So, we’ve had a couple of friends staying for the last two days. They’re over from the States and a while back asked if they could drop in sort of on their way home, before visiting a family member / London. They’d clearly heard how awesome Bristol is and wanted to visit :)
Anyhow, to prepare for their visit meant finding the bedroom again. The front bedroom (ironically the ‘master’ of the house’s bedrooms and also the one we use least (it faces the road rather than the woods)) had been gradually filled with crap. Crap for the charity shops. Crap for e-bay. Crap that should have gone in the bin, and boxes and boxes of stuff we’d not unpacked, but that we’d also declared would not go into the attic to just sit there until it had been sorted.
This visit was, thankfully, arranged with enough time that we actually did it. We went through the boxes. We threw out, recycled, charity-shopped and charity-furniture-group’d so much stuff that the room now looks incredibly spacious. I can actually see myself being able to recover the chaise* in the space up there.
There’s a few boxes, but they’re things that shouldn’t be chucked, things that can’t be unpacked here because the desk in the office isn’t quite big enough, and still a box of stuff to go on ebay when I get the time / chance.
Anyhow, we had a very nice time with our visitors – took them to the Roman Baths, out to dinner at ‘Same, Same, but Different’ on their first afternoon here, and then on a whirlwind tour of Brizzle on the second day – breakfast from Hart’s Bakery, a visit to the M-shed, the Harbourside, a quick look at Bristol Central Library (so pretty inside the reference room and entry way**) up to Clifton village, on to the Downs (for a picnic and a chat), then down to the river near where we live… fed them Bristol’s best Fish and Chips with some nice cider whilst relaxing on the deck, and then back into the house for a quick episode of Miranda as the evening faded.
It’s difficult though. I mean, there’s so much we didn’t show them; Stokes Croft, the Cube, the Arnolfini (which we just wandered past), the Watershed, Gloucester Road… it’s so hard to cram what we love about Bristol into one day. Still, without making it all running about the place, it was a nice day and I think they had fun, which is really the point.
So all good really.
Now we just need to keep the house as tidy as it is now – and I need to get back to decorating.
* which I note I’ve never got a picture of, so I must do that before I start…
…although I still don’t strictly understand what is original structure on it, and what is later additions, and how the hell it originally looked
** Really sadly, the Book Hive exhibit had finished:
