"If you look closely enough, all landscapes can be fascinating and any object, no matter what its material, can be freighted with meaning." This is the most inspiring book I've read all year. Writer Gareth E. Rees1 shows, through his wonderfully offbeat travels across Britain, that in a secular age "significance" can be found anywhere, … Continue reading “Unofficial Britain” by Gareth E. Rees
Regular readers will know that I like both professional and recreational cycling. Many professional races (such as the Tour de France) hold events called sportives which allow recreational cyclists the chance to ride the same route as the pros. One of the longest-established of these is the sportive attached to my favourite bike race, the … Continue reading Landscape, politics and sport: the Ronde van Vlaanderen
The river is tidal for many miles upstream, and the current strong. To an observer on the southern shore the island midway across the estuary’s breadth is deceptively close. You might think you could swim to it, and explore undisturbed its unpeopled expanse. But whatever anecdote your reaching the island inspired, the journey back would … Continue reading Firth of Tay
Something a bit different. I go for cycles more than I do walks, and the back roads of East- and Midlothian are my usual haunts. I've explored some of the old coal mining region in a previous post. A ride on a road bike is necessarily restricted to roads, because you can't branch off onto … Continue reading Esk Valley & Moorfoots: a ride
The plen-an-gwarry (or plain-an-gwarry) is where several of my interests collide: early modern drama, Cornwall, (more or less) ancient sites, and language. What are they? The plen-an-gwarrys are circular earthworks - amphitheatres - where, among other communal events, medieval dramas were performed. These would have borne a resemblance to the contemporary English passion plays and … Continue reading Cornwall: Plen-an-gwarry
Bernard Rose's 1992 film horror Candyman was adapted by him from Clive Barker's 1985 short story "The Forbidden", published in volume 5 of the groundbreaking Books of Blood. Candyman transports the action from Barker's Liverpool to Chicago, specifically to the "projects" (US term for "housing scheme") of Cabrini-Green. In addition to the source material's look … Continue reading Clive Barker: “Candyman”, “The Forbidden”, Place, Race & Time
"No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe" wrote Donne. Well, Mike Tomkies tried his damnedest. Tomkies's books sold in their thousands in the 1980s, but in today's Nature Writing Revival he is nowhere to be found. Both my Dad and cousin Colin (with whom I went birdwatching in my teens, chugging around Fife … Continue reading Mike Tomkies: Wilderness(e) man
Nothing dates like a vision of the future. I was in Brussels recently for a family holiday. Lovely city; highly recommended. Anyway: we visited the Atomium. You might not know the name, but you know the image: "the steel balls". As a piece of architecture, from afar it looks like a toy; one of the … Continue reading Brussels Expo58
"Collieries where a thousand men had laboured for a hundred years became silent fields around a concrete shaft-cap." Neal Ascherson, Stone Voices I've lived in Midlothian for 13 years. The visual signifiers of the county's industrial heritage are largely gone: demolished or overgrown. It wasn't just coal: shorelines on either bank of the Forth once … Continue reading King Coal’s Graveyard: a walk in Midlothian mining country
They're building houses on the field. Not in the field: the field has gone. On it, on the site that it once occupied. For a hundred years, it was a field. Before that, common land perhaps, before the village spread up the hill to encompass it. I don't know. The developers haven't grubbed up hedges … Continue reading A blank space filled
Into the Gyre 