THE ROADS LESS TRAVELLED: PART 2 (2000)
I put little to no planning into these rural bus journeys. You got on if you could, hung on if you could, and fell off in a new place. Passengers’ skills to accommodate, got you…
5 MILES SHORT: INDIAN RAILWAYS (1981)
I had reached Madras, and travels in the sub-Continent had so far been largely by bus and by boat. I was determined to change that, and lined myself up to take on one of the…
CROSSING BORDERS (1981)
The India I had read about in novels stretched well beyond its current borders. I learned of a country that was referenced to include places that were now in Pakistan and Bangladesh. On my first…
AN EVENING WITH QAZI (1981)
Returning to Rawalpindi after a day of tedious administrative duties in Islamabad, I was planning a quiet night. I had a 5am departure to Peshawar the following morning. I headed back to my bare room,…
HIGHWAY 35 FIRST-VISITED (1981)
Raised in a parochial environment, where bomb sites, economic austerity, and disintegrating industries were omnipresent; low working-class aspiration prevailed on my happy childhood. The early 1960s were my primary school years, when dreams were nurtured.…
Two communities at the Edge: Seal Sands and Dungeness
I am a painter of place, and through a series of largely mixed media compositions, I attempted to express something of what it means to me, to know a place ‘at the edge’. The resulting…
Staithes (Part 2): The Strand.
On North Yorkshire’s Jurassic coast, where Roxby Beck meets the North Sea, there is just enough space to squeeze in a landing place. The Old Norse word ‘stoth’, means a wharf, but in the North…
Staithes (Part 1): The Village.
I stepped down from the ‘United’ bus at a junction on the main Redcar to Whitby road, and found myself on the edge of a small estate of unprepossessing council houses. Feeling underwhelmed at the…
“How Long Did It Take You To Do That?”
May 2014. Looking at paintings, people often seem to want an answer to the question, “How long did it take you to do that?” It’s difficult to offer a reply. I can work out the…
Blackhall Rocks
March 2014. Just 4 miles to the north of Hartlepool lies the former colliery village of Blackhall and Blackhall Rocks, at the southern extent of the Northumberland and Durham coalfield, and what a place it…
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