Psychogeography on holiday

We’ve had some nice weather in Essex lately; I requested it for my ‘Summer holiday’; and no-one says no to this face! I’ve been using the lovely weather to explore local landscapes in new ways.

London and Love Lane

Psychogeography has enjoyed a long and fruitful relationship with England’s capital city; I have long enjoyed merely walking round  a part of London, with no cause but interest.

During some temp work in London I have been engaged in some urban wandering and it has got me seeing London from a completely different angle. Leather Lane, for example, is hidden just off Holborn Circus and is profuse with leather and lots of wonderful little coffee shops. Little Essex Road is in the middle of the law quarter; I’ve never seen a road that shared so little with Essex!
 Love Lane was a road I discovered by accident wandering towards East London. When I walked it, it seemed one of the least ‘Love’ filled roads in all of London; there are no front facing businesses on the road and there were very few people using the road. The only thing that seemed vaguely love related was Shakespeare’s Garden at the end of the lane. Traditionally  road names reflected usage; you can find examples of this all over London; you would have found chickens on Poultry, pork at Swinegate and so maybe traditionally people found love, of a kind on ‘Love Lane’. A little research suggested that historically ‘Love Lane’ was a hotbed of prostitution ; today the road plays host to a City of London HIV and Chlamydia clinic. Maybe I was looking for the wrong kind of love down ‘Love Lane’?

Cambridge, Maldon, St Andrews, Ely.

In the last few weeks I’ve had the opportunity to get out and about in the local (and not so local) area. I have been really indulging my early Medievalist; getting my hands on modern day settlements that retain their three-road Medieval structure. 

Cambridge, Maldon and St Andrews all qualify as ‘quaint little English towns’ and are based around three main streets. Such a simple settlement pattern not only makes it easy to get home if you are a drunken fresher; but also makes it much easier to direct tourists to the church/ river/ ice cream shop (delete as appropriate). It never ceases to amaze me, that a settlement system introduced over a thousand years ago can still provide the essentials for a modern town; even if we are no longer trying to hide our swine in the back streets (or are we?).  On the subject of settlements has anyone else realised that even though Ely has a Cathedral and Cambridge does not; Ely is in Cambridgeshire, why is that?

One day I drove the car out and around north Essex. I stopped off for some proper East Saxon jam in Maldon. Maldon is the scene of a semi-famous Saxon epic poem, the Battle of Maldon (that’s the one where Byrtnoth showed some fatal ofermod – whatever that turned out to be!); its got the three-street structure and some pretty, old buildings. I later enjoyed my East Saxon roots with another Essex girl in Cambridge; but I also drove through many other evocative Saxon settlements; Essex is full of them – Tillingham, Dengie (after the Dæningas, awesome name), Althorne, Osea Island.  Driving around rural Essex you could almost be forgiven for believing no one had arrived since those vicious Vikings of 991 (who arrived during the Battle of Maldon); its thoroughly unspoilt with lots of wiggly-roads and old field boundaries.

Essex is home to one of the best places in the world; Bradwell on Sea. It has been a Roman fort, a Saxon monastic community and now a nature reserve and hamlet on the shores of the Blackwater Estuary, where it meets the North Sea. This space has been a special place for me since before I can remember. Just to sit on the beach (in snow or sunshine) and watch the Thames barges/ windmills/ birds tumble in the breeze (delete as appropriate) is magical. It is a place I feel automatically more peaceful, able to notice even the drifting bird flying on the air current and the barge passing silently past.
What is it about this landscape that is so capable of making me stop and notice passing birds, to be peaceful? Which places are special to you? What is it about that space or landscapes that makes it special? Why don’t you share your special place with someone?!

Southend; walls, barges and berries.

