I remember being sat on a bench on Dunwich Heath in September last year and seeing the dome of Sizewell B for the first time as an adult. I had just walked a little way down the coast, after a day of filming further down at Orford Ness, from Dunwich beach through to the heath. I simply was not expecting to be greeted by such … Continue reading Short Film – Heavy Water.
“The contours of the Sizewell power plant, its Magnox block a glowering mausoleum, begin to loom upon an island far out in the pallid waters where one believes the Dogger Bank to be, where once shoals of herring spawned and earlier still, a long, long time ago, the delta of the Rhine flowed out into the sea and where green forests grew from silting sands.” … Continue reading Wanders: Sebald, Sizewell and Dunwich (Suffolk).
My walk around Harold Pinter’s old haunts in the east end of London has produced a number of written accounts now that, with the film that sparked of the whole venture being finally public, I’m not quite sure what else to say about it. The idea for the walk came about when I saw the, since frustratingly taken down, Harold Pinter Arena documentary which spent a … Continue reading Short Film – A Walk By Waiting (Harold Pinter, Iain Sinclair).
This is an edited version of the paper given at Spirits Of Place in Calderstones Park, Liverpool 02/04/2016. My thanks to John Reppion and Leah Moore for organising the event and for to the other excellent speakers (Gill Hoffs, David Southwell, Gary Budden, Kenneth Brophy, Richard Macdonald, Ian “Cat” Vincent and Ramsey Campbell). Here’s to the next one. There is strange landmass on the opposite … Continue reading “Wyrd” Wirral – Spirits Of Place (02/04/2016)
It’s an oft-stated critique of Liverpool city centre in recent years that it’s become an increasingly oversized student campus as opposed to a city. A number of local writers and commentators, including an excellent summation earlier in the year by Seven Streets, have mentioned the suspiciously sheer abundance of developments comprising purely of student accommodation within the centre though it has rarely been quantified as a reality if … Continue reading Wanders: Student Flatopia (Liverpool)
“When I was not confined to the house, I would spend my days and my nights on the Edge.” – Alan Garner (1997, p.12). On a frosty but sunny January morning, I was making my way along the M56 towards Macclesfield. The pilgrimage was not one of unique exploration but one of repetition; I was treading my own ghost steps to a place I had … Continue reading Wanders: Alan Garner’s Edge And Cadellin’s Home.
Dérive 1 – The M53 Cavern (A Northern Concrete Island) – 23/12/2015. In a dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop their relations, their work and leisure activities, and all their other usual motives for movement and action, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there. – Guy Debord, 1958, The Theory Of … Continue reading Wanders: The M53 Cavern (A Northern Concrete Island)
Celluloid Wicker Man 