The Bristol Magazine February 2022

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THE

Issue 207

I

FeBRuARY 2022

MAGAZINE

THEBRISTOLMAG.CO.UK

£3.95 where sold

MASTERFUL STORYTELLING British theatre’s living legends bring world premiere to Bristol Old Vic

CREATIVE MINDS

MYRIAD OF CUISINES Bristolians come together to share family recipes in new cook book

INTRINSIC TO LIFE

Goldfrapp’s Will Gregory on collaborating with creators of BBC’s new thriller, Chloe

Bristol music venue launches befriending service like no other

LOST & FOUND

BRISTOL TO BEIJING

Forgotten stories reveal plans for railway station – in Queen Square

West Country athletes fly the flag for Team GB in China

DONNA HUANCA World-renowned artist arrives at Arnolfini with immersive installation

PLUS...

SO MUCH MORE IN THE CITY’S BIGGEST GUIDE TO LIVING IN BRISTOL

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Contents February 2022 REGULARS ZEITGEIST

STAGE NARRATIVES AT THE OLD VIC

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Top activities for the month ahead

CITYIST

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Catch up on local news and meet the founder and CEO of children’s charity Flamingo Chicks, Katie Sparkes MBE

BARTLEBY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 As fate would have it...

WHAT’S ON

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A selection of interesting things to do and happenings in the city

ARTS & EXHIBITIONS

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We chat to the supremely talented Thalissa Teixeira, who performs alongside Mark Rylance and beautifully narrates the powerful story of Dr Semmelweis

GIG BUDDIES

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Bristol’s live music venue, Exchange, has recently launched a new befriending service. Manager Iwan Best sits down to talk the arts: intrinsic to life and liberty

MUSIC TO THRILL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Filmed in Bristol, the BBC’s psychological thriller, Chloe, is coming to our screens on 6 February. Bristol-born Will Gregory (Goldfrapp) collaborated with Portishead’s Adrian Utley to produce the score

FOR THE LOVE OF FOOD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

What’s showing, and at which of our local galleries you can see it

Acclaimed food writer and charity founder Kalpna Woolf launches her recipe book, Eat, Share, Love.

CHRIS YEO ON ANTIQUES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

A GOOD NIGHT’S SLEEP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

What better way to celebrate the Lunar New Year than admiring all things Chinoiserie

Ade Williams MBE, lead pharmacist at Bedminster Pharmacy talks about the benefits of sleep and how to get a good one – every night

BRISTOL UPDATES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

FASHION TO FEEL GOOD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

The latest news and views from the city...

Hannah Hill – founder of bespoke styling and shopping service LIFESTYLISH – tells us about the mood-boosting powers of fashion

EDUCATION NEWS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Updates from the city’s schools and colleges

ABANDONED PLANS

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HABITAT THE LIGHT TOUCH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

Andrew Swift looks at a grand plan to build a station in Queen Square

John Law of Woodhouse & Law gives us his expertise in the matter of maximising and improving the light in our homes

FEATURES

GARDENING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

FROM BRISTOL TO BEIJING

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Emma Clegg chats to Team GB skeleton athlete and Bristol local, Marcus Wyatt, who is hoping for a podium place at the Olympics

ARNOLFINI PRESENTS

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An exhibition of works by two world-renowned artists, Dame Paula Rego and Donna Huanca

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Elly West creates some natural bounderies

ON THE COVER Portrait of Donna Huanca ahead of her CUEVA DE COPAL exhibition at Arnolfini. Photograph by Tobias Willmann.

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from the EDITOR

Clifton Suspension Bridge at sunrise, taken by Peter Hall

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xtraordinary imaginative power: that’s what this month’s cover proclaims. Donna Huanca, a world-renowned Bolivian-American artist is exhibiting at the Arnolfini this month.

Huanca’s immersive site-specific installation will be built around the history and architecture of the gallery. Famed for using art to explore the human body, her new exhibition will invite audiences to study their own reflection and become part of her work, ultimately providing solace in our everyday lives – something, I think we can all agree, will be warmly welcomed.

The talent descending on the Arnolfini this month doesn’t end there. Exhibiting alongside Huanca is Portuguese-British artist Dame Paula Rego – unarguably one of the most important figurative artists of her generation. Over the course of her extensive career, Rego has transcended the world of art and penetrated the cultural consciousness. Informing, challenging and inspiring: she is very much upheld as one of the greats. It’s an honour to have both Huanca and Rego’s pieces grace our pages this month (p.20).

From legendary artists to the living legends of British theatre. It’s been 18 months since Dr Semmelweis was due to take to the stage at Bristol Old Vic. Telling an important – and largely forgotten – story of Ignaz Semmelweis, a 19th century Hungarian doctor who first introduced hand-washing in medical practice. His findings, however, were met with rage and rejection from doctors unwilling to accept that they were the reason behind so many deaths. Their refusal to acknowledge his discovery meant his life’s work lay buried in the annals of history for decades. Sir Mark Rylance, Tom Morris, Stephen Brown and a whole host of award-winning creatives have now immortalised the lives of everyone involved in his journey of discovery – including that of his wife, Maria, played by Thalissa Teixeira, who very much has a place in this narrative. On p.24, we chat to Thalissa and find out why this is a play to remember.

Elsewhere in the city, brilliant people are doing brilliant things. Acclaimed food writer and charity campaigner Kalpna Woolf has gathered Bristolians together to share their family recipes, giving them a space to tell their stories in a brand new recipe book, Eat, Share, Love. The city’s famous faces as well as much-loved locals have come together to provide a number of mouth-watering dishes from a myriad of cuisines. Genuinely heart-warming, this book is absolutely set to be a kitchen mainstay (p.46).

In essence, there’s a lot to look forward to this month. West Country athletes will fly the flag at the Winter Olympics (p.14); locally filmed BBC thriller, Chloe, scored by Bristol’s Will Gregory (Goldfrapp), will air on 6 February (p.42); and a quarter of the world’s population will ring in the Year of the Tiger, hoping for 12 months filled with adventure (p.52). So far, this month looks as though it will be bursting with an abundance of raw talent, inspiring us all and igniting our imagination – have a good one! ■

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Millie Bruce-Watt Follow us: @thebristolmag @thebristolmag thebristolmag.co.uk

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ZEITGEIST

top things to do in February

Shop The award-winning Vintage Furniture Flea is coming back to Paintworks on 13 February.

As sustainability plays heavy on everyone’s minds and shoppers seek interesting and unique homewares and furniture, The Vintage Furniture Flea – now in its 12th year – is here to provide an environmentallyconscious way of shopping for homewares, while keeping prices low.

European glassware, mid-century sideboards, rattan chairs, handmade ceramics, bold prints and fabrics and restored lamps are just a small selection of the pieces you’ll find, all sold by an awesome group of hand-picked furniture and homewares traders. Visit the Judy’s Vintage Fair website below to book early bird and general admission tickets; under 12’s go free!

Enjoy Opera in a Box is delighted to be producing its first full scale performance post-pandemic with the ever-enchanting production of Carmen at The Fire Station for 6 performances starting on 19 February.

Opera in a Box has set the standard in the south west of up-close and personal operas in unique settings, helping to smash the preconceptions of opera that can put off new audience members. Explore the themes of desire, love and fate with some of the most famous tunes ever written.

• Book your tickets at: operainabox.com

• judysvintagefair.co.uk/furniture-flea

Admire Light at Marston Park, an immersive light exhibition by internationally acclaimed British artist, Bruce Munro, is now at Marston Park, Somerset, until the end of March. To date, the wizard of Wiltshire – as dubbed by The New York Times – Bruce Munro's ephemeral lightbased works have featured in urban landscapes and remote rural areas around the globe. His world famous Field of Light, currently illuminating Uluru in Australia and the Paso Robles wine country in California, is now coming to Somerset. This new collaboration with Marston Park signifies a homecoming for Munro, who lives at his 16th-century barn studio just 10 minutes away in Long Knoll, Wiltshire.

The large-scale, experiential display features thousands of coloured spheres on stems, which are 'planted' along the lakeside path and through the woodland. This winter, visitors can explore the exhibition trail, as well as enjoy hot, seasonal food and drinks at the covered lakeside bar, The Terrace.

• marstonpark.co.uk/light

Watch

Celebrate A brand new event is coming to Saltford this Valentine’s Day. Flourish Foodhall & Kitchen, a purpose-driven food and shopping destination, will be turning their car park into a drive-in cinema experience on 14 February.

Showing 90’s classic rom-com 10 Things I Hate About You, visitors can enjoy a glass of Prosecco upon arrival and tuck into a delicious three-course menu while they enjoy the film. The bar will also remain open for the duration of the film, supplying local beers, ciders, wines, hot drinks, cocktails and nonalcoholic options for drivers!

• Find out more and buy tickets at: flourishvalentines-drivein.eventbrite.co.uk

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In a leafy corner of England, in the early years of the nineteenth century, Mrs Bennet hears exciting news. A young bachelor has moved into neighbouring Netherfield Park – and what’s more he’s incredibly wealthy. With five unmarried daughters and no fortune, Mrs Bennet makes it her mission to play matchmaker.

Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and director Jenny Stephens invite you to join their graduating cohort for a lively production of Pride and Prejudice this February. Can the wilful and determined Elizabeth Bennet ever find her match? Is happiness in marriage always entirely a matter of chance?

Simon Reade’s adaptation of the original Jane Austen rom-com will be staged in one of Bristol’s newest and most evocative performance spaces, The Mount Without, from 12–19 February.

• Tickets on sale now at: bristololdvic.org.uk/whats-on/bovts-pride-and-prejudice

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THE CITY

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BRISTOL Meet the founder and CEO of children’s charity Flamingo Chicks, Katie Sparkes MBE I was born in Bristol then lived in Cardiff and London as well as being lucky enough to work in several different countries. Despite my exciting adventures elsewhere, Bristol definitely has my heart!

I still can't quite believe I’ve been recognised in the Queen's New Year Honours List! It's wonderful news and I’m so delighted that the work of Flamingo Chicks has been acknowledged. We have had 20,000 children dance with us since we began, meaning disabled children across the UK are being given the chance to explore movement, have fun and forge friendships. Therefore, the MBE feels very much a team achievement and a lovely way to recognise that collective contribution.

For our family, it's extra special. Both my parents were diagnosed with advanced cancer in May (within two weeks of each other!), so after a truly challenging year, it couldn't have come at a better time to give them a boost.

FORGOTTEN STORY A Bristol architect has overturned the known history of Temple Meads railway station by discovering its real architect was Bristolian. New research conducted

by David Martyn (pictured) has attributed the famous Victorian Joint Station building to a local man, Henry Lloyd. The Victorian gothic revival station building attached to Brunel’s old terminus had previously been thought to be by a famous London architect. Now, David has found compelling evidence that the designs were actually down to a Bristol man.

David’s research has recently been published by the Bristol Industrial Archaeology Society and details the history of the virtually unknown architect. He said: “It’s unfair that Henry Lloyd’s work has been overlooked for so long and attributed to other people. Bristol needs to reclaim credit for him, and his incredible achievement with the station”.

Temple Meads Joint station was funded by the Great Western Railway, Midland Railway, and Bristol and Exeter Railway, who all shared cramped facilities in Brunel’s original station buildings. The new station was a huge undertaking, more than doubling the capacity of the old building and creating the station much as we know it today.

The architect previously credited with the designs was Matthew Digby Wyatt, a nationally famous architect who worked with Brunel on Paddington Station. It’s now been shown that there’s nothing to support his claim on designs and previous attributions to him have been groundless.

Pivotal to the new discovery were original drawings from the Brunel Institute, at the SS Great Britain.

Bristol Temple Meads is currently undergoing a £10.2m refurbishment and there are hopes that Lloyd might be commemorated somehow when the restored building is unveiled.

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Flamingo Chicks delivers inclusive programmes designed to support disabled children and their families through five core pillars: inclusive dance classes, peer-to-peer support networking, intergenerational volunteering, youth-led advocacy and global outreach. Together these pillars deliver muchneeded support for our children and their families and create systemic change towards a fairer, more inclusive society.

I started Flamingo Chicks because I was frustrated at the lack of inclusive opportunities for my daughter, who has cerebral palsy. I wanted to create a safe space that was also inspiring, joyous and creative that would support parents and children alike. Initially, I thought it would be a small community group but the first session I put on had 15 spaces and 200 families applied. There's a huge need and Covid-19 has only increased that – we are growing rapidly with the number of classes we've delivered up by 48% in the last year.

A particular highlight was when we took seven of our Flamingo Chick Youth Advocates out to New York. They made a speech at the United Nations on human rights for disabled children, pioneering their vision for an inclusive society.

This has a monumental impact and was a moment they treasure.

We are planning exciting things for 2022, a step change in how we work to reach even more children. First up, we'll be launching a new dramatic performance production called

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MEN-TOUR. Two of our talented teachers will create and tour a unique workshop for disabled children to participate in breaking down gender barriers, with the male dancers providing relatable role models for disabled dancers of any age. We will also be working towards launching a new performance arm of Flamingo Chicks. The genre of ballet offers a real richness in storytelling, characterisation, music, costume and props and we will explore this in more detail.

Bristolian Actor Joe Sims (also a Flamingo Chicks' Patron) definitely deserves a shoutout.

He gives away £500 a week to a worthy cause from money he collects from his friends. He signed up 500 people to each pay a pound a week, and then they get to nominate a worthy cause to give the money to (500reasons.org).

The amazing thing is, his scheme has grown so much, there are now lots of inspired schemes including THE BRISTOL 500, which I am now part of. It's like a 'community generosity pot' helping local people in need.

I’m currently reading Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan, who is a wonderful autistic author and journalist – her book is intelligent, funny and written with such heart. Naoise also speaks beautifully about autism in Pandora Sykes' podcast Doing it Right – the episode is called Understanding Autism.

My philosophy in life is be the change you want to see in the world. I love the Starfish Story: one step towards changing the world.

We all have the opportunity to help create positive change and whilst you might not be able to change the entire world, you can change a small part of it, for someone. And to that one person, it can make a world of difference.

• flamingochicks.org

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Image credit: Netflix

IGNITE: A TRAIL OF LIGHT, LANTERNS, FANTASY AND FIRE AT TYNTESFIELD

NETFLIX TEAMS UP WITH UK CHARITY Following the release of Ricky Gervais' After Life (season three), suicide prevention charity CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably) have teamed up with Netflix to donate twenty five benches to councils around the UK, providing people with a place to sit and talk. Bristol is one of the twenty five cities to enjoy a new bench, which was recently installed at the side of Ashton Court Mansion, overlooking the rose garden. Those who visit the bench can access resources from CALM via a unique QR code. Find the bench using What3Words trade.scam.amused.

• thecalmzone.net

Ignite – a brand new light trail for the South West will open at Tyntesfield – a National Trust house surrounded by heritage trees and picture-perfect parkland.

The gardens of the Victorian Gothic Revival house, just a stone’s throw from Bristol, form the perfect setting for a new after-dark experience from 11 – 26 February (closed 16/17 February).

Wander between flickering flames and majestic trees, marvel as lights dance from one amazing space to another. Within this fiery interpretation of stars and spheres, illuminated flora and fantasy, there are moments of reflection and playful discovery set to a soundscape that will inspire and intrigue. Join with family and friends to immerse yourself in the shimmering effects of fire and light.

Try something new, expect the unexpected with fairies dancing in trees and fiery fish glowing at dusk. Glimpse woodland wildlife sculpted in willow as you stroll along tree-lined avenues into a winter landscape filled with wonder.

The new after dark adventure has been specially designed for visitors of all ages to enjoy.

Free entry for carers and children aged 2 and under. For more information on opening times, ticket prices – and to book tickets – visit the website below. Covid-19 guidelines are being followed and processes are in place to maintain cleanliness and aid social/physical distancing.

