It’s Sunday morning and your head is calling out for a strong coffee, your lungs are calling out for some fresh air, your limbs are calling out for some cosy warmth, and your stomach is calling out for something fried and substantial. An early afternoon trip to that perfect pub or café around the corner then is a life-raft for the over-worked and over-partied Sunday man. This weekly ritual is a place to meet very causally with friends, a time to capitulate in front of a warm radiator (or fireplace if you’re particularly lucky) and an occasion to try your damnest at the Sunday crossword. It curves all of our weekends off with a very palatable laziness and it is the calm in our lives we need before the restart button is hit Monday morning but, ladies and gentlemen, prams are threatening this angelic existence!

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Mild West Heroes is a Bristol-based, ethical t-shirt company that promotes the artwork of West Country illustrators. Started in 2007, the company is run by Jude and Mark Lawson who, after moving from London, fell in love with Bristol and felt inspired by its creative vibe. Whilst embracing the DIY attitude of the city, they also became more aware of its strong ethical and environmental views: “We wanted to create something that was fair for all, whilst also being as low impact and sustainable as possible. We thought promoting local artists and sharing any money made was a good place to start.”

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Did you know that Bristol has one of the most prestigious, successful and well respected graduate theatre schools in the country, whose alumni regularly grace TV and film screens, theatre boards and radio plays nationally and internationally? It has been a bit of a standing joke in the school that the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School is one of Bristol’s best kept secrets, despite garnering huge acclaim around the world. Thankfully, that is changing, and so it should. With graduates like Jeremy Irons, Pete Postlethwaite, Helen Baxendale, Daniel Day-Lewis, Gene Wilder and Sir Patrick Stewart, this home-grown Bristol establishment deserves to be held aloft as one of the jewels of this city.

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Aries
You know the saying ‘going at it like rabbits?’ Mystic doesn’t want to scare you, but the Easter bunny knows where you live, and he has plans for you. Sexy, rampant, melted-chocolate plans.

Taurus
Beware of Easter eggs this month, Taurus. They are incubating horrible things that hatch and climb up your inner thigh with tiny claws. Stay away!

Gemini
Spring is the time of little lambs. Like what Mary had. She had something else as well, didn’t she? And now you are itchy and your parts smell worrying.
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Bristol’s waters aren’t just home to ducks and other aquatic wildlife but a stable community of people who relish in the fact that boats aren’t just a form of transport but also an ideal way of living. Bristol’s harbour and the River Avon are not shy of people who settle along their banks to moor up for the night or even their whole life time.

Bristol’s city centre waterfront boasts a buzzing nightlife with well established bars and eateries, some of which are boats themselves offering a unique way of dining and drinking off land. Because of its popularity, settling along Bristol’s waters doesn’t come cheap as Kerry Smith and her boyfriend, James, have found. Put off my the mooring costs, the couple decided instead to settle their canal boat just down from Bristol and Bath in a place called Avon Cliff in Bradford-on-Avon. The idea of eating, sleeping and living on a canal boat may have never crossed your mind, it certainly hadn’t been the first place I would have thought about moving into long term but after reaching the picturesque surroundings of Avon Cliff, I can see why Kerry and James have resided here for 15 months.
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I’ve never met Margaret, my landlady, but she has one of those direct, no-nonsense voices. I assume she is afraid of nothing. I’m told she drives a Volvo Estate (probably one of the old ones that sound like industrial fans, their interior including backwards facing seats in the boot and those horrendously disconcerting seat warming devices) and she most likely wears Hunter wellies and a Barbour for purely practical reasons too. Anyway, she said to me when we moved into our flat in Redland that we should; “Watch out for the foxes. You know, for the cat.”

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In each issue of Suit Yourself, Creative File goes behind-the-scenes to talk with Bristol creatives in their own working space. Zuleika Gregory is a seriously multi-talented woman working here in Bristol involved in aerial, theatre, performance and design. We caught up with her at her home workspace in Montpelier.

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By Heidi Gough

Ryan Walker
Describe your outfit: Relaxed urban farmer
Favourite Bristol clothes shop: BS8
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10 ways Bristol has changed over the last 10 years

Riots, job-cuts, awful fashion and a royal wedding! We’re quantum leaping like it’s 1999 again. Why? What’s the fascination with retro-reminiscence? 10 years ago I was scooping sick out of my pockets and I remember thinking at the time ‘I really don’t want to be back here again. Thank god for the relentless future when all this will be lost to alcoholic blackouts’ and yet here we are again, reliving the past - like that’s somewhere good to go. Were the days before these days really so good that we all want to go back for a day out or is Bristol at its best now?

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