i’m a fisherman. metaphorically speaking that is; on a practical footing i have no idea of what it’s like to chug out to the north sea with a net and a host of black flags. but professionally, metaphorically speaking, i’m a fisherman.
people go on and on tediously about twitter, writing reams and reams of boring rules outlining why they do and/or do not follow people. here’s mine:
now can we all get back to discussing something interesting please?
this is the shape of 27th of december 2008:
this shape demarks the route of a walk i took on that day. inspired by and loosely modeled on iain sinclair’s ‘london orbital‘ - where iain circumnavigates london by following the route of the m25 - i decided to go for a similar walk around my home town of swindon. i bought a map of the town, roughly worked out the geographical centre, drew a circle with a compass around it and then went out to follow it by foot as closely as possible. with the shape of roads and the physical locations of buildings and farmland it was never going to be possible to walk a perfect circle and the route above shows the path i eventually took. the red line at the bottom of the shape marks the walk’s start and end point; the junction of springfield road & croft road and formerly the site of swindon’s old workhouse.
the idea - beyond simply having a post-christmas day out - was to see my own home town in a new way and reflect upon it afterwards in the form of something like a blog post. however, the experience was so rich with significance that it has forcably extended itself into a larger project; i will return to swindon in mid-january to spend a few days in the newly-built reference library putting together an illustrated historical essay.
update:
the essay is now finished. once completed, friend and fellow writer james burt suggested it should be published in actual book and promoted in swindon, so i did. details of its promotion - including a bbc radio interview and a newspaper article - can be found here. if you’d like to purchase a printed version of the book contact me directly here (copies cost £5), and if you’d just like to download the pdf, you can find it here.