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In that lovely liminal place, snoozing in a field, a bee comes near and it feels the size of a tank, and just as loud. I could hear the blood in my ears and it sounded like an army marching.
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I have thirty-five typecases which I rescued from a skip years ago, and I’ve got to get rid of them now I don’t have anywhere to live. They are mostly in good condition and have the old font names on them. I’ve seen scruffier ones for sale for anything between £20 and £80 each, although most dealers want to give me £10 for the lot and say they’re doing me a favour.
I’ve seen them cleaned up and filled with things, but the idea of little boxes filled with little things makes me shudder.
What should I do with them? What would you do with them?
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James Bone The London Perambulator 1925
The London lover likes to remember that it was in London that Whistler discovered the nocturne. In the wide reaches of the river at night he found the silence and space in the midst of the complicated resounding town that his exasperated nature sought, and into these nocturnes he has imparted a strange tension of beauty as though at any moment something might snap, and the chartered Thames and its warehouses and lights along the banks might suddenly not be there, only a wide nameless creek, with forests at its swampy sides, swooning under the night.
JM Whistler Cremorne Lights 1872
I heard that Whistler got some grief for these near abstract images, but London was foggy and impenetrable, it is transtemporal and strange.
I love its impenetrable, crepuscular strangeness. If the day is clear and bright then you should get out of town!
More from James Bone
Then there are the raree-shows of the fog that every observant Londoner knows. People light up their rooms, but they do not pull down the blinds, so the fog street effect is always curiously different from a night effect. It is a little uncanny as you drift along the stately old parts of town, such as Lincoln’s Inn Fields and Bloomsbury, and see before your eyes hundreds of lit interiors like stage scenes framed in the darkness. You can study ceilings and panelling and mantlepieces in the old houses that it had often been your wish to see.
Another great room I remember had no lights, but a fire was burning in the grate, throwing moving shadows on the ceiling and outlining an extraordinary projecting mass with branching shapes, which one slowly identified as an enormous moose’s head with vast antlers. -
I am unable to read facial expressions. I did a test once in an fMRI machine and got 5 out of 100. This looks like a drowsy face. I am happy to be in Germany, surrounded by so many nice green colours.
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photograph of a conspirator
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so it goes
We all went to Sparrenburg Castle in Bielefeld. Jürgen was our tour guide.
Matt told us that during WWII there was an agreement not to bomb Bielefeld as it was home to a large hospital for the disabled. In 1944 it was bombed, 85% of the town was destroyed and a lot of the castle.
Jürgen said “Tja, so ist das leben”
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A swarm have found their way to my dad’s spare hive
I ask “is there a queen bee?!”
He says we have to wait and seeHe shakes them on to new frames
I make a sign and it reads:
Mr Postman! Warning! Bees! -
Hey,
has come out at last.
The grass is happy
To open her scents, like a dress, through the country,
Drugging light heartsHer heart is the weather.
She loves nobody- Ted Hughes
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I’m pretty sure this’ll take me years to set up, but here’s the idea:
My big brother said: you need to put approx distances and times on your walks.
My colleague said: offer some walks for families and older people.
My friend said: the pictures shouldn’t all have blue skies.
My ma said: you might get raped.
My friend said: your ‘introduction to pyschogeography’ walk sounds wanky.
My little brother said: the walks should come with apples and flapjacks included.
I say: I specialise in the history, literature & poetry of the Sussex South Downs.
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I am applying for the job of Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Research here at Sussex University.
- I command respect among the academic community by always being crispy. Crispy as fuck.
- I’m not a professor but I am really fresh. Everyone says so.
Wish me luck!*
*Your good luck wishes will be included in the ‘supporting information’ section.
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My mum’s cat gives everyone the stink eye all the time, has unretractable claws and used to live on the streets (I suspect as a killer for hire/drug dealer).
We’ve bonded and she sleeps on the bed with me. I love you, evil cat!
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For ten years I have ridden over it, motored through it, run over it, and walked about it in all weathers and at all seasons. I now find that I know practically nothing about it, but the little that I do know has made me supremely happy.
Sussex S.P.B. Mais
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I have a very clear memory of my mother putting soap in my mouth when I was eight or nine years old as punishment for swearing.
I swear a lot now. A whole fucking lot.
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Exploration begins at home.
We all study WWI and WWII at school, but it was only a few months ago that I learnt: in 1940
All sign posts and place names were removed. Every railway station name sign was removed, maps were banned from being sold in the shops.
so as to inhibit the progress of a Nazi invasion.
In five hours of walking today I didn’t see a road sign or place name. I had deliberately set out without a map with the idea of getting lost, but it is hard to get lost in Sussex; the sea, the south downs, the weald, the north downs, the topography is an obvious guide.
(“Ah, I am heading west, I am north of the V.”)
The ringing of church bells was forbidden in June 1940; for the rest of the War the ringing of Church bells was a sign that an invasion had started.
I couldn’t avoid the rain.
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It is nice to sit on the beach at night and look at the sea, because you cannot really see the sea in the darkness, you just kinda look in its direction and listen to it roaring and roaring. -
BBC News
