Places for stage and screen.

11 Nov 2024 Leave a comment

by Carole Gardiner in 60 by 60 list, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Number 2 – Acta Community Theatre

Deep in the heart of Bedminster in South Bristol is the home of a thriving community theatre group that is nearly 40 years old. I have been going to this theatre for many years to watch fantastic and original productions on a regular basis as my youngest son, Jake, belongs to the group and has been since he was a young teenager.

The groups are not afraid to tackle controversial and challenging subjects with well written, directed and amazingly acted productions. Also putting on Christmas pantomimes and other light hearted plays to entertain the Bristol public. The groups are a mixing bowl full of different ages and abilities and everyone works so hard to keep putting on fabulous performances.

It wasn’t until I started planning this post that I noticed that the picture in the book had a photo of Jake on the wall, which I love.

Number 5 – Arnos Vale Cemetery

This cemetery near Temple Meads Station was first opened in 1839 and served the city of Bristol for many years for the burial and cremation of loved ones. A wander around the gravestones will reveal the final resting places of the great and the good of Bristol past, such as the survivors of the Charge of the Light Brigade.

In 2003 the city council took ownership creating a community hub with an event area and a café, regularly hosting weddings and other special occasions. The cemetery is a 45 acre haven for wildlife and if you look really closely at the foot of some of the trees you might find tiny doors for the fairies to come and go.

My son Jake and I found ourselves there last year to watch an outdoor showing of the 1980’s classic The Lost Boys, a very apt setting for a fabulous night with my lovely boy.

Number 14 – Bottle yard studio

Not far from my house and almost next door to my place of work lives the Bottle yard studios, this was formerly Harvey’s Bristol Cream where sherry was made and bottled for that traditional Christmas tipple. It is now the place where all sorts of TV and film productions are made. My absolute favourite coming out of these studios is Poldark starting the wonderful Aiden Turner, who I stood in line behind at a cashpoint in Bristol city centre, unfortunately he was chatting on his phone so I couldn’t say hello. I think Aiden dodged a bullet there and had a very lucky escape.

My experience of the studio was a few years ago when I got free tickets to be in the audience for Tipping Point – Lucky stars. Accompanied by my mum and my friend Deb, I joined a very long queue in the car park, mildly excited to watch some celebrities answering easy questions and dropping counters into a giant machine. We were almost at the final destination when an announcement was made to say there was no more room as the host, Ben Shepherd, had brought his family and they had taken up an entire section of the audience. So we never made it inside and went to a well known coffee shop chain for cake.

Number 52 – Goldney Hall Grotto

My bestie and I decided to be culture vultures and watch a production of my favourite Shakespeare play, Much ado about nothing, in the grounds of Goldney Hall. The backdrop for the performance was the beautiful orangery that started out as a rather posh greenhouse in 1714. The grotto was created by Goldney as he developed the gardens, the subterranean wonder is decorated with Bristol diamonds, iron rich quartz found around the city.

These days the orangery is used as an event venue, famously for Dr Watson’s wedding in the TV show Sherlock, where you’ll hear the best ever best man speech from the fabulous Benedict Cumberbach. On a more personal note it was also the venue for Jane’s daughter, Holly’s wedding, who joined us to watch the play. I didn’t visit the grotto on this occasion but I will return at some point to take a closer look.

Big birthday, big challenge.

11 Nov 2024 Leave a comment

by Carole Gardiner in 50 Fabulous things, 60 by 60 list Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Following the success of my 50 Fabulous things in a year to celebrate my 50th birthday, I have decided to mark the occasion of my big 60, (coming up in 2 1/2 years), by completing a list of 60 things. The 60 by 60 list is a mixture of new skills to learn, experiences I’ve yet to have and places I’ve been meaning to visit but haven’t got around to yet.

I made a start at the end of summer and I’ve already ticked off quite a few things, but before I start writing about my experiences so far I thought I’d share a few posts about the fair city I call home.

About a year ago I bought this book 111 places in Bristol that you shouldn’t miss. Having lived in Bristol for the majority of my life you would think that I had seen it all. But after an initial flick through the pages, I discovered there are quite a few places I either wasn’t aware of, or knew about and have never checked out.

But in the last 57 years I have managed to cobble together a few experiences I think may be worth sharing with my merry band of followers and some of them overlap with the 60 by 60 theme. I have added the book to my list of 60 things to try and visit the remaining places in the book.

I went to London and I saw ……

30 Dec 2023 Leave a comment

by Carole Gardiner in London trips Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

I love my trips to London and there are several posts on this blog to support this. My last two visits to the Big Smoke involved two music legends and my two sons.

