The Imber bus.

On paper, Imber is a perfect dark, destination.
Requisitioned by the military
At the heart of Salisbury Plain
Never given back

Abandoned.

A lost village.

Now used for military practice.
At the heart of the live firing range.

Many people visit Imber on the Imber bus day.
The counter in the church porch read: 1443 visitors.
Cars line the road.

Families..
Push pushchairs and small infants past the danger signs and inside the houses....
Which are just empty shells.

Imber treated as a film set.

This year I still haven't really got all of it sussed...
But I understand a lot more than I did.

Last year I didn't get any of it...
This year I understood that Imber on the Saterday closest to the 20th of August, is a day dedicated to buses.

The Imber bus walkthrough - Part one.

The buses begin their journey across the plain from Warminster train station.

There is plenty of car park space before you reach the station, turn left off Station road.
Toilets are also to be found here.

At the station there will be many buses.

1. All buses go through Imber except buses going to Chitterne - The Chittern bus travels via Knook Camp.
2. All destinations can be accessed via the Gore Cross Interchange.

Gore Cross to New Zealand Camp.

The bus trundles up a narrow road towards a lay-by, and a heap of earth, beyond which there is some kind of camp being built:

Two buildings demolished and replaced with 11 multi-functional structures, known as ‘stone tents’.The new facilities will provide a modern, multi-purpose training camp that can be used as a Forward Operating Base or to replicate a terrorist camp, refugee camp and a Non-Governmental Organisation Base, or as part of a complex manoeuvre environment. It will also provide an exercise base for troops training in the local area.

A bridleway is sign posted on the opposite side of the road.
Though windswept and bleak, this is an excellent place to picnic.
I assume a bridleway to be free of unexploded ordnance...

We waited for the bus to return
It didn't....

The next bus stopped at a lay-by further down the road and turned around there.
disheartened, we walked back to Gore Cross.

~END of walkthough. TBC.

Vado film.
Begins at Warminster car park, one or two buses parked here.
Then the buses at the station
Over the plain.
Then to New Zealand.

We return to Imber
Then back over the plain towards Warminster.

Broadway Tower.

The day begins in Cobham road
We go past the Droitwich transmitters
To Broadway tower

Built to see the stars...

Dear in the park
A memorial stone, for the crew of a plane that crashed

Britain is riddled in holes.
A 20 foot ladder
To a box
In which three men
Waited for the nukes..

A pressure gauge
Pascals
Ionisation chambers
Pin hole camera...

1650 holes
To monitor nuclear war.

The cafe...
The road home
Fish Hill.

Tewkesbury festival 2016

Scene one: the road that begins all journeys.
Scene two: On the field....

All other scenes: describe Tewkesbury festival.
The stalls.
The Morris dancers..
Hearing the battle reenactment narrated, as sport.

Flags and people
Delicious food
So many pretty things.

Tewkesbury becomes a noun
To be 'Tewkesburied': so hot and so out of one's head that time and direction resolve into endless loops without direction or polarity...

Birmingham -Saturday afternoon - music.

Note the specific use of the word Paradise in the context of Birmingham.

• Top of New St.
• Alpha tower - with a seagull. 
• Vegan festival band.
• Jazz band trapped in pit at new library.
• Bees.
• New Street busker. 
• Last scene, the lovely Faculty Coffee.

Halesowen to Old Hill, round Birmingham to Mucklow's Hill...2015

This journey took place over one year ago.
Circa March 20th, 2015.

A somewhat depressing journey perhaps?
Now become history.

It languished in my video folder, unprocessed and unloved.

We begin.
We descend to Halesowen.
We ascend to Old Hill.
There I board a train.

In the city of Birmingham I visit Oasis, walk past the golden door. Stand before the library - now in ruins.

I catch the train back to Rowley Regis and don't film until I'm standing in a field about to walk onto the pavement running parallel to Mucklow's Hill road...

End.

It was a cold day.

West Midlands to Somerset. Glastonbury Tor.

The film begins in the kitchen. It is Thursday morning. Melvyn Bragg is on the radio talking about Margery Kemp.

The M5 was blocked due to a terrible accident in the early hours of the morning, and the number of cars trying to make it through Tewkesbury made the journey impossible!

We ate sandwiches in the car whilst stopped in a lay-by, then went home.

This has not been included in the film.

Friday morning we headed out again.

