Fast forward

Tuesday evening

As the announcer on the Paddington - Bristol train said, "we shall now be proceeding forward." The last thing we want to do, as Chris puts it, is to proceed backward.

It's not easy to find time for blogging on my travels. Things happen faster than I can write notes about them (more so than at home) and even as I write, my husband comes into the hotel room from his day's work at the Safety Critical Systems Symposium dying to interrupt and tell me all about that, too.

We are in Bristol, after a weekend with the grandsons in the London snow. Tomorrow, while Chris gives his presentation here and attends his Symposium Banquet, I travel on to Cardiff to see some more of my mother and sister. They joined me for a few hours in Bristol today. My sister came here yesterday as well; two days in a row she and I boarded the SS Great Britain moored in the dock where she was built in 1839, restored to the glory of her maiden voyage to Melbourne in 1852, “the best museum I've ever visited,” said Faith. Today we shared it with Mum, and I had the bonus pleasure of being allowed to step aboard John Cabot's (replica) vessel, The Matthew, moored a few paces away. That one (the original, I mean) sailed for Newfoundland in 1497, the first British ship to cross the Atlantic. Cabot's real name was Giovanni Cabboto.

On the waterfront in Bristol is a plethora of museums, one of them, Arnolfini, a modern art gallery that has an exhibition on the theme of museums that made us think: what are they? What is the point of them?

Up the slope from the river, next door to our hotel, lies Bristol Cathedral, where yesterday afternoon before supper I attended Evensong sung by The Consort of girls and boys from the 6^th Form of Bristol Cathedral school. I remembered the words and their musical settings so well: Stanford's Magnificat in B flat that I sang once, myself, long ago.

Supper with Chris' colleagues Michael and Gary was at Carlo's, an Italian restaurant of high repute, all bright with mirrors and lights, where the waiters looked like penguins.