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A Poem mentioning The Pipe. Thanks Huw!

If in Bristol

IF you can keep your head and a constant speed, on the Almondsbury interchange,
When all around, other drivers race ahead and swerve about the lanes - blaming you.
If you can walk along Grosvenor Road late at night, thinking, damn it - do or die
And when passers by draw near, look ‘em in the eye, without any hint of fear:
If you can wait and not be tired of waiting, for your train at Temple Meads ,
Or whilst driving through the dismal Dings, looking for those luminous dongs
And not finding these wretched things, admit that you were wrong,
Or hear Redcliffe’s bells, at the sparkling sight of your lover’s thong.

If you can dream hard like Isambard - and keep out of cuckoo land, up on Clouds Hill.
If you can think, when viewing Colston’s statue, I’d like to paint that sugar daddy pink,
With cane and masses of molasses, to ice his sweet charity; refined from bitter slavery
And then go face the music in The Colston Hall.
Or if you can see the swelling Severn estuary, the Avon’s flow defeat
And feel simple pride in that grey salty tide,
Twisting the flotsam, trapping the jetsam and rising so fast against the quayside.
If you can make a heap of money, taking it from anyone,

And on The Nails paying everyone – and with what’s left,
Avoid Old Market’s strippers, while taking a bus to The Pipe & Slippers,
Where over a Blackthorn, a plate of smoked kippers and a warm salad tossed,
You’ll not breath a word about the money you’ve lost.
If you can force your sick self, through cardiology, neurology and physiology at the B.R.I.
And in endless rooms, wait long for your turn, as a patient with the patience of a saint.
If your heart goes out to those girls, who, in the darkened streets of St Paul’s,
Have nothing left, except a haunting obsession with the world’s oldest profession

And who ply their trade with a will to deceive – and yet you believe in their virtue.
If you can walk with Princes through Kingswood and not lose that Oldbury Common touch
And if on the suspension bridge, you can look at that sucking mud the tide has brought about,
Then shed a tear, for those who have stared into this same abyss, and then stepped out:
If you can not be another brick in the wall in The Hole in the Wall,
And in the half marathon, fill every painful minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run,
Yours is Cabot’s Circus and everything that’s in it –
And having done all of this and more – you’ll be a proper Bristolian!

Huw Parsons December 2010 peevishbeebooks@yahoo.co.uk

I would like to take this opportunity to apologise for having a little snooze at the table in the windmill on Saturday night. It happens to the best of us. I just hope I didn't snore/dribble.

Keep up the good work Windmill xx

Oh yeah, fablouus stuff there you!