First stop Tebay of the South, otherwise known as Gloucester service station. I include a view of the Daily Mail's front page top give a flavor of Britain today. Tebay of the South is a low-rise, low-impact building. 

Soothing to the senses. 

Avoid news papers.

We bought a Danish

Chocolate and almond.

It was superb.

Onward....M5 through Bristol.

Onward to A roads 

Then Glastonbury.

We walked up the High street and turned right.

The footpath took us up Dod lane.

X marks the spot - looking from here, towards the church of St John the Baptist.

Second X we look up to the Tor.

I didn't know that this path would take us to a narrow road - but it does - so if I were you, and next time I'm here, avoid this way to the Tor.

Instead of taking Dod lane, walk on a bit further, past the Chalice well and look for another path close to Chalice well, up to the Tor.

Next film
On top of the Tor.

• People.
• A crow...
• Sheep...
• The remains of the church felled by an earthquake.

Ah...the amazing music in the toilets in the car park...

Then M5
A road.
End!

Halesowen number 9 stop to The Delaunay, Covent Garden.

6:40 am black, damp, cold
Icy morning.
At the bus stop waiting for the 9.

The bus goes up Manor way
A golden road
Sodium light gilds the darkness.

The sky is becoming blue
Sun rise..to New Street.





Inside the station
Waiting for the London-Midland train....

And then we are in London, an unusually deserted tube station.
Dust haze like mist, fogs the air.

Then we are in Heddon Street
Flowers, candles, drawings and most interestingly, letter
Left where Ziggy Stardust was....

Then to Pret for coffee...
Then Persepolis for falafel and tea sweetened with safron-sugar, flavored with cardomon...

Next to an abandoned church
Art exhibition.
Outside, Egyptian geese and the sun is setting.

The last part of the journey
To the beautiful Canada Water station...
Metal cladding on the walls reminding me of Event Horizon.

The sky once more dark
Stars and moon
And more cake and coffee,  at The Delaunay.

Avebury to sun rise at the modern long barrow of All Cannings.

19th December
Not about comfort...

We set off to Tesco's
Early to avoid the Christmas madness
A damp car park in the drizzle and grey
Sound of weather and alarms...




Inside Tesco
Busy already...

Then onward, down the motorway,,,
To Avebury, Kennet avenue

Inside the refurbished Avebury manor
The sinister tinkling of Christmas
For the children

Then back outside
To the rain, crows and a ferocious wind...

Then Marlborough
And the so, so lovely Polly Tea Rooms.

Then silence
The Travelodge,
Inside and out

Early next day
A solstice sunrise at All Cannings

'into the light'



Where I will be...
My ashes in a niche

Knowlton henge.

A Saturday.
The car boot is open, things being put inside the car
Coats, hats, gloves.
Sunny day
Blue sky

Cold.

We stop just once before arriving at the henge, a petrol station, coffee shop.

Then onwards
Into Dorset.








Parking space just on the side of the road, used condoms, assorted plastics surround the black bin-liner flaps in the wind.

The church is overwhelmed by the circle, A rectangle of sky framed by the tower...

To the yew trees, adorned with memories.

Almost home
Road deserted
Only 8 pm
Dark

We stop to buy a take away.

The stone of Bryn Celli Dhu.

Cardiff.

We went in search of the stone.
Expecting it to be inside the museum
On
Display...

Inquiry at the desk confirmed the worst of our suspicions.
The stone was hidden away
Literally behind the walls of Cardiff museum.

I was allowed to pass through a locked door...following a security guard.

To see the stone.

To Birmingham.

The purpose of our journey was to image abandoned streets.
To capture the unsettling silence of roads without cars.

We failed.
Instead of creating a sense of unease
We drove straight into it....

The journey begins half an hour before sun rise.
The engine of the motorbike purrs.

The second image was taken when we were midway on Mucklow's Hill, at the B+Q roundabout.

At first the image seemed so normal and ordinary
But as I kept looking I realised we were at the edge of a star-field.
As if stars grow on stalks

Distant street lamps.

Next location is beside Street Bike, at the top of Mucklow's Hill as we go into Quinton.

Now stopped at traffic lights.
The river of cars flow along the M5 as we wait for the traffic lights to change.

Onwards to Harborne.
Stopped beside the swimming baths.

Then we reach Birmingham.
Sea gulls and Broad Street.
People still hanging around besides the clubs.

Final image
Ambulance.

Parked
Door open
No crew....

