Do you even like living in Bristol?” a friend asks me. “Reading your column every week, it would seem…’ She stops mid-sentence. I get what she’s saying. Whenever people ask me whether I enjoy living here, I do that classic British thing, best exemplified by how we follow football – I trash it because I love it. I take the piss out of it and I keep it in its place through mockery and misery, because that beats admitting how much I love it. The city and I have a complicated relationship, what can I say? Here is a non-exhaustive list of things I love about the place, you know… for balance:
1. I live near a long road called Happy Lane. It looks positively post-apocalyptic. Every time I cycle down it, I feel happy mostly because of the mismatch. Not because of the community graffiti that tries to hide the sad brickwork.
2. On getting off the bus, people shout, “Cheers, drive!” to the driver as they go past. Obviously it’s polite to thank the driver for the journey, even if they rolled their eyes at your fiver and you got stuck in traffic, making you 20 minutes late for a meeting. Obviously you thank them. But “Cheers, drive”? Come on. It’s adorable.
3. During the particularly cold weather we’ve had recently, a bunch of people bought up loads of woolly hats, gloves and scarves, and left them around the city, with a label saying: “I’m not lost. If you need me to keep warm, take me.” Bristol has an innate thoughtfulness.
4. At the Watershed cinema, filmgoers are encouraged to write down reviews on index cards and pin them on a board. One person, without fail, declares every single film: “NOT AS GOOD AS JURASSIC PARK.”
5. I was once walking across a bridge, eating an ice cream. A seagull, on an attack mission, dove into my ice cream and managed to abscond with everything but the cone. I stood there for a second, stunned, staring at an empty cone. I noticed a man, dressed as a pirate to attract tourists, staring at me. Our eyes locked. He burst into laughter. “Ere mate, get yourself another,” he said, offering me a pound coin. I smiled at his small act of kindness and bought myself another ice cream. I ate it in the safety of the shop this time.
6. Bristol is the street-party capital of Europe, apparently.
7. Most places will be guaranteed to have at least one night dedicated to mid-90s hip-hop, and the ageing b-boy in me is comforted by never being too far away from a night that will drop Large Professor remixes of Nas tunes.
8. Everywhere in the main hub of the city is within walking distance.
9. Rice & Things, a Caribbean restaurant in Stokes Croft, lights a barbecue at 7am on Fridays to make jerk chicken. Even in the snow. The smell is amazing.
10. When my daughter was a month old, I used to walk around the city to get her to sleep. It was the height of summer, and she only fell into a deep sleep in a sling. So I strapped her to me and we walked the entire city. We walked to the mosque in Totterdown, to the mandir in St George, all around the university campus, along the harbourside to look at the SS Great Britain as the sun went down and to a comedy gig in Bedminster to see a set by a friend. We even met Neneh Cherry. The baby slept and I walked. I got to know the city well. I started to fall in love with it.
There are problems in Bristol, too, of course. The legacy of slavery isn’t properly acknowledged. The terrible public transport gives people less ownership of the city. The lack of affordable housing is a huge issue. These all feel like big things compared to the lighter vignettes I’ve listed. But these moments make me feel this place is home. And knowing there are big problems here... Well, I’m like that pub football pundit analysing, deconstructing and proselytising about the team he adores and criticises so freely. I’m that guy. And this is my city.