• igniteattyntesfield.seetickets.com

Book your place on the Tour de Bristol and get ready to pedal for patient care!

St Peter’s Hospice is asking supporters to get back on their bikes on 9 April.

Conquer the hills, soak up the scenery and pedal through our beautiful countryside. With three routes spanning 40k, 65k and 100k to choose from, there's a route for all abilities whether you're a seasoned cyclist or a firsttimer.

By riding and raising funds, you're making a difference for local families, providing a nurse on the doorstep, a listening ear on the phone and the best possible care during the most difficult of times.

• Visit tourdebristol.co.uk to find out more

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Both photos by Richard Haughton © Sony Music

TOUR DE BRISTOL: SIGN UP NOW

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From Bristol to Beijing As Beijing prepares to host the 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games from 4–20 February, Emma Clegg chats to Team GB skeleton athlete and Bristol local, Marcus Wyatt, about training at the renowned Team Bath Sports Training Village and his hopes for medal success

M

aking his World Cup debut in Igls, Austria in December 2017, Marcus Wyatt finished an impressive 10th in his first elite-level skeleton outing. He narrowly missed out on a spot in the Team GB squad for the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in PyeongChang but did travel to South Korea after being selected to join the British Olympic Association's Ambitions Programme for potential future Olympians.

Marcus is one of four skeleton athletes to have been selected by Team GB for the Winter Olympic Games. “It is a dream come true. This season has been tough, but I’m really excited to go out to compete for a medal,” he says.

Marcus’ opportunity to become a skeleton athlete came in his final year at university in 2014 when he watched Lizzy Yarnold win gold in Sochi. “I was looking at what I was going to do next. In the Olympic coverage they said that UK Sport wanted people to do trials for skeleton and I thought it sounded amazing – I was always a bit of an adrenalin junkie. After 10–11 months of trials I was accepted on the team – there were over 1,000 people who applied and they cut us down to four men and four women – suddenly I was part of a British sports team.”

Just three years later Marcus missed out on being selected for the PyeongChang team. “That was really tough,” he says. “I always felt I had a chance and I got super close. I knew I was good enough and it was hard for a few weeks, but it was just a case of picking myself back up and getting going again. I like to think it’s made me a stronger, more resilient athlete.”

Now back in force, Marcus won the Olympic Test Event silver in October on the Beijing track. “Beijing is a unique track”, says Marcus. “It is unlike any other track where we’ve been. There are two different track styles. Europe has one style where the corners are quite low, more like a C-shape – we call it the ‘rollover’, so where the ice goes over vertical it will turn you back down. Whereas in North America they have really big corners, so where you roll over the ice is almost flat, so you can be parallel going in a straight line but you might be 3ft or 8ft high. Beijing has mixed the two so you’ve got some corners that feel European and small and some where you can be going flat in the corner. It can be difficult to tell exactly how high you are, which is crucial in terms of getting the best exit for the corner.”

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The coaching at Team Bath, where Marcus trains, taps into every aspect of preparation, physical and psychological, says Marcus: “I work with a strength and conditioning coach and we also have ice coaches who are more involved in the actual sliding. Then there are physios and psychologists, as well as technology aids and the research and innovation that goes on – it’s a big coaching team with multiple facilities and they all play their part.”

All this goes a long way to overcoming the lack of a nearby ice track: “We try and use the disadvantage of not having our own track as an advantage. We’ve shown in the past how we’re really good at going to a brand new track and learning it quickly. The Germans will do a couple of hundred runs down their own track every year, whereas we’re really good at turning up to a track and working it out in 10 runs. That’s something we really pride ourselves on and it’s been key to our success.”

The team’s success is also about collaboration: “We sit down as a group when we join the programme – even though it’s an individual sport, our philosophy is that we work as a team, so I’m benefitting from my runs, but also from Matt’s runs and Laura’s runs [Matt Weston and Laura Deas]. If you’re happy to have open, honest discussions as a group then you can learn so much more quickly. Ultimately, it’s you versus the clock not against other athletes, but we’re happy to share ideas because it’s how you then go and use them when you’re sliding.”

And what about medal hopes? “This year the field has been absolutely wide open,” says Marcus. “There are a couple of Olympic champions there, Yun Sung-Bin of Korea, who won in PyeongChang, and Russian Aleksandr Tretyakov, who won in Sochi, two Latvian Brothers, Martins and Tomass Dukurs, one of whom has won silver at the last three Games, and there are multiple World Cup race winners – honestly this year many races might see up to 15 potential skeleton athletes on the podium. I’d like to put myself and Matt in the mix as well. This could all come down to a couple of 100ths of a second over four and a half minutes of racing.”

There are of course no medal guarantees, but the preparation has been immaculate. Good luck TeamGB! ■ • thebbsa.co.uk; teambath.com; teamgb.com Opposite page: Marcus Wyatt making sure his race start is a fast one

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THE

B R I S TO L MAGAZINE

Contact us:

As fate would have it

T

he other day I bumped into someone I hadn’t seen in almost a decade, probably since our daughters left primary school.

They had been, not best friends, but birthday-party friends.

Which meant this Dad – Justin – and I saw each other occasionally but always in memorable circumstances. One time I was supposed to collect a neighbour’s little boy along with the young Ms B, but, when we were due to leave, the boy retreated to the upper reaches of a vast play structure and refused to come down. He remained up there, defiantly resisting all entreaties, until someone hit on the idea of luring him down with a trail of chocolate raisins.

I’m not sure Justin witnessed that particular episode, but he definitely was there when the river boat hired by an unusually adventurous parent suffered a technical mishap on the way through Netham Lock, and we all had to be rescued.

“Remember that time we were shipwrecked?!” he said when we ran into each other in the park.

“How could I forget!” I responded, as I tried to recall who this beaming stranger was, and where or when we could possibly have been shipwrecked.

“That was definitely taking the whole birthday party thing a bit far,” he said helpfully. Perhaps sensing my continuing bewilderment he introduced himself and reminded me that our daughters had been great pals when they were eight. His daughter had enjoyed my ‘interesting macaroni’ he said. I could picture the child now. She had lent Ms B her Tamagotchi, I seemed to recall.

We compared notes about our families in the traditional, mildly competitive manner, and then I noticed that the dog had wandered off and was, as we talked, sneaking up on a man who was sat on a bench enjoying some kind of slice from Greggs. Indicating the disaster that was about to unfold, I made my excuses.

“That’s the thing about Bristol,” Justin called out as I hurried dog-wards.

“The past is never far away!”

He was right, of course. Compared to London, Bristol is so small that we’re always bumping into old acquaintances. It also seems to be the case that when you do run into a character from a previous period, or episode, in your life, you are almost guaranteed to see them again very soon afterwards. No doubt someone of a scientific bent would explain that, actually, you encounter people in this way all the time, but you only remember those you meet twice.

But explain this, Mr or Ms Scientist: how is it that, after I had snatched the questing snout of the slavering hound away from the man with the some-kind-of-slice from Greggs, I gave myself very good odds on seeing Justin again within a couple of days – and did exactly that. Once again I was walking the beast, and once again this Dad from long ago came loping along the path towards us. Once again he greeted us with a smile, although there was a shade less enthusiasm in his voice.

“Don’t worry,” he said, “I’m not stalking you!”

The story of the Tamagotchi had not ended well, I remembered vaguely as we parted for the second time, but it was Ms B herself who reminded me exactly what had happened. She had indeed borrowed the Tamagotchi, but someone – let’s just call him ‘the idiot’ – had confiscated the thing in the middle of the night, and somehow (not even the idiot can recall the exact circumstances) dropped it in the loo... Cue distraught daughters. Words exchanged by irate Dads. A planned camping trip cancelled. “They never forgave us!” Ms B cried gaily down the phone.

“Well, he didn’t mention it this time,” I said. “And now I won’t see him again for another ten years.”

“Sorry!” came the cheery response. “Meeting people like that always happens in threes - you wait!” ■

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Publisher Email:

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February Gift Guide Bristol.qxp_Layout 1 26/01/2022 15:06 Page 1

SHOPPING | ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE

Give a Little Love

Sweetheart, Valentine, friend or family – a carefully chosen token of your love and appreciation is a welcome gift at any time of year

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1. A classic gold heart diamond pendant designed by Clare Chandler. £211, available from cliftonrocks.co.uk 2. Chopard Happy Hearts silk and cashmere stole, £312, from mallory-jewellers.com 3. 9ct yellow gold Russian linked bangle, £1,500 from nicholaswylde.com 4. Lalique Anemone red crystal sculpture, £85, from mallory-jewellers.com 5. Art Deco solid 9ct gold heart locket, £345, Lillicoco, lillicoco.com 6. Diamond solitaire rings from £400, Kemps; kempsjewellers.com 7. Disa Allsopp organic diamond ring. 18ct yellow gold organic textured ring with ten white diamonds, £3,500, visit dianaporter.co.uk 8. Make heart shaped poached eggs (up to four at a time) in the microwave with this great poacher, £3.80 from thebigkitchen.co.uk 9. Fulton heart-shaped umbrella in red, £25 available from Johnlewis.com

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This page (clockwise from top left): Untitled 3 (from abortion series), Paula Rego 1999, courtesy of Paula Rego and Cristea Roberts Gallery, London © Paula Rego; Loving Bewick (from Jane Eyre series) Paula Rego 2001, courtesy of Paula Rego and Cristea Roberts Gallery, London © Paula Rego; Flood (from Pendle Witches series), Paula Rego 1996, courtesy of Paula Rego and Cristea Roberts Gallery, London © Paula Rego; Children and their Stories, Paula Rego 1989, courtesy Paula Rego and Cristea Roberts Gallery, London © Paula Rego Little Miss Muffet II (from Nursery Rhymes series), Paula Rego 1989, courtesy of Paula Rego and Cristea Roberts Gallery, London © Paula Rego.

Opposite page: Paula Rego © Nick Willing 2020; nickwilling.co.uk 20 THE BRISTOL MAGAZINE

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ART

Imaginative power This month, Arnolfini is exhibiting the works of two extraordinarily creative minds. Here, we take a closer look at the work of world-renowned artists Dame Paula Rego and Donna Huanca and discover the inspiration behind their phenomenal creations...

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suppose it wasn’t until we lost access to Bristol’s rich culture and flourishing arts scene that we realised just how lucky we were to have such an eclectic mix of innovative artists, writers and musicians on our doorstep. Since venues, galleries and art spaces reopened last year, we’ve been hanging on with white knuckles, appreciating them for all that they are, and all that they bring us.

This month, one gallery in particular has caught our eye as it prepares to dazzle with an endless supply of world-renowned talent. From 5 February, Arnolfini will be welcoming a host of phenomenal creatives to its gallery space. Among them will be Portuguese-British visual artist Dame Paula Rego and Bolivian-American artist Donna Huanca.

Rego – unarguably one of the most important figurative artists of her generation – returns to Arnolfini almost 40 years after her first exhibition at the gallery in 1983, creating an opportunity for a new generation of visitors to explore her subversive stories. Featuring over 70 prints from across her extensive career, the exhibition ventures inside the artist’s disquieting imagination in which she casts herself as a storyteller, interweaving her wit and dark humour into stories old and new. In Rego’s world, women are often repositioned as the protagonists and heroes as she reinterprets classic folk tales while instilling issues of gender, power, poverty and politics.

Equally as spectacular, Huanca presents a new and immersive sitespecific installation by performance, choreography, video and sensory interventions. Most remarkably, she will build her experiential

installations around the history and architecture of Arnolfini, enhancing the sensory elements of visitors’ interactions with scent and texture. At the very heart of her work is an exploration of the human body and its relationship to space and identity. The exhibition, CUEVA DE COPAL, will plunge the viewer into a cocoon-like space, encouraging them to separate their experience from the world around them.

Ahead of the openings this month, we had the pleasure of speaking to Donna Huanca, delving deeper into her extraordinary body of work, while simultaneously learning more about the life and career of Paula Rego.

PAULA REGO: TELLING TALES ON CANVAS Rego’s Subversive Stories exhibition, will be a chance to not only celebrate an artist of the highest calibre and study the meanings behind her paintings – many of which draw on nursery rhymes and fables – but to learn more about the narrative of her own life.

Rego recently recalled her fond memories of exhibiting at Arnolfini in 1983 and told the gallery that she was looking forward to showing her prints to Bristol audiences once again. “When the prints are shown well, their stories dominate,” she said. “I’m very interested to see how it all comes together.”

Rego was born in Lisbon in 1935 when the country was under the oppressive fascist regime of the Portuguese dictator António de Oliveira Salazar. It is said that the society in which she lived stoked her THEBRISTOLMAG.CO.UK

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need for freedom of speech in her art. From a young age, her work was often courageously political; consistently and defiantly addressing complex power dynamics in both personal, romantic relationships as well as in war and exile.

At the age of 16, she was sent to a finishing school in Kent. From there, she moved to London to study at the Slade School of Art, soon becoming an exhibiting member of the London Group, working alongside painters David Hockney and Frank Auerbach. In 1957, she returned to Portugal with her husband, the artist Victor Willing, and their three children, before finally settling back in the UK capital in 1963.

Rego came to prominence in Britain after her first major solo exhibition at the Air Gallery in 1981 and subsequently at the Serpentine Gallery in 1988, which saw her become the first National Gallery artist-in-residence in 1990.

Rego’s work ranges from painting, pastel, and prints to sculptural installations. Perhaps the most well-known of her collection is the Dog Woman series: large-scale pastels depicting women in dog-like positions, scavenging for food, sleeping and grooming. Addressing the series, she once said: “To be a dog woman is not necessarily to be downtrodden; that has very little to do with it. In these pictures every woman's a dog woman, not downtrodden, but powerful. To be bestial is good. It's physical. Eating, snarling, all activities to do with sensation are positive. To picture a woman as a dog is utterly believable."

An uncompromising artist of imaginative power, Rego’s influence has transcended the world of art and penetrated the cultural consciousness. In 2007, her abortion series, which depicts women in the aftermath of illegal abortions, was so powerful that it was credited with influencing the public to campaign for a second referendum, after which abortion was finally legalised in Portugal.

Today, Rego is internationally renowned as having revolutionised the way in which women are represented. She is one of only four painters to receive a damehood and is widely acknowledged as one of Portugal's leading artists. In fact, Rego is respected to such an extent 22 THE BRISTOL MAGAZINE

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that, in 2006, a museum was built in her honour: Casa das Histórias – the House of Stories, situated in Cascais, Portugal. It was designed entirely in keeping with her wishes, having indicated that it should be “fun, lively and also a bit mischievous.”

DONNA HUANCE: A SOLACE FROM EVERYDAY LIFE CUEVA DE COPAL will be Huanca’s first time exhibiting in the south west and we couldn’t wait to discover the inspiration behind her creations. “For this exhibition, I wanted to make a cave-like, hermetic space,” she tells us. “In my practice, I often explore cycles of light and dark, and the physical and emotional states that can be achieved through their interplay. For CUEVA DE COPAL, I embrace and experiment with darkness and I think it brings about a type of intimacy and solitude that opens up possibilities for reflection and meditation.

“I’m really excited for CUEVA DE COPAL to open. It has been such a special opportunity to think about the Arnolfini and its unique audience who will encounter this installation. After the last two years, I hope that this exhibition can provide a glitch to their everyday life.”

Huanca’s previous installations have seen her transform the Copenhagen Contemporary’s industrial space of the former B&W welding hall, the early 18th century palace of the Belvedere Museum in Vienna and the high desert landscape surrounding the Ballroom Marfa in Texas. Well-known for working primarily with nude bodies, she draws particular attention to the skin as a complex surface via which we experience the world around us. By exposing the naked body, while at the same time concealing it beneath layers of paint, cosmetics and latex, Huanca and her performers urge the viewer to confront their own instinctive response to the human form.

