Boundaries are blurred between fact and fiction and explorations of the sites and spaces of public and private institutions are explored. As artist, adventurer and collector, I attempt to construct a personal taxonomy from these experiences, choreographing encounters with objects gifted to the early Literary and Philosophical Society as well as engagements with people and events along the way. This "return to the philosophers' table" utilises my personal archive of objects, anecdotes, jokes and theoretical citations to investigate ways in which an auto-ethnographic position might be developed within the flow of these phenomena.