Friends and people

My camera and I made friends with each other again today in Bristol where we went to take Firstborn out for lunch for his birthday. I had a wonderful train journey chatting with Curtis and Michelle, two American tourists on a day trip from London to Bath. I recommended the adorable angels on Bath Abbey. (I also recommended a river trip in London tomorrow which they were very enthusiastic about as Curtis loves boats.) Then the couple opposite them recommended the Royal Crescent in Bath. Michelle recommended Vietnam to me and I said I didn't fly any more which brought in the man opposite me and we got talking bikes and climate. Curtis asked all of us whether we'd been to Chester and what it was like. Well yes, I have - it's lovely. And had I ever been to Beeston Castle, nearby. Ah - that ruined one on the crag that I saw from the canal? That was it, very surprisingly, as it's not a place you'd expect to be on an American tourist route. It turned out they were here for their 35th wedding anniversary and Beeston Castle once belonged to his family.

The most friendly train journey I've had for a very long time.

I spent the morning in the Paintworks area of Bristol seeing the gallery at the Martin Parr Foundation, which I've been wanting to visit for ages. I thought I'd be short of time there but the gallery is only one room so it didn't take long to see Kavi Pujara's exhibition documenting Indian migration to Leicester. As it happens I've had very different perspectives on that bit of Leicester's history over the years and I enjoyed her view.

Not so the exhibition at the Royal Photographic Society next door. I found most of the photos banal and preferred the shadows on the floor which set me thinking, for the millionth time, what it is that makes a good photograph. Kavi Pujara's pictures reminded me how much I like pictures of people, however fearful I am of taking them, so that's how I've chosen today's blip and extra.

Firstborn and I got lunch from one of the stalls in the Hawkins Lane market then sat catching up in the sun in Castle Park, a place with lots of echoes as 13 years ago, when he was a student, we spent an afternoon there opposite the place where neither of us had any idea he would one day be working.

I'd planned to wander in the afternoon then spend the early evening with Firstborn again but when I checked at the station this morning they told me the last train back would leave at 5. By 3.30 the weather was cold and wet so I headed back to Temple Meads. And when the train reached Bath who should get into my carriage but Curtis and Michelle! It was good to see them again but I was gutted when I got home to find that trains were still running out of Bristol and I could have stayed longer.