BRISTOL - Let me Grab your Soul Away

The last post I wrote on Bristol caused something of a firestorm among its inhabitants - with many being accused of being 'the one' who made me proclaim that, after my day long visit, I had resolved to leave the country again. I should set this one straight: nobody in Bristol did that. Certainly not Charity; who fed me so many cups of tea that I'd probably have never left her flat if I didn't have weddings to go to. Or Jutta and Martin; although obviously I shall be visiting them in Bamburg very soon because, y'know, it looks very pretty. Indeed, let me be clear here, there is one person who you can credit for my booking of flight tickets that I cannot afford and you won't find her in Bristol. Or, indeed, on this continent.

In fact what I meant to say the last time was that, although the days to be notching up another stamp in my passport are numbered (I'm flying out to the States in January) I'd like nothing more than to spend them somewhere in the West Midlands and hopefully within striking distance of Bristol. That, incidentally, is both a whimsical blog comment and also a quick shoutout for anyone around there who wants to give me a job. I find writing applications a very tiring sort of business because of the genetic defect I have which forces me to fill up all the spaces on anything I fill out. Anyone who's received a birthday card from me can tell you how unpleasant the results of this verbal diarrhea can look like. The reason I am not a poet is because when I look in poetry collections I tend not to think 'what a lovely poem' rather than 'what an awful waste of space! Couldn't they have thought of something else to fill in all the white bits? Why on Earth does this thing cost so much when it's all blank verse and blank pages?!'

But, anyway, back to the point.


I have many more beautiful photos of Martin and Ros but this is my favorite. I call it: "Wedding pauses briefly as Bride and Groom spot something unsightly emerging from the undergrowth."

Obviously going to a wedding is the highlight of any trip for me at the moment since, it seems, they are my foremost method of social interaction. This particular example, of good Bristolian friends Martin and Ros, was much fun because of the random assemblage of guests who I half-recognised and half-remembered doing some sort of a campaign once at some undisclosed point in the past. Trying to recall names whilst slowly choking on volcano hot Indian snack foods is the sort of wedding activity I want to be much more involved in in the future.

Ah yes, Indian food. After a short ceasefire following those illness filled days at the end of the Phworld tour, curries and I got reacquainted this week. Four times. But, really, when you're meeting up with impending grooms, future chaplaincy assistants and ex-pats, Indians are not a choice: they are a responsibility.


Your guide to posh Bristol. We have one pretty but fairly useless tower. And, in front of it, a pretty but fairly scary statue. Posh Bristol: pretty scary, and pretty useless.

Aside from weddings and curries; this week was about getting properly reacquainted with all the folks I'd left behind a year ago and it was pretty much all delightful. And, perhaps more importantly, getting reacquainted with the city. Not owning a car and shunning the ways of the bike in Bristol means you get to see an awful lot of the place as you stroll from place to place. Going to and from the station is an epic hike taking in harbour side redevelopment, a bit of the grungy downtown (understand that the way I go isn't necessarily either the shortest or most pleasant) followed by the rolling hills, soaring university buildings and finally the so-white-it's-unbelievable Clifton.

There's a good mix in this city - although you do sometimes have to get on the fabulously bumpy local train to get at it. I took my first trip to Stapleton Road this week where church sits alongside mosque, Sikh Temple sits near Pakistani Women's Centre and you can find every Polish or Indian after dinner sweet that your heart desires. Yes, I'd like to get a job based in Bristol or thereabouts. I'd like to spend some more time in the lovely West Country. And then, I'd like to leave again and come back and get all the pleasure of leaving and coming back again. That suits me. Now let's hope it suits someone whose job I've applied for.

Other recent highlights: (1) Finding the first outside toilet in a house for many, many years (they must be so proud) (2) The first meeting with Samuel Taylor (two thirds of the way to literary greatness already) who has developed the fantastically useful habit of sleeping through church. Clever baby. (3) Fajitas. Where did you go? Don't ever leave me again, baby.

DORSET - Shelves in the closet. Happy thought indeed.

