Sandown Road

I happened to be in Brislington today, the eastern suburb on the outskirts of Bristol as we never called it when I was living there. Doubtless, as the area becomes gentrified and the local pubs turn into craft ale bars, no one will call Brislington ‘Briz’ anymore but I still do. I always will. Anyway, I found myself driving up Sandown Road where my grandparents lived and, as ever, I looked to the left for number 40. I’ve done this many, many times over the years because even though Alfred and Nellie have long since died, this place is part of my history.

I have not been in the house for, I suppose, around 37 years but I remember every part of it and I remember what wasn’t there, which was a bathroom. They had an outside toilet, covered in a ramshackle shed, linked to the back door but the only other water in the house was in the kitchen. Because of my not exactly privileged upbringing, I never thought there was anything odd about it. Genuinely, I didn’t think there was anything unusual about a house not having any kind of place to wash until the last few years. What you don’t have, they say, you don’t miss.

Anyway, today was a bit unusual. As I drove past, at glacial speed, there was a woman on the doorstep talking to a passer by. So much will have changed about the house – I hope – but one thing was the same. You could see right through to the back of the house from the front. And on the right just past the front door were the stairs. I couldn’t see any more but then I didn’t want to. But for a brief moment in time it was yesterday once more.

Apart from the sheer number of cars parked on both sides of the road – where would I have played my improvised and solo games of football these days? – the road has barely changed at all. It literally can’t change unless someone drops a bomb on it. Near the top, the house where a friend used to live. I well remember when his parents proudly bought new windows with metal frames, which seemed so state of the art. I am pretty sure that exactly the same windows and frames are still there today, probably 50 years old.

At the foot of the road still stands Tarr’s ice creams, purveyors of some of the greatest ice cream on the planet and suppliers to most ice cream vans in the city. If it wasn’t closed due to COVID, I’d have gone in for a 99 (or a 69 as I mistakenly requested last time I went in) or a tub.

On the corner at the top, on the right hand side as you look up is a house which used to be a corner shop, Bleathman’s. These were the days before supermarkets and Ken, a balding man with huge teeth, stood proudly greeting customers, dressed in his traditional white coat. He supplied everyone in Sandown Road and all the roads nearby, all of which begin with Sand in their names. Corner shops were everywhere in the 1960s, killed off by the arrival of supermarkets and, I have to say, thank God for that.  I swear that unless you wanted tins of meat or biscuits, there was nothing left worth having.

I didn’t even stop the car. I turned left at the top of the road, onto Upper Sandhurst Road and left Briz. Whilst my body was in 2021, my spirits were transformed to a different, though certainly not better, time.

Of course, I have happy memories of my grandparents who were simple, honest people who never asked for anything from anyone. But the simple life, in a freezing cold house with running water in only the kitchen and outside toilet, was not one that warmed my soul.

There were two upstairs bedrooms. The one at the back was a cramped affair, shared by Alfred and Nellie. The front bedroom was large, airy and largely bare, but spotlessly clean. And there was a small box room which was full of junk. Downstairs, they lived in the small backroom, in front of the coal fire and the front room was – you guessed it – never used and spotlessly clean. As I don’t own any rose-coloured spectacles, all I remember is the cold, dreading winter visits to the outside toilet. I have no idea how they spent their lives in a house so devoid of even basic facilities. But I guess a lot of people did.

I was thinking all this stuff in the moments after I drove away, half expecting to bump into people I used to know and then realising that some of them would be in their 120s by now.

I try not to look back too much – honest! – but just now and again I visit the places of my childhood, youth and adulthood. It’s then I remember who I am and where I am from, which is Briz. Briz, my hipster friends, is not Bristol. Briz is Brislington. And don’t you dare try to change it. I’ve got far too much emotion invested there.