An Alternative Writing Retreat
Edinburgh is perhaps the most vertical of any major UK city. It has ups. It has downs. And sometimes the transitions between the two can be surprising and difficult to parse. As we navigate from place to place we might find ourselves tackling elegant staircases, perilously steep streets, or unexpected bridges…
Maps aren’t boring. Or, at least, they’re not boring enough for some people. The Royal Society for the Presevation of Boring Grid Squares is the largest organisation of individuals who dream of more boring maps, more blank grid squares, and a more featureless, relaxing world…
Take a ruler. Take a map of Wales. Draw a straight line from border to coast… then pack a bag and walk it. To anyone familiar with the brambly, moist, sometimes-rocky terrain of the Welsh countryside this might seem like an insane idea…
We believe that there are cameras everywhere, and that security is a ubiquitous presence. But how much of the security we see is actually real?
There is a somewhat-sinister rumour that nobody has ever been allowed to die at Disneyland. We investigate the spectre of death within theme parks…
In 2006, the city broke ground on a brand new airport: Brandenburg Willy Brandt Airport. It was a project which would swiftly become a civil engineering nightmare…
We walked around the ragged, disputed edges of Heathrow Airport. From ancient coaching inns to robot cars on raised roads, here’s what we found…
Slushy. Books with poems. Parapets. There is a shadow cast from the trees. Wind. Summer. Talk in the distance both prosaic and profound. Denim. Denim for certain. Cars. It rained before. It’s all cleared up now, someone said. The barber shop sign is winding. White red blue, right? Someone is always chartering a boat, a vessel…
Turn off Seafield Road onto Marine Esplanade, past the sewage plant’s entrance, and you quickly come to the edge of the Firth of Forth. A wide expanse of water with the glittering lights of Kirkcaldy on the other side. There’s a grass walkway here, sandwiched between the treatment works’ chain fence and the sea wall, that leads down to the edge of what then becomes Portobello beach…
Set out on your government-approved once-daily walk. Go in the evening; fewer people present, less necessity for the awkward dance whereby you slip past one another on a narrow sidewalk, one of you spilling out into the road to keep that space, maintain that gap…