Dreamland Doubling: Circumnavigating Pinewood
Solitaire: [turning tarot cards between sentences] A man comes. He travels quickly. He has purpose. A year ago I was in Florida, where I visited a theme park pretending to be a film studio. Now, after walking through some rainswept woods, I was outside Pinewood, a real studio that does not allow visitors. I had walked to th

If that way be your walk: Chalfont St Giles to Langley
I woke up in one of the White Hart’s comfortable rooms, early brightness offering some hope that this would be a good walking day. Chalfont St Giles being the home of John Milton, I read some Paradise Lost while I waited for breakfast time. I hadn’t looked at this poem for years – not since ‘Rusty’ Reynolds taught it at A-level, at least when we weren’t able to distract him into talking about cricket, jazz or Bob Dylan. (A happy memory – VIth form huts at the back of Hove Grammar School as lost paradise…) I became steadily more wide-eyed as I read through Books 1 and 2 – soaking in the language of a potent supermyt

Dreams in a career: heading to resume point
Saturday at home, awake early, I read a bit of London Orbital, the account of Iain Sinclair’s pre-millennial trek around the M25. As I drift towards London, I want to avoid literally walking in Sinclair’s footsteps. This doesn’t seem likely on the next stretch, as I will be walking outside the M25 while Sinclair and companions were on the inside. I did, however, learn that author Arthur Machen lived out his last years in Amersham, a place I would be passing through later that day.

Misty en route: Great Missenden to Chalfont St Giles
For a long time now I’ve been pondering the best route to take for the last part of the walk. I could veer off into the southwest, strike the south coast and approach Brighton from the west. Or I could skirt London anticlockwise and end up arriving from the north close to the route of the M23. Or head straight through London and come in via Kent. Each has its attractions, pros and cons and today was the day I would decide. I left Great Missenden with some gladness. Despite its superficial normality, I had found this place to be sad and uncanny, rath

Walking Home to 0Z
In 1900 a book called The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was published. Author L. Frank Baum stated that he intended to write ‘a series of of newer “wonder tales” in which the stereotyped genie, dwarf and fairy are eliminated, together with…horrible and bloodcurdling incidents’. Despite this intention I found the film version terrifying in parts when I saw it at the pictures as a five-year-old. Shortly afterwards my parents took me to see 2001: A Space Odyssey, so I gue