Sometimes I write my thoughts down.

On Saturday night I went up to Bristol for James's houseparty, in honour of the fact that in a couple of days he will be old. Err... older, sorry :)

He lives in Clifton, which is justly famous for its bridge but more generally is just a really pretty and interesting place to live. There are loads of small shops, cafes and bars that all have something enticing about them, and in some of the back streets you could almost imagine yourself to be in a small French town.

But back to the party. The theme for the evening was "Anti-Christmas". I was considering being the Easter Bunny but frankly that was going to be far too much trouble. Instead I found an anti-Santa hat, which you'll be able to see in the photos when I get round to uploading them. There was also a Santa-GW Bush (pretty damn evil!), a Nazi, and some sort of skull-wearing shaman-Santa get-up. And a devil and an angel (no clue there). And lots of others without costumes :)

I had a really good time. I drank all the drink, had lots of random conversations with strangers, stayed up till 5am, and had a suitably terrible hangover the next day. The house next door was full of students and they had a party on as well (theme: gothic book/cartoon characters, I think) so we went over there for a bit too.

I ended up arguing for ages with one guy who absolutely point-blank refused to accept that religious or spiritual people could be anything other than irrational, crazy or stupid. It'd be interesting to hear what you guys think here. I was brought up Christian (protestant) but have since developed a deep suspicion of organised religion. On the other hand, although I am a rational, scientifically-minded person, I do think it would be nice if there were someone or something out there, and I'm not averse to acknowledging a possible role for a God in science. Spiritualism and rationality are not mutually exclusive, and furthermore, surely it's as wrong to foist on people your opinion that no-one in their right mind should be spiritual as it is to foist religious dogma on them. Discuss :)
(NB I'm thinking here of general belief in an unseen deity - individual religious dos and don'ts such as homosexuality are a separate issue!)

Anyway, as I say, it was a great night, good to see everyone (though it would've been nice to see more of you - especially Dom and Maz!). I've uploaded some photos now: they are here. (I've named some photos with people I know in them; I'm shit at names so I can't remember anyone else's that I met there!)