Back to Blighty – Books, Banksy and Bugsitters

Swiss Family Gibbons has been simply “Family Gibbons” for the past two weeks on a trip back to Blighty on holiday. Many colleagues were heading off to Italy, France, Corsica or intending to spend time at the local pool for their breaks, whereas we headed for exotic Birmingham (and I don’t mean Birmingham Alabama). We also spent some time on the Welsh borders, and in Bristol and Bath

We started our holiday with a 2-day road trip across France and Southern England via the Calais-Dover ferry. It might have been a slightly shorter journey had I not decided to take the ‘scenic route’ over the Jura to France. But, at least it was very scenic, especially when we were heading up single-track roads through wooded terrain and had our path blocked by a herd of bell-jangling Swiss milkers. That was also preferable to the majority of the journey through France which seemed to be just one gently undulating expanse of... erm, ...well, France. Need I say more.

One of the main events once we were back on British soil – aside from checking that Radio 4 was still broadcasting – was a party for The Bug as we had not found the time to introduce her to many family and friends before leaving the country in May. My parents kindly offered their house as a venue for The Bug’s first outing as a social butterfly and we were blessed by a rare day of glorious sunshine, as well as the presence of so many lovely friends and relations. The Bug also behaved herself famously (aside from yawning during my few words of address to the assembled masses – it was a crap speech to be fair though) which has gone a little way to redeeming herself in social situations since she screamed down the walls of a colleagues apartment building for an hour solid last time we tried to introduce her to ‘people’...

Having spent a week in Birmingham (pretty much the limit of what most mortals can endure) we headed for the annual retreat that is “the farmhouse” – an ill-equipped, cold, yet hugely comforting stone cottage down a lane quite literally on the England-Wales border. Together with friends, we were able to indulge in walks, strolls around Hay-on-Wye’s book shops, read, make a visit to the Gower penninsula (beautiful) and Swansea (very far from beautiful) and gaze out of the window while it rained, longing for it to stop, and contemplating the sodden existence of livestock in that part of the world. In truth, the weather was not all that bad and served to reinforce my theory that the most beautiful places can be breathtaking in weathers fine and foul.


Reading has been something we’ve struggled to find the time for since the coming of The Bug, but Hay-on-Wye really does remind one of the pleasures to be found in a good book. That being said, the concentration of bookshops in such a small town – each one of them stacked to the rafters with titles from every genre and generation since Mr Guttenberg got bored on a Sunday afternoon – leads to the inescapable conclusion that a quite colossal number of trees have been felled to become some sort of literary dross or other. What possible market could a publisher have foreseen for “A Potato for All Seasons” outside of pre-18th Century Ireland?

One of the last things we did before heading back for Switzerland was to spend a few days in the west-country. The reasons for this were three-fold. Firstly to visit some relatives in a part of Somerset where many of the local population may well be under the impression that “Hot Fuzz” was a documentary; secondly, for me to visit Bath (a place to which I had hitherto never been); and thirdly to find time in Bristol to visit the Banksy exhibition at the city’s Museum and Art Galleries. It turned out that I had to find a considerable amount of time to achieve the latter, and only after an aborted attempt the previous day when we joined the back of the queue at lunchtime to be informed that the wait was in the region of 4-5 hours and therefore that there was no guarantee of gaining entry before the final admittance at 4:30pm.

The Bug has her uses in acting as a 6:00am alarm call. So, after a feed she was left in bed in the droopy-eyed custody of mummy, while daddy walked across to the other side of town to queue for just shy of 3 hours to see the exhibition. And hats off to Bristol’s museum and galleries for a quite brilliant execution in providing Bansky with a platform to display his challenging wit and insight in such an original – and ironically fitting way. In that sense, it was slightly unfortunate that they felt the need to post up so many disclaimers, distancing themselves, their staff, sponsors and trustees from the “viewpoints expressed by the artist”.

So, all in all a very pleasant break, even if it did seem to fleet by so quickly. Of course the presence of grandparents who could act as Bugsitters on a few occasions meant that we had a few opportunities to enjoy being a couple for a few hours or so on occasion. But it was also a delight to share The Bug – whose latest trick is to do Stevie Wonder-esque head-shaking moves (yes, we did Google it and were relieved to read that it’s ‘normal’ baby behaviour, even outside Romania...) – with people as a family, and to have our first holiday together. Even if it was ‘only’ to the UK.