‘Street Sailing’ makes the local press back in Bristol…

Delighted to have a feature about ‘Street Sailing’ in Bristol 24/7′

On foot to the UFO station

In my mental landscape, Bristol is a city of hills, not towers. Although, one local tower – the Purdown Transmitter, or BT Tower loomed large in my imagination. Not least because it looked more like some kind of alien space station, than a building that belonged at the north eastern edge of 1980s Bristol.

Haunted by a strange green world: ‘Our days were a joy and our paths through flowers’

There’s a painting in the Bristol Museum & Art Gallery that I can’t say I exactly liked as a child, but it fascinated me and has haunted me a little ever since.

Growing up in a city that was never there

The day Bristol Museum and Art Gallery’s Chinese Room disappeared, was the day I first realised that places, like people, can change. It came as something of a shock.

A half-hidden route to the past: Bristol’s Johnny Ball Lane

For a long time it didn’t have a name. It was just the lane that ran along the back of Mum and Dad’s bookshop…Eventually, I was to discover that there was a lot more to this old city route than I could possibly have imagined.

All back to Asselega’s place

Is it possible to be haunted by a place? I think that I may be. In this case it is Ashley Vale in Bristol – an exceptional urban oasis caught between the tracks, containing allotments, woods, hilltops and a pub next door to a farm.

Up Brandon Hill!

Wherever you find yourself in Bristol, a hill will be lying in wait. South Bristol even has a whole area seemingly named in jokey reference to its steep streets – Totterdown.

My favourite though, will always be Brandon Hill – scene of public protest, fake duels, restrictive carpet beating and for a long time, hermit’s cells.

Behind Bristol’s Closed Doors

A new way to go behind the scenes of some of Bristol’s most historic buildings.

Into the Narroways – a landscape of words

Landscapes, imagined and remembered, have always played a central role in literature.

The fascinating relationship between writers and the British landscape is currently explored in a new exhibition at The British Library: Writing Britain: Wastelands to Wonderlands. Here are some thoughts it inspired.

I owe my life to a second-hand bookshop

Once upon a time a young woman opened a bookshop…

Record Store Day – Here’s to Revolver Records, Bristol.

As a teenager in the eighties my hometown seemed blessed with a surprising variety of record shops, but I always saw Revolver as the one true emporium of cool.

The Narroways

We knew it wasn’t ours – considered it on loan,
sliver of old wild earth made common ground,
swallowed by city, only partially digested,
an accidental place, become essential.