Category: Upcoming

The below has been sent to the Walking Artists Network. Good to see us headlining above London!

‘Here are more details about the events across the UK currently planned for Terminalia: Festival of Psychogeography 2018 held on Friday Feb 23rd 2018

http://terminaliafestival.org/#events

•  10am, Stroud. Radical Stroud: Terminalia Festival Walk
•  11am, Seasalter, nr Whitstable, Kent. Elspeth Penfold: Walking with The Waste Land
•  1pm, Aberystwyth. Roger Boyle: Terminalia – An Aberystwyth Celebration Walk
•  5.30pm, Leeds. Beating the Bounds Walk – Circular walk around our boundary of Leeds
•  6.30pm, London, Nathania Hartley: Tapping Into The City: Group Walk – Stratford

Many thanks and I hope you have a Happy Terminalia!

Tim Waters

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10am, Stroud. Radical Stroud: Terminalia Festival Walk

The folks at Radical Stroud have a walk planned for Stroud involving three very different interactions with boundaries and landmarks: spatial, temporal and linguistic.

1. Meet at the Upper Lockkeeper’s Café at 10am when Jon Seagrave will explain how the shadowy operatives of Stroud & District Psychogeography and Deep Topography Commission are attempting a ‘subjective remapping’ of the town, asking for YOUR assistance in locating the unseen energies that shape and guide our everyday actions here in the bosom of the Five Valleys. Where did YOU have your first kiss? Where do YOU go when you want tranquillity, or fancy a fist-fight? Help identify Aggression Hotpots, Enlightenment Nodes and Knee-Trembler Clusters! Ritual Pilgrimages and Fertility Dances may result!

2. Robin Treefellow will take us on a guided walk to Woodchester Roman Villa where we will slip through all manner of wormholes of Time.

3. We will then walk up Water Lane to the long barrow at Selsley where Stuart Butler will take us on a brief history of swearing: the boundaries between the sacred and the profane; the elemental and excremental; the physical and the psychical; by Janus and …
Robin Treefellow will also talk of the two names of this barrow: The Toots and the Blacklow – it was the site of the old Saxon hundred moot called Blacklow Hundred. Folk still like to gather there!
We will finish with a toast to Faunus.
Please bring food and drink to share….And so to home.

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11am, Seasalter, nr Whitstable. Walking with The Waste Land

On Friday the 23rd of February, members from the walking group Walking with The Waste Land and their friends will be conducting a walk from the Sportsman Car Park in Seasalter, near Whitstable, in Kent. We will meet at 11a.m. in order to catch the low tide at 11.47.

On this walk we will walk to “Mick’s post” from here we will experiment with some low tide mud walking, using knots in ropes to record the experience.
We will then return to Mick’s post where where we will tie the knotted ropes to Mick’s post in a symbolic ritual of the celebration of Terminus.

Mick’s post is a white post in Seasalter which has been erected near the sea wall to indicate the boundary for the digging of bait in the estuary.
Images from these walks will be posted on Twitter @womenwhowalknet @elspethpenfold, using the #Terminalia hashtag. To find out more about Elspeth’s walking as research please visit her website blog: http://www.elspeth-billie-penfold.com

If you would like to attend this walk please contact Elspeth: elspethpenfold@yahoo.co.uk

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1pm, Aberystwyth. Terminalia – An Aberystwyth Celebration Walk

There will be a celebration of Terminalia in Aberystwyth. Terminalia was celebrated in Aberystwyth in 2017 http://www.rogerdboyle.eu/Terminalia/terminalia17.html by a select group, and will be again in 2018. The town map is very clear to this day, and various historical sources confirm the course as:
Castle Point, South to Tan Y Cae, Along to Heol Y Bont, Dan Dre, Chalybeate Street, Baker Street, Alfred Place, Crynfryn Row, Marine Terrace, King Street, Y Ro Fawr, Castle Point
While the walls are no longer visible, their route is easy to trace. There were gates at Heol Y Bont, Great Darkgate Street, Eastgate and Pier Street, which will be noted as part of the tour. http://www.rogerdboyle.eu/Terminalia/Aberystwyth_2_w.jpg

Meet at 1pm, Castle Point (at the sea wall). The tour takes less than 30 minutes. This year we will travel clockwise, in opposition to last year. More details about the walk.
Some words of wisdom are available, http://www.rogerdboyle.eu/Terminalia/walls.pdf that enthusiasts might read in advance. Organised by Roger Boyle.

