Bristol Family Arts Festival

Half term is big business for Bristol's many and varied palaces of culture. Nine organisations have clubbed together to make a trail through the City Centre: we followed part of it with the boys today, being based on Edmund's boat, visible in the centre of the photograph. This I took from the M Shed balcony, which gives a great 180 degree view over the Avon and Northwards.

You could spend a whole day in the M Shed itself, but we also packed in the best part of an hour at the Architecture Centre (model building making) and lit a candle or two in Bristol Cathedral, where we admired some weird fragments of mediaeval glass in the Cloister: finally, we visited the Library to choose a DVD. (We only just remembered to get it unlocked - something Cheltenham hasn't yet begun to require us to do.)

And the boys and I marvelled - each in our own way - at Michael Dean's "The Introduction of Muscle" exhibition at the Arnolfini. This occupies two rooms - one huge, one smaller. But "occupies" them with a total of five modestly-sized sculptures. "It's all about texture," the helpful gallery guide told us, encouraging us to feel the amorphous, coloured concrete objects. One was recognisable as a cabbage. Others resembled a tongue, a pair of arms, possibly someone's back. No "labels" are supplied. The black flooring and the (white?) lighting form part of the "show".

The boys enjoyed being able to run round: to put it another way, they took the fact that this was "art" in their stride. I had more of a problem: the acronym Grayson Perry gave us in his "Nice rebellion, Welcome In!" Reith lecture yesterday morning was MAYA, "most advanced yet acceptable". But is it?

Photography came under the microscope in the previous lecture. ("It rains on us like sewage from above.")  His advice to photographers seemed to be, make all your editions limited: "if something is endless, it's giving away part of its qualification as art." You can easily tell, Perry said, if a portrait photograph is art or not. "Are they smiling? If they are - probably not art."

France: Strasbourg

We passed the Vosges mountains on our left as we sped along to Strasbourg, another city that surprised us. Europe has certainly made its mark on the station building there, but we hadn't thought there would be so much else to see between trains. Leaving our backpacks, it was an easy walk to the old centre - the Grande Île.

This turns out to be a city crammed full of fine buildings, but dominated by the pink Cathedral of Notre-Dame-de-Strasbourg with its vast spire. The carvings - inside and out - and the stained glass are sensational; but then I seem to have felt that about very many of the churches and cathedrals we have visited. What was different here was the throng of people, in spite of which the manner in which the authorities presented the church and its works of art to the public displayed a special reverence.

Oxford revisited

From the back entrance to my former College, Univ., it was only a short distance to the Canterbury Gate of Christ Church ("the House"), so I passed that way often when I was up at Oxford (in the early 'Sixties). I took this photograph on Tuesday morning, standing just inside the Gate. On the left is the East end of the Library which faces onto Peckwater Quad, scene of much partygoing.

In 1765 General John Guise, an Old Member of the House, died leaving it a collection of some 2,000 drawings and 200 paintings. They were hung - or a few of them were - in the Library until the late 'Sixties, when the Christ Church Picture Gallery was built - to "House" them properly. It's celebrating its 40th anniversary with a special exhibition and has on display some of the best drawings, prompting our visit - my first for a long while.

What an amazing collection it is! And what a place on its own is Christ Church! We were there with Caroline and Andrew Meynell, having been staying with them. This gave us easy access to the Cathedral - Andrew being an Hon. Canon - via Cardinal Wolsey's Tom Quad.

Doubling as a college chapel, it's a tiny cathedral, you tend to forget - compared to Gloucester for instance. But the stained glass is particularly fine, dating from many different periods.

We ended up at The Bear for a nostalgic (for me anyway) lunch.

A bit of LEJOG

Today, I took my bike on the train so as to join my friends Martin and Peter (and friends of theirs), who are in the process of cycling from Land's End to John O'Groats - they have a blog too. When I came alongside them near Slimbridge after lunch, they had already biked more than 40 miles. (I am now exhausted after a mere 20 or so miles!) They have another fortnight to go. And compared to the hills of Somerset, where they had started early this morning, I had an easy bit - up the Severn valley, and on through Gloucester. While I peeled off to come home and sink into a hot bath, they slogged up the A38. What particularly puzzled me - it must be a sign that I am ready to put my feet up - is that, so far from rejoicing at living life in the Slow Lane for three weeks, Martin confessed it was all a frantic business getting to the right place at the right time. What a mad way to celebrate being 65! Don't they know they are now eligible for a free bus pass, for use anywhere in England? OK, it wouldn't take you as far as John O'Groats. No, really I'm exhilarated to have been able to tap in, and admire hugely their cojones.
Whilst waiting to meet up, I saw lightening in the distance, but managed to avoid any of the sharp showers that were around: in fact, discounting the slight head wind, it was perfect weather for cycling. Going through Gloucester these days is heaven on a bike: the City had a cycling Mayor for some years: he encouraged the estimable Sustrans in their Route 41 planning, and the mediaeval lanes round the Cathedral are ideal for avoiding car traffic. We stopped to look at Llanthony Secunda Priory, and rode through the docks: that whole area is so much more attractive now than it was 20 years ago. The outside of the Cathedral is looking magnificent - in the places where the restoration has gone ahead. And we can recommend the teashop in the basement of the old Deanery (see picture - it's where Caroline's Great-grandmother grew up: her father the Dean kept chickens in the Cloisters, according to Tamara Talbot-Rice).