Day 257, Monday 17 September 2012, Bristol
Yay (not) I am fifty years old today!
Though, I will confess that, to my utter surprise I am not actually bothered by it at all. I have been dreading this anniversary for a while now, not so much the turning fifty, more the – what will I do to celebrate the end of half a century of life. I have realised I am not alone away from home, and that even home is not that far away, so have not been overly worried about it recently.
From the start of “first birthday” (A private joke sorry ! ) last Tuesday when I had dinner with extended family in Essex I have had a great week that has seen me doing many of the things I love, seeing bands, doing an awesome run and hanging out with lovely, wonderful people.
I was up early, disgusting ! 7:30, earlier enough to make Richard a cup of tea before he went to work as I made my own coffee. But it was all worth it, Skype session with my mum, my boys Dom and Aiden and my sister and her family in NZ. It was very nice to see everyone and such a great start to my day and over the next couple of hours I had a couple of Skype sessions, lovely.
Once I had made the effort to haul my butt out of bed I went down to a new laundromat up in Stokes Croft. I am going to say it was not like anything I had experienced before !
Wifi, coffee, nice food as well as laundry. Fantastic, almost worth doing on a birthday!
After the laundromat I met Meliesha at St Nicks market in town for lunch, though after a bacon sarnie as a late breakfast i wasn’t up to much more than a very nice berry smoothie. We wandered the market a bit and Meliesha bought me a t-shirt for my birthday before going back to work. I then bought another t-shirt of the album cover from the Descendants great old punk LP “everything sucks”, is 50 to old to wear an everything sucks t-shirt ?
After lunch I walked past this guy with the longest window cleaning pole I have ever seen !
Down to Nelson St for the street art. I was pretty disappointed to be honest, firstly because some of the great art from lat year has been painted over and I was expecting new walls to be painted in the festival this year and secondly because the standard of art was not as good (IMHO of course).
The art below is not all from Nelson St.
I wandered around Bristol for a while before heading back to Mels place for a rest prior to going out for dinner. Mel and Richard and a few of their friends are going to take me to a Moroccan restaurant in Easton, about a 15 minute walk away. We had a couple of beers before we left and one on the way and picked up some cheap red at the local offie. Dinner was great, food was excellent and I had a lot of fun. After dinner some of us stopped for some bad darts a closing pub on the way back to Mels, where we had a cup of tea or two, ate some chocolates and talked way too late !
It was a fabbo day, full of good things and I had a nice birthday. Great to spend time again with Mel and Richard and as always enjoyed time with their friends too.
Thanks to all for the birthday wishes.
Heres to the next decade ! Cheers
Where is Phil now? 