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5.30pm, Leeds. Beating the Bounds Walk – Circular walk around our boundary of Leeds

5.30pm Route planning, dowsing and map browsing for a strict 6pm departure from the bar at Wharf Chambers Co-op Club . 2 hrs (easy). Bring treats to share, flowers to leave and alcoholic or soft drinks to keep you warm! With events, interventions, and special performances from local artists. Led by Tim Waters

A slightly different format to past years, we will find, in addition to the medieval stones, our own boundary markers of the city. Using crystal dowsing techniques over maps in the bar beforehand participants will plot out a route to follow within the city centre. Walkers will then head out to explore the divined places and examine whats there and uncover boundary indicators. Once done (or after a set amount of time), examining our new boundary markers and the map, we will head inwards to find the centre. At each newly found marker, we shall celebrate the boundary with snacks, drinks and flowers, do please bring some to share!

We’re happy to report that 2018 finds all the medieval boundary markers of Leeds, the bars, marked with blue plaques and/or uncovered. Our actions over the years has been successful! This year we will seek in addition to explore the city by finding new boundary places. The medieval boundary stones marked out the limits of the medieval city, and the entrances and toll booths for animals and trade. Terminus is also the god of non physical boundaries such as time and seasons and relationships. How has the city changed from ancient times – can we ask our unconcious minds where these new marks would or should be?
Beating the Bounds: Additional Interventions and Performances

Simon Bradley http://hud.academia.edu/SimonBradley will perform a guided tour of his “Pocket Museum of Displacements” at a location along the walk.

Anzir Boodoo https://twitter.com/anzrboo will perform a traditional Roman blessing at a suitable spot along the walk – possibly including an invocation to a Roman river god.

Meet 5.30pm at Wharf Chambers bar http://www.wharfchambers.org/ to be part of the essential dowsing, divination and route planning activity. We will leave the bar at 6pm sharp.
Event is free, just turn up. Tickets would be nice, they are not required but help us plan numbers. Tickets via Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/397708697352784

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6.30pm, London, Tapping Into The City: Group Walk – Stratford

Tapping Into The City looks at our movements through private-public space in the city, the impact of urban surroundings on us and our relations with each other.
Come and join in this live art piece – a group walk around Stratford – one of London’s most overtly regenerated areas and centres of privatised-public space (Westfield Stratford City, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and East Village are all within walking distance).

Friday 23rd February, 6.30pm. Meeting point – at the bottom of the Meridian Steps (the stairs leading up to Westfield, next to the bus and underground station and opposite Stratford Centre).
Nathania will explain the piece and then we’ll walk together for an hour or so, simply moving as one through the city space, listening to its sound and the sound of our feet. Afterwards we can retreat to a warm pub nearby. Ideally we’ll wear shoes with pennies stuck to the soles.

All welcome! Free, but please book on Eventbrite to secure your space – https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/terminalia-festival-tapping-into-the-city-group-walk-stratford-tickets-42866867956

Further info and updates on event page https://www.facebook.com/events/1700941356611797/
Tapping Into The City Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/tappedcity. Also view the project video on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/186335190
Contact info, project and other works – nathaniah@gmail.com / www.nathaniahartley.com

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Other Participations

Direction South West: Ursula Troche will be celebrating Terminalia, moving from London space into Torquay space, presenting her work at The Art of You Exhibition at the Artizan Gallery in Torquay, you can read more about her work for the show on Ursula’s blog: https://colourcirclesite.wordpress.com/2018/02/09/its-in-the-south-west/

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Call for events is still open so if you wish to run an event or participation for the day, let me know

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Terminalia is a one day festival of walking, space, place and psychogeography. Terminalia is the festival of Terminus, Roman god of boundaries and landmarks so if there was ever a god and festival for psychogeography this would be it! Events have been run on this day since 2011, and is programmed by you and website hosted by Tim Waters.