CUEVA DE COPAL, however, will see the artist move away from using the live body as a key element and produce new pieces through ideas first seen in the reflective sculptures at Ballroom Marfa. Huanca will incorporate mirrored and metallic surfaces, inviting audiences to view their own reflection alongside glimpses of body, skin and human

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form in her monumental and multi-panelled paintings. She will immerse her audiences in intimate moments, encouraging them to explore their own body in relation to perceptions of space and time.

“The mirrored surfaces offer multiple perspectives and portals into the exhibition,” she says. “They work to destabilize the audience by augmenting their sense of sight. The viewer is also incorporated into the landscape, lending their body and movement to the exhibition.”

Born to Bolivian parents but raised in Chicago, Huanca graduated in Fine Art at the University of Houston, in 2004, before going on to study at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine and at Städelschule, a renowned art school in Frankfurt. Huanca has exhibited widely including at solo exhibitions in Los Angeles, Shanghai, London and New York. She is a recipient of the Hirshhorn Artist Award, Fulbright Scholarship, DAAD Artist Grant and the Francis Greenberg Award, to name but a few. Throughout her career, she has extensively explored the human body, which, she says rather profoundly, has taught her that “everything is temporary”.

“This is something that I pursue in my practice,” she explains.

“These cycles of regeneration and decay. CUEVA DE COPAL is meant to be an intimate encounter with oneself – to be a solace from everyday life and provide a space for privacy and contemplation.”

A space that we are very much looking forward to exploring. It is truly remarkable to see such outstanding artistic talent arrive in the city this month. We have been granted with the opportunity to admire both Rego and Huanca’s world-class art in one fell swoop at Arnolfini – how lucky we are.

• Donna Huanca: CUEVA DE COPAL and Paula Rego: Subversive Stories will be at the Arnolfini from 5 February to 29 May; arnolfini.org.uk This page and opposite: Paintings featured in CUEVA DE COPAL, courtesy of Peres Projects, Berlin; portrait of Donna Huanca, photograph by Tobias Willmann.

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Mark Rylance as Ignaz Semmelweis and Thalissa Teixeira as Maria Semmelweis

Masterful storytelling After almost two years in the making, the powerful world premiere production of Dr Semmelweis has finally made it to the stage at Bristol Old Vic, immortalising the lives of everyone involved in a journey of discovery. To find out more, we chat to the production’s narrator, Maria Semmelweis, played by the abundantly talented Thalissa Teixeira...

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f you haven’t heard by now, world-renowned actor, playwright and theatre director Sir Mark Rylance has teamed up with fellow writer Stephen Brown (Occupational Hazards) and artistic director of Bristol Old Vic, Tom Morris OBE (War Horse, Touching the Void), to tell the story of Dr Ignaz Semmelweis – a 19th century Hungarian physician who discovered the cause of puerperal ‘childbed’ fever and introduced antiseptic procedures into medical practice.

His discovery at the time, however, although blindingly obvious to us in 2022, especially as we come through a global pandemic, was

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fiercely rejected by medical professionals who refused to believe that their unwashed hands had been the prime cause of thousands of deaths. Pushed aside and labelled as a radical, controversial practitioner, the traduced genius spent the rest of his life haunted by the faces of those who had needlessly suffered, and tortured by the fact that many more were still dying despite his findings. Driven to an eventual breakdown, he died a pariah at the tender age of 47 in an asylum. For decades, his life’s work lay buried in the annals of history.

Although Semmelweis is now very much celebrated as ‘the father of hand hygiene’ – and the recent world-altering events have given

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“I suppose you could say that this is just a play about the discovery of handwashing,” she begins. “But actually there are so many questions in there. We’ve had a lot of conversations about if it was a rich, upper class sector of Vienna, would they have come up with a solution a lot sooner. Unfortunately, we had to do a lot of shifting when the pandemic happened – we couldn’t end it with ‘oh hurrah, this one guy has come up with a really positive thing andyou wash your hands and everything’s fine’, it’s actually about addressing the class system, what’s going on with race and who suffers the most when the NHS funding gets cut. I think the play isn’t about saying ‘all these women are dying, we had no idea’ – they had the figures – it was just about who was bothered to do something about it and what price did they have to pay to make those advancements. It is, of course, celebratory – it’s an amazing discovery – but the societal issues have made such small advancements. The play is about science versus care, home versus discovery, and who gets left behind along the way.”

You can’t just be – as Mark [Rylance] says, using

All photos by Geraint Lewis

a great metaphor – fed with a knife, you’ve got

currency to his name once again – it is thanks to Rylance, Brown and Morris that not only his life but those of his wife and allies are immortalised in performance, all of whom have purpose, point, and place in this narrative. What’s more, through their stories, issues of class, race and gender discrimination are addressed and explored. It’s been 175 years since Semmelweis first mandated hand-washing across his department in one of Vienna’s free institutions for underprivileged women – and science has made huge advancements since – but sadly, as we live through another worldwide health crisis, the same inhumanity and lack of care for certain groups of people remain evident. As we come to learn, the creators of Dr Semmelweis were not willing to let such observations go unheeded.

Eager to discover more about Semmelweis’s extraordinary life, we thought it fitting to speak to the person in charge of guiding the production’s narrative – his wife, Maria – played by the incredibly talented Thalissa Teixeira (Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, The Musketeers, We Met Before). As Thalissa takes a mid-morning break from rehearsals, she sits down with us, her voice echoing around the great hall of the Bristol Old Vic, and lets us in on a play to remember.

to use a spoon and a fork to gently bring information to people’s mouths otherwise it’s going to be rejected

Dr Semmelweis is set over one night in Vienna in the year 1860, five years before his death. He has been shunned by the profession and is clearly struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder. Maria is pregnant with the first of her five children, which stirs Semmelweis’s memories of the women who died in childbirth. It should be said at this point that Semmelweis, although intrinsic to the nascent growth of evidence-based medicine, certainly played a part in his own downfall. Outspoken, angry, violent, impatient – he was by no means a knight in shining armour destroyed by a cruel fate.

“Maria is the storyteller,” Thalissa explains. “She reminds Semmelweis about what comes next as he remembers his days as a young doctor. It’s interesting because you end the first half of the play thinking, well what possibly could go wrong?! But then the second half of the play really points out how information needs to be fed. You can’t just be – as Mark [Rylance] says, using a great metaphor – fed with a knife, you’ve got to use a spoon and a fork to gently bring information to people’s mouths otherwise it’s going to be rejected. Semmelweis was really young, he was a student when he made the discovery and he was putting the blame on doctors, saying they were murderers, which people didn’t want to hear for obvious reasons.”

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“A group of dancers – choreographed by Antonia Franceschi – perform with such incredible movement.

We’ve given these women a voice through dance and their performance is very visceral,” says Thalissa

Below: A photograph of Dr Semmelweis taken in the year 1864, one year before his death

Image source: József Antall, Géza Szebellédy (1973) Aus den Jahrhunderten der Heilkunde, Budapest: Corvina Verlag p19

“THRUMMING WITH CREATIVE ENERGY” Music and dance play a major role in Dr Semmelweis. Creatively and compassionately, the ghosts of the women who died in Semmelweis’s care are brought to life with the help of the prizewinning multinational ensemble, Salomé Quartet, playing Schubert’s string piece, Death and the Maiden. For Thalissa, it was these different mediums of storytelling that attracted her to the role.

“We’ve got the Salomé Quartet in the room with us every day playing live music, which means I don’t have to do much acting because it’s already so emotional,” she says with a laugh. “Then a group of dancers – choreographed by Antonia Franceschi – perform with such incredible movement. We’ve given these women a voice through dance and their performance is very visceral.”

The cast and crew of Dr Semmelweis is filled to the brim with

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The cast and crew of Dr Semmelweis is filled to the brim with extraordinary talent... the auditorium is unequivocally thrumming with creative energy

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extraordinary talent. From the creators, to the actors Jackie Clune (Too Close, The Bill), Felix Hayes (A Monster Calls), Alan Williams (The Cockroach that Ate Cincinnati, Father Brown, Chernobyl), to the Tony Award-winning theatre designer Ti Green and the Olivier Award-winning composer Adrian Sutton, the auditorium is unequivocally thrumming with creative energy.

“I felt like I needed a masterclass after very little stage work because of the pandemic and I feel like I got the crème de la crème,” says Thalissa. “Mark is also such a giving performer. He’s so gentle and so open to discussion and to change – it feels like such a collaborative room. He said at the start, at any moment if you want to change phrases or you’ve got an impulse to say something else, let’s say them out loud – and the script has changed and moulded because of that. It really feels like ours now. Mark is light, he’s a

work of art, he’s brilliant to watch.” As for bringing the world premiere to the Bristol Old Vic, Thalissa and Mark, both making their debut appearances, agree they “couldn’t think of a better theatre to do this”.

A year and a half on from its original dates, Dr Semmelweis has made it to the stage. It’s brilliant to see so many of British theatre’s living legends come together to tell such an important story but, more than that, it’s joyous to be back in the theatre, in pursuit of inspiration, and to find it in hatfuls. As Thalissa puts it so well: “Storytelling is a passing energy. It’s all about listening, receiving and passing on – it’s vital to who we are.”

• bristololdvic.org.uk

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LOCAL EVENTS

WHAT’S ON IN FEBRUARY Bedminster Winter Lantern Parade

Waitress at The Bristol Hippodrome

Photograph by Chris Dean

Bristol College of Massage and Bodywork n Throughout February Bristol College of Massage and Bodywork offers high quality training in the heart of Clifton. Founded in 1986, it runs a variety of different courses including monthly holistic massage introductions for beginners and professional training in holistic, remedial and sports massage and Indian head massage. Qualified therapists can also join Continuing Professional Development (CPD) workshops and a low cost graduate massage clinic every Thursday. bristolmassage.co.uk

spread over all five floors of the Bristol Beacon Foyer building. Almost 100 stalls, dealers from across the UK, all genres and era's of vinyl, with a few CD dealers thrown in. Free entry all day 10am to 4pm. swrecordfairs.co.uk Bristol Palestine Film Festival: Liwan n 6 February, St George’s Bristol For the first time, the Bristol Palestine Film Festival is putting on an event outside of its usual festival dates in December. The evening will include two insightful short films focusing on cultural resistance in Palestine and a panel discussion. Liwan is an uplifting story about the struggle to establish a cultural café in Nazareth promoting Palestinian culture and driving a rejuvenation of the old city. bristolpff.org.uk

Winter Stargazing n Throughout February, We The Curious With shorter days and clear nights, winter can be the best time of year to look up at the night sky. We The Curious is running winter stargazing shows in its 3D digital planetarium. Discover famous constellations, unveil the secret lives of stars, and learn the fate of planet Earth. wethecurious.org

Bristol Bridge Club: Beginners’ Lessons n Starting 8 February, Oldfield Road Bristol Bridge Club is back welcoming members and guests to its premises on Oldfield Road. The club is running beginner lessons on Tuesday mornings and/or evenings. The course costs £90 for ten lessons, which will include a BFA Beginning Bridge book. Alternatively, members can pay £8 a lesson. For more information, contact Sue at: teaching@bristolbridgeclub.co.uk

Lunar New Year Dinner n 4 February, Harvey Nichols Bristol Celebrate Lunar New Year and enjoy a traditional menu with a Second Floor twist.

Enjoy a Year of the Tiger cocktail, followed by a starter and main course.Specialising in French-style pastries with Asian flavour, Bath-based patisserie Sugarcane Studio will end the evening in style with a unique Chinese New Year dessert. harveynichols.com

Waitress n 8–12 February, The Bristol Hippodrome Meet Jenna, a waitress and expert pie-maker who dreams of some happiness in her life.

When a hot new doctor arrives in town, life gets complicated. With the support of her workmates Becky and Dawn, Jenna overcomes the challenges she faces and finds

South West Record Fairs n 5 February, Bristol Beacon The biggest Record Fair in the south west, 28 THE BRISTOL MAGAZINE

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that laughter, love and friendship can provide the perfect recipe for happiness. atgtickets.com Kendal Mountain Tour: Bristol n 11 February, Tobacco Factory An evening of film and talks celebrating adventure from some of the most spectacular places on earth, brought to you by the team behind Kendal Mountain Festival. You'll be guided through a curation of stories from across the globe, told by a unique collection of films from travellers, athletes, activists and creatives. Kendal Mountain Festival is the ultimate social gathering for outdoor enthusiasts – with a world-class programme of films and talks from international adventurers taking place on the edge of the Lake District each year. tobaccofactorytheatres.com Exultate Singers – Saxultate II n 12 February, St George’s Bristol Exultate Singers is joined by the internationally-renowned Australian saxophonist Amy Dickson for a concert of spellbinding music for choir and saxophone.

The rhythmical and virtuosic pieces feature exciting interplay between choir and saxophone, including arrangements of folk songs from around the British Isles in which the saxophone soars over the choir's beautiful melodies and sumptuous harmonies. stgeorgesbristol.co.uk Bedminster Winter Lantern Parade n 12 February, BS3 Bedminster Winter Lantern Parade is the largest community project in south Bristol, celebrating the creativity, inclusivity and the wonderful spirit of BS3. On 12 February,

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Eleanor Alberga OBE

Ciaran Corsar and Amy Tanner in Decadence, directed by Joanne Butler

poems can be tender, riotous, caustic and romantic and he delivers them with the ferocity and panache of a raconteur at the top of his game. Now Luke is preparing for an extensive tour the UK in 2022 with an all new show of poems. Appearing at Bristol Folk House on 18 February, grab your tickets at: bristolfolkhouse.co.uk

just after darkness falls, organisers will be hosting the 10th annual parade, which will see local schools, businesses, residents and community centres parade their colourful lanterns from Ashton Gate to Bedminster along North Street and British Road. As music plays, dancers entertain and paraders soak up the good vibes, spectators from Bristol and beyond are invited to join the festivities. lanternparade.org

The Stranglers n 21 February, 02 Academy Bristol One of the UK’s most exciting, credible and influential British groups, The Stranglers, are set for an extensive, full production tour – the last time they play together in this format.

Coming to O2 Academy Bristol on 21 February and covering tracks from their mighty, 45-year catalogue, fans can expect to hear all the classics and get the full rock ‘n’

Bristol Ensemble – Romantic Rhapsody n 14 February, St George’s Bristol Allow yourself to be swept off your feet for an evening of passion and drama from the world of classical and film music. Promising to be a Valentine's Day to remember, this concert is packed with ravishing melodies, poignant songs and heartrending music from some of the world's favourite romantic composers. stgeorgesbristol.co.uk Nubiyan Twist n 15 February, The Marble Factory Nubiyan Twist craft, led by multiinstrumentalist and producer Tom Excell, the nine-strong London-based collective of musicians offer a combined powerhouse of talent and musicianship.

Earlier this year they released their acclaimed new album Freedom Fables. The record continues the group’s collaborative essence featuring guest appearances from the likes of Ego Ella May, K.O.G. and Cherise. bristolbeacon.org

LOOKING AHEAD Misplaced Theatre presents: Decadence n 1–5 March, The Alma Tavern & Theatre In Decadence, a terrifying light is brutally shone on the excesses of the ‘80s and all that decade offered and took away. Steven Berkoff's searing indictment of the moneyed classes is brought gloriously and grotesquely back to the modern stage by theatre company Misplaced.

How much has really changed? Are we a classless society? Can we build better?