One of the aims of the psychogeographer is to get people (including themselves) to see familiar places in a new light. Armed with only a camera, and with a whole afternoon to spare, I set out for Old Leigh; another special coastal place. I tried to essentialise the landscape in a few key images which took my eye; the images that epitomised ‘Leigh’. I tried to frame the images naturally and resist the urge to edit my photos; instead I wanted to focus on taking good photos, first time round, like we used to before digital. You can see how I got on here.

Leigh: sea wall, coast and blackberries

Looking for images made my other senses somewhat heightened; to the sounds of spinnakers flapping in the wind and the water lapping the shore; the crunch of sand in my trainers and of salt on my lips. Experiencing the environment holistically got me thinking not only about the beauty of the environment but, as ever, different perspectives on space and ideas.  I’ve never really seen myself as an arty-creative before, but looking at textures in my environment even got me thinking about bigger ideas; looking at a bench being engulfed by a hedge I started to think about what we let engulf us; and more to the point, why? 

Bench on the seafront, Leigh

What environments do you live in or pass through every day? How do you feel about them? How might you engage with your environment in ways that help you perceive it differently? And what about your special places? What connects meaning to space to make it place? Would you share that space with someone you care about? Would you share it with the internet?

Enjoy getting out into your communities this weekend and take great photos!

'Time Passes' part II

And so I find myself yet again apologising for the tardiness of this blog. I have a great excuse though! I’ve been doing lots of other writing and thinking this week and even designing this cute little venn diagram! But I haven’t forgotten to think about time.

Flying high

Last weekend I had the pleasure of going on a flight in a little aeroplane big enough for just four including the pilot. We flew a round trip to the south coast; right over the cliffs of Dover, Canterbury Cathedral and Dover Castle. Flying over our little town, the Thames Estuary and all of Kent, in a matter of minutes, provided me with quite a different perspective on life. It got me thinking about how reliant we are on our pyschogeography in our everyday life.

Canterbury Cathedral from the plane.

I took my digital camera on the flight and even ten years ago my photographs of England from the air would have impressed people. It is not every day you get to see England so well from above! But with the rise of digital technologies anyone can look on google maps at what England looks like from the air. So although for me this photograph of Canterbury will forever be special; to the rest of you time and technology has probably robbed you of its specialness. So, instead of trying to capture once in a lifetime shots of the county from above, I took other ‘arty’ photos expressing something a little more abstract.

Sunset over the river

One Bright Spot
The Kursaal of Southend on Sea is the subject of my dissertation. It used to be called ‘One Bright Spot’ although it had lots of illuminations it was also a beacon of fun for the working classes with a large amusement park. There were loads of rides and side shows to experience and people from Essex and London would take a day-trip to the seaside. Many of the people I’ve interviewed for my work have spoken about the attachment they have to the 'bright spot', romantic nights at the ballroom or the Tunnel of Love. This got me thinking about how the ‘Kursaal’ space has changed function over time; from field to trotting park, amusement park to housing estate. Although with the passing years people no longer dance at the ballroom (it was demolished and sold, much to the chagrin of Southend’s over 70s); it is still an important place to the local community because of what it represents.

There have been other elements of Southend culture that time has been unable to steal. People still visit Southend for the amusement park, its just on the other side of the road; and the 1930’s arcades have been replaced by illuminated ‘grabber’ games. East Londoners might do different things in Southend, but the majority of our visitors are still East Londoners down for a day at the seaside. All is not lost; ice cream and spades still sell!

Not much changed over 60 years - seaside amusements.

‘I’m fine! I’m fine!’
Was what I said when I came round from a faint at a BBQ recently. After that I was rushed to A & E and spent the evening lying on a bed in the department, I'm fine by the way. I was helpfully positioned in front of the staff desk so I could watch all the comings and goings. Hospital departments can be quite interesting to watch when you aren’t on death’s door or worrying about someone. When I first came round in the house I moved from one room to a stairwell, through another room and I actually don’t remember it. My brain has failed to store that memory. Although in the main I’m not bothered ; a part of me wonders where those few minutes went, who stole my time and what they did with it (and me!) in the meantime?