Read more: http://terminaliafestival.org/

Swearing Through Time

I have to confess that I’m not loath
To swear the occasional oath,
To utter an imprecation,
Or a shocking execration;
Swearing comes naturally to me,
A semantic field of obscenity,
A lexicon of profanity:
A logorrhea of filth,
A diarrhea of diction;

But let us stop for a moment and ponder
On these two words:
Obscenity and profanity;
Obscenity and profanity –
The different sides to swearing:
Swearing the truth, an oath –
For Christians, not taking the Lord’s name in vain,
Not profaning His name,

And then, the other side of the debased coin:
Obscenity – downright vulgar, bad language,
For just as cleanliness is next to Godliness,
So filth and obscenity are cheek by jowl with the Devil,
And these two tropes, the profane and the obscene,
Dance a pas de deux , a dialectic of truth and falsehood,
In a Song of Innocence and Experience,
And Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained,
Where Heaven and Hell are conjoined
In a history of swearing and cursing:
The marriage of the elemental and the excremental,
The celestial and the scatological,
A state of beatitude, a harmony of opposites,
OMG, FFS,
God Damn It,
In short:
Holy Sh*t.

But none of these expressions are to be taken literally,
Of course; the agreed meanings are not shared
In a dictionary denotative way,
Instead, associatively, connotatively,
Figuratively,
I hope you agree, you bunch of w*nkers,

Sorry, I mean walkers.

But what of swearing on the Holy Bible,
Taking an oath,
The boundary between God and Lucifer:
By God’s Bones,
Jesus Christ,
Go to Hell,
Malediction, blasphemy,
Truth and Falsehood,
Lies:
The Devil’s Work,
The Devil Take it,
Do not bear false witness,
Are you telling the truth?
Would you swear on the Bible?

The New Testament can be ambiguous
About this whole matter of swearing,
Of swearing a holy oath –
Here’s the Gospel according to Matthew:
‘But I say to you,
Do not swear at all,
either by heaven, for it is the throne of God,
or by earth, for it is his footstool …
anything more than that comes from the evil one.’
Which is why, in Medieval times,
Obscenity was acceptable,
But not ‘Zounds’, ‘God’s wounds’,
‘By the blood of Christ’,
‘By God’s arms’,
‘By God’s nails’, and so on,
Profaning the sacred could harm God Himself,
It was believed,
In a reversal of the Eucharist and sacrament,
Which is partly why the Lollards – associates
Of John Ball and the Peasants’ Revolt,
Found swearing on the Bible problematic,
And, later, the Quakers, too, rejected all pledging of oaths.

But with the decline of feudalism,
The rise of capitalism,
The consequent increase in legal contracts,
Litigation and oath taking,
The increasing secularization of society,
So obscenity replaced profanity
As the devil’s work,
With euphemism and bowdlerization,
To cap it all in the nineteenth century,
Until the demotic tongue of twentieth century war:
In the First World War,
‘F***ing’ was used so often, that it lost all
Associative or literal meanings,
And merely meant that ‘a noun is coming’,
As in ‘Get your f***ing rifles’,
A real emergency would entail
A succinct and expletive deleted,
‘Get your rifles’,
And a good job, too –
Imagine Wilfred Owen and Dulce et Decorum Est
With the line,
‘F***Ing gas! F***ing gas! A f***ing ecstasy of fumbling.’
Iambic pentameter goes right out the window,
Although there is a new and emphatic repetition,
I suppose …

And so to the Second World War,
And the end of our story,
This is a history,
Not a modern commentary,
So we will not be addressing social media,
Hate speech,
Or the reported first use of the f-word on the BBC:
The mythology surrounding Ken Tynan in November 1965:
‘I doubt if there are many rational people in this world to whom the word “f***” is particularly diabolical or revolting or forbidden’ –
In passing, note how he used the adjective ‘diabolical’,
He knew what he was talking about,
But no, we end with

‘F*** ‘em all!
F*** ‘em all!
The long and the short and the tall;
Fuck all the sergeants and W.O.I’s,
Fuck all the corporals and their bastard sons;
For we’re saying goodbye to them all,
As up the C.CO.’s they crawl,
You’ll get no promotion this side of the ocean,
So cheer up my lads, f*** ‘em all!”

And so we end with the voice of the working class male,
And of George Formby and Vera Lynn,
Voices that helped bring socialism in 1945,
But today, the lesson is over,
No more History today,
No more psycho-geography on the timetable,
The bell is ringing for us to go home.
Thank Christ for that,
I hear you say.

Inspired by HOLY SH*T
A BRIEF HISTORY OF SWEARING
Melissa Mohr
OUP

Bristol Doors Open Days
The Merchants’ Hall
indocilis pauperiem pati
‘One who cannot learn to bear poverty’

What did I learn about our ‘Island Story’
On a squally September rain-swept day,
At the Merchants’ Hall, and Redcliffe Caves?
Well, we formed an orderly queue at the Hall,
Bantering with the pinstriped beadle,
Before our guide escorted us to the hall,
Where our talk began.

