Thank You For The Days...

Yesterday I went back in time.

I had returned to Bristol only once in the previous eleven years, but a promise to visit a new CouchSurfing acquaintance and the ideal opportunity to resurrect an old and precious friendship presented me with all the reasons I needed, and so I decided to dust the cobwebs of my past and revisit the city that I called home during my four years of further education.

Like a spring-heeled koala on a massive eucalyptus rush, I jumped off the train and bounded down and up the stairs leading to the exit, more excited than an only child at Christmas at the prospect of seeing my old flatmate Marc and his girlfriend Tracey. The fact that I was also meeting a new friend from CouchSurfing, Lucy, lent a nice symmetry to the occasion, the equivalent of my life coming full circle, mixing the old with the new, a meeting of past, present and future.

The pretext for this visit was to recreate a venerable old institution that we had worshipped as students: the Bristol Ale Trail. Every year, for a period of six weeks, twelve Bristolian pubs showcased and promoted one real ale a week and offered a t-shirt stating 'I conquered the Bristol Ale Trail' to whoever managed to get a stamp from each pub over the duration of the campaign. Being students (i.e. borderline alcoholic slackers with too much time on our hands), we decided to take the challenge one step further by completing the full set on the first day of the campaign. Every third Sunday in April for 5 years in the mid-1990s, the good folk of Bristol could therefore look forward to seven students more hammered than Hammy the Happy Hammer from Hammertown stumbling down the Gloucester Road just after pub closing time, all wearing the same t-shirt and cap.

With this in mind, I had booked a train ticket to get me into Bristol at 11:15am. Marc, Tracey and Lucy were to meet me at the station and we would head to the pub for our first beer at 11:30am. A minimum of seven pubs were to be visited and our numbers were expected to swell as more CouchSurfers joined our merry throng as the afternoon progressed. The final event of the day was to be a visit to Klub Kute, an indie nightclub playing old school Britpop from the 1990s, the very soundtrack of my university years.

A simple equation really: nostalgic tour of old stomping ground + all day pub crawl + CouchSurfing meeting = a fantastic (and very long) day.

As we wandered lazily from pub to pub (to pub to pub to pub...), I found myself rediscovering this fascinating city that was my home for four years. The beautiful Georgian terraces, trademark steep Bristolian hills, the canals and waterfront, all the memories started to flood back from the moment we left the train station. Every street name, every sign, every building reminded me of a long-forgotten time, of the period of my life that shaped me into the person I am today. Nostalgia was thick in the air as I saw the cultural and historical landmarks that were part of my everyday life all those years ago. Particularly pleasing to my eyes was the discovery that Flames Kebab House, responsible for at least 35% of my nutritional intake, had stood the test of time and was still bringing e.coli burgers and ebola kebabs to the masses.

The Station, The Shakespeare, The Llandoger Trow, The King William, The Drawbridge, The White Lion, The Bay Horse, Colston Yard, Micawber's and The Highbury Vaults. No fewer than ten pubs were put to the sword by our now ten-strong party, boosted by the regular arrival of new CouchSurfers. It was a thoroughly enjoyable day spent in particularly pleasant company.

In fact, it was a perfect day. And one that could only be finished in style with a good old-fashioned boogie to some old indie favourites. I was ready to rock, I was ready to roll. I was in dance mode.

What happened next should not be committed to paper, indeed the most eloquent writer would struggle to find the words that best describe the devastation and carnage that was about to hit the dance floor. After threatening all and sundry with visionary dance moves that would not be out of place in a Jane Fonda Keep Fit DVD, I decided to take centre stage.

Holding the railing between the dance floor and the bar at arm's length, I squatted and stuck out my un-J-Lo-esque backside backwards before unleashing further misery upon a clearly unsuspecting audience by displaying some wild posterior gyrations that the most limber of Russian pole-dancers would have been proud of. With my centre of gravity some kilometres beneath the earth's crust, I was moving as though my butt and the floor were two equally charged ends of a magnet pushing up against and away from each other. People were stopping in mid-dance to marvel at this circus-worthy aesthetical prowess. My own memories of this 'dancing' interlude are somewhat hazy, but I reportedly built on this solid foundation by doing the can-can and the twist at the same time. And the jive. And tapdancing.

Oh yes, I hit the dancefloor, and I hit it hard. Unfortunately, I also hit at least 7 other dancers with my flailing arms à la octopus-on-crack. Although the nightclub manager declined to call in the paramedics, several people who witnessed my dancing did have to receive treatment for shock and will undoubtedly be consulting a hypnotist in the not too distant future in order to repress these scarring memories. Needless to say, I will not be requested to audition for the Royal Ballet Society anytime soon.

It may be another eleven years before I am allowed back in the city.