789 - Liturgy (2): Psychogeography

On Cheltenham Racecourse I had a chance to put a question to Iain Sinclair. He's (tangentially, at least) a practitioner of psychogeography. In his books (Edge of the Orison; London Orbital; Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire) he explores the experience of walking through various landscapes, mythmaking with the architecture, people and histories he finds there.

He spoke about the devastation inflicted, unwittingly perhaps, on the poet John Clare, who, unable to acclimatise to London's literary life, sought to return to his labouring family home, only to find that enclosure of the commons had, in the name of progress, privatised the landscape he used to wander freely and which had given him belonging and a muse. Doubly disenfranchised, he spent the latter years of his life in an asylum.

Such enclosure currently finds its echo in the Millenium Dome (a space enclosed with nothing in it) and, now, in the site of the 2012 Olympic Village, where you are being photographed as you approach, but where you have no power to photograph back, on pain of the confiscation of your camera. The site is empty, and the architecture to be built on it modern and uniform, but the crushed stone and life-space confiscated from its previous residents was once rich and full.

Sinclair's talk was powerful, and I, and perhaps others after, asked him how, in the midst of cultural obliteration, one might make a proactive stand for cultural rejuvenation. He writes books. What else could one do?

He gave an interesting answer: "Keep moving. Keep finding new projects."

I cannot help but think that this is the way that Whitley Bay will grow: for its people, and those who come to it, to keep moving, keep on walking, keep dreaming, pushing, and pressing our projects to completion.

790 - Liturgy

Back from a week in a tent on Cheltenham Racecourse.

791 - Fish Legs

One of five fish I've drawn for my friend Marianne, who is putting together a book of children's poetry on Lulu (or similar).

The poem this illustrates, about creepy fish running on land, has a pleasingly shivery Southern Gothic feel.

I drew the fish on holiday with my in-laws. My four-year-old nephew was amazed I took so long on something so small. He decided to draw a fish with legs too, and filled it up with dots, but as he explained to me, it was at least four times as big, and took much, much less time to complete!

792 - Cromer: Whitley Bay With Ladybirds (and Beach Huts)

793 - Betty Boop at Maugham's

Maugham's in Whitley Bay has a shop window full of the wildest out-there ornaments you're likely to see. Here's Betty Boop(s), just left of the Pendelphin range, right from the Native Americans, up from the Chinese Dragons and in the window adjacent to the Elvises.

794 - Whitley Through Fields of Gold

This is looking east from Briar Dene Farm. Sting's song reference intentional!

795 - Playhouse and Dome

Both the Playhouse and the Dome have dropped their scaffolding in the past few weeks. Here they are together...