To entertain myself, and hopefully entertain others as well, I’m currently pursuing a creative writing course with the fine old Open University. It’s proving to be a fascinating experience, and I didn’t expect to have as much fun as I am, or to be getting such great feedback from my fellow students.
Most of the writing is peer-assessed, but every few months there’s a formal assessment point where we’re asked to put together a few thousand words, and these are marked for our eventual grade. This ‘term’, I’m working on creative non-fiction, which I thought would be a new genre for me, but it’s really the sort of thing I usually write: taking everyday experiences and looking at them from creative or unusual angles. I’ve decided that this assignment piece is going to take the form of a guided walk around one of my favourite spots, interspersed with me reflecting on architecture, hauntology, Freud’s Doppelgänger theory, psycho-geography, the memory of places, all sorts of things. Today, I set off with my good camera to take some pictures to illustrate the story and add to the ‘guided walk’ vibe.
It started with a post on Facebook. I still used it heavily, back in those days, and had just joined a new group which posted about playgrounds in the local area. I was looking for one with a bird’s nest swing, I remember, and this group had a handy map showing where they all were. One rainy lunchtime, I was browsing through my feed and idly wondering whether I could face getting up and heading out for a walk when I came across a picture someone had posted up near Caldecotte Lake. It showed a beautiful gothic doll in a black gown, perched in the branches of a tree. The poster had been out walking his dog, and was asking if anyone knew who it belonged to. No-one had replied. Intrigued, I headed for the door before I could change my mind.
City of Secrets 