Let me tell you a little story about shelves. Once upon a time when I was a lot younger and smaller than I am now; things were different. Money was tight (pocket money didn't go nearly so far in those days) rooms were small and I was accumulating stuff. The accumulation of stuff was something I spent many a happy day doing in my youth. I was a great collector. Adventure books? Sure! But one was never enough. Dinosaur magazine? Hurrah! But they get you addicted after the first issue and so you just *have* to buy the other hundred or so.

I became such a successful accumulator that it took my parents by surprise. My mother would tell me in no uncertain terms that I must move the stuff blocking her cleaning route (my mother is very particular about her cleaning route) but soon realised that moving said stuff only put it in another part of the same route. I tried putting it on my desk. The desk collapsed. I tried stuffing it in the closet. Unfortunatley I then insisted on carrying on wearing clothes, and so out it would fall. And, of course, I wanted my stuff. To read. To look at. To have around me in as wide and messy a circle as possible because that's what kids want to *do* with our stuff.

So my parents eventually got me some shelves. Not just any shelves, though. To fit in to the tiny wall space I had not already alloted to posters or to standing up in (like I say; small room) they bought me the world's tiniest little shelves on which to store my worldly posessions. And up they went. Books, videos, magazines. All nicely stacked and ready for using and tidying afterwards. This happy stalemate carried on for a while. Sadly for stalemate; I was still acquiring stuff. Lots of stuff. This was the period in my life when I had realised I had picked up the infection of wanting to be a writer and I had acquired the most virulent strain which dictates your choice of university and makes you read a lot of books. So there were a lot of books entering my life and nowhere to put them. Except the shelves.

Eventually I left the country. The instructions I left to my parents were few and vague. "Pile up my mail," I commanded. "Open my credit card bills and burn them! Just tell me they've arrived" (I eventually told them to forget the second part of that instruction) and, most importantly, "If you find anything of mine lying around the house and have nowhere to put it. Slap it on my shelf. I'll deal with it when I get back."


One year later... This is the super fun interactive part of today's post. Open up the picture, magnify and scroll around to your heart's content. This is my life. Enjoy.

The results of this vague instruction giving I present to you now. Because it occured to me today as I was surveying those shelves that this is the most concrete representation of my development avaliable to view in any one place. It's like the Seven Stages of Phil; but all mixed together in that charmingly random way which only Freud or my mother could possibly understand (the latter because she's the one who stacked most of it up there)

For today's Phworld visit, then, I would like you to allow me to give you a brief guided tour of me. Pay attention. There will be a quiz. The top shelf is dedicated to the logical, learning me. Back when these shelves were put up, the first things to go out of harm's way were my many big, heavy fact books. Along with my dinosaur collection and computer magazines. Like some sort of science fiction monster I spent a lot of my early life absorbing facts. From HTML line coding to the discovery of the Iguandadon; I wanted to know everything technical, wordly and, most importantly of all, as completley useless to everyday living as possible. Imagination was more important than life in those days. Who wanted to be in the real world when you could dream and talk dinosaur? There's also some early literary classics up there because, you all know, I was all about the classics. Which of course means: abridged Shakespeare, classic fairy tales (abliet; Disney retellings) and my grandfather's beautifully illustrated copy of Treasure Island which is hidden betweem the Disney and the 20th Century book.

Then there is the bottom shelf which comes from my adolesent period and obsession with films. Nestled in there you will spot such treasures as the Chronicle of the Cinema (it's a *big, heavy book* and therefore it must be *very, very important*), the Buffy the Vampire Slayer yearbook (a later but crucial addition) and a big, heavy hardcopy of the Green Mile which one of my very best friends gave to me for a birthday one time and which I have still not read. Which is pretty good going as I've read everything else on these shelves. There's also a considerable collection of X-Files memorbilia. I make no apologies. Mulder and Scully taught me great things about writing.

But, for me, the joy is scanning over the paperbacks clustered everywhere else. Because, truly, this eclectic collection of volumes sums me up like nothing else in the world ever could. From Jane Austens to religious mysteries, political thrillers and Black Beauty. A few puzzle books, some travel guides and language courses. Peter Wimsey, Arthurian legend, some funny books about Jesus and a rogue copy of T.S. Eliot poetry which is obviously there to make me look clever.

Some people travel the world to remember who they are. I look up about forty five degress whenever I wake up to do the same.