Tag Archives: Bristol

Dropping a Few Ts

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I’m visiting the parents in Bristol this weekend. When I’m here I get more Bristolian and you might catch me with a proper “ooh aar” West Country accent going on. Back home in Wales I sometimes sound quite Welsh … apart from my Ts. As work colleagues will confirm, I don’t sound my Ts much, apart from of course when they are vital to the word – e.g. “a cup of Tea” :) Twitter became known for a while as Twi’er, when we wrote it down for any reason, after some mickey taking of how I say it! Back here in the place where I grew up it would almost sound posh to say Twitter properly and everyone drops Ts all over the place :) There are many other delights to the Bristol accent/dialect, such as the marvellous phrase “alright me luvver?” (which only works in a proper gert lush Bristol accent).

If you want to know more about the Bristol accent (or even if you just fancy a laugh) go to the Beast Clothing: The Brizzle Lesson – made me giggle anyway – might only have that effect if you are yourself a Bristolian though! :) I only came across it from a Google Search but now I might just have to buy a t-shirt!

Perspective

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While we were in Bristol over Christmas we went to Cabot Circus several times. I really liked it there even though I am quite skilled at getting lost while shopping – I nearly always walk out of a shop with absolutely no idea which direction I was going when I went in … it’s only when I catch myself thinking “wow, another Next (or whatever) so close to the one I just passed” that I realise I’ve gone back the way I came! At least with Cabot Circus you can tell if you’ve gone too far and you’re leaving the under cover bits – turn around and you’ll soon find yourself back in the middle! Cabot Circus is amazing to look at and there’s lots of good shops and places to eat, and even a cinema (though I haven’t been there yet). It’s done wonders for Bristol as far as I can tell – brought the Broadmead area to life and made it into a great attraction. It’s all so different from when I lived there as a child/teenager. Click on the pic below to see it really big – it’s amazing architecture.

Cabot Circus

Photo of the centre of Cabot Circus from the Cabot Circus website - click on the photo to see it in glorious full size - it's amazing!

Anyway the point of this post was about the bridge. I foolishly didn’t take any photos, but the bridge is freaky! It is specially for shoppers parking in the multi-story car park to get across to the shopping centre. I imagine there are alternatives but I don’t know where, so each time we visited we crossed the bridge. The thing about is is the way it’s built – it’s all strange angles – hard to describe – look at the picture below that I found to see what I’m on about (click on it to see it bigger). What it does is give you the feeling that the ground you are walking on is actually on a slant. Common sense and logic tells you it’s not, but the messages coming to your brain via your eyes tell you the world is tilted over. Most people seem to stroll along happily but for me, it was actually quite unpleasant! I felt a little nauseous and felt like I was drunk and that I was about to fall over! Very strange effect! Didn’t stop me going across it and back several times though so it couldn’t have been that bad, but I started developing coping mechanisms, like staring fixedly at the floor in front of me the whole way (only wise to do when holding onto someone else who’s looking where they’re going!). I tried staring at the hand rail but that didn’t help. So I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with the bridge – I think it’s cool, fascinating and clever, but it makes me feel kind of ill!

I love living in a small town in Wales … but sometimes I wish I could go to cool places like this more regularly – there are some big plus points to living in a big city that I forget about sometimes.

By the way, sorry if this sounds a little like an advert for Cabot Circus – they haven’t sponsored this blog post, I promise – I just like it! :)