Back in August I met son number one, Scott, at Paddington station and we made our way to Sotheby’s to see the exhibition of Freddie Mercury’s possessions “A world of his own”. Fans and buyers could visit to view the items for a couple of weeks before the auctions arranged and managed by Mary Austin, Freddie’s lifelong friend whom he described as his common law wife and was his closest confidant. During that time there were 140,000 visitors from all around the world and the auctions raised £40 million, a large proportion of that amount was donated to charity.

Freddie collected a lot of fabulous stuff in his short life and 14061 lots were lovingly arranged over three floors and each room had vases full of beautiful lilies to fill the air with the most amazing fragrance. Everything was in temptingly close touching distance and while no-one was looking I managed a little pinch on the bottom of the sleeve of a jacket Freddie wore on a visit to Japan. When I mentioned it to Scott, he shot me a look that said “if we get chucked out of here because of you, I’m going to kill you”! It reminded me of the time myself and both my lads went to Destination Star Trek and I was trying to get a sneaky photo of William Shatner instead of paying the extortionate fee to do so. I was told a couple of times to stop and move along, which I ignored and my youngest son, Jake, felt the need to drag me away hissing “you’re gonna get us chucked out”.

So with that in mind I decided to try and behave myself on my next trip to London with Jake to see the Elvis Exhibition. It was a wonderful collection of memorabilia from Graceland, lots of amazing personal items belonging to Elvis, stage outfits, documents, vehicles, instruments and his every day clothes in all their 1970’s glory. This time there was no chance of touching anything as it was all safely protected behind glass.

It was a relatively small exhibition so before we headed home we made our way to St. John’s wood and after a yummy lunch at the Drunch café we wandered to the Abbey road studio. We really didn’t have time to do the studio tour, so we visited the shop and tried to get a “walking across the zebra” photo without pissing off too many motorists!

I am so lucky to have shared interests with my lads, it makes my days out to London really special.

Tracks of Carole’s years: part 3

06 Dec 2021 Leave a comment

by Carole Gardiner in Uncategorized Tags: , , , ,

My 5th song is Way Down by Elvis Presley. Most of my childhood was spent listening to Elvis’s music as my dad was a huge fan. So I quickly joined him in that love of the great man.

Most people can recall where they were when we learnt of his death, we were on holiday in Weymouth when we heard the news on the radio in our guest house. At the age of 10 I don’t think I realised at the time how big a deal it actually was, but it was the first time I saw my dad cry.

Way Down was the last single released by Elvis before his death, it’s one of my favourites.

See the source image

The 6th song on my list is Good day sunshine by The Beatles. In my final year of primary school I had the most fantastic teacher, Mr. Parkin. He was so creative in the way he structured his lessons, helping us to learn with competitions and quizzes, he read us books like The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. He also set up a disco every Friday afternoon.

Music and dance was very important to him and he created a dance group, I remember watching them perform in assembly and thought I definitely wanted to be a part of that. So when I was finally in his class I jumped at the chance to join when he set up a new group. We did a dance routine to this song.

I will never forget Mr. Parkin, he was the best teacher I ever had and I still remember a lot of what he taught me, even after 44 years! he was truly inspirational.

See the source image

My Everything

29 Nov 2021 Leave a comment

by Carole Gardiner in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , ,

At the moment I’m doing a rotation in the medical team in a local hospital rather then my usual prevention of admission community role. This means I can walk to work, so Radio 2 is my best friend in my head phones. On my walk home I particularly like Sara Cox and her feature ” My first and last”. She invites the listener to talk about their first and last gig/concert they went to. So I thought I would share my experiences with the group for this post.

My first concert that I went to was back in 1981, I saw Ultravox at Bristol Colston Hall with my school friend Donna. We were dressed in the most ridiculous new romantic clothes and had the most amazing time. The next day we decided that we had to meet them, so we caught the bus after school and headed for the stage door. Of course we didn’t see them and we got in a whole lot of trouble with our parents because we forgot to tell them where we were going and this was way before the birth of mobile phones.

The last concert I went to was with my two besties Bev and Deb, we went to see Il Divo at Birmingham in 2019. I’ve liked Il Divo for a very long time, but always seemed to miss out on getting tickets when they come to the UK. But I didn’t hang about that time and secured our tickets as soon as I saw them advertised. Unfortunately, although I’ve been friends with Bev for over 30 years, I didn’t know about her fear of heights and she had a bit of a wobbly getting to and initially sitting in our seats in the upper arena. But with a lot of support and distraction therapy from Deb and I, she was ok and we enjoyed the most fantastic show.

A tragic end

01 Nov 2013 Leave a comment

Halloween 20 years ago saw the tragic death of a talented actor named River Phoenix, outside the Viper Room nightclub part-owned by Johnny Depp.

