Secret Clifton Down Shopping Centre Parking

dichohecho points us at this secret parking space hidden behind Sainsbury's on Whiteladies Road, which is also handy for that fine beveraging factility, the Alma Tavern.

This will let you combine a swift pint or two in the beer garden with some Saturday shopping, without having to deal with the shopping centre's own car park, or the now-paid-for railway parking area.

The AA: turning up late. As usual.

Just like the responsiveness of breakdown organisations is measured in time they take to turn up and fix the the problem, the competence of motoring press organisations ought to be assessed by how long they take to complain about something.

Last Friday, a whole week ago, we were complaining about pedestrians walking in our road space.

A whole week ago. Since then: more snow, more pedestrians in our way.

Yet it was only on Friday, seven days after we highlighted this issue that the AA, the nominal voice of the motorist, speaks out on this in a Daily Telegraph article:

And the AA warned pedestrians not to walk on gritted roads as a way of escaping icy pavements or mounds of snow piled high after roads had been ploughed.

See that? It took the AA a week to notice what a problem pedestrians were creating for us. And they weren't even specific about what they were threatening pedestrians with!

If the warning didn't say something like "or we will follow you home and cut the head of your household pet off and put in the bed" it isn't really a warning, is it? More a polite hint. Yet the pedestrians were out and about for a whole week. Above, in Alma Vale and St John's Roads in Clifton.

Below, in Cotham Hill. There you can see one man happily walking down the road, while a law-abiding pedestrian holds on to a lamppost to keep upright. She may not be able to get anywhere, but at least she won't be trying to use any zebra crossings or pressing buttons on pelican crossings.

The pedestrians should know that pavements are for them.

And for vehicles like P78RHW whose driver has struggled against adverse conditions to get to work at the NHS Hampton House facility. At least in these terrible conditions one part of the council -Bristol Parking Services- helped the motorists by staying in.

We're planning a little critique of the Association of British Drivers for being out of touch, but the AA, the big fault there is that despite their leader, Edmund King, being good at getting quotes into the printed news, if their quotes are a week behind the issues in our streets, what use is that? They are coming out and complaining about pedestrians in the roadway just when the snow and ice is all going away. And they don't even warn cyclists to stay off the roads as they aren't welcome in UK cities.

Bristol Traffic: up to date with the issues, timely with the news. Prepared to speak the truth. The real voice of Bristol's Motorists.

International Persecution

Interesting scene in Alma Vale Road, Clifton, one foggy December morning: a DVLA-clamped car.

Nothing unusual people think -we've seen them before. Which is true, but what is interesting here is that this is not a UK car. Looks like an Italian or Spanish plate, left hand drive.

Either it isn't up to date with respect to its homeland's taxes, or the DVLA have clamped it on the belief that it has not been back to the homeland within the last six months or whatever. If it's the latter: how can they tell? You'd need ANPR number plate logging at every port of entry/exit to the country, and some way for a DVLA clamping van to enter the registration number (again, ANPR without human intervention? ) into some database lookup that scans through all that data and says whether or not this car passed through any of the ports in the last six months.

Interesting indeed...

The source of all evil

There are two 9pm+ TV series filmed in Bristol running right now, Mistresses and Being Human.

Mistresses is set in Clifton and Redland; Papadelli's delicatessen pops up regularly, and the program focuses on the day-to-day problems of residents of this part of the city, namely who is going to jump in bed with whom while their respective spouses aren't looking. Except. It's just not realistic is it? You don't just drive round on a weekday afternoon for a bit of awayday fun with at at-home wife while their husband is out at work. Not in Clifton, not unless foreplay consists of 15 minutes driving round in circles looking for somewhere to park followed by 10 minutes of complaining about the traffic on the way there. The only way they'd be able to do it would be if the wife's house had a driveway, and she pulled her car out the previous evening or before 0700 -but she'd be left explaining to her husband why she's doing that. No, not realistic. Now, if they cycled round to their liasons, it would be a cycling-city showcase program. And a good use of showers.

Being Human is much better. It is funded by the South Bristol Marketing Board, an organisation sponsored by two estate agents, a gastropub, and some of the warehouse-sized shops in Bristlington. The purpose of the SBMB is to remind people that some of the more interesting parts of the city are south of the river and people are usually friendlier to their neighbours, even when they are in fact vampires, ghosts or werewolves. In the series, the characters all live in Totterdown, not far from the Shakespeare pub.

As part of the plot -approved by the South Bristol Marketing Board-, the enemy is a group of vampires based in a building. The building is in Alma Vale Road, Clifton, a road most well known for the Alma Tavern, a pub with a theatre attached, and just round the corner from Papadelli's, the delicatessen in mistresses where some of the characters work.

In the program, the building appears to be a funeral parlour, but in reality is something else

It is a closed down car showroom.

As far as Being Human is concerned then, the enemy of humanity are car dealers. Hmmm.