A closed-door represents a wealth of temptation. It is a barrier between two separate spaces and can represent a change between any numbers of dualistic properties. For example, private and public space, exterior and interior, as well as the segregation of people for any number of socio-political reasons. But unlike a wall, a door is imbued with the potential for movement, and the process of opening it can eradicate the certainty between extremes. Doors create grey areas – moral uncertainties: they make some people very uncomfortable.
Author Archives: Narrative Places
Marrakesh: The Mint Tea is Delicious
I was on the plane. My row didn’t have a window so I looked across the aisle and observed, through the nodding heads of a family of three, how clouds bubbled at the edge of the atmosphere – producing premonitions of sandy cities, citadels, square roofed buildings, terraces, spires and domes. This dream city slowly transmuted and sunk – grew and stretched out of the blueness that underlay it like a deep ocean lapping at its confines. It told stories beyond the scope of my life, until it too sank, like the gifted mirage it was, into oblivion, and the true coast of Africa, glittered on the horizon.
The Art of Being Lost
The idea of being lost is one that is difficult to define – it seems initially to be totally removed from ideas of mapping or physical geography and to be a purely animalistic experience; one akin to a state of confusion. It is perhaps an idea more about interaction with others than on individuality; an idea based on a local scale rather than about vast open spaces.
Hunstanton in the Gloom: Norfolk
What is Sunny Hunny without the sun? Hunstanton in the winter.
A Very English Winter: Sandringham
Revisiting the royal forest in the Winter.
Sandringham: On Forests
His forest filled my imagination. Permeating all corners like a thick fog, filling in every crevice, creating borders and salients, building battlements and forts – keeping the riot of real life out of the lucid bounty of my imagination. The forest grew monstrous in my mind.
Wicken Fen: Watery Field
Wicken Fen – the place sounds a bit like some sort of prison from a Sherlock Holmes novel – at least that was my initial feelings. But it’s actually worse. It is in fact, a watery field in the East of England, which the National Trust tries to charge you seven quid to enter.
Cambridge: Yesterday & Today
Cambridge started like most British cities. Way back, when the Egyptians were busy building pyramids, we raised some lowly farmsteads in the swamps. The Romans appear afterwards and build some roads (handy) and then the Saxon and the Vikings did various medieval things, after which William the Conqueror assumed control. Then, the tumble of the next millennia created the anthropocene that we lament today. Curiously, the village of Cambridge, used to be called Granta-Bridge (or some middle English variant) it then changed to Cambridge at some point – and according to my dubious sources at Wikipedia – the river name was changed because the city had, not the other way around.
On Beaches: Brancaster
Why do we love beaches? What is our fascination with these sandy stretches of water and are they really the paradises we make them out to be in our mind.
The Flood: A Forgotten Village: Grimwith
A little over a hundred years ago, the small village of Gate Up was flooded out of existence. Now all that exists is water.
Narrative Places 