Fishermen, the Plymouth gay scene and undisabled dwarves

Hi to you all out there, since this the first blog I guess I should introduce myself.

Juliet. Jules or Mrs B to those who know me well.

Why am I in Plymouth? Well it’s down to my husband. He got a job here and since by that time I had an engagement ring on my finger I didn’t feel it was right to stay behind!

I’m a home counties girl at heart and had spent ten years in Nottingham after Uni. Doing what I do which is being an artist and sometime curator and all the malarkey that goes with that of which you’ll hear more about in due course.

I’d moved back to Kingwood – a little village outside Henley-on-Thames to do an MA in Fine Art at Reading University and to hear birds when I woke up instead of traffic. Ideally placed for commuting into London where quite a bit of my work happens. I was planning to stay put for the foreseeable future.

Then I met Glenn.

I was dubious at first, not about Glenn, about moving to Plymouth, all I’d heard was some dodgy tales about Union Street and it didn’t sound as if it was a contemporary art Mecca. I said I’d give it a year and see. I’ve been here four and a half now and were looking for somewhere to buy (not easy finding a bungalow with wheelchair access that’s not on a hill round here!) so obviously some if not all my doubts were unfounded. You’re a friendly lot and the surrounding area is stunning so let’s just say I’m warming.

Okay - what am I going to be blog about? Life in general, art will make an appearance and being a wheelchair user always provides material for musing, ranting and philosophising not necessarily in that order.



Let’s start off with a little gem that happened last week.

I had a friend and colleague from London staying to help with some research for the PhD I’m doing at Dartington College of Arts (another reason for staying here for the foreseeable.)

He been eyeing up the fishermen on the barbican and one night decided to hit the highly cultural cosmopolitan gay scene of Plymouth.

Having found a bar and begun chatting with the owner, thoughtful chap that he is enquired about access for me – always good to know which watering holes are user-friendly.

So as I understand it the conversation went something like.

‘Do you have wheelchair access?’

‘Err, well you can get in through the car park’

‘What about a drop down /lower bit of the bar?’

‘They’re disabled not dwarves!’

Now there must be some kind of outlandish logic going on in his head but for the life of me I can’t imagine what it is. Having found myself initially laughing at the ridiculousness of that statement I find it’s been playing on my mind. I wonder if I should go and have a quiet word before he finds himself offending his paying punters, but I’m not sure I can be bothered. In fact me and Glenn spent a while counting the ways in which it was wrong on so many levels. We’ve got to five so far.

Any advance on that I’d be interested in hearing about.