My Victoriana HELL!

Just as well we got evicted from the Bonmarche shop on Broadmead as the strip outside is now occupied by the tackiest Christmas market on the planet.  Bristol is a Georgian city and this psuedo-Victorian tat is arse-clenchingly awful.



Even the arch-Victorian Brunel choose to adopt the local Georgian style when it came to building shit in Bristol.  Check out his Great Western hotel behind the Council House for a good example.  A restrained line of confidently erect giant stone penises across the front of a cleanly designed huge stone shoebox.  Perfect.  The whole building exudes class and confidence.

People travel the world to come to Bristol and Bath and soak up the Georgian stonework.  Weston-super-Mare is pure Victorian and no-one goes there for the architecture.  The nearest those the mud-dwellers have to a landmark building is a giant carrot, for flip's sake.

Even Broadmead - if you look closely - is designed to Georgian proportions and finish.  The square roof-lines, window surrounds and stone surfaces are all pure Georgian.  It all looks rather lovely on a summer evening as the setting sun turns the stonework to a soft pink.  Ok so the metal window frames are a bit of a let down but you can't have everything.

So what the flying flip is a tacky so-called German Christmas market doing filling the main drag?  It's terrible, crappy brown wooden shacks with mock Victorian eaves, facias and pointy bits selling violently expensive crap that would look tacky in St Nicks market.  Overpriced fried nuts, sausage buns and scented candles.  Isn't there some sort of law against this stuff?

If we were still in the squat I'd be leaning out the window shouting and ranting architectural criticism at the bemused shoppers below 'till I was hoarse and then sulking miserably at the tackiness of it all.