I predict a riot!
I couldn’t write a blog post this week without passing comment on the recent riots this week. I’ve enjoyed reading the vast amount of e-comment on the subject and the growing number of acceptable reactions. When I first heard about the riots it reminded me of the work I did on the Miners’ Strike of the 1980’s; of the multi-vocality of the time and what happens when you put cuts on public spending. When I did my research on the Miner’s Strike I had the benefit of hindsight to see the build-up, the strikes and the aftermath, including the effect ten years on. I’ll have still made a partisan judgement but it will at least be a little detached. What is so interesting about the riot reportage today is the immediacy of the comment; academics are able to publish journal length articles online within hours of incidents taking place. I will watch with interest to see what the generation twenty years behind me makes of all this when they consider it all with ‘academic detachment’.

p.s. I hope you noticed my reference to Under Milk Wood in the title, I'm going on holiday a bit over the next few weeks so expect my blogging to be even more sporadic! And I'll be back soon to talk about digital tech, its pros and cons for life and the universe!

The Old Man and the Sea

This weekend I had the great fortune to attend ‘Shorelines’; the first literary festival celebrating the sea. The press eagerly anticipated the event and weren’t to be disappointed. The programme was varied including public readings of works old and new, literary discussions and some memorable theatre (who could forget an open air production of ‘The Tempest’ actually in a tempest!). It was good just to get people talking about the rich inheritance of being ‘people of the sea’; even if visitors weren’t from Southend, we all share this little island.

For me, the most memorable experience was watching a three-man performance of Hemmingway’s ‘Old Man and the Sea’. I like Hemingway and enjoyed reading ‘The Sun Also Rises’ and ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ but I have to say, with ‘Old Man and the Sea’ I never got past page three. For some reason a story of one man fishing didn’t capture my imagination in quite the same way as some of his other tales. That was, until Rob Young adapted the story for stage and Laura Casey directed his show; injecting the story of an old man’s delusions with life and vigour.

At base this is a story of one old man, on a boat at sea; not much to write home about. But Young has made it come alive; building a dynamism between the Old Man and his wife, or is it the sea? Either way he builds an exciting, playful tension between the two players. Young has made the story more accessible by introducing two characters alongside the old man who represent temptation and good, in the shape of the wife and fisherman’s boy. We’ve all been confused, tempted and uncertain in decision making. But it was more than a sympathetic plotline that drew us in; there was magic.

The concept for the show is quite simple; three actors, one stage, simple lighting and human percussion; but the effect is impressive. The sounds of water slopping against the boat, created by a boy with a partly filled water-cooler; or the skimming of stones recreated in a bucket of water with a few rocks. The plot weighs in on the psychological and the Old Man’s hallucinations, which recreate both his dead wife and fisherman’s boy; prime the imagination to fill in the other details of sea and sky. The actors also helped us to imagine other parts of the seascape sometimes taking on the role of say, birds in the distance. Special mention goes to Vernon Kizza Nxumalo for his portrayal of the fisherman’s boy, the Old Man’s conscience, a fish, the sounds of the sea and narrator extraordinaire. Such competency in being so versatile is an unusual skill in so young a man, he has the makings of a great storyteller; having the audience in stitches telling tales of the Old Man and his wife.

Old Man and the Sea, 04/09/10. Photo credit: K. Koziel

The location and circumstances within which this story was told also added to the sense of drama and seafaring. We were in a tent, in a storm. The roof of the tent was billowing in the wind and the performance was nearly hijacked by a failing generator which threatened the show with mere candlelight for lighting. Despite these distractions, the performance was impressive and a thoroughly memorable finale to a thought-provoking festival. As one guest said, ‘Technical difficulties? What technical difficulties?’.

Now I’m going to go and read Hemmingway’s novella; thank you Magpie Productions for the inspiration to give ‘Old Man and the Sea’ a second go!