River was born in 1970  to John and Arlyn Bottom, they joined the Children of God cult while River and his siblings were young and the family moved over 40 times around the USA and down to South America. The children never went to school and spent a lot of their time performing on the streets and handing out literature from the cult. River was a self taught guitarist starting at the age of 5.

All the children were spotted by a talent scout while singing on the street , but initially River was the most successful doing a variety of television work in his early career. His break into films came with The Explorers and the wonderful coming of age film Stand by me. He seemed to favour the quirky, independent and off the wall films, the only blockbuster he did was a small role as the young Indiana in The last Crusade.

I have 4 favourite films:

Running on empty: River plays a teenager on the run with his fugitive parents, struggling with the constant moving and loyalty to his family. His performance is beautiful and shows maturity beyond his years. He received Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for best support actor for this role.

I love you to death: River’s performance as a young, spiritual hippy is heart warming and funny alongside Kevin Kline and Tracy Ullman.

Dog Fight: This role, as a marine on his last night before being shipped out to Vietnam, was reported to be one of the most difficult for River due to the character being so far removed from his own.

My own private Idaho: This was an outstanding performance as a gay hustler searching for his mother, River delivers in a sensitive and poignant way that is quite stunning. For this role he won 3 awards including the Independent Spirit Award for a movie lead.

River never had any acting training but he could morph completely into his character and act with the sensitivity, depth and expertise of a much older actor.

As well as being a fantastic actor River was also an accomplished musician and singer/song writer and along with his sister Rain he formed the band Aleka’s Attic. They played at many charity events for environmental causes. He got to use his singing talents in the film The Thing called love, when he played a country singer. On the night of his death he was hoping to have a jamming session with Johnny Depp and Flea from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers.

A committed vegan from an early age he was a dedicated animal rights activist, environmentalist  and a spokesperson for PETA. He donated a lot of his money to environmental and humanitarian causes and bought 800 acres of rain-forest in Costa Rica.

The cause of his death was confirmed as a drug induced heart failure, he had Heroin and Cocaine in his system. This came as a shock to his fans as he seemed to be a clean living and healthy young man, but it transpired after his death that he had been struggling with drug addiction for approximately 2 years.

Stand by meRiver

Quote by Carole Gardiner

Where were you when…..

16 Aug 2012 Leave a comment

by Carole Gardiner in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , ,

On this day 35 years ago the King died.

The King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley, was found dead at the age of 42 from a suspected massive heart attack in 1977.

As I wrote in my last post, my dad was Elvis’s biggest fan and his music was played a lot in our house and that’s how I became a massive fan too.

It’s often asked, where were you when you heard Elvis was dead.

I was with my family on our annual holiday in Weymouth when we heard the sad news. My dad was devastated and I think it was the first time I saw him cry. I was only 10 and a bit bewildered at the time, but later understood what was going on.

To this day my Elvis songs are constantly played on my ipod and will continue to be enjoyed for many years.

My 15 minutes of fame

15 Aug 2012 2 Comments

by Carole Gardiner in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

After reading Jack Scott’s post on Perking the Pansies about his radio show appearance, it got me thinking about my very brief moment of stardom on the radio waves. My claim to fame is not nearly as exciting as Jack’s, but nevertheless it was good for me.

A few years ago our local radio station, known then as GWR, was doing a daily slot called ‘Four play’. Listeners were invited to contact the station with 4 songs; their favourite song at the time, their song they dance like their dad to, the song to turn up their speakers to and the song that makes them cry. The presenter would then do a quick interview about the reasons behind the choices and it was edited and played back in the show.

I listened to that show quite often and decided I should let Bristol know about my favourite tunes.

My favourite song at the time was Take That’s ‘Shine’, I liked the song because they had just reformed and I never really was a big fan of the band first time around, I felt it was much better than their old stuff.

My first choice for the song that made me dance like my dad was ‘Suspicious Minds’ by Elvis Presley because my dad was a huge Elvis fan and he actually won a prize once for dancing when he was in the RAF. But alas they didn’t have that one so I had to think of something else, my son suggested ‘Get down on it’ by Kool and the Gang as there is some ancient video evidence of his dad dancing to this somewhere.

The song to turn my speakers up to was ‘Summer of 69’ by Bryan Adams. I have been a fan of Bryan for many years and have seen him live in London, Birmingham, Cardiff and Bristol and I adore him…enough said!

I always cry when I hear ‘These are the days of our life’ by Queen. I am a massive, lifelong fan of Queen and I loved Freddie Mercury. Like many people I was upset when he died and the video for the song is just heartbreaking because of Freddie’s appearance. It was the last video he made before he died and he was just so thin and fragile, but still he managed to perform for the camera to thank the fans for all the support over his fantastic career.

He is truly a legend…