w/e 2023-11-20

Another weekend away. This time I dragged my mood to Bristol for a couple of nights. Pottering around the city on my own wasn’t as pleasurable as when I was there for a sunny reunion weekend in June, but the weather wasn’t as rainy as I feared, mainly settling on mild and cloudy. Like me.

I did have a lovely evening of pubs and food with a gang of old friends, and a few hours of brunch and wandering with another friend, so that made the trip worthwhile and improved the forecast.

My main excuse for this get-me-out-of-the-house trip was to see ME REX play at Exchange, a relaxed and friendly little venue I’d never been to. One of the supports was Sunny Side Down, also new to me, a bit Porridge Radio-esque. While I always hope music can somehow find new and exciting forms, it’s still life-affirming to see people born in the 21st century singing happy and angsty guitars + drums songs. They were young enough to make fun of ME REX being “old”. I’m guessing the latter are, at most, in their early 30s.

A photo of a three-piece band on a small stage, quite close, lit by purple light. Two young men standing, playing guitars, singing into microphones, and a young woman playing drums, grinning as she sings. — ME REX

Earlier I popped into the Arnolfini to see what was on, and really liked the current exhibition, Eregata እርጋታ, by Elias Sime. Mostly big wall pieces, often made from carefully braided electrical wires, wound around nails, and/or pieces of electronics or computers. From a distance the details merge and it looks like textiles, or further out, vaguely like aerial views of fields or cities.

A photo of a large rectangular work on a white wall, taken from one end of it. It's covered in a tiny detailed swirl of electrical wires, wrapped around hundreds or thousands of nails. The nearest half is green, with raised concentric circles, plus odd arched lumps protuding from it. The distant half is light pink and ridged. In the lower-right corner, on the floor, we can just see a lot of brown clay pots. — Close-up of Veiled Whispers by Elias Sime

§ Not much else of note happened during the earlier days in the week, while at home.

Amazingly, even though Mary’s already been away in the mountains of Nepal forever (3½ weeks), she still won’t be back home for another 1½ weeks. No news is good news.