Our European Adventure

After MUCH effort we finally managed to arrange to see Kiri, Dom, James, Liz and Elijah for a couple of days in Bristol. Took the train in the morning (after an annoying and stupid mix-up we missed one train, but they got us on another and asked Kiri to, “Please apologise to Miss Jones for the inconvenience.”)

The first thing everyone noticed about us when we got to Bristol was, “You’re so colourful!” I guess after living in the bland shades of grey of England, people start dressing to fit their environment. We, on the other hand, look like a trio of travelling gypsy clowns. We can’t help it! We just like being bright! And the other thing that our dear Aussie friends commented on was, “I can’t believe how strong your Australian accents are!” (Code for: “you guys sound like total bogans,” - which we do.)

Bristol is cool. Lots of hills, colourful townhouses and brightly painted doors. Far more trees than boring old London as well. The fact that it was Guy Fawkes night and we were finally in the company of people who knew our names, and noticed the same strange things about English people as we did, gave us great reason to celebrate. A plan was hatched to climb the “mound” with some DIY fireworks – and maybe there’d be some other people up there too. Woohoo!

Dom came home from work and we left Liz in the kitchen (baking! Oh yeah!) to go out in Bristol and pick up some fireworks. Dom and Kiri were excellent guides and we got to check out Kiri’s work at the Olive Grove or whatever it was called, until one of her workmates spotted us standing across the road taking photos and generally acting goofy. When she waved to Kiri with a slightly confused look on her face, we hastily made tracks.

Almost had to witness Kiri purchasing an ugly home made Halloween mouse from an op-shop but were saved by Dom’s sarcastic comments. Phew!

The fireworks shopping experience was slightly surreal. We all walked in and looked around with no idea what we were looking for or how to ask for it. It’s weird that the fireworks don’t actually have pictures of what the fireworks will look like on them. So how do you differentiate? The fireworks man asked if we wanted lots of colour, lots of noise, or both. Ummm…? We ended up with an interesting collection of explosives that would apparently look kinda impressive when set off at night. So, happy with our purchases, we proceeded to the park to meet Liz and James and Elijah. That plan got hijacked by the absolutely freezing weather, and we all agreed that hot chips at the pub was a much better idea. So there we were, with our bags of fireworks (James came back with a fairly big bag himself, after “just popping in for a look to see what it’s all about”) crowded around a table at the pub (the very same pub we’d scoffed at earlier for advertising FREE JUGS!! of water), drinking typical English ale (flat and warm, just the way we like it) and generally feeling good about ourselves.

It really was great to feel so welcomed by our friends and be able to talk rubbish and laugh with people who just got us and didn’t give us weird looks all the time. Saphira pretty much fell in love at first sight with Elijah. Pretty cool because the last time Dom, Kiri and James saw Saffi she would have been not much older than Elijah is now. She drew him pictures and took him for little walks and basically just tried to mother him as much as possible. Totally cute.

We ate dinner in the lounge room at Chateau de Lay/Kleinig and sloshed down some wine before donning all our warm clothes for the climb up the mound. Got up the top to find a bonfire, a great view and a stack of drunk English people. What’s wrong with this picture? A heap of people sitting on top of a mountain in close range of a bonfire setting off fireworks at random!?! It was great. Really really fun. Saphira was such a trooper, hanging out with us, chatting to Kiri while James, Dom, Mel and I tried to work out what to do with our fireworks and took turns with the dodgy lighter. We had a great time swigging from our shared bottle of Baileys, watching people setting off different fireworks, and braving our own.

The best was when Dom set a huge one off right over the crowd of people. Whoops! The rocket went flying at a big bunch of strangers… it was pretty loud and firey! We all just ducked and laughed and thanked the universe that it didn’t set anyone on fire! The big box we bought had to be buried 20cm into the ground, which was fun since we didn’t exactly have any digging implements except for the plastic tubes we used to launch our rockets. We gave it a solid home in the ground and if I say so myself, it was awesome. What wasn’t awesome was the stupid idiot dog that kept barking and trying to attack the box where the fireworks were coming from. I don’t know how many times it burnt its dumb dog nose but it kept going back. Later we saw the dog’s owner and realised that the dog was actually the smart one in his household in comparison.

It was cool too because on top of the mound we could see all the other fireworks being let off at random places around Bristol as well as the ones on the mound. It felt so sly and illegal, even though it was perfectly legitimate, to let off fireworks in a public place whenever we felt like it. So much fun.

Ended the night with a sweet cider from the off-license and Kiri and Dom even lent us their bed, the gorgeous things. We felt very taken-care-of and loved.