Penguin suits and Mouton Rothschild Champagne collide with fake furs and powdered glass in gin. Absurd, horrifying and obscene in equal measures, watch Berkoff's characters immerse themselves in ridiculous pursuits of pleasure and revenge

Luke Wright n 18 February, Bristol Folk House Whether he’s playing master of ceremonies at a Libertines show in front of 5,000 screaming rock fans or reciting Georgian ballads down your local, Luke Wright is adept at taking poetry to places it doesn’t normally go. His

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roll experience for one final time. Tour support comes from Ruts DC. academymusicgroup.com Aled Jones MBE n 24 February, Bristol Cathedral Aled Jones MBE, one of the classical world's vocal powerhouses, has announced a very special tour for February and March 2022, as he brings his unique concert of music and stories to cathedrals and churches around the UK. Aled will be appearing at Bristol Cathedral on 24 February and will be singing songs from a range of different faiths - Quaker, Christian, Catholic, Muslim and Buddhism - including uplifting hymns, texts and scriptures set to music. bristolcathedral.co.uk

while morality and compassion are nowhere to be seen. thealmatavernandtheatre.co.uk Strata: A World Premiere n 5 March, St George’s Bristol On 5 March, in celebration of International Women’s Day, Brandon Hill Chamber Orchestra – one of the finest non-professional orchestras in England – will be playing a major new symphony by the eminent composer, Eleanor Alberga OBE. The piece, titled Strata, is a joint commission between The Meadows Orchestra based in Edinburgh and the BHCO. Strata is a musical telling of the geological history of our world. It invites listeners to travel to the very dawn of time, when mysterious and colossal forces were forging planet Earth. stgeorgesbristol.co.uk

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Saturday March 26th 7.30 • Bristol Cathedral www.3choirs.org/whats-on/bcs-mozart-treasures or call the ticket office 01452 768 928

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CITY LIFE

Intrinsic to life

Bristol’s live music venue, Exchange, has recently launched a new befriending service, aiming to make the city’s rich calendar of events accessible to everyone. Here, manager Iwan Best sits down to talk the arts: intrinsic to life and liberty

Exchange manager, Iwan Best

they are combatting loneliness as we enter the third year of the pandemic, and how useful it can be having big-name talent tweet about a local fundraiser.

Gig Buddies Bristol

A

befriending project like no other, Gig Buddies is a driving force for change, tackling loneliness and social isolation while simultaneously reinforcing the message that the arts are an instinctive essential of our humanity – and access to them is a birthright not a luxury.

The brain child of Paul Richards – founder of Brighton-based charity Stay Up Late – Gig Buddies has been enabling people from across the country with learning disabilities and/or autism to have people in their lives who aren’t just paid to be there. Paul was finding that many people were not able to lead full and active social lives due to their support workers finishing at 10pm, meaning they were often having to leave gigs early. He wanted to ensure that person-centred planning truly reflected what an individual wanted to do in their life. Since 2013, Gig Buddies has been matching people with volunteers who share similar interests in music, helping them form meaningful relationships, build confidence and lead a life powered by their own passions.

Bristol is now the 12th UK city to take on the project, launching at the community-owned live music venue, Exchange. As the only grassroots venue in the south of England with a Silver Award on Attitude Is Everything’s Grassroots Charter – a service that improves deaf and disabled people’s access to live music – Exchange could not be a better place for the project to grow. With Bristol local and IDLES bassist, Adam ‘Dev’ Devonshire, also heavily involved as patron, we were eager to discover how the team were planning to help people in the city. This month, Exchange’s manager, Iwan Best, sat down with us to explain how they are trying to make Bristol’s supremely diverse arts and culture scene accessible to everyone, how 34 THE BRISTOL MAGAZINE

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Bristol is home to an abundance of celebrated art galleries, internationally renowned theatres and buzzing music venues as well as victorious sports teams and award-winning comedy clubs. With such a rich calendar of events on offer, the Bristol project will connect people who not only have similar interests in music but also have a love for theatre, a passion for sport and an appreciation for art.

“Being in Bristol, there’s such a broad range of events, we wanted to open it up,” Iwan tells us. “We’ve had a few people that just want to go and watch a game with someone and it seemed quite counter to what the project is about to say no, so we’ve already got a few people paired up to go and watch the Bristol Bears and the football.”

Volunteers are matched to one Gig Buddy with whom they will attend events in and around Bristol. Volunteers are expected to commit to at least one event per month with their Gig Buddy, and to meet once a month for a coffee to plan their event. Once volunteers have applied, they will be set up on the DBS system before attending an interview. Successful applicants will then be invited to a training day where, as Iwan perfectly sums it up, they will learn how to be a good friend.

“It’s a day’s training because it’s really important that the volunteers aren’t there to offer primary care – it’s a befriending project for vulnerable adults, they’re not there to offer medical help but nonetheless the training has a lot of information about safeguarding, emergency procedures, and how to look out for the tell-tale signs that there might be a problem,” he says.

“There’s also a lot about managing expectations because we find that people are keen to go out every week once they’ve got someone to go with. It should be fun – the whole point is that you’re going to the events that you would go to anyway and you make a new friend. The training also helps people to understand what it might be like to be neurodivergent or autistic, and thinking: alright this person might love metal but they might not love AC/DC or Guns N’ Roses because they haven’t had a social circle that has given them the opportunity to find out more. What could be a good thing to do is make a Spotify playlist with all the metal bands that are coming through Bristol in the next few months so they can find some new things.”

Bristol Gig Buddies Callum McLellan (left) and Brian Wilcox (right) enjoying their first gig together at The Fleece

All images courtesy of Exchange

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Exchange patron and IDLES bassist, Adam ‘Dev’ Devonshire has been fundamental to the launch of Gig Buddies

Exchange’s former bar manager turned patron, Dev, has been fundamental to the launch of the Bristol project. In June 2021, while Covid restrictions were keeping venue doors firmly fixed, he organised an online gig, inviting a whole host of musicians and comedians to the empty stages of Exchange. On the bill was Mclusky, Willie J Healey, Fenne Lily, TV Priest, Dogeyed and Wilderman as well as comedians Stewart Lee, Seann Walsh and Josh Weller. Alongside the evening’s entertainment was a raffle, which saw an outrageous list of prizes up for grabs. Rare pieces of signed merchandise from Frank Turner, Laura Marling, Florence Welch, The Staves, Fontaines DC and The National, to name just a few, were being given out at a fraction of the cost.

News of the event made its way around the social media universe in no time at all and was even picked up by rock band Radiohead, who directly tweeted it out to millions of their followers, creating quite the buzz. “Dev’s been critical to the whole thing – I don’t think Radiohead would have got involved if I’d have asked,” jokes Iwan. “Stay Up Late has actually had people get in touch from places like Philadelphia and Los Angeles because our fundraiser got so much press.”

Dev – a loyal support of the project since its early days in Sussex – said: “After witnessing first-hand what vital and wonderful work Gig Buddies do, it has been an honour and a privilege for me to be working with them and to help raise awareness of the wonderful service that they provide. Music and live events provide us all with so much happiness and catharsis, everyone deserves to have that joy in their lives.”

Bristol Gig Buddies Brian Wilcox, a carpenter, and Callum McLellan, who has Down’s Syndrome, have already been enjoying the fruits of Exchange’s labour. Their first outing was to see British Lion at The Fleece, featuring the guitarist from Callum's favourite band, Iron Maiden. Brian told BBC Bristol: “I was looking for something to do to give a little bit back. It appealed to me; I like music and I wanted to help people. It’s been really nice meeting

Callum and I can see the enjoyment he’s getting from it already.”

Championing accessibility By no means does Exchange’s trailblazing start and stop with Gig Buddies. The team made accessibility their standard, not their goal many years ago. Exchange’s website clearly states: “We should all be fighting the idea that access to events is a privilege that should only be afforded to some. We want to make events in Bristol more than accessible, we want to make them welcoming.” Along with Gig Buddies, Exchange has recently launched a Go Gentle series of relaxed shows, which feature both touring bands and local performers. The gigs – which are designed for people who will benefit from a more relaxed environment including people with autism, sensory or communication disorders, a learning disability, those with age-related impairments and parents/carers with babies or young children – will be cosy with reduced capacity to make them inclusive to everyone.

“We’ve been working really hard on this,” says Iwan. “We’re trying to do things in interesting ways. Something that we want to do next is have audio versions of gig listings, asking different musicians to do it every month. Dev is going to do the first one then we’ll get some more Bristolian musicians involved.”

With several buddies already paired up, the team are constantly on the look-out for music fans, theatre lovers and sports fanatics to get involved in the project. The team are hoping to match at least 30 buddies within its first year and, all being well, they hope to one day hire neurodiverse and autistic people to help run the scheme.

Ultimately, this space, without any shadow of a doubt, is one brimming with the potential to change lives, and it’s a pleasure to see. ■ • Find out more about Gig Buddies via Exchange’s website: exchangebristol.com; 72, 73 Old Market Street, Bristol BS2 0EJ THEBRISTOLMAG.CO.UK

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EXHIBITIONS

STATE OF THE ART

February Tones, Clifton Contemporary, 1 – 25 February Work by gallery artists including Masako Tobita and Robert Jones. Far from colourless, the rich earthy tones, restless skies and skeletal trees of February reflect the raw beauty of late winter, when nature is on the cusp of spring.

From 1 – 25 February, the gallery will be showing a range of work by artists who really understand and harness this invigorating rawness. Through the beautifully observed paintings of Tony Scrivener, Parastoo Ganjei, Robert Jones, Masako Tobita and others, you can feel a latent world beginning to stir once more.

• cliftoncontemporaryart.co.uk Image: Snowdrops by Tony Scrivener

Polly Braden: Holding the Baby, Arnolfini, 19 February to 12 June Polly Braden presents Holding the Baby, an exhibition of new photography that creates a powerful and moving portrait of the impact of austerity measures on families across the UK. Braden’s participatory project, which began life at the Museum of the Home, features families from Bristol, London and Liverpool, including photographic portraits and narrated stories, highlighting the lived experience, strength, and resilience of single parents.

Inspired and provoked by a United Nations report which stated that single parents have been hardest hit by UK austerity measures, Braden’s collaborative photographs – some taken during lockdown by the parents themselves – capture the families’ sense of adventure, optimism, creativity and ambition, that transcends the often difficult situations they face.

Accompanied by excerpts from conversations between the families and journalist Sally Williams, and reflections on the idea of ‘home’ drawn together by writer Claire-Louise Bennett, Braden captures individual’s stories, highlighting the universality of their lives.

• arnolfini.org.uk Image: Barbeline and Elijah, Holding the Baby, London 2021, Polly Braden

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From the Mountains to the Sea, Lime Tree Gallery, 10 February – 10 March Lime Tree Gallery’s latest exhibition includes a mix of beautiful landscape and seascape paintings across a variety of media. Some of the highlights include a new series of arresting acrylic paintings by Welsh artist Sian McGill; powerful Scottish scenes by Zanna Wilson, Alexander Robb and Marion Thomson; skilful egg tempera works by Andrew Scott George; and Northumberland landscapes in oil by Robert Newton. Artist Ulla Ohlson has also contributed abstract unframed lithographs of Swedish landscapes.

• limetreegallery.com Image: Caerfai by Sian McGill

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EXHIBITIONS

A Lifelong Passion for Design: Ken Stradling at 100, 12 February - 7 May This exhibition will be the first time the gallery tells the full story of Ken Stradling's extraordinary life through his amazing collection of 20th Century design. The gallery is the product of sixty years spent transforming a small craft shop into the cultural icon that is the Bristol Guild. Sparkling colour from the 60s, witty statements about art and life, the gorgeous earthy textures of craft pottery, this exhibition is a wonderful mixture of the elegant one-off art piece and the everyday and ordinary, picked out and given value by Ken. Craft ceramics and glass from people who became his friends accompany high quality furniture, glass imported through visits to Scandinavia, quirky toys and playful pieces, which caught his fancy.

• stradlingcollection.org

Wildlife Photographer of the Year, M Shed, throughout February On loan from the Natural History Museum in London, Wildlife Photographer of the Year – the most prestigious photography event of its kind – showcases exceptional images of animal behaviour, spectacular species, and the breath-taking diversity of the natural world. This year’s competition saw a record-breaking number of entries from professional and amateur photographers from 95 countries.

Each entry was judged anonymously on its creativity, originality, and technical excellence by an international panel of industry experts. The exhibition will be on display at M Shed until 5 June before embarking on an international tour.

• Wildlife Photographer of the Year is developed and produced by the Natural History Museum, London; bristolmuseums.org.uk Image: High-flying jay by Lasse Kurkela, Finland, Winner, 15-17 Years; Lasse Kurkela/Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Image: Ken Stradling

Grayson’s Art Club, Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, until 4 September During lockdown, Grayson Perry – one of Britain’s leading artists – helped the nation find comfort and company through art in his critically acclaimed Channel 4 series, Grayson’s Art Club. Each week on Zoom, Grayson and his wife, Philippa, spoke to famous artists and creatives about how they were spending their time and invited them to respond creatively to lockdown. Alongside artists, the couple asked celebrity guests including Boy George, Derren Brown, Johnny Vegas and Alex Horne to create brand new works of art in response to Grayson’s weekly themes – family, nature, food, dreams, work, and travel. The public were also invited to share their works and over 17,000 entries were submitted throughout the series in a vast range of mediums – from paintings and photography, to ceramics and textiles.

Now, after a successful two series of the programme, an exhibition of the work has gone on display at the Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, where they will stay until 4 September 2022.

Spread across three floors, the exhibition is a vibrant and poignant chronicle of lockdown and forms a lasting artistic record of the unique time the nation has lived through together. As well as three galleries to explore, works are interspersed within the permanent collection to create a trail throughout the museum.

• bristolmuseums.org.uk Image: Artwork by illusionist Derren Brown

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From the Mountains to the Sea: February 10 - March 10 A mixed exhibition of beautiful landscape and seascape paintings across a variety of media

Lime Tree Gallery, 84 Hotwell Road, Bristol BS8 4UB • Tel 0117 929 2527 • www.limetreegallery.com

February Tones Work by gallery artists including Masako Tobita and Robert Jones

www.cliftoncontemporaryart.co.uk • info@cliftoncontemporaryart.co.uk 0117 3179713 • Tuesday - Saturday 10 - 5 • 25 Portland Street • Clifton • Bristol BS8 4JB THEBRISTOLMAG.CO.UK

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COLUMN | CHRIS YEO ON ANTIQUES

Expert opinion ...From Chris Yeo, valuer at Clevedon Salerooms, and regular expert on BBC Antiques Roadshow

Chinese Whispers

H

ave you ever come across something that’s so good it literally stops you in your tracks, makes your heart jump for joy and your fingertips tingle?

Recently I came discovered an interior that did all of that and more: a riotous assembly of fiery dragons, bamboo stalks, pagodas and mythical beasts presided over by near life size figures in Chinese imperial robes.

Although worthy of the Forbidden City, this fantastical vision was less than half an hour’s drive from the centre of Bristol. Welcome to the extraordinary world of chinoiserie.

Anyone who spends time with antiques quickly realises that decorative styles are rather like people. There are the brash, in your face sorts (Art Deco), the ever so serious, couldn’t smile for fear of their face cracking sorts (Georgian), and then there are the exuberant, life and soul of the party sorts. Chinoiserie is most definitely in this last category.

Taking its name from chinois the French for Chinese, chinoiserie was a fantasy vision of China and the East that boomed in the 18th and early 19th centuries. As a decorative style, it influenced just about everything – from tea pots to garden pavilions.

For Europeans, the 4,000-year-old civilisation of China had for centuries been shrouded in mystery. As trade routes gradually opened up, Chinese porcelain, silk and lacquerware began to trickle into the West and instantly became the height of fashion. Everything that found its way out of China from blue-and-white vases to tea leaves was highly prized and the demand for Chinese goods reached fever pitch. Savvy home grown artisans looked to cash-in on the demand but because no clear vision of the country was available, designers came up with their own, highly fanciful, interpretations of Chinese art and chinoiserie was born.

