Wednesday 9 June:

Started the day at “Bloke’s Prayer” at the Society Café (with Dave, Dave, Ed, Nick and Dru). Quite relaxed and enjoyable… sitting outside in bright sunshine.
Returned home and scribbled a brief ’reflection’ (essentially taking stock of where we are as far the house ‘move’ is concerned) and also a long-overdue email to Chris+Sarah.
At 12.30pm, I’d booked a ‘free ticket’ to see the Colston statue exhibition at the M-Shed (despite campaigners trying to prevent people seeing it by block-booking the event online)… my view is that the statue ought to have been removed some considerable time ago. It’s a good exhibition (with views from both sides of the argument), but I found these words (which accompanied the exhibition display) shockingly powerful:
“Edward Colston’s family had longstanding links with Bristol… He was engaged in international trade and became a high official of the London-based Royal African Company (1680-1692). They had the monopoly on the Transatlantic Traffic in Enslaved Africans until 1698. As such, Colstan played an active role in the trading of over 84,000 enslaved African people (including 12,000 children) of whom 19,000 died on their way across the Atlantic. As a Bristol MP late in life, he campaigned to keep the slave trade legal and on favourable terms for traders”.
Read more of my Bloomsbury book in the afternoon.
In the evening “Bloke’s Books” met up online to discuss Dru’s “The Way of the Pilgrim”. Interesting discussion… but I wasn’t really taken by the book!
Image: Colston statue at the M-Shed.