A place on the shelf 2: The Great Ghost Rescue

For the young me, the ghost stories and folklore of Britain had a powerful effect. Odd to think of it now, but reading about the dead as a child, brought my country to a rich and vivid life.

Out there, it seemed, was a place, far older, stranger and deeper than my limited experience. A world where multiple layers of history could still be seen, or felt, not only in old houses, ruined castles and abbeys, but also in and around more ordinary sites such as shops, factories, pubs and suburban streets.

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Landscape / London

Wandling Free?

Surrounding the wall, stubby ash and elephantine coils of Cherry Laurel gave a writhing border to the site, which for a moment felt to me like an abandoned sacred grove. The idea of Celtic Thin places came to mind, though here it seemed, any doorway to the eternal world had been blocked and forgotten.

The thoughtless hands that had tossed bottles and plastic bags, now tangled in rolling brambles, made this more of a Thick Place – dirty and broken, frayed at the edges, with nothing but shadows able to leak through the veil and stumble off ragged into the undergrowth towards an indifferent city beyond.

Reviving a ghost-wood: the Great North Wood project

It shouldn’t be a surprise to hear a woodpecker in a wood. It depends on the circumstances I suppose. In the last week of January, I was in a small wood on the edge of a housing estate in Lewisham – Hillcrest Wood. The sound of a great spotted woodpecker drumming isn’t yet uncommon, even in London, but here, as you will see, it felt unexpected, though enormously welcome.

Bristol / City / Landscape

Up Brandon Hill!

Brandon Hill aside, other hills in Bristol have their own distinctively languid charm and grace, such as Park Street, while a few are simply brutes.

One of these is the short and abrupt St Michael’s Hill, stretching from Upper Maudlin Street to Cotham. The lower slopes are dotted with attractive iron street furniture, step-work and historic buildings – including the pretty Colston Alms Houses – but don’t let these architectural gewgaws deceive you – it’s a bastard.

Books / Landscape

Common Ground or Private Park: Whose Nature (writing) is it anyway?

This post originally began as a bit of a rant. Fed up with the latest salvos in yet another round of click-baiting polemic about ‘New Nature Writing’, I launched into an aggrieved fan-boy defence of certain ‘nature’ writers.

Since then I’ve occasionally added new links and info to the post, in an attempt to expand its terms of reference and offer some useful resources for anyone else engaged in the debate. Including links to articles on lack of diversity in nature writing, creeping nativism and more.

Above all it is the nature itself that matters, not the opinion – so I urge you to read this too – https://www.chrispackham.co.uk/a-peoples-manifesto-for-wildlife

Books found and books lost: another year of reading

Two thoughts, or questions, struck me recently as I reflected on the books I’ve read during 2018. The first was, where do all these books come from? I don’t mean in a literal sense; from a shop or library, but where did I hear about them? I often wonder this about authors in end-of-year-round-ups of…

Imagine that there was a CheckaTrade for writers…

Imagine a world where there was a demand for poems to be repaired, plot holes to be fixed, unnecessary exposition removed, unfinished tales completed, or lost books and stories to be patched-up and rewritten. The literary equivalent of MyBuilder; let’s call it, Your writer.

At the tree border: Sydenham Hill Station

The large frames created between the support struts, beneath the corrugated iron roof, seem like glassless windows, with ash and oak, horse chestnut, hazel, sycamore and brambles pressing themselves right up to the edges. Sometimes it feels as though passengers are being protected from the looming sylvan creatures beyond.

Un coup d’oeil: a lucky walk by a mill

Going down to the mill is something we do every time we come here. It’s a short distance downhill from Rue de la Roche, where my parents-in-law live, to the town’s second river. When the water is low, as it usually is in August, the visit also includes a walk across the stepping stones and…

Edging into Kent

I started to wonder how far I should go, without a map or much water, but a trail leading out of town and into the fields is always hard to resist. After all, as Richard Jeffries notes in in Nature Near London, one should “Never omit to explore a footpath, for never was there a footpath yet which did not pass something of interest.”

Flying Backwards: Lev Parikian’s Why Do Birds Suddenly Disappear?

A review and author interview as part of the blog tour for Lev Parikian’s Why Do Birds Suddenly Disappear? published 17 May 2018.

Shooting Trees – Into the Woods: Trees in Photography, V&A

Here were ancient trees, darkling trees, summer and winter trees, ancient oaks, looming pines, explosive cherries, laugh out loud at the wonder of it all trees. In one case a massive old volume was open on a page showing a 19th century photograph of a large Beech. Especially fascinating was the tree’s position on the side of a sunken lane, which meant that its multiple tangled roots were exposed to the world, in a glorious, twisting, serpentine display.

Richly Evocative

Places, books & other diversions