Images courtesy of the Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove Asset Bank

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The most important thing to remember about chinoiserie is that it’s about as authentically Asian as a packet of supermarket prawn crackers. Think of it as a Disneyland version of how the West liked to imagine China - light on academic rigour and heavy on stereotypes. Its practitioners never visited China – they just let their imagination flow.

In the right hands the results are joyous and dazzling, but the complexity and sophistication of true Chinese art are noticeably absent.

A few critical eyebrows were raised at the time and some still are.

Chinoiserie’s popularity hit its stride in the middle decades of the 18th century – offering an escape from chilly Georgian formality – and then went into decline as the smart money turned to our own native Gothic (or Gothick) for light relief. It boomeranged back into fashion at the start of the following century, largely as a result of George IV choosing it as the fancy dress for his seaside retreat in Brighton – the Royal Pavilion. This spectacular – some might say monstrous - palace, just a pebble’s throw from the seafront, is the most spectacular example of chinoiserie style anywhere in the world.

As Kings go, Georgy Porgey has an extremely bad rep (according to a recent survey to find Britain’s least popular sovereign even history’s favourite bogey man, Richard III, is thought of more highly) but no monarch has had a sharper eye for works of art.

Brighton was chinoiserie’s last great hurrah. Shortly after the political relationship between East and West worsened and the spell was broken. But while styles fall out of fashion, rarely do they completely die. Today chinoiserie is again finding renewed life amongst the Instagram generation and this most intriguing of styles continues to inspire designers and decorators. The spirit of chinoiserie not only survives in the 21st century, but thrives. ■ • clevedonsalerooms.com; @chrisyeo_antiques (Instagram)

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MUSIC

Creative collaborations After much anticipation, the locally filmed BBC One psychological thriller, Chloe, is coming to our screens on 6 February. Maintaining the city links, Bristol-born Will Gregory (Goldfrapp) has collaborated with Portishead’s Adrian Utley to produce an outstanding original score.

Melissa Blease discovers more...

“

W

here am I at, in my life? There's been quite a lot of it so far, I suppose; it tends to get filled up.” Filled up? Musician Will Gregory is, it seems, a master of the understatement. Goldfrapp, film soundtracks and operas. Collaborations with Tears for Fears, Peter Gabriel, The Cure, Portishead and Michael Nyman. Scores for BBC TV's Serengeti and the National Theatre of Scotland's James III trilogy; his very own, highly-acclaimed Moog Ensemble; the well-worthy recipient of an Ivor Novello Inspiration Award... and, coming soon to a small screen near you, Alice Seabright's six-part psychological thriller, Chloe: a BBC One and Amazon Prime production, filmed in Bristol, premiering this month, and featuring a Bristol-centric sound track led by Will himself.

But before we talk all things Chloe-related, I have to ask: where did that filled-up life start filling up?

Having grown up in London, Will moved to Bristol in his late teens, and lived here throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. But long before his Bristol years, he was already writing the score for his future.

“I played the piano up until I was around 11 or 12, then I started playing the oboe,” says Will. The oboe! Crikey. “But at the same time, I listened to a lot of commercial music – I loved the Beatles, and I remember getting really excited the first time I heard jazz, and then World Music. As a youngster I was in orchestras, which was a bit like being in the army: in an orchestra, you just follow orders. I think there's a particular type of person who does that brilliantly, but I don't think it's me. So I took up the saxophone when I was at college, and started to rebel against the whole orchestra 'thing'. At the time, everybody from The Specials to Spandau Ballet seemed to have a sax player in their band – it was kind of endemic, so it turned out that I'd got in at the right time.”

As it turned out, Will got into living in Bristol at the right time too.

“Moving to a city where people were just making music on the spot was a very liberating experience, for me – and such a different culture,” he recalls. “There was no kind of top-down musical direction because there were no music colleges in Bristol, and no orchestra to join, so a lot of the people who made music did it based on a kind of received music education, which I think Bristol both suffered and gained from, the gain being that the city's musicality flourished in a kind of unguided way, and created some of the most amazing sounds. But it was a shame for the people who wanted a bit of input and guidance, and wanted to know how to play their instruments properly. I felt that I really benefitted from hitting the scene already knowing how to read music; if someone said they needed a brass arrangement, I could do that, and that formal musical literacy proved to be really useful.”

And Will had great fun being 'useful'. “After living in London where just keeping a roof over your head and and keeping yourself fed meant that you didn't have room for anything creative, Bristol was a great city to be unemployed in,” he says. “You could walk around everywhere, and go to Dot's Cafe and have a 3-course meal for a couple of quid. And of course, it had a music scene that I became a small, outlandish part of, which was all very exciting. The bands that immediately spring to mind are Rip, Rig and Panic, and Pigbag – I knew some of those guys, and played quite a bit with them. And then I got friendly with a lovely guy called Pete Brandt, and we had a group called Loggerheads – that was really good fun.

We used to rehearse at the Startled Insects rehearsal studio in Redland Road, where everyone used to hang out. It was a kind of permanent party, really; it felt like there was a culture of people just having a great time doing creative things. It was the era of The Young Ones, and everyone was living in a squat, and we were all poor, and times were tough, but really good. Today, it's as though everybody – young people in particular – is trying to get on to some kind of lifestyle ladder that simply wasn't there then... if indeed, it's really there now? I was definitely lucky to spend so much of my formative years in that kind of collaborative environment.”

Establishing fruitful creative collaborations turned out to be something of a recurring theme for Will, throughout his career – and, given what he's already shared with us about both his back story and his own creative processes, it comes as no surprise to learn why Chloe held such appeal for him, nor how he worked on writing the score.

Everybody on the team, particularly creator and writer Alice Seabright, was musically sensitive, so quite a lot of the time we were throwing spaghetti around and seeing what stuck!

“I loved the Chloe project because it has a really strong connection with the Bristol scene and it feels home-grown,” says Will. “Once I got the ball rolling with various ideas for the music it was very much a collaborative venture, which I love. Everybody on the team, particularly creator and writer Alice Seabright, was musically sensitive, so quite a lot of the time we were throwing spaghetti around and seeing what stuck! And Alice was great. She has strong opinions, and a strong sense of direction. To begin with, we just exchanged ideas; I sent a bunch of tracks that I thought might be appropriate whether it was Serge Gainsbourg or Ennio Morriconi, and there was a real lingua franca between us. It's very difficult to talk about music in the abstract, so you go through a lot of soulsearching – you don't know, until you put it up against the visuals, what is or isn't going to work, but the process was fascinating.”

Is Will able to share any of the end result of that process with us?

“Without giving any spoilers away, it's quite a tragic drama,” he says. “It's a questionable process, you might say – quite sinister – I've never seen anything like it. But I deliberately didn't read the script for the last episode or watch it until I'd watched the other five, because I really didn't want to know what happened, and I wanted to be as surprised as everybody else. All I can say, though, is that Alice is a master of plot, and detail; she's amazing, and the casting [including The Crown's Erin Doherty as Becky alongside Jack Farthing, who many of us know and love as Poldark villain George Warleggan] is amazing as well.”

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MUSIC

Okay Will – we're hooked! But I have to ask: has Chloe kicked Goldfrapp to the kerb? “Oh no, very much not!” says Will. “Both Alison and I have been temporarily sidetracked by several projects, which is really healthy. We did seven albums back-to-back over 20 years and we had a tour lined up before the pandemic which we had to cancel, for obvious reasons. But yes, we are still Goldfrapp!”

And in the autumn of last year, that particular collaboration received formal, official recognition when Alison and Will collected their Ivor Novello Inspiration Award which aimed to 'celebrate peer recognition for excellence of Goldfrapp's songwriting catalogue and, in particular, how they inspired the creative talent of other creators'. Phew, that's quite the coup!

“Oh, that was lovely, it really was,” says Will. “Even going to the

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ceremony was quite a remarkable thing in itself, as it was the first time we'd been allowed out after lockdown. There must have been about 1000 people all together at this sort of long, boozy lunch; we were all a bit rabbit in the headlights, I think. When they played our music, it was a bit like being dragged back through the last 20 years, seeing and hearing all the stuff that we'd done, and watching our life compressed into five minutes. And to find out that our peers had all been aware of our work, throughout it all – it was quite intense, and very emotional; even Daniel Miller, our record company head at Mute Records, was quite weepy. It was wonderful.”

Will Gregory: collaborative genius... and inspirational, influential superstar in his own right.

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MUSIC

Everything you need to know: Written and directed by Alice Seabright, Chloe is a tale of obsession, identity and social media. The thriller turns on Becky (Erin Doherty), who lives on the outskirts of Bristol and cares for her mother who suffers from dementia. As an escape, she becomes obsessed with Chloe (Poppy Gilbert), an Instagram influencer. When Chloe suddenly dies, Becky assumes a new identity to infiltrate her world and find out what happened. On 6 February, viewers can tune in to enjoy Will Gregory’s original score, featuring Portishead’s Adrian Utley.

• The first episode of Chloe will premiere on BBC One (and on BBC iPlayer) from 6 February. The six one-hour episodes will also air on Amazon Prime Video worldwide. n First page (clockwise from top left): Will Greogory, photograph by Serge LeBlon; Billy Howle playing Elliot and Jack Farthing playing Richard, photograph by York Tillyer; Brandon Micheal Hall as Brandon, photograph by York Tillyer; Erin Doherty playing Becky/Sasha and Pippa Bennett-Warner playing Livia, photograph by York Tillyer; Poppy Gilbert (Chloe) in the Marriott Hotel on College Green, photographer York Tillyer This page (clockwise from top left): Erin Doherty and Natasha Atherton, photograph by David King; Erin Doherty filming the nightclub exterior at the Bonded Warehouse, Cumberland Basin, Bristol; filming on the set of Chloe, photograph by Luke Varley; Pippa Bennett-Warner, photograph by York Tillyer

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FOOD

For the love of food On 28 February, Kalpna Woolf – an acclaimed food writer and charity founder – will publish her latest recipe book, Eat, Share, Love. Brimming with Bristolian stories, Kalpna tells us all about the myriad of food cuisines that make this city thrum with life and love

A

n award-winning food writer, entrepreneur, charity campaigner, and former head of production at the BBC, Kalpna Woolf is a well-known and highly respected figure on the food scene. During her 23 years at the corporation, she oversaw a number of popular television programmes starring internationally renowned chefs including Nigella Lawson, Nigel Slater, Rick Stein and the Hairy Bikers. In 2016, she brought her own passion and expertise in spices and health into her first cookbook – Spice Yourself Slim – which became a kitchen mainstay in its own right.

Over the years, Kalpna’s extraordinary appetite for hard work has been recognised by a clutch of national awards. Her mantelpiece supports The Guild of Food Writers Inspiration Award, BBC’s Food and Farming Food Hero Award and the Asian Women of Achievement Award – all of which earned her a rightful place on Waitrose Food Magazine’s list of 20 people Making the World a Better Place to Live and Eat in 2020.

Throughout her long and illustrious career, Kalpna’s genuine love for food has always shone through, but what’s more is her dedication to bringing diverse communities together, using the power of food to break down barriers. In 2015, she founded her Bristol-based charity 91 Ways, which draws on the 91 different languages spoken in the city and brings people closer together through a shared passion for food.

We all have a story to tell – we absolutely do.

The vivacity of this book is all about the joy of sharing them

Kalpna’s latest book, Eat, Share, Love, calls on a number of brilliant Bristol ambassadors – famous figures as well as much-loved locals – to share their mouth-watering recipes from a myriad of food cuisines. Think berbere-spiced Eritrean stews, fragrant Iranian saffron rice, fresh Sudanese salads and Somali lamb huuris. These recipes alone would prize you from the quotidian and plunge you into the extraordinary, but this book goes one step further. With every dish comes an absorbing anecdote of rekindled memories – many of which reveal touching tales of love and loss, family and friendship, happiness and kindness. From romance blossoming over a tantalising Persian ghormeh sabzi to families gathering to make Moldovan cheese dumplings – this book is joyous, this book is warming, this book is Bristol. As perfectly summed up by Kalpna, this book “reminds us just how much our favourite foods actually mean to us, and that by the simple act of sharing our food and stories we can make unexpected connections with each other, which can bridge our cultural, religious and ethnic divides and bring us all closer together.”

Alongside Kalpna, who contributes several of her own family recipes and stories, Her Majesty's Lord-Lieutenant of the County and City of Bristol, Peaches Golding OBE, shares her Thanksgiving Savoury Sweet Potato Bake; Michelin-star chef Josh Eggleton reveals his Nan’s Apple Pie (and Jam Turnover); and Bristol lawyer and

nightclub owner, Marti Burgess, remembers the story behind her Portland Jerk Marinade. Each and every page is wonderfully illustrated with family photographs and Eat, Share, Love ultimately immortalises these beautiful Bristol lives in literature.

“The book is an opportunity for people who don’t normally get to voice who they are. I went back to who we are at 91 Ways and I realised that there doesn’t seem to be a space, particularly in the food world, to hear people’s stories – it is somehow always taken over by the same voices. We all have a story to tell – we absolutely do. The vivacity of this book is all about the joy of sharing them,” says Kalpna. “I don’t think there’s a book out there like Eat, Share, Love.

The heart of Bristol is beating in this book and we can all connect to it. You can enjoy it, you can use it as a cookbook or you can sit and read the stories. I can guarantee you one thing – once you’ve read the stories and cooked the recipes, people’s memories will move with you – a chain of joy and love and understanding will be passed on through you, and that’s really what I want.”

Ú

• Eat, Share, Love by Kalpna Woolf will be published on 28 February.

Purchase the book at: 91ways.org or mezepublishing.co.uk; £22

Above: “The cover is one of my first gold silk saris, which was given to me by my mum,” says Kalpna.

Opposite page (clockwise from top left): Kalpna Woolf; Bristol-based Middle Eastern Supper Club member, Natasha Orson, shares her Grandma’s Kurdish Kufte Soup; Marti Burgess; Amina Jama, who first met Kalpna at a Refugee Women of Bristol event, tells us how to make her Somali Lamb Huuris THEBRISTOLMAG.CO.UK

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FOOD

Recipe from the book:

ABOUT DRAGANA University of Bristol’s Deputy Head of Public Engagement

PREPARATION TIME 45 minutes, plus chilling time COOKING TIME 10 minutes INGREDIENTS (makes about 30 pieces) 100g unsalted butter 125g digestive biscuits 125g caster sugar 1 egg 125g ground almonds or walnuts 20g cocoa powder For the chocolate glaze: 75g dark chocolate, broken up 15-30g sugar 125ml milk

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DRAGANA SMART’S BAYADERA

DRAGANA’S STORY

METHOD

For me, sharing food and recipes means extending a hand of friendship to other fellow beings, an invitation to share in those precious aspects of life: caring for each other, love and laughter. Sharing homemade food is also about giving something created with one’s own hands, passing on positive energy. I have selected a couple of recipes that typify Bosnia, the country I come from, a melting pot of civilisations, cultures and traditions. They are rooted in bountiful nature and the history that brought culinary influences from the Byzantine, Roman, Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires.

Generations of Bosnian women have transformed simple ingredients that nature provided into morsels of delight that we enjoy today. Among my most treasured possessions is a collection of recipes that my maternal and paternal grandmothers, my auntie and my mum gave me as I was leaving for the United Kingdom.

Not only an expression of our culture and identity, evoking the taste of sun-kissed summers and snow-swept winters, they are also a connection to strong women in my family, who knew how to keep their families going through huge historical events affecting their lives. They are a testament to continuity and hope. It is these handwritten recipes that I consulted for this book, selecting two dishes that will nourish your body and soul.

This elegant yet simple sweet treat is a perfect accompaniment to a cup of coffee and a chat with a friend. It is one of my maternal grandmother’s favourite recipes, often part of a larger selection of small fancies. There is no baking involved and it’s quite quick to make.

