back of a spreadsheet; back of the net

I don’t like Bristol. I would go as far as to say that other than Swindon it is the urban place I hate most in the UK.

It is badly designed.  Getting anywhere is really difficult. The road to the airport is single carriageway.

It is populated with rude and incompetent taxi and bus drivers. Here’s a hint Bristolian taxi drivers, if you have picked me up from Bristol International Airport there is a good chance I am not from Bristol and won’t know how to get where I am paying you to take me. Part of the deal is that I pay you so I can sit in the back of the cab and not worry. As for the bus drivers, I buy two single tickets from town to Cribbs Causeway, not a crazy or unusual occurrence I bet. It costs £4.95. “Sorry mate, I can’t take a five pound note.” What?!? What!!! You’ve just charged me five pounds. What do you want me to do? Carry round half a hundredweight of change so you don’t have to trouble yourself with new fangled concepts like paper money issued by a central bank. What would you do if I were a single mother buying tickets for myself and my three children? Do you want me to pay you in gold? Or barter? A chicken should see my and Bluebird to Cribbs Causeway.

All the good architecture appears to have been pulled down or blown up and replaced by concrete. Any philosophy of anything called Brutalism should stop before they start. 

The airport, the effing airport is a joke. Carrying a bottle, one bottle, of aftershave I was made to put it in a plastic bag and put it back through the X-ray machine. It’s been X-rayed. The plastic bag will, if anything, make it slightly harder to see inside off. I have one thing. Now you have made me stop the whole queue to put that one thing inside another thing. The coffee is cold. You can’t get a train to town. Despite being as far from Bristol Temple Meads as it is from Bath you can’t get a bus there.

It’s scruffy. Litter lines the streets like drunkards watching the Pope. Everyone looks like a rapist or a drug dealer or a mugger. I’m willing to bet that the average IQ is about 20 points lower than the rest of England.

Bristol lacks beauty, grace, utility or soul.

Frankly, the place could do with a good scrub down and some disinfectant. I hate going there and I wish I didn’t have to.