Bristol: The new Birmingham and Aberystwyth.

Unless you’ve read this blog avidly for years, it’s unlikely that title makes much sense. So, to recap. Once upon a time I spent a night out in Birmingham and fell in love with the city again after being jaded for quite some time. It was everything it has a reputation for not being. I wrote about it.

I also had occasion to revisit an old haunt of mine, Aberystwyth, and found it less than it was. Miserable, with hen parties in full flow. At lunch time. I wrote about that too.

Recently one of my best friends got married and I assisted in organising the stag do. We decided to spend two nights in Bristol because, well, none of us had ever gone to Bristol before and it was between where we live in Telford and he lives in Wales. Bristol, it turns out, is fabulous. Before this, Bristol to me was basically a huge car park that we would pass on the M5 on the way to the south coast, but it is vibrant, bustling and alive in that way the best cities are. We spent a lot of time on a stretch of bars and restaurants on a kind of artificially created harbour, where we frequented a cider bar on a boat, a pub full of retro arcade cabinets (unfortunately the quid a go they cost isn’t quite so retro), a jazz bar, a rock pub and several others.

Head to the middle of the city, however, and you enter the ‘old town’, where 700 year-old stone arches are surrounded by newer buildings and quiet bars with supposedly haunted toilets. There are many, many places to eat and drink, most of them fabulous. That overwhelmingly positive feeling I got on that night out in Birmingham suffused the whole experience.

I was, however, also put in mind of that time in Aberystwyth, and this is because there were loads of stag parties and hen dos. They were everywhere. But hey, we were one of them, so how hard can you judge them really? During the second night out this reminder of that disappointing visit to Aberystwyth turned hugely positive as well, as we managed to team up with a hen party and saw the night out until almost 4am drinking, talking, laughing, dancing and generally having the best damn time I’ve had in, frankly, years. I’ve written before about how much I love cities, and Bristol is now right up there with London and Birmingham. If money was no object (yeah right, keep dreaming) I would take some close friends and spend as many weekends in as many different cities all over the world as I possibly could.

Bristol: I would recommend it.

Growing up, guitars and good friends.

When I was in my teens, the big musical thing was Britpop. Now, that isn’t my fault, so don’t be too hard on me. The thing about music is it isn’t necessarily what’s best in a technical sense that becomes your favourite. Sure, everyone can appreciate decent lyrics and great playing. But your favourite music often becomes your favourite because of how you felt, or what you were doing, or even how old you were when you heard it. So when I first really got into music, following a brief flirtation with the mighty Jovi, it was to the strains of the Britpop movement. Blur’s Parklife was the first record I truly fell in love with (and to this day I remain so), but Oasis slowly eclipsed Blur as my favourite. As with so many of today’s leading guitar acts, Definitely Maybe inspired me to buy a guitar. I lacked both the talent and the will for it to go any further than a hobby, but being able to play first Oasis, and later Stereophonics, Blur and Weller was among the greatest joys of my teenage life.

One of my childhood friends, Ian, loved Oasis as much as I did, and there is no doubt that we bonded tremendously over this mutual love. Entire weekends would disappear learning Slide Away or Champagne Supernova; Ian singing, me playing guitar. Our friends were probably bored half to death listening to us, but we didn’t care. Then we got older, and things change as they always do. Girlfriends, jobs, moving all conspired to move my guitars to a cupboard under the stairs. Late last year Ian died of a rare form of Leukaemia, and now I find myself remembering all those weekends spent playing guitar. Turns out I can’t listen to Live Forever all the way through without crying anymore.

We never did get a band together. But in the end that isn’t what matters. What matters is the comfort of the memories I have of those years. There has been much talk of Ian looking down on us and the things we’re doing with approval and love. If you’ve read enough of these you’ll know that in my heart that’s a belief I can’t share, but at times like these I feel and understand the need people have for it, and I cannot give enough kudos to the vicar who spoke at Ian’s funeral, who happily admitted that he had been tasked with giving the ceremony just enough religion ‘to get him in’, and the good grace with which he managed this.

Thoughts now turn to those guitars, gathering dust under the stairs. I think maybe I’ll bring them out again into the light of day and give Don’t Look Back in Anger a whirl. It feels like a modest tribute, but somehow the most heartfelt.