Manor Way.

The alley way leads towards Tenterfield's school. When I was a child, I was told that this area was called Tenterfields because travellers (the tenter folk- because they had tents?) used this land to set up camp. Tenterfields school took the land that was once occupied by an isolation hospital. The hospital was demolished, and a single arch remains- not shown in this film.

A Coop dairy, the place milk floats went...has been replaced by McDonald's

The Christadelphian's have been waiting for the end of the world, all my life. They are a millenarian church. Christadelphian's like the Jehovah's Witnesses believe that there are signs indicating end times. The Olivet Prophecy in particular describes the signs that Christadelphians believe indicate the return of Jesus. The signs are described by Jesus in Matthew 24 and 25, Mark 13 and Luke 21 and include war, famine, "men's hearts failing them for fear" and people being more interested in themselves than in God. Christadelphians believe these signs have been fulfilled and, consequently, that Jesus will soon return. The Christadelphian movement was founded by John Thomas (1805-71), in America in 1848.

A surgical plaster stuck on the wall by the bus stop.

As we began to walk along Manor Way, Gavin saw round things on the pavement. Most likely the round things are damsons from this tree.

At the side of the road Gavin spotted the second instant of detached kettle lead. This is inexplicable.

Manor way and the sun shines directly into our faces. Traffic is slow, one lane has been coned off for gas repair. We walk past Sandvik. A set of offices, or it it a factory, that sells tools for the handyman; saws in particular. Sandvik is Scandinavian. It means sandy bay.

We leave Manor Way. The Clent Hills and Walton are on the horizon.

Walking towards Manor Way school, an amber cat.

A hole in the hedge leading back to Manor Way.

At the top of which is 'Death Island'. This rather innocuous traffic island was called Death Island because someone died there. The accident happened in the early hours. Two guys were racing, but they smashed into each other because this island is not all that it seems to be. The island used to be much smaller.

We walk back to Tenterfields.

Wessex. 22nd July 2014.

It was time to visit Stonehenge once more.
Not the stones, you understand.

It is the visitor centre that fascinates me.
Every surface is non-stick.

And yet something of the old, messy, confusing and temporary Stonehenge remains in the absurdity of the land train...

The film is a mix of static and moving.
No dialogue.

My written notes made at the time, are transcribed below the film:

10:00 am
Service station.
We left the M5 and stopped at the service station.
Non stop flow of cars into the car park
Amazing blue sky.
... a Polo mint..

11:50
Barberry Castle.
Sitting under a tarpaulin. The sound of a plane, crickets and a few distant voices. The sounds of gun-shot from the shooting school located just a little way from here, further on down the narrow road.

11:52
String failure
The black tarpaulin flaps like a disconsolate crow around my head.

4:15 PM
Stonehenge.
After navigating the queue to cross over we sought privacy and shelter from the sun. The surrounding grass land isn't grass. No trees, no grass. The ground sprouts clover and sorrel and the promise of thistles. Eventually we come to rest on some concrete steps, close to the land train station. The similarity to a shopping mall, almost always a shopping mall has a bus station, is making me feel distinctly depressed. A shopping mall is designed for flow to create a need to consume. Likewise here we are subtly pressurised into feeling uncomfortable for contemplating eating food that we have not purchased here, but elsewhere.

The design of the building funnels air towards us, sucks air through the gap between restaurant/gift shop and museum. As the day is so hot, this wind-tunnel effect is very welcome.

The corporate flexi-shrine, slippery and impenetrable; new Stonehenge makes me want to give up! This is of course how I am meant to feel. Thousands of pounds have gone into designing a place to make people feel hollow, and empty inside; to create within us all a discontent that can only be filled by buying stuff...For some stupid reason, we fell for it too and bought coffee. Horrible, machine made. A mistake!

The land trains are still operating. There doesn't appear to be any direct or even indirect way to walk to the stones unless I walk along the road. The land trains move at the speed of a hearse, no doubt to give the impression that the stones are impossibly distance both in time and location.

7:05 PM
The Sanctuary
The concrete markers have been repainted. A tanker is parked in the lay-by. The sun shines hot on my back as it begins to set. I am very glad to be away from Stonehenge.

8:35 PM
The Inn with a Well.
An old house with a hole in the floor! The well is now covered in glass and is the blue disc in the film. It is just a bit disconcerting to walk over it. I am so hot, sipping a glass wine, waiting for a bowl of curry....