for Alice, right after eating that mysterious cake
as well! Imagine the indigestion..
I’m on the road again J only a short
distance this time, Bristol to London for a weekend away with friends and
family. It’s funny playing a different role in the city you’re so used to
living in. Walking around with a backpack and a beanie suddenly elicits a
cocked head ‘where’s she going’ kind of look while the other backpackers give
me a familiar nod. It’s different to the reaction I get when I’m looking
slightly hobo-ish in trackies and an oversized jumper keeping my head as low as
possible after a night out. That’s when you get the sympathetic look, I once
received a pat on the shoulder by a passer by and kind words of ‘you’ll be
alright love’ right before a truck swerved an inch from my face. Oh gawd, hide!
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| Countryside! |
The rest of the time I just blend in. It’s great living in such a
studenty city, despite the fact that we all look the same with our grey
beanies, flannel shirts, black tights and boots – everyone’s of a similar
mind-set. Stokes Croft (where I work) has long been known for its outspoken and
independent stance. There are lots of gorgeous independent cooperative cafes
and I recently learned about the Bristol Pound – I didn’t understand the point
of the cartoon-like notes that so few people pulled out of their wallets, but
after the barista explained it to me the other day, the light-bulb in my head
illuminated. If a currency can only be circulated within one city (only in certain shops/ cafes that give you a discount
for using it) and not used outside of it, then the focus on developing Bristol
and its independent businesses suddenly grows. A great concept I reckon!
You know I read in the newspaper the other day that the Swiss government
was going to start giving everyone an allowance/ free money to allow its
civilians to engage in more intrinsic activities and possibly become a happier
and more productive population? Sociology on the brainn.
It’s the beautiful season of spring at the moment, we’re inching
towards ‘the hottest summer since 1910’ apparently! I’ll be here for a few
months of it and then am jetting off to an Australian winter, hmm. I doubt
their winter will be much to whine about though ;).
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| Bus journeys |
Bristol is the green capital of the Europe and on all the patches of grass around the city; rich yellow daffodils are sprouting while bluebells sit timidly in clusters close-by. Occasionally, a piece of cherry blossom will get caught in my hair, a pit stop on its journey with the Bristol winds. The clocks went forward on Saturday while we were all spinning around to hard-core psytrance at ‘Tribe of Frog’. Dressed like ‘frogz in space’ we arrived, ciders one hand, fags in the other. One night blends into the next and suddenly we’ve jumped back in time to last week, drummers in white headdresses and glitter galore, hippies sitting around in the tunnel of timbuk2 (the underground club hosting the glitter festival) carving wooden mushrooms and feather hair garments. Mushroom in pocket we skipped along to join the circle of colourful pens and large sheets of paper, I’ll never forget the one boy that spent about two hours writing his name, what was going through his mind during that time I’ll never know. Jump again to the 3-pound electro night at the cavern! Vines spread all over the ceilings, 40 year olds giving passers by drops of trips from a white limo with fluorescent blue lights. Jump. Now we’re at a dub night in attic bar, jamming along to a one-man-band that somehow managed to layer beat boxing, electric guitar, harmonica, rap and live sax in one performance.
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| Fonthill |
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| The hunt :) |
Oooh the feel of music! Doesn’t it just make you squirm? It tingles
every part of your body, teasing you, getting your heart racing and then
dropping you in mid-air. Leaving you helpless and falling, but it’s there to
catch you too! And cradle you and lay you down so that you’re looking above and
below and straight ahead all at the same time, breathless and empty but so
content. Just yearning to be bathed in the song and let go of physical reality
to merge into one with the universe. That’s
what a good song does for you anyway and that’s what every weekend has done for
us. I remember opening my eyes during one of our jams and peering around the
room, not one pair of eyes was focusing on anything else but the music, in a
trance of ecstasy and presence everyone was connected together but totally lost
at the same time.
Within the last few weeks I’ve turned 20, signed for a house for next year, booked a flight to Aus and almost finished the first year of Uni. Wow, it hits you fast doesn’t it?
