I am loving your new picture - we used to see the balloons over the Severn occasionally.
Your username and pictures have been stirring memories for me. We lived from the mid 70s to the mid 80s just outside Chepstow. With 2 children we were frequent visitors to Bristol Zoo. I was sad to see it is moving (has already moved?) outside Bristol, though obviously the Clifton site was very limited for space.
One child was at school at Wraxall, and the other at Clevedon. The uniform shop for both schools was in Clifton, Jolly's, on Whiteladies Road, I think. Googling, it seems to have closed, which is no great surprise, it was really old-fashioned even in the 80s. They had an amazing system where payments and receipts were conveyed in metal tubes from every sales desk to a central cashier. Some sort of vacuum system?
I taught for 3+ years in Bristol, close to Parkway. Later on, travelling from Newport to Paddington, as I did frequently for examiner meetings, I could see the school from the train, just after Parkway, until it was demolished and rebuilt under a new name a short distance away, part of the Stoke Gifford expansion.
Nostalgia is an odd thing - if one moves away and doesn't revisit for years or decades, one expects things to stay as you remember them, even though they obviously must have changed. I bet Weston is still Weston-Super-Mud when the tide is out all day, though! Glad you enjoyed your day out there.
I hope the appointment tomorrow gives you an answer to the leg problem.
