Colour Walk – Walking North

May 30th

A walk through sprawling Bristol. My aim was to try and walk as far North as The Mall shopping Centre (the group of white buildings above and slightly to the right of the furthest north point of my walk). I got tantalisingly close, but in the end was defeated by a combination of a locked gate, a grumpy caravan owner, and the extreme heat of the day. I did get to Filton airstrip, now defunct but still a huge mark on the map of Bristol.

My first timer went off as I walked down a cut through between houses – high brick wall on one side, a fence on the other.  The only spot of colour, a ‘danger of death’ sign on an electricity transformer box, gave me my theme for the rest of the walk – every three minutes I took a photograh that included some element of text:

Old favourites, company names in the frogs of bricks piled high on a demolition site.

Sign in a window ‘These premises are alarmed!’ – by what?

Grafitti – ‘we have to start somewhere’ and ‘no going back’.  Signs of the times, but sounding to me like the start of a Margaret Atwood distopia.

‘Look right’ sprayed on the grass at a golf course. A safety warning, or sartorial instruction?

WAITING.  For what?