“No Pasaran!”
“Where Are the Faces We Seek?” This extract from a contemporary poem gives a flavour of the 1930s. You’ll hear about the Means Test which was, in essence, a vicious attack on the unemployed living on the dole during the Great Depression when unemployment as a national...
The Blackpool of the West (A Tale of Two Bridges Or Two Bridges and a Tunnel)
The Blackpool of the West It’s so close to the endless edgelands of Avonmouth, That warehouse-dystopian modernity, Where no-one seems to manufacture anything, Just store stuff, move stuff or exchange stuff, And then choose a café for a coffee and a croissant: The...
Why No Hoboes Over Here?
I’m writing this after rereading Kenneth Alsopp’s classic Hard Travellin’ after a gap of some nearly fifty years. It is, needless, to say, a book of its time but what a poetic piece of extensive research it is. It’s a piece of Americana but the book also opens up the...
A Walk can be an Open Air Museum
A BS3 Museum Walk (Others Are Available) Join me on one of my regular walks from my home to Ashton Gate, the home of Bristol City. I am highlighting the exhibits I connect with. If you were to undertake the walk you would, undoubtedly, see different things. Exhibit 1...
Dudbridge Railway Station
I often walk the cycle track below Rodborough Hill, The old Midland Railway spur from Dudbridge, And I often cycle the track on to Nailsworth, Musing on the springs and watercourses, the ancient holloways, The Roman villa, medieval ridge and furrow, the woollen...
Psychogeography and Cyclo-geography
I’m a great fan of psychogeographical wandering: I love the whole chronotope thing of getting lost in a landscape and drifting through timescapes; I love the whole Hazlittian and Solnitian walking and thinking at 2.5 miles an hour trope. I love walking,...