sussex
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Ride ‘zines
Recently I’ve made a handful of ‘zines based on bike rides over the years. The Picos and Nyhavn first appeared on this blog but I’ve edited or re-written the text extensively. All of them are A6 folded booklets that unfold to A3 with maps, photos and/or words on the reverse side. Full colour digital print…
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Tiling
Coming up in a week or so is a group exhibition of printers who screenprint at East Side Print in Brighton, including me. I’ll be showing prints made from layering patterns from floor tiles in churches around Sussex. This is part of a larger project about churches in Sussex which I’ll post about in the…
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The shortest straightest line rarely beckons
There’s a stream that runs by the office where I work. The Winterbourne, its name a clue. It runs high and fast when the South Downs saturate and the chalk aquifers deep inside overflow. It’s an indicator of conditions on the Downs and it helps me decide my cycle commute. The office is in Lewes,…
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Diamonds Are Forever
Each signpost points to somewhere I was either a few minutes or an hour or two ago, and quite often both. A back and forth route that almost retraces and crosses itself but never quite meets. A series of incredibly familiar lanes, like a list of old friends in an address book; St Helena, Streat,…
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James Bond and cheap Jelly Babies
The rising sun gently lifts mist from the frosted hinterlands, the angular shapes of Arundel Castle stand out against the hill curving through the clear sky. I’m on an early train to Chichester for February’s ‘Randonneur Round the Year’ attempt: Buck Barn Sutton Scotney 200. It’s a week later than planned, thanks to storms Eunice…
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Road Closed
Ah fuck it! The road is actually properly closed. Tall metal barriers span the darkened sunken lane. It’s always a risk riding past ROAD CLOSED signs but with a bike you can almost invariably get past somehow. More often than not it’s only closed to cars and pedestrians can get through, but over the years…
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Riding with Ravilious
We sweep down from the opera singer’s house past Virginia Woolf’s to the Ouse flood plain, the first of our Ravilious rendezvous. A heron nonchalantly flaps overhead. The riverbank into Lewes is beautifully overgrown, my shins whipped by wild grass and flowers. Butterflies skitter about. We’re the wrong side of the Ouse for the Ravilious…
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Winding On
An old point and shoot, one roll of film. A week off work. Aeroplane mode, wider world switched off. Perhaps an audiobook in one ear. The sun stays close to the wide crisp horizon, bright light skims the surface of the sea followed by my eyes. Low waves lazily sparkle and ripple towards the shingle.…
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Beach Bivi Beach
8pm Thursday to 8am Friday
the man from icon 