Share Whenever I think of the place, it’s a grey autumn day in November. Stirrings of Christmas, mist in the air, chill clinging to clothing, those little drops of moisture that would bead my fleece with dew. Old women weighed by plastic bags full of God-knows-what shuffling down the beleaguered high street. The town, back...
Share After the divorce, the nineties began. My father, guilt ridden, took it upon himself to make amends and began taking my younger brother and me on a series of trips around the British Isles. We would go to places of natural beauty, which he hoped would instil in us some of his love...
Share It’s been a long time. The bird freewheels through the air, soars above the reed-beds, dives into the marsh hunting frogs, smaller birds, water voles. The wetlands that form an isolated NNR, just outside the tiny village of Stodmarsh. Picturesque rural England pushed to the point of absurdity. It can’t be real, merely an...
Share A dirty street in South London. Smoke-breath gusts in freezing air. The promise of snow. A huddle of patch-jacket smokers shuddering and inhaling outside the pub. A few piercings, studs, heads newly scalped, boots, army coats. Some tattoos visible. A solitary dyed Mohawk. An elderly West Indian woman shuffled past. Scowled. The rumble of...
Share Arthur Machen (3 March 1863 – 15 December 1947) seems to be one of those writers who is continually referred to as obscure and ‘forgotten’ though many of his works are very much still in print, occasionally gets mentioned in mainstream papers like The Guardian, and is championed by lovers of weird and fantastic...
Share “The hills in our minds cannot be measured in miles” - Leatherface, ‘Shipyards’ - “And tomorrow? Tomorrow’s been cancelled due to lack of interest.” - ‘The Last of England’ Andrew Kotting’s 1996 psycho-geographic tour of Britain, ‘Gallivant’, played on the smeared TV set. Little Eden and Big Granny accompany him around the...
Share “There are certain memories that never really reach your brain. They stay in your blood like a dormant virus.” - Michael Moorcock, ‘London Blood’ The city was soft. Streets expanded and contracted with the seasons, thumbprints were left in plasticine tarmac. Quick-sand concrete that could pull you under threatened to trap memories, biography butterfly-pinned...
Share The spoken word scene in London appears to be in rude health right now, with a number of eclectic nights springing up right here in Hackney; October has seen the return of poet Captain of the Rant’s Basement Sedition, held once more downstairs at the Railroad Café on Morning Lane. Hosted by Captain...
Share ‘Under Margaret Thatcher, the government had decided to build a network of new motorways and trunk roads in order to realise her dream of universal driving. Hers was a programme not just to facilitate car ownership, but also to close down the alternatives. We fought for Solsbury Hill because of what it was, what...
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