1. Leave the butter to stand at room temperature until soft while you crush the digestive biscuits into fine crumbs. With a handheld mixer, combine the soft butter with the sugar in a bowl. Add the egg and continue mixing until incorporated, then add the biscuit crumbs and ground nuts. Mix well.

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2. Put half the biscuit mixture into another bowl, add the cocoa powder to the remaining half and mix until fully blended. Grease a 20 by 20cm tin and sprinkle some breadcrumbs or extra biscuit crumbs over the base to make it easier to take the bayaderas out. Spread the cocoa crumb mixture into the prepared tray and place in the fridge for about 10 minutes to firm up slightly.

3. Once cooled, spread the remaining crumb mixture on top and place in the fridge for another 10 minutes. In the meantime, make the chocolate glaze. Put the chocolate, milk and sugar into a heatproof bowl with a splash of water and melt the mixture over a saucepan of simmering water until the consistency is smooth and even. Leave the glaze to cool off the heat.

4. Take the tray out of the fridge and pour the chocolate glaze over the top as the final layer. Tilt the tray from side to side until the glaze has evenly covered the entire surface. Leave in the fridge to cool down for a few hours, or even overnight.

Keep chilled and when you’re ready to serve the bayadera, cut into small rectangles (about 5cm by 2cm) and serve with coffee or after dinner. ■

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HEALTH & WELLBEING

A vital necessity Ade Williams, lead pharmacist at Bedminster Pharmacy, was recently honoured with an MBE for his services to the NHS and to the community in South Bristol, particularly during Covid-19.

Here, he shares his knowledge on the importance of sleep Regular episodes of poor sleep can impact emotional, physical, and mental health, putting people at risk of serious medical conditions such as obesity, heart disease and diabetes. It also increses the risk of accidents and injury. The think-tank Rand Europe has estimated that poor sleeping habits cost the UK economy around £40bn a year, with tired employees being less productive and more likely to be absent from work.

Unsurprisingly, recent restrictions and lockdowns have adversely affected people's sleep. Although alcohol has sedative properties, helping you fall asleep initially, it ultimately robs you of quality and quantity. Interrupted sleep produces feelings of sluggishness during the day – and that is before we consider all the broader, well-documented health impacts of excessive alcohol consumption.

Some simple lifestyle changes can make a world of difference to your sleep quality. For a restful night’s sleep, the NHS suggests:

Ade Williams’ portrait as taken by acclaimed photographer Rankin

Getting into a routine Going to bed and getting up at roughly the same time every day will programme your body to sleep better. Choose a time when you're likely to feel tired and sleepy.

Creating a restful sleeping environment Your bedroom should be a peaceful place for rest and sleep. Avoid looking at screens before bedtime and make sure your space is cool, dark and quiet.

Exercising regularly Moderate exercise on a regular basis, such as swimming or walking, can help relieve some of the tensions built up during the day. However, vigorous exercise, such as running or weight training, can keep you up at night if they’re done too late in the evening.

Cutting down on caffeine Cut down on caffeine in tea, coffee, energy drinks and fizzy drinks, especially in the evening. Caffeine interferes with the process of falling asleep and prevents deep sleep. Instead, try a warm herbal tea.

H

ere is a Latin quiz: who wrote the text De somno et vigilia and what was it about? A clue: the time span of the subject matter provides us with an insight into the lives of some of history’s most significant figures including Einstein, who managed 10 hours; Churchill, Napoleon and Newton, who scraped only four hours; and Shakespeare and Van Gogh, who got so little it was a problem.

The answer to the quiz is Aristotle, the text translates to “On Sleep and Sleeplessness”, and the message was clear from the outset: sleep is a vital necessity. If I had mentioned that Margaret Thatcher only got four hours, that might have given it all away.

Humans are the only mammals that can delay sleep. Yet, while scientists are still working to better understand its functions, we know conclusively that it is critical to our well-being.

You are not alone if you have lain awake at night, staring at the clock wondering why you cannot sleep. The NHS reports that up to a third of UK adults – particularly the older population, and some children – experience sleeping problems. Some may notice occasional episodes of insomnia that come and go without causing any serious issues, but others may suffer from sleepless nights for months or even years at a time.

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Not going to bed full, hungry or thirsty Too much food, especially late at night, can interrupt your sleep pattern. Conversely, being hungry or thirsty at night can increase the chances of waking up.

Writing away your worries If you tend to lie in bed thinking about everything you must do tomorrow, set aside time before you go to bed to make plans for the next day. The aim is to avoid doing these things when you are trying to sleep.

Moving around Don’t lie there worrying about how you are not sleeping. Get up and do something you find relaxing until you feel sleepy again.

Community pharmacy teams can help with self-care measures that can, in turn, help with sleep difficulty. However, if you or your child are regularly finding it difficult to get to sleep or stay asleep, please speak with a GP. Finally, if while reading this you nod off, it is hopefully welcome – I will certainly attribute this effect solely to the subject matter! ■ • Follow Ade on Twitter: @adewilliamsnhs; and keep up to date with Bedminster Pharmacy: @bedminsterpharm

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THE PARENTING PLACE Real Solutions for Real Life

The Parenting Place offers Parenting support, education and an online community for parents to share ideas We also offer hypnotherapy for children in the areas of sleep difficulties, stress, anxiety, nerves and phobias and for adults in the areas of stress, anxiety, sleep, weight loss, smoking cessation and phobias.

We aim to normalise asking for support as a parent

and can offer you over twenty years of experience in working with children and families

www.theparentingplace.co.uk parentingplaceuk@gmail.com

TEL: 07305 346 792

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LUNAR NEW YEAR

Year of the Tiger

As almost two billion people around the world prepare to celebrate Lunar New Year in some way, we take a closer look at the traditions and origins of the festival as well as the celebrations that are taking place both here in Bristol and in our sister city, Guangzhou, in South China

O

n 1 February, a quarter of the world’s population will celebrate Lunar New Year.

City streets will burst with life as people come together to ring in the Year of the Tiger, enjoying pyrotechnic displays and spectacular drone shows dancing above elaborate choreographed performances and snaking parades.

As communities in Bristol and beyond prepare to celebrate the festivities over the first two weeks of February, we reach out to our sister city – Guangzhou, in South China – and take a look at how, collectively, we will be bidding farewell to the past year and looking forward to one of adventure.

To help us better understand our special relationship, we chat to the chief executive of the Bristol & West of England China Bureau, Dianne Francombe OBE, who in 2020, was honoured in the Queen’s New Year Honours List for truly exceptional and outstanding service to international trade, investment and exporting. A leading expert in her field, Dianne provides a fascinating insight into our alliance and shares some joyous news about the year ahead.

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Sister-City Agreement The Bristol China Partnership (BCP) was created in 1998 when members of the Bristol City Council and Bristol's corporate businesses agreed that there was much to be gained by developing a strong and lasting partnership with China. BCP facilitated the signing of the Sister City agreement in 2001. Since then, the Bristol & West of England China Bureau has been working unstintingly to connect the people of Bristol and the south west of England with the people of Guangzhou, encouraging greater mutual understanding between the two countries and providing a platform for businesses to connect with like-minded organisations. Over the past 21 years, the two cities have grown close, successfully erasing the distance that lay between them. “The relationship has gone from strength to strength and a deep level of friendship, trust and understanding has developed,” says Dianne. “Many joint projects have flowed covering education exchange, cultural activities and climate change, to name just a few.”

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LUNAR NEW YEAR

Year of the Tiger (1 February 2022 – 21 January 2023) The order of the zodiac signs is thought to be based on a folk tale known as the Great Race. Legend has it that one of the most important gods in Chinese tradition, Jade Emperor, invited 12 animals to participate in the race. The years are named in the order in which each animal finished the race – Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog and Pig. Each zodiac animal holds a special meaning and their qualities are believed to be embodied by the children born in that specific year. This means anyone born in 2022 is believed to have the qualities of the Tiger – an animal known to be king of all beasts in China. Those due to be born this year are predicted to be brave, competitive, unpredictable, confident and display great levels of willpower.

“The predictions for the Year of the Tiger are currently being promoted as a year of change, a year of risk-taking and adventure,” Dianne tells us. “We should find enthusiasm again, to do things for ourselves and for others – I hope this rings true!”

In celebration of Lunar New Year, Guangzhou is planning to have a traditional lantern festival and a modern light and shadow show, where people will be able to admire flowers, browse exhibitions and enjoy wonderful food. “Lunar New Year is a time for fun, interesting and meaningful Spring Festival activities,” Dianne explains. “Throughout the festivities, stories about the meaning of life are told. It’s a very vibrant and colourful time when families gather to share food and give presents in the form of lucky red pockets. The children particularly enjoy this time – it’s like our Christmas.”

Celebrations in Bristol will be taking place in equal measure as families, students, scholars, members of the China Bureau, Bristol Overseas Chinese Association and the Chinese Community Wellbeing Society will all be enjoying the seasonal jollity. “There will be a festival at Bristol Museum, celebrating the colourful and entertaining culture of China. We will be showcasing the fantastic pyrotechnics display from Guangzhou on our social media and

website – their drone displays are truly amazing. We will also be holding a Year of the Tiger banquet in March to celebrate the Lunar New Year and the 50th Anniversary of UK-China relations.”

Over the last two decades, Bristol and Guangzhou have certainly reaped the rewards of the Sister City agreement. But for Dianne, it has been the personal stories that have brought her the most joy. “It’s the 14 scholars who have studied in Bristol for a year, received a Master’s degree from the University of the West of England and now call Bristol their second home. It’s the students who have visited through the Sister City School link programme and the companies who have a stake in Bristol’s and Guangzhou’s economic development – their successes have been the most memorable moments,” she says.

The next highlight on the calendar – after Lunar New Year, of course – is the unveiling of the Guangzhou Garden at the University of Bristol’s Botanic Gardens in the summer. The garden took home the coveted Best in Show prize at last year’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show and was gifted by Guangzhou to Bristol.

The designers, Peter Chmiel and Chin-Jung Chen, looked to capture the essence of vast and vibrant Guangzhou, which has a population of 15 million. They were inspired by a philosophy of reconnecting people and nature, while also highlighting the benefits of responsible city planning.

“It will be the most spectacular legacy of the Bristol–Guangzhou Sister City relationship,” says Dianne.

Ultimately, whether you’re celebrating Lunar New Year in all its traditional glory, or are simply hoping for a happy and healthy 12 months ahead, the wonders of connection during these times are abundantly beautiful and provide us with an inexhaustible source of inspiration – let us harness it and make this year a better one.

Happy New Year! n • For more information about the Bristol & West of England China Bureau, visit: chinabureau.co.uk; or follow them on Twitter: @BristolChina and Instagram: @bristolchina_ THEBRISTOLMAG.CO.UK

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BRISTOL UPDATES NEWS FROM LOCAL BUSINESSES AND COMMUNITY ORGANISATIONS

ARTS COUNCIL ACCREDITATION Following an extremely challenging period that has seen Aerospace Bristol seek urgent support to continue operating through the Covid-19 pandemic – the museum and charity has received a major boost in the form of Arts Council accreditation: the UK industry standard for museums and galleries.

Accredited status means that Aerospace Bristol is operated to professional industry standards and shows that the museum takes proper care of its collection including the last Concorde ever to fly and the many other important objects and archive records in order to make them accessible and safeguard our aerospace heritage for the future.

Lloyd Burnell, Executive Director, Aerospace Bristol said: “Achieving Arts Council accredited status is an important step forward for Aerospace Bristol. As the national benchmark of a well-run museum, this award is testament to the professionalism and high standards that our staff and volunteers work hard to maintain. Accreditation demonstrates that our collection is in safe hands, opens up exciting funding and partnership opportunities, and will give confidence to donors and supporters who wish to join us in preserving our aerospace heritage and inspiring future generations.”

• Aerospace Bristol is currently open Tuesday to Sunday during term time and seven days per week during school holidays. More information and tickets available at aerospacebristol.org

PROTECT YOUR PREMISES A&E Fire and Security are a well-established, family-run and trusted company established in 1965. It has been at the forefront of fire and security servicing and maintenance in Gloucestershire for many years, and is finally opening its new regional branch and training facility in Avonbank, Bristol.

The team will be running fire-training courses out of this branch – all of which are available at the premises.

• If you’re interested in joining a course, visit A&E Fire and Security’s website at: aefire.co.uk; 18 Avonbank Ind. Park, Avonmouth, BS11 9DE

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TREE OF LIFE A growing number of people are trying to live environmentally conscious lives – but now there is also a trend to ensure an environmentally friendly death. With crematoria using as much energy to dispose of one body as a person would use in a month, the appeal of being laid to rest in a woodland setting is increasing.

Bristol Memorial Woodlands at Earthcott Green, near Thornbury, is a 100-acre burial ground that will become a nature reserve for future generations to enjoy, all held in a charitable trust – the Bristol Memorial Woodland Trust.

Christopher Baker, founder of Bristol Memorial Woodlands, said: “Burial is an ancient and traditional way to lay someone to rest and the growing concerns about the environment mean it is also the most modern.

“Cremation has been promoted as a way of minimising land use and as being cheaper than burial. We have totally turned that on its head and now burial is not only environmentally better – because it does not burn gas and puts nutrients back into the ground – it is also cheaper.”

Native British species are being planted and families can enjoy time in the countryside amongst the trees and feel close to their loved ones, resting in peace, under nature’s green canopy.

Planting a commemorative tree is an ancient gesture steeped in tradition and meaning; it is a symbol of continued life, strength and family connections. The woodland gives relatives and friends a memorial to visit, which they can enjoy watching as it changes over the seasons. Equally, it is a gift to the woodlands as they continue to grow and mature. n • memorialwoodlands.com; bristolmemorialwoodlandtrust.org

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BRISTOL UPDATES NEWS FROM LOCAL BUSINESSES AND COMMUNITY ORGANISATIONS

PLANT YOUR OWN APPLE TREES If you are a community group or charity looking to plant trees this spring, then Thatchers Cider may be able to help. The Somerset Cider maker's Community Orchard Project has launched with 250 apple trees being donated to groups either undertaking new planting this year, or looking to extend a community orchard they already have.

Thatchers Community Orchard Project was first run in 2021, when it gave away 120 apple trees to community groups up and down the country. The family run cider maker has now doubled the number of apple trees it is donating, meaning more groups will benefit.

"In the year of the Queen's Green Canopy campaign, all eyes are on planting trees. It's so important to keep planting not just for the environment around us, but for people to enjoy and benefit from," says Martin Thatcher, fourth generation cider maker.

Thatchers is looking for groups, large or small, schools, care homes, communities, who would benefit from growing apple trees, to take part in this project, and is encouraging people to apply via its website. The deadline for applications is 18 February 2022.

• For more information and how to apply, visit: thatcherscider.co.uk

NEW ENERGY PARTNER FOR OSBORNE CLARKE Energy and infrastructure partner Hugo Lidbetter joins Osborne Clarke in Bristol. Joining from Fieldfisher, Hugo brings over 10 years' experience advising domestic and international clients on policy and legal issues relating to decarbonisation and low carbon energy. He brings particular expertise in project development work in the energy sector, regularly advising on standard and bespoke forms of construction and operation contracts and related commercial agreements.

Hugo was previously deputy General Counsel of EDF Energy's Generation business and was also Company Secretary and Head of Legal of its Thermal Power division.

Head of Osborne Clarke's Energy and Utilities Sector team Matt Lewis said: "Decarbonisation is one of the key transformation drivers that's having a huge impact on our clients. Hugo brings a wealth of experience both in-house and in private practice, which will help us to grow our current portfolio, and support UK and International clients."

