Bristol Has Been Fun

I didn’t sleep well the night before Bill and I left Holbrook at 5:00 am, and didn’t sleep more than a couple hours for the next 24. We plowed through the night far too rapidly at almost 600 miles an hour, and arrived in Bristol at 10:00 am (local time) the next day with our internal clocks well and truly fucked. Nonetheless, although I have noticed that my body has been exhausted, I haven’t really felt it. The journey and stay in England so far has been an absolute blast.

Bristol is an old city, and consequently it has a layout which has grown organically, rather than having been planned. Moreover, the city sits in an extremely hilly region of England, and as a result is a bewildering maze of streets that seem to defy the laws of physics. One may pass a street curving steeply uphill, then another curving parallel to it no more than 50 feet away, which impossibly goes downhill. The buildings lining these insane streets are tall and narrow, and are built in a bewildering variety of styles going back centuries.

It is an easy city to get lost in, which is how I like it, especially when wandering around drunk and alone at 1:00 am. There is a lot of beer and ale in Bristol, and I have already drunk most of it. Despite Britain’s reputation for shitty food, I have no complaints about anything I have eaten since arriving, which has included some excellent curry and an honest-to-Christ East Coast-style pizza. Bristol is also packed full of very attractive and classy women with beguiling accents who wear short skirts and black stockings.

The traffic is intense but curiously well ordered. The cars race through the streets a lot faster than seems safe, and the crosswalks and their signals are strictly advisory. People confidently but cautiously scurry across the streets like nervous raccoons. However, unlike in the states, the pedestrians and drivers are not out to kill or piss each other off, and cars will courteously slow down to let people across without incident.

I could spend a bit of time making interesting observations on the city and its inhabitants. However, I must instead relate the following scene which took place in a bar not far from the campus on the night of the 24th of September, 2009.

The bar was packed full of paleontologists. I was sitting in one corner of the bar talking to Sarah Werning and Matt Brown. Sitting unattended on one of the tables was a box containing a novelty do-it-yourself kit called “Stuff Your Own Beaver.” The outside of the box alleged to contain all that was necessary for stuffing a beaver (the kind with large teeth and a flat tail). The ownership of the box was not established at this time.

A paleontologist of our acquaintance, we will call him Carl, wandered over very drunk. He noticed the box and decided to open it, even though it did not belong to him, and found that it did indeed contain the components necessary for stuffing one (1) beaver: an empty beaver skin and a large bag of cotton. Carl tore open the bag and proceeded to stuff the beaver. Although he proceeded very slowly and methodically, he experienced difficulties getting small handfuls of cotton into the small opening on the beaver skin.

“I’ve never had this problem before” he remarked.

A second paleontologist, we will call her Anita, came over at this point. She was filled with indignation.

“That is my beaver!” she protested, and it was. I don't think he even apologized.