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As well as doing a spot of sightseeing at abbeys and museums when my friend Richard was down we also took in a few of the sights of the other sights on offer - It’s been a while since he was down this way so a lot of Bristol city centre was new to him. Mind you it was new to me as well, because until this week I had not set foot inside Cabot Circus and now that I have, I rather unsurprisingly don’t feel like I have missed out on all that much.

One of the things Richard saw that I took for granted though was the above Banksy, which he had seen photographed, but with the photographs not giving anyidea of where the photograph is situated (a trend my photo doesn’t break).

Anyway Rich, you know where to find it now and even better here’s a larger copy of the photo for you and anyone else that wants it.

Banksy on Park Street, Bristol - Big Version

It’s just gone half eleven at night and I’ve just realised that it’s not Monday. I’m not completely stupid though, I do have a kind of reason for not realising that it has indeed been Thursday all day today.

I’ve only just come back from a holiday, as I have been enjoying using up my annual holiday left over from last year and so my working week, which usually starts on a Monday has only just commenced today and caused the confusion.

As to how I’ve spent my time off most of it has been spent doing not very much and enduring a 4 day headache over the New Year period. The last few days however have been a little bit more enjoyable and productive as I have been playing tourist with a friend of mine (pictured above). Richard and I were friends at uni and whilst he left Bristol for London, he returned  for a few days to visit me this week.

Having him around was like having a pet historian and I cannot recommend having one enough - It makes going to museums and churches a whole lot more interesting, as the significance of lots of minor things gets pointed out and explained. Plus having a pet historian means you have someone on hand to translate Latin inscriptions.

Unfortunately he’s had to go back to London, but on the plus side I finally got around to seeing the inside of a few places that I have been meaning to see for a few years - Bath Abbey and Bristol’s City Museum and Art Gallery. A particular bonus was getting to see the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Exhibition 2008 which it turns out is due to close this weekend.

My opinions about the best photos may have differed from the judges, but it has to be said that either way there is some pretty amazing photography on show. They are even kind enough to have it online for people who can’t get to the exhibition.

Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2008

I know I have kept you waiting, but here is a picture of what I broke:

Luckily for me I was changing it for a higher powered energy saving bulb, so I wasn’t in the dark for too long. There isn’t too much need to fear for the earth as I am still using less energy than the original bulb that was there by a considerable margin.

The only thing that concerned me when picking up the pieces was that even after gathering the pieces together it still looked like I was missing a few pieces. So far though the walk around barefoot method of glass detection has failed to produce any results, so it would seem I was worrying needlessly.

So there you go Rich, you need wonder no more.

Here’s a close up of something I made earlier - Although when I say made, I actually mean dropped, broke and gathered up into a pile. But what could they be pieces of?

I’ll give you a clue, they usually come with a 10 year guarantee. A guarantee, that I suspect does not cover being dropped, which is a little unlucky for me to say the least.

At roleplay last night as it was the last session before Christmas the traditional exchanging of gifts took place, as with any group of friends such an endeavour is rarely treated seriously. Amongst the gifts I found for people included the films Doom, 2001 Maniacs and Serenity, so at least one person got a good film out of my gift giving. Although I will concede that the only reason they got the film was because it was on special offer.

Earlier in the week when I had been discussing buying gifts for the people in the roleplay group with one of them and how hard it was to find appropriate gifts for people, Zak one of the other players shared his cunning shopping plan with me – Go into the nearest Christmas tat store and grab the nearest items appropriate for each person at roleplay.

I got this:

It sounds even worse than it looks and it has only the one heavily distorted song, but it has decided my next character for a fantasy roleplay game – I shall be a bard!

Furthermore to increase the arbitrary nature of deciding my character I shall use my recently created Pathfinder NPC generator to determine the rest of the basic details for my next character. One quick running of my NPC script until a bard was created and the end result was:

Errijon Darkthinker is a male Gnome bard with stats:

Str 8
Dex 15
Con 12
Int 12
Wis 8
Cha 19

Errijon Darkthinker has heavily-scarred skin and a squat body.
They also have baby-blue eyes and unwashed silver hair.

Now all I have to do is come up with a backstory…

I suppose you wouldn’t have to worry about hairloss ever again if something had already caused you to lose it all…