The Castle School, Thornbury, has upheld its ‘Good’ Ofsted rating following a recent school inspection, a grade the school and its Sixth Form has consistently held for almost two decades.

The inspectors had many positive comments to make about the school including the “raised expectations of pupil behaviour”, “rich extracurricular programme” and praise for the anti-bullying ambassadors. The report is very encouraging about the new leadership team at the school, echoing the comments in parent feedback: “The school has seen a period of rapid change since the previous inspection. A new headteacher and several new senior leaders have joined the school. Together, they have ensured high standards in pupils’ behaviour. They have gained the confidence of staff. Parents have noticed the positive difference that leaders have made. For example, many parents highlighted the high standard of remote education provided during national restrictions because of the Covid-19 pandemic.”

Joe Docherty, who was appointed headteacher of Castle School in 2019, said: “We felt particularly encouraged by the recent inspection. I would like to congratulate the staff and students on their consistent hard work and resilience in these times.

We are, however, always looking for ways to improve. We discussed these areas with the inspectors who could already see the progress we have made through our own self-evaluation. I’m excited for what’s to come at The Castle School.” n • For more information about the Castle School Education Trust, visit: cset.co.uk

• osborneclarke.com

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Leadership Skills for Tomorrow’s World University of Bristol offers part-time Masters in Strategy, Change and Leadership for senior professionals

The University of Bristol is offering a part-time Masters programme in Strategy, Change and Leadership. This part-time programme is for aspiring senior managers and is designed to fit around the demands of a busy job.

Today’s leaders are facing the most challenging operating circumstances for a generation. The necessary skills and competencies have shifted from the motivation of employees in a buoyant economy to change management and strategic leadership in this landscape of budget cuts, increased hours, more sophisticated technology and leaner workforces. Few organisations have escaped these changes whether they are in the private, public or not-for-profit sectors.

The University of Bristol has recognised this and designed a bespoke Masters degree in Strategy, Change and Leadership aimed at providing senior managers with the tools and techniques they require in order to navigate their organisations through such demanding times.

Programme Director, Helen Ballard says “I am delighted that we are able to offer this type of programme. Excellent leadership is critical in this challenging climate, and high performing organisations are recognising the need to further develop their managers. This practical Masters degree will offer a return on investment from day one.”

To find out more about the programme, come along to our open evening at the University and Literary Club on Tuesday 15 March from 6pm – 8pm. Please contact Cheralyn Dark for details: mgmt-scl@bristol.ac.uk

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FASHION

The power of fashion

As the dark days of winter can leave us feeling tired and lethargic, Hannah Hill – founder of LIFESTYLISH, a Bristol-born business providing bespoke styling and shopping solutions – delves into the mood-boosting powers of fashion...

W

e’ve just completed what feels like the longest January on record. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could feel good about ourselves thriving in February rather than just making it through?

While getting dressed is something we all do every single day, a lot of us don’t take the time to consider the emotional benefits we might be missing out on when it comes to choosing what we wear.

Unless you’ve made the very specific lifestyle choice to be a naturist or nudist – hats off to you (literally) – you’ll be needing to put clothes on in the morning. So, if I told you that what you choose to wear might just boost your mood and make February feel a bit better, wouldn’t you want to give it a go? Here are just a handful of ideas to keep in mind.

Wear what sparks joy To coin tidying-expert and best-selling author Marie Kondo’s famous phrase, wearing items that “spark joy” is a gamechanger. We all have pieces in our wardrobes that we love, whether it’s from a memory we have wearing it or simply the look and feel or the item itself. If you’re dressing in clothes that you really enjoy, you’ll feel all the better for it.

Introduce colour It’s been proven that wearing colour helps boost your mood but this can feel scary if you’re not sure where to start. Most of us will have had a favourite colour as a child. Do you know what yours is now and would you consider wearing it? We all have complimentary colours that will make us look and feel awesome so don’t be afraid of those bold brights on grey February days.

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Don’t save it for best Many of us have clothes that we save for best but given what we’ve lived through over the last two years is there really any point? Nine times out of ten these items will be higher quality and we’ll have paid a little more than we usually would for them. Saving them for special occasions to keep them in good condition might seem logical but really what’s the point? You’ve bought it, so wear it. If the item is for “best”, wear it and you’ll feel your best!

Be comfortable Even if you’re not completely sold on the idea that your clothing can have a positive impact on how you feel, being comfortable in what you wear can stop it having a negative one. Being uncomfortable in clothes can often make us feel unnecessarily self-conscious and no one wants that. Don’t forget the three Fs. Fit, fabric and function. Items that fit well in fabrics that feel good against the skin and are functional for your lifestyle will keep you comfortable and feeling confident.

There are no rules As a personal stylist, it’s my job to make people look good in their clothes but, for me, the outfit is the by-product of helping someone to feel good about themselves. When it comes to what we wear there are no rules, your outfit just needs to make you feel great. Last week, that meant sitting on video-calls all day wearing a bright green sequin jacket.

I’m perfectly okay with that – and so were my clients!

Here’s to feeling good in February! What are you waiting for?

• Need a little extra help with your wardrobe? Head over to LIFESTYLISH’s website to find out more about what Hannah does: lifestylish.co.uk

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PAMPER ZONE Review:

BEAUTY NOTES N°1 DE CHANEL L’EAU ROUGE – REVITALIZING FRAGRANCE MIST Olivier Polge used a skincare base enriched with refreshing camellia water and a revitalizing red camellia extract as the medium for this fragrance mist. The red camellia inspired him to create, in collaboration with the CHANEL Fragrance Laboratory, an original floral bouquet. 100ml, RRP £90.

• Chanel.com

JO MALONE LONDON CELEBRATES THE ROSE Jo Malone London has introduced a collection of scents celebrating the rose. The limited-edition consists of three romantic, floral scents with a focus for Lunar New Year celebrations and is perfect for Valentine’s Day gifting. from left to right they are: Rose Blush Cologne, 50ml, RRP £76; Rose & Magnolia Cologne 50ml, RRP £76; Velvet Rose & Oud Cologne Intense 50ml, RRP £92. • jomalone.co.uk

HERBAE BY L’OCCITANE It’s the scent of Provence on a clear spring day; aromatic, invigorating and lightly floral – thanks to wild flowers that blossom in abundance across the Southern French hills.

HERBAE par L’OCCITANE Clary Sage is the embodiment of this scent; refreshing notes of wild grass, are expertly intertwined with a herbaceous heart of clary sage whilst zesty top notes of bitter orange, bergamot and red thyme invigorate. The perfect transitional spring-summer scent. Eau de Toilette, 50ml, RRP £55. • uk.loccitane.com/

Little High, Little Low. Hello, Profhilo There’s a new non-invasive, youth-preserving treatment on the beauty block. Crystal Rose heads to Ciao Bella Aesthetics to put Profhilo to the test.

If you’ve ever found yourself at a crossroads between age-defying invasives and letting nature run its course, then allow us to introduce you to Profhilo. Free from any chemical crosslinking compounds, the non-invasive treatment is here to turn back the hands of time. How? Through a radiance-boosting formula (an ultra-pure hyaluronic acid concentrate) that's inserted underneath the skin’s surface and designed to boost collagen and elastin levels.

I headed down to Ciao Bella Aesthetics, based in the idyllic village of Wrington, to check out the illuminating treatment. Headed up by lead practitioner Alex Henderson, the award-winning medical cosmetic clinic was founded in 2010 and is one of the only nurse-led clinics in the South West to hold Care Quality Commission Registration – ensuring quality and safety of care through ongoing monitoring and inspection.

Following a consultation, my appointment began with an in-depth skin analysis to address any concerns and assess the current condition of my epidermis. Having run through the relevant safety procedures (I can’t stress enough the attention to care that I received here, no stone was left unturned and I felt completely at ease from the moment I arrived), Alex began by cleansing the area, before plotting out the route of action on my face – five Bio Aesthetic Points (BAP) on each side of the face to maximise diffusion in the cheeks and lower face. Ten injections later, we’re all wrapped up and I’m on my way to enjoy the rest of my day. After the treatment, each injection site appears as a small lump, this softens over the next few days as the hyaluronic acid disperses evenly inside the skin. The result? Hydration, rejuvenation and boosted collagen production. Expect to see results around the twoweek mark before you wave goodbye to the appearance of fine lines, and say hello to skin restoration at its finest.

Oh, and for those located in North Bristol, Ciao Bella Aesthetics is due to open another clinic in Downend this year. We’ll see you there.

Two Profhilo treatments are recommended initially with a four-week interval in-between.

Profhilo Treatment at Ciao Bella Aesthetics from £299; ciaobellaaesthetics.co.uk Unit 3 & 4 Railway Wharf Station Road, Wrington, BS40 5LL

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ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE

Are you struggling to book a GP appointment?

Although things are returning to normal across Bristol, you may still be finding it difficult to schedule a GP appointment.

Nuffield Health Bristol Hospital offers a private GP service, with minimal waiting times for appointments, prescriptions and referrals.

T

he GP service at Nuffield Health Bristol Hospital offers patients the opportunity to see a GP face-to-face for 30 minutes in a relaxed environment. There are three GPs at the hospital, each working on different days to ensure cover across the week; Dr Claire Winstanley, Dr Gill Jenkins and Dr Sonia Mann.

Meet the team Dr Claire Winstanley has a diverse interest in medicine, and is fascinated by all aspects of health and wellbeing, with a particular interest in diet, lifestyle and alternative therapies. Having worked as a GP in the NHS for over 20 years, Dr Winstanley is experienced in treating a wide range of acute and chronic problems. She enjoys the variety that general practice offers, as well as its challenges, and continues to work in the NHS, based at the Whiteladies Health Centre in Clifton, and for NHS 111.

Dr Gill Jenkins has over 35 years of medical experience, and a career that has spanned several areas of medicine. She has a particular interest in diabetes and cardiovascular disease, but has experience in family planning, accident and emergency, psychiatry, weight management and travel medicine. Dr Jenkins also works as a freelance medical writer and broadcaster, working with a variety of magazines, medical newspapers, websites and on local and national TV and radio.

Dr Sonia Mann began her medical career in London before relocating to Bristol with her family in 2010. Her main areas of interest are women’s health, mental wellbeing and integrative medicine. Dr Mann’s travels abroad and study of alternative health systems has helped her develop a more holistic approach to care, where time is taken to work with a patient’s individual needs, especially incorporating mental wellness and how this relates to their physical health, and visa versa.

Seeing a GP at Nuffield Health Bristol Hospital Appointments with a GP at Nuffield Health Bristol Hospital are usually available within 48 hours, and sometimes on the same day you call.

Appointment slots are 30 minutes, giving you a good amount of time to discuss your concerns or your ongoing medical condition. Our GP will also review your medical history, examine you, and talk with you about medication and lifestyle changes that may be advisable.

With 30 minutes available to discuss your options, you can feel reassured that your GP appointment at Nuffield Health is providing the help you need. The GP team cannot access your NHS notes. Therefore, if you are able to bring along a summary page of your NHS GP notes (available from them on request), along with any blood test results, scans or letters from previous consultations relating to your condition, this can save time during the appointment. Our GP can

also oversee and coordinate your healthcare if you need to see multiple consultants for multiple problems.

Diet is also very important to our health but we all have different dietary needs, which can be made more confusing with the knowledge and advice, often conflicting, available on the internet. Sometimes the internet can be very helpful for our health, but sometimes it can cause unnecessary worry. We are here to have those conversations and signpost you, if needed, to respected, evidence-based websites to help you get well and stay well.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made us all more aware of the importance of our health, both physical and mental. As general practitioners, the team at Nuffield Health see a wide variety of acute and chronic problems, as well as those “odd problems” which might not be so straightforward.

Dr Winstanley says: “Our job is to talk to you about your symptoms (we love a list!), examine you as needed, organise the appropriate investigations and prescribe the necessary medication. Gill, Sonia and I have a wealth of knowledge in all areas of medicine. While we are generalists, not specialists, we know what tests may be necessary and can refer you for diagnostics and then, if needed, to the appropriate specialist.”

A 30-minute GP appointment at Nuffield Health Bristol Hospital costs £110. If you would like to book an appointment with Dr Winstanley, Dr Jenkins or Dr Mann, call our Bookings team on 0117 911 5339, or visit our website.

Nuffield Health Bristol Hospital 3 Clifton Hill, Bristol BS8 1BN nuffieldhealth.com/hospitals/bristol

Nuffield Health Bristol Hospital’s GP team: Dr Claire Winstanley, Dr Gill Jenkins and Dr Sonia Mann.

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HISTORY

Abandoned plans As we approach the centenary of the closure of Bristol’s unlikliest railway station – which would have seen passengers travel under Clifton Suspension Bridge – Andrew Swift takes a closer look at the city’s (very serious) plans to build a Grand Central Station in Queen Square

W

hen the SS Great Britain was launched into Bristol’s floating harbour on 19 July 1843, she was the largest ship ever built – and too wide to fit through the lock leading out of the harbour. It was only 18 months later, after the lock had been widened, that she could head off down the Avon.

It was not a good portent. As larger ships were introduced, the city’s docks, with no scope for expansion, would dwindle away unless drastic action was taken. As far as many were concerned, the only solution was to relocate the docks to a new port at the mouth of the Avon – Avonmouth.

For the new docks to succeed, they needed to be linked to the city – and to the railways that served it – by rail. So the promoters set about building a line. The obvious route to choose would have been one heading east to link up with one of the other lines serving the city.

They chose, however, to build a line heading south, along the east bank of the Avon, to a terminus below the Clifton Suspension Bridge.

On the face of it, this was an unfathomable decision, as any goods carried along the line would have to complete their journey by horse and cart. But they had a very good reason for choosing the route they did.

Over 20 years earlier, when Brunel surveyed the route of the Great Western Railway, he planned to build his terminus in Queen Square.

When money ran short, however, the company told him to take the line no further than Temple Meads.

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also poorly designed for expansion. As lines opened to Gloucester and Exeter, and new platforms were added, it grew haphazardly and became increasingly inconvenient. Both the railway companies and Bristol’s businessmen realised something better was needed urgently.

They came up with a radical solution – the construction of a new line, the Bristol & Clifton Railway. This would head on past Temple Meads along a viaduct north of Portwall Lane before crossing a swingbridge over the floating harbour into Queen Square, where a station would be built. From there, the line would continue west, over another swingbridge and across Canon’s Marsh, before curving north to another station on Jacob’s Wells Road. A network of sidings and goods lines would also be laid along Welsh Back, Broad Quay, the Grove and Cumberland Basin.

So powerful were the interests backing the line, and so sure were they of success, that the promoters of the docks at Avonmouth were confident that, if they built their line to a temporary terminus below the suspension bridge, the construction of a short extension linking it with the Bristol & Clifton Railway would follow as a matter of course. And, although the promoters of neither of the lines said so, it was common knowledge that this was what was planned.

This tacit agreement between the promoters of the two schemes, however, seems to have been what scuppered the plan for the line through Queen Square. Despite overwhelming support, determined opposition from those who saw it as an attempt to divert trade from Bristol’s docks resulted in parliament throwing out the bill for its construction on 20 June 1862.

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HISTORY

Less than a month later, however, on 17 July, the bill for the line from Avonmouth to a terminus under the suspension bridge received royal assent. Its promoters seem to have been unconcerned that the Bristol & Clifton Railway would not be going ahead, as plans were being drawn up to get approval for another line through the city. That failed as well, as did another plan a couple of years later, and the railway companies eventually decided to cut their losses and build a new station at Temple Meads instead.

By the time the line from Avonmouth opened on 6 March 1865, it was clear that Bristol wasn’t going to get a central station and that, if the promoters wanted to link their line up with the rest of the rail network, they would have to build their own line through Bristol. Given the opposition that previous schemes had encountered, however, the chances of receiving parliamentary approval were nil. So they sought permission for a new line, branching off the original line 1.75 miles north of the terminus under the bridge and climbing through a mile-long tunnel to the heights of Clifton before heading east to join the Great Western.