It was informative, in a manner of speaking:
The chandeliers are cleaned every two years!
Sixty-eight people can sit at this table!
When a speaker addresses an audience here,
The chairs are moved to face the front!
Princess Anne likes the Merchant Venturers!
Here are pictures of the docks in the 18th century!
(No mention yet…)
Royal Charters galore!
Portraits galore!
One day there will be a woman on the wall!
And a female ‘Master’ of the Society,
And she shalt have the title of ‘Master’!
The voice went on about the Society’s charitable enterprises,
I glanced at a couple of their annual reports:
‘New Schools’ Trust Offers Diversity’
(Conventional trope of girl in a science lab.),
More stuff on academies, residential care for the elderly,
‘Social business’ (sic), almshouses,
The ownership of Clifton Downs,
‘Although some 460 years old, the Society
is fresh and full of vigour and purpose’;
‘ … The Society and Bristol prospered. Trading patterns changed
over the centuries, with the later years marked
by the appalling period of slave trading in the 18th century.’
It all felt a bit Kafkaesque,
An arcane, shadowy world of ruling class disinformation …
Where philanthropy and charity
Obscures the hierarchy of ruling class control…

The clock chimed the hour.
‘Well, that’s the end of the tour. Any questions?’
‘Only the inevitable question about slavery:
How did the Society benefit from slavery?’
‘Well of course, it’s no secret that individual merchants were involved in the slave trade. But not the Society itself.’
Fair enough then.
Off we went into the rain,
Out past the pinstriped bantering beadle,
And down to Redcliffe Caves:
‘Contrary to rumour slaves were never kept in the caves …
slaves were never directly traded through Bristol itself.’

Outside, ignored by most of the throng,
A fenced site, tagged edgeland tumbledown,
Demolition awaiting,
And on the side,
A searing depiction of a slave ship,
A searing work of art,
With this message about our ‘Island Story’:
‘IN MEMORY
of the ones that were
TAKEN AWAY from their
Freedom, STOLEN from
THEIR FAMILIES AND
HISTORY’
I asked an official at the caves:
‘Is this a publicly sanctioned work of art
or a guerrilla memorialization?’
‘Not sanctioned.
It appeared mysteriously overnight about nine months ago.’

It had been an old school sort of day,
So I decided to do some homework back in Stroud,
Got Madge Dresser’s Slavery Obscured down from the shelf,
Leafed through the index to discover:
One:
‘By the beginning of the seventeenth century, Bristol’s Society of Merchant Venturers, first established in 1552, had re-formed and consolidated its position as the most exclusive voice of the city’s overseas merchants. This was the very time which saw the establishment of a British presence in the Caribbean and the mainland colonies.’
Two:
‘In 1690 John Carey acted as an agent for the Merchant Venturers in London and was appointed … along with others, to draw up a petition for Parliament for “letting the merchants of this City to a share in the African trade.”’
Three:
‘In 1692, he advanced the Society of Merchant Venturers £600 towards the building of a new quay and cranes on the Bristol docks, for which he was soon reimbursed.’
Four:
‘Much Clifton property was owned by the Society of Merchant Venturers , and the eighteenth century saw the progressive development in both bespoke and speculative housing … Clifton was awash with slave-based wealth.’
Five:
‘In Bristol, the Society of Merchant Venturers, which had organized a memorial against abolition in March 1788 went on the following year to organize a group of African and West India merchants and manufacturers with related interests to rally around the anti-abolitionist cause.’

The clock chimed the hour.
‘Well, that’s the end of the tour. Any questions?’
‘Only the inevitable question about slavery:
How did the Society benefit from slavery?’
‘Well of course, it’s no secret that individual merchants were involved in the slave trade. But not the Society itself.’

Announcing “Edgelands and Industry: a look at Hidden Stroud in Space and Time” – A fringe-time walke:

We are a collaborative group unearthing the radical history of Stroud through walking and mapping the landscape, interpreting and re-imagining our local history. Following the huge success of our walk as part of last year’s Stroud Fringe we will be setting off again from The Fountain Inn, Slad Road at 4:00pm on Sunday. This year’s performative walk, ‘Edgelands and Industry: a look at hidden Stroud in space and time’ is approximately 3 hours long, (you can also join the walk at the Upper Lock Cafe at 4:30pm) ends at the The Fountain Inn at 7:00pm with some reflective performance about the walk and a well earned drink!

