This book wasn't what I expected it to be. But that's fine, because it sets out to do one thing while it - deliberately, cunningly - does the opposite. In St. Mary's Church, Brent Pelham, in eastern Hertfordshire is the tomb of Piers Shonks, dragon slayer. Yep, dragon slayer. In Hollow Places, writer Christopher Hadley … Continue reading “Hollow Places” by Christopher Hadley
One of the boys in this photo is now dead. Today would have been his 45th birthday. Why do I remember something like that? I didn't know him particularly well. As it happens, his family moved away when we were in 2nd (or 3rd, or 4th?) year of High School, so I never saw him … Continue reading “All those moments…”
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
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
Benjamin Myers is a writer whose time has come. Recent winner of the Walter Scott Prize for his stunning The Gallows Pole, Myers has been a prolific voice of the English North for several years, and his wider renown is thoroughly deserved. It also comes at a fertile time for writing from the North of … Continue reading Lodestone – the work of Benjamin Myers
Or, me talking about maps again. Names change as both language and places change. The village I grew up in has a name - Newburgh - which it has borne since the 12th or 13th century and clearly no longer merits. Some town names' spelling - and meaning - alter over the centuries, but this … Continue reading A nail to hang a place on
"The stones, like the natural granite cast up from the earth by nature, defy the centuries. To stand beside them...on the heights of West Penwith...is to become...an astronaut in time. The present vanishes, centuries dissolve...here in the lichened stone is the essence of memory itself. Belief in immortality...Man's answer, from the beginning, to the challenge … Continue reading Cornwall: ancient stones
I tweeted a month or so back that I'd shoved all other writing projects aside (and that has included this blog, dear reader) because I'd started work on a Folk Horror story. This new work is now at around 9,000 words* and going well. I feel a twinge of guilt at abandoning (for now) the … Continue reading New fields, old land
Warning: contains spoilers, sort of. I read Jon McGregor's debut novel, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, when it came out in 2003. I was, I confess, immediately envious of his talent, given that he's two years younger than me. Ah well, some people have it. This is the first novel of his I've read … Continue reading Habitat and Habit: “Reservoir 13” by Jon McGregor
We moved from Edinburgh to Peterborough in January 2000. At that point, my sole experience of the Soke had been a trip a few weeks before, to find a place to live, and as a stop on the East Coast railway line. The landscape around the town was a revelation, even when just viewed from … Continue reading The mutation of an idea
Into the Gyre 