This was such an expensive option that the company went bust and the Great Western and Midland Railways took over the project.

And so the Severn Beach Line was born.

The old terminus under the bridge wasn’t abandoned, though. A tram line was laid to it from Brislington, providing dockworkers living in south Bristol with a convenient way of getting to Avonmouth by tram and train. During the First World War, when their numbers were swelled by munition workers, the old station was unable to cope and a longer platform was brought into use just to the north.

It was from this platform that the last train left for Avonmouth on 3 July 1922. The old line would have survived longer had the trackbed not been needed to construct the Portway, providing a level road from Bristol to Avonmouth. Today all that survives of the longforgotten station under the bridge is an open space and a couple of bricked-up tunnels.

As the centenary of its closure approaches, however, it is worth reflecting on how different Bristol would have been had the Bristol & Clifton Railway gone ahead and the city had got that Grand Central station. Queen Square would look like a station forecourt rather than

a tree-lined open space. The King Street area, instead of being at one remove from the bustle of the central core, would have been at its heart. Redevelopment – along with new roads – would have spread out from that central station, obliterating much of the area’s 18thcentury heritage.

At the same time, Bristol’s 20th-century development would almost certainly have been less road oriented, and the city would have a better suburban rail network. In 1966, a report by the council planning department concluded that ‘the demand for a railway commuter service is very low’ as ‘the lack of a station within reasonable walking distance of the heart of the city has made the railway service unattractive for city centre users’. By then, most of Bristol’s suburban railways had closed; more would follow. The only line to survive – in spite of two attempts to close it – is that to Avonmouth and Severn Beach, which today is busier than ever, with a recently-introduced half-hourly service.

With the development of the Temple Quarter and the growth in the number of people who walk or cycle as part of their journeys into and within the city, Temple Meads has never been busier. Its inconvenient location meant, however, in the days when the car was king, that Bristol’s suburban services were shorn away. How different it could all have been been if the Bristol & Clifton Railway had been given the green light 160 years ago. ■ • More on the Severn Beach Line can be found in Andrew Swift's Walks from Bristol's Severn Beach Line, available from bookshops or direct from akemanpress.com Opposite page: a distant view of the original terminus of the line from Avonmouth, under the Clifton Suspension Bridge. Top left: After the plan to build a central station in Queen Square was abandoned, work started on a new station at Temple Meads, seen here in the 1920s. Top right: A map of about 1865 with the route of the Bristol & Clifton Railway superimposed in red. The station under the suspension bridge is at top left, with a red dotted line indicating how it could have been linked to the Bristol & Clifton Railway. Bottom left: the Bristol & Clifton Railway was to run from Temple Meads to new stations in Queen Square and on Jacob’s Wells Road (known at the time as Woodwell Lane). This map also shows the network of sidings which would have served the docks.

Bottom right: The original station at Temple Meads had little scope for expansion.

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A large roof light and neutral colours ensure that available light bounces around the interior space

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INTERIORS

The light touch We have said goodbye to the shortest, darkest days of winter, but not without appreciating the light factors in our homes that carry us through them, or perhaps realising that we need to find some new solutions. So we asked John Law of Woodhouse & Law to give us his expertise in the matter of maximising and improving the light in our homes

I

t’s February and those much-anticipated spring months are almost upon us, and with them the promise of longer days and lighter evenings. The recent months will have seen particular rooms in our homes feel that bit darker than we remembered, perhaps that bit less inviting. Fortunately, there are some surefire ways in which we can improve light levels in any space, even in these winter months.

Light might be borrowed from a neighbouring space for instance; perhaps by glazing the door that links them, adding a window in place of an internal wall, or even introducing a glazed ceiling to lower floors such as a basement. A room can be equally transformed by introducing a roof light or atrium to the space. The feasibility of such options may of course be limited by budget or logistics; there is however plenty of opportunity still to give a greater sense of light to any room. We may just need get that bit more creative, carefully considering each and every component of the room in its own right.

Paints of a white or neutral tone on walls and ceilings instantly lift a space, as will those with a natural sheen to them. This might be complemented by the introduction of bright, vibrant artwork, allowing the injection of colour and character to a space. Reflective surfaces such as metals will help throw the light around further, as will large mirrors, especially when placed directly opposite a window. A floor offers just as much opportunity to brighten a space too; opt here perhaps for a light wooden finish, or a large rug in neutral tones.

These finishes will need to be complemented by layers of artificial lighting throughout the space, not only offering a greater sense of warmth but also making sure the space adapts to its use through the day. In a dark bedroom, celling lights offer more functionality in the day, but at nighttime these are likely to be turned off in favour of bedside lamps or wall lights.

The choice of window dressing is also of huge importance. Heavy curtains and wooden shutters tend to reduce light flow considerably. In their place, consider a less-imposing alternative. Roman blinds, for example, add texture and interest without being overbearing; these might be accompanied by sheer Roman blinds to offer greater privacy in spaces such as bedrooms.

Unclean windows can also reduce that muchsought light, so it’s worthwhile investing in a regular window-cleaning regime. Beyond those windows, ensure that unwieldy shrubs and trees aren’t restricting the natural light on offer to the property; this can be particularly noticeable in the summer months when they are in full leaf.

Before any such changes are introduced, it’s vital to consider the orientation of each room within our home, and how each space is used. The location of a breakfast room might be chosen to make the most of an eastern aspect for the morning sun, for example, with a more formal

dining room enjoying the evening sun to the west. A darker, northfacing room might also make for the perfect snug; a space in which darker colours might be embraced, complemented by layers of texture for warmth and interest. In the absence of generous, if any, windows, the use of green colour tones and house plants can help counter that lost connection to nature. The space might not necessarily offer the best habitat for house plants, so it’s reassuring to see a growing range of impressive and convincing faux plants on the market.

In our rush to bring in light, we mustn’t forget that this can come with its drawbacks, particularly with the fading of much-loved fabrics and paintings. In light-filled rooms such as glass cubes, it is worth considering UV filtering fabrics within discrete, automated blinds that

Large mirrors will reflect light around the room, especially when sited near a window

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This space has roof lights and French doors in the room beyond, and the glass lights and the white walls in the inner room helps to make the light bounce off the different surfaces

Lower light levels affect not just a room’s ambience, but our own health and well-being

can be dropped when the room is not in use.

To protect those pieces of furniture that are subject to plenty of light, advances are also being made in the production of faderesistant acrylics. One of our go-to resources for such materials is Perennials Fabrics; their range of textiles, rugs and trims are 100% solution-dyed, making them resist not just fading but also most stains. To help preserve artwork, we also use conservation glass when framing; this glazing offers a coating that blocks almost all UV transfer while still providing optical clarity.

Lower light levels affect not just a room’s ambience but our own health and well-being.

Exposure to bright light is believed to increase our levels of serotonin, a crucial hormone that steadies our mood and happiness as well as aiding sleep and digestion. There is unquestionably much incentive, both on a practical and personal level, in ensuring it really is all sweetness and light – not just in the heart but in the home too. n

A large rooflight and a transparent shower structure makes this bathroom feel bright and large

The large windows, dressed with Roman blinds and curtains enables full daylight when it suits or a more subdued light when it does not; the peachy apricot tones and soft greys increase the feeling of relaxation

• woodhouseandlaw.co.uk 70 THE BRISTOL MAGAZINE

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THE

KI TC HEN PAR TNER S DESIGN STUDIO

www.thekitchenpartners.co.uk 102 Whiteladies Road, Clifton, Bristol BS8 2QY 01179 466433

Founders and Lead Designers - Fiona & Clinton

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GARDENING

The Newt in Somerset

Know your boundaries While your plants lay dormant, now is the ideal time to construct some natural boundaries, says Elly West.

Here, she explains how to create everything from strong design statements to wildlife-boosting borders

G

ardens may vary in size and shape, but one thing they have in common is the need to mark the boundaries in some way. Often this will be with walls or fences, but I personally love the impact of a well-kept hedge. Now is the ideal time to plant a new hedge, while the plants are dormant, and in time for spring and summer.

A hedge is a living wall made of plants. Some are decorative and make a strong design statement, such as the low box-hedge parterres of the Victorian era, or even a hedge maze. Others provide a practical function, acting as a boundary, privacy screen or windbreak. They can be used to break up a space and create different zones, giving structure, leading your eye around the garden and, depending on what plants you choose, they are extremely versatile. A hedge can be formal or informal, evergreen or deciduous, with interesting leaves, flowers or fruits. Hedges are cheaper and easier to install than fencing, as well as being longer-lasting and more interesting. They provide a habitat and shelter for wildlife, and create a good foil for other plants. In spring, you'll have fresh new growth, in summer, perhaps flowers and a home for nesting birds, then the possibility of autumn fruits, and in winter they are the architecture of the garden, carrying frost and snow.

Choosing a hedge is an important decision. You'll need to consider the specific requirements such as the height and size you want it to be maintained at, and whether you want it to be evergreen or deciduous.

A formal hedge is likely to be a single species for a uniform look. Yew is a fantastic option and can be kept small as an alternative to box hedging, or left to grow to several metres. Its soft, dark green needles make a beautiful backdrop for other plants. However, it's fairly slow growing compared to other options, so you'll need patience.

Other conifers can be grown as hedges, including the notorious 72 THE BRISTOL MAGAZINE

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Leyland cypress, or leylandii. It's extremely fast growing (up to a metre per year), and has been at the centre of thousands of disputes between neighbours, so either avoid, or be prepared to cut it back two or three times a year to keep it fully under control.

There are plenty of other evergreen options, including Portuguese laurel, which has attractive slender dark-green leaves and reddish stems, or Griselinia, with glossy apple-green leaves. This dense, lowmaintenance evergreen grows on most soil types in sun or shade, and is tolerant of wind and salt, so good for coastal gardens.

Semi-evergreens include privet – ever popular for good reason as it's tough, easy to grow and maintain, and there are attractive variegated varieties available with leaves edged with golden-yellow or cream.

Beech is deciduous when grown as a tree, but beech hedges tend to hold their leaves after they've turned brown until the new growth comes through in spring, giving you cover all year round. Beech can be kept fairly low – at around 1.2m – or allowed to grow tall. The tallest hedge in the world is a 30m beech hedge in Perthshire, Scotland. Hornbeam is very similar and is a better choice if you're planting on heavy clay soil.

Box hedging (Buxus sempervirens) is the classic choice for low hedging and edging around the garden, but can be susceptible to blight or the dreaded box caterpillar. The latter is still mostly confined to areas of the south-east but unfortunately present across the UK, so check around your neighbourhood and if you see dead, brown box bushes then it's probably best to avoid. Ilex crenata, a type of smoothleaved holly, makes a good alternative. Likewise, on the road where I live any viburnum hedges in the front gardens are ragged with viburnum beetle by mid-summer. I took mine out and replaced it with silver-leaved privet.

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GARDENING

If you want something less formal that will also attract wildlife, then there are lots of native hedge mixes offering berries and flowers. These may include hawthorn, dog rose, field maple, hazel and blackthorn. Since the middle of the last century we've lost around fifty per cent of our hedgerows in the UK, so anything we can do in our gardens to benefit birds and other wildlife will help to redress the balance.

Other flowering plants that make good hedging include Rosa rugosa, escallonia and camellia. Lower-growing options are choisya, hardy fuchsia, lavender and hydrangea. In the village where I live there's even a row of beautiful magnolias grown as a hedge, with pink and white goblet blooms in spring. A hedge can also be a good option in terms of security if you choose plants with prickly leaves such as holly, or thorns such as berberis, pyracantha or hawthorn.

Any time between about November and March is a good time for planting, as long as the ground isn't frozen. Classic hedging plants are often sold bare-root while they are dormant, often at a fraction of the cost of their pot-grown counterparts. Check the recommended spacing of your chosen plants online, or if you buy from a specialist nursery such as Chew Valley Trees, they will be able to provide you with plenty of advice and exactly how many you'll need per metre.

Prepare the ground thoroughly by removing any weeds or grass from the planting area, dig it over and add well-rotted manure or compost, along with some handfuls of bone meal fertiliser. Fork the fertiliser into the soil to make sure it doesn't come into direct contact with the plant roots. Once your hedge is planted, it will benefit from a layer of mulch such as bark chips on the surrounding soil to suppress weeds and conserve moisture. Then, once established, it's a case of keeping it tidy and trimming as necessary during the growing season. This could just be once a year for slower-growing varieties, or two or three times a year for faster-growing plants.

The RHS website (rhs.org.uk/plants/types/hedges/choosing) is a good starting point if you want to narrow down your options. Chew Valley Trees also has an excellent website (chewvalleytrees.co.uk) that will help you choose the right hedge for your garden. n

Plant of the Month: Silver Privet Silver privet (Ligustrum ovalifolium 'Argenteum') is a great choice for a medium-sized hedge, as it is fast growing and has attractive green leaves edged with silvery cream all year round. It also has creamy-white flowers in summer that are attractive to bees. It's a tough, compact plant that's happy in sun or partial shade and will tolerate most soil types. Trim as necessary during the growing season, but avoid pruning from late summer until spring to avoid frost damage on the new growth. Prune out any shoots that have reverted to plain green to maintain the silver variegation.

• ellyswellies.co.uk

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Elly’s Wellies

Garden Designs

Turning your ideas into beautiful spaces Elly’s Wellies Garden Designs will help you maximise the potential of your outdoor space and tailor it to your individual needs. Whether you are looking for a complete garden redesign, or just need advice on what to plant in a border, Elly’s Wellies will be happy to help.

For a free initial consultation, contact Elly West

www.ellyswellies.co.uk ellyswellies@gmail.com 07788 640934

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Renovations

Extensions

Building excellence by design

Say hello.

0117 259 1591

Visit our design studio at: 23 Chandos Road, Redland, Bristol BS6 6PG

www.halbuild.co.uk info@halgroup.co.uk

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THE BRISTOL MAGAZINE 75

Bristol & Clifton’s premier Commercial Property Agents Keep up-to-date with our latest news, deals, testimonials and market comment at our website: www.burstoncook.co.uk

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Rupert Oliver FP February.qxp_Layout 1 28/01/2022 11:34 Page 1

Sneyd Park, Bristol | Guide Price £1,650,000 A beautiful family house with a fabulous west facing garden, versatile family accommodation, excellent parking and potential for self-contained accommodation.

Beautifully proportioned (circa 4000 sq ft) semi-detached period house | Superb West-facing rear garden | Off-Street parking for several vehicles and a detached double garage | Exquisite internal accommodation over four floors | Beautiful family kitchen, breakfast room and snug | Decked veranda | Stunning period features | Fabulous views over St. Marys and across to Wales | Easy access to the Downs | EPC: E

In all circa 4000 sq. ft (371 sq. m)

Rupert Oliver FP February.qxp_Layout 1 28/01/2022 11:34 Page 2

Sneyd Park, Bristol | Guide Price £1,500,000 A unique opportunity on one of Bristol’s most sought-after roads; a superb semi-detached house with wonderful gardens, extensive views over The Downs with gated parking.

A generous (circa 3000 sq. ft) semi-detached period house | Stunning rear garden complete with an outdoor swimming pool and glazed fruit house | Off-Street parking for numerous vehicles, detached single garage and a car port | Exquisite internal accommodation over two floors with a generous basement below and wine store | Extensive loft with space (with lapsed planning consent) to convert | Fabulous views over the Downs | EPC: E

In all circa 3000 sq. ft (278 sq. m)

Ocean DPS.qxp_Layout 1 24/01/2022 15:31 Page 1

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Mallory fp.qxp_Layout 1 27/01/2022 13:19 Page 1