Announcing a Literary, Self-Referential, Post-Modernist Pub Crawl on Thursday – starting at The Fountain at 4.

The Fountain – The Vic – The Greyhound – The Imperial – The Lord John – The Little George.

I often walk the cycle track at the bottom of Rodborough Hill,
The old Midland Railway spur from Dudbridge into Stroud,
And I often cycle the track on to Nailsworth through Woodchester,
Musing on the springs and watercourses, the ancient holloways,
The Roman villa, medieval ridge and furrow, the woollen mills,
The occasional mill chimney, still rising high into the Stroudwater sky,
And I have often walked the surrounds of Avening, Minch and Amberley,
Recreating the 1916 tragedy of Dorothy Beard and Archibald Knee,
A young woman and a young new recruit,
Drowning together in a millpond.

In short, my head is usually lost in the clouds of the past,
Where I am entranced rather than perturbed by novelty –
Unlike Scrooge, I see few phantoms that repel –
Until last night, when just before our show
Trenchcoats for Goalposts,
At the Comrades’ Club,
In Nailsworth,
Jon Seagrave mentioned a local radio history programme
About that local branch line and the First World War,
Did I know that? …

(Dictionary definition interruption:
Shoddy
Adjective:
Badly made or done.
‘We’re not paying good money for shoddy goods.’
Synonyms:
Poor-quality, inferior, second-rate, third-rate, low-grade, cheap, cheapjack, tawdry rubbishy, trashy, gimcrack, jerry-built, crude,

Lacking moral principle, sordid,

‘A shoddy misuse of the honours system.’

Noun:
An inferior quality yarn or fabric made from the shredded fibre of waste woolen cloth or clippings.)

Did I know that? …
In the First World War, the uniforms of dead soldiers
Were brought from the front, across the Channel, along the railway lines
Of southern England, and so to the Nailsworth branch line,
Where bloodstained and able to tell who knows what tale
Of carnage, confusion and pain,
This timetabled railway conveyor belt
Would deliver its constant supplies to keep alive
The endless supply of shoddy;

Jon said, just before we went on stage,
‘In my innocence I thought the soldiers would have had the dignity of a burial in their uniform, rather than be stripped bare of honour.’

I am sure there was a heartfelt justification for this:
The submarine warfare in the Atlantic,
The destruction of British merchant shipping
The consequent shortages of 1917,
The drowning of our seamen,
The need for cloth to provide uniforms
As the armed forces grew with Kitchener’ appeal,
And then with conscription after 1916,

But there was still something shocking in this tale for me,
Something that I took with me on stage,
That made me mention Robert Graves’ Good-bye to All That
For the first time to an audience in this production:
I think Graves’ image of the Western Front as a ‘sausage machine’
Subliminally affected me –
I thought of his words:
‘It was fed with live men, churned out corpses,
and remained firmly screwed in place’,
As I sang the first verse of ‘Goodbyee’ at the finale…

And what of Lloyd George, Minister for Munitions?
Secretary of State for War, Prime Minister:
‘The Man who won the War’,
Keeping the front lines fed with men and shells,
Keeping the Nailsworth branch line busy with dead men’s uniforms
(‘Finding an arm or a leg still inside wasn’t that uncommon’),
Keeping the Nailsworth mills busy with the production of shoddy,
The production of shoddy for yet more uniforms,
In a Catch 22 search for the perfect uniform:
Made from an infinitely regressive shoddy,
‘Dulce et Decorum est
Pro Patria Mori,
Lloyd George – ‘The man who won the war’,
Friend of ‘the hard-faced men who did well out of the War’,
Flogging them peerages, knighthoods, medals:
The Order of the British Empire
Was conveniently and coincidentally coined in 1917,
Keeping himself in power and profit with the
‘Sale of Honours Scandal’ …

Shoddy
Noun:
An inferior quality yarn or fabric made from the shredded fibre of waste woolen cloth or clippings.

Adjective:
Badly made or done

Synonym:
Lacking moral principle, sordid,

‘A shoddy misuse of the honours system.’

Unbelievable
Adjective:
Unlikely

Synonyms:
Amazing, surprising, astonishing, revelation, shocking, thunderbolt, startling, staggering, turn-up for the book
‘That a part of some poor fellow should end up in the (relative) tranquility
of a Cotswold valley, far from the carnage.’