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| Picnics in St. Andrews :) |
J left to Australia a few weeks ago and on our last weekend together (after
Paris) we got into our fancy clothes again, somehow managing to get them in and
out of the washing machine dry, fairly un-wrinkled and on time; making an
effort to play into a more socially acceptable image than scruffy travellers.
We stayed at the beautiful Fonthill estate that was once owned by the richest
man in England, William Beckford, a highly controversial character due to the fact
that he was both traditional, English and gay! His dimes and lavish lifestyle
soon slipped through his fingers and everything was sold! Luckily we have the
option of going to stay there with family every now and then… so J and I had a
lovely weekend together, we sipped (and spilt) wine, ate yummy food, star-fished
in big beds and got hot and sweaty… playing squash. We bonded with most of my
family members that weekend in a very civilised fashion and both experienced
our first British ‘hunt’ with hundreds of hounds, horses and guns. I felt like
I’d been transported back to 1920! It was great to watch and so beautifully
done; my cousin T wore a GoPro on his head and watching the footage afterwards
was a great vicarious moment.
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| Bathtiime |
The most dramatic moment for me at the hunt was attempting to
befriend one of the hounds and somehow attracting the whole pack… oh my god, a
whole pack of dogs running towards you is not an exciting site… a man on a big horse had to come galloping
over and shoo them all away, not exactly a knight in shining armour but close
enough?
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| André :p.. this guy was drumming live DnB it was incredible |
J and I strolled in the sunshine over the green fields and past the
running river to my granny’s ‘vine cottage’. We looked through old photo albums
and laughed at all the old hairstyles and flared jeans… It’s quite sad that now
photo’s are so abundant to us and we don’t have to go through such a long process
of developing them etc. they lose so much of their value. I don’t know how
we’re going to choose what photo’s to put in our photo albums when we filter
through our Facebook snaps… My granny on the other hand has one photo album for 80+ years! We
listened to stories, ate lunch and sipped on coffees before heading back for a
cheeky film and a bubble bath. The bus was late leaving my aunties and I made
it into uni for my presentation (worth 20% of our final grade) a minute before
class started, phew.
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| We bumped into Panda from Skins on this night out :) |
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| Hugging trees :) |
It’s tough balancing pleasure and work when one always overrides the
other, I guess uni’s the one place that you can get away with it right? I
savoured the few days that we ate and drank like royals and forgot about
student living for a bit. Eating yummy meals at ‘atomic burger’, chai-coffee latte’s
at Rojak and drinks at ‘The Social’ after work. Oh work, work, work. Work is… a
handful? Being a social carer you have different clients but tend to work with
a small handful more closely once you get to know them. I’ve somehow become the
primary carer for A.L, a mentally insane woman that has severe autism and
amongst many other ‘things’, Münchausen syndrome (a disorder where people
pretend to have various illnesses etc.). So some days she’ll be unable to move
and other days she’ll be banging her head against the wall and crying/ screaming
till she collapses in exhaustion. It’s pretty heavy work but it is rewarding
and always different. Despite her madness she does have little moments of being
pleasant (little, little, tiny, miniscule moments) but having J waiting outside
for a hug after a shift was always the highlight. The day he was supposed to
leave he made a spur of the moment decision to delay the flight by a day,
ironically a few weeks later when I’s boyfriend was leaving back to Portugal,
he happened to delay his trip by a couple days too. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdxYiCd782c)
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| Frogz in space :) |
I was walking home up 'happy lane' the other day, red and flustered from a run around the park. I turned the corner and a surprising influx of bubbles came floating towards me! Each one acted like a little window, the focus was on them but through the transparent layer I suddenly noticed the tree on the side of the
wall, it had such delicate branches they looked like they had been sketched out with
a fine artists pencil. The bubbles reflected the dusk in micro-rainbows that
drifted over the chimney tops and disappeared with silent pops. I stopped to reflect for a moment with the school kids all running past me;
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