Author: Andy Howlett

In what has become a monthly lockdown tradition I once again joined The Loiterers Resistance Movement (remotely) for July’s First Sunday stroll. For reports on previous month’s walks see here and here. This month’s outing took the form of a “metaphysical treasure hunt” with participants receiving walking instructions to their phones via WhatsApp or Twitter. The walk began at 2pm and instructions were sent out at ten minute intervals resulting in a 100+ minute synchronised but geographically dispersed group walk.

Living as I do in the Stone Age, I don’t own, nor have I ever owned a smartphone so it was with some dismay that I learnt that one would be necessary to take part. After trying and failing to rouse the other Walkspace members to join me and grant me access through their superior hardware, Loiterer in Chief Morag took pity and agreed to let me join in via SMS.

Taking part in a walk like this grants you license to slow down and really tune into your local environment in a way that you’re unlikely to on a self-guided walk. Usually I have a destination in mind when I leave the house and I tend to rush through the immediate neighbourhood on the way to places less familiar. On a First Sunday walk however there is no “familiar”. The discovery begins the moment I step foot outside with the first instruction:

1. Let’s start with something light. Look for the brightest yellow thing you can find.

2. Now let’s play street cribbage. Find a playing card or something with a link (hearts, spades, clubs, diamonds, jokers or queens perhaps?)

I spot the heart immediately on looking up from my phone so decide to coast for the rest of the ten minutes. Towards the end however I spot another heart and a playing card shaped label with a possible reference to Alice’s nemesis the Queen of Hearts:

3. Look Down at the flotsam and jetsom. What are traces and rubbish trying to tell you?

A screwdriver and a clove of garlic… a makeshift vampire defence kit?

Then a hedge trimmer heralds the reopening of hairdressers and a discarded roach indicates that wild strawberry season is upon us:

4. Now look up… hunt for UFOs or signs of extra-terrestrial life.

5. Stop! You’ve wandered onto a film set. What’s the story? Where’s the drama? Can you spot the cameras or any glitches that reveal it’s all made up?

6. Let’s go back to nature. Follow the local flora and fauna. What can non-human beings teach us about where we are?

7. Hunt for patterns, regular, designed or coincidental.

8. What’s the smallest interesting thing you can find…

… and the biggest?

9. Can you find evidence or rumour of the supernatural or mythological in your landscape? Do ghosts linger?

10. To end this wander please look for signs of hope and promises for the future. What do you want to happen next?

I made my way back to the house with heightened senses and a renewed alertness to the fantastical eruptions of the familiar. It was in this state that I spotted for the first time a Top Cat figurine upon a satellite dish above the premises of TopSat Digital. I must’ve walked past it a hundred times before completely oblivious.

One small consolation for walkers in lockdown is that it’s no longer necessary to travel to Manchester to join the Loiterers Resistance Movement for one of their First Sunday strolls. For the past three months the Loiterers have been conducting their group walks remotely meaning that anyone can join in from anywhere in the world. You can read my report of April’s walk lead by Blake Morris here.

The theme of this month’s walk was “reading and writing space”. Loiterer in Chief, Morag Rose writes:

Lets read the streets (or our rooms or gardens or ginnels or wherever). This month I invite you wherever, and whenever you are to find scraps of texts. Writing on walls, fragments of rubbish, slogans on t-shirts or placards or billboards, shop fronts and flyers…. Whatever you can find. Take a picture or make a note and if you feel like doing so call it poetry. Its a way to begin to rewrite the city by taking what it says to us and rearranging in new ways. Detournement of trash and textual treasures.

I enjoyed this walk, it took me back to the time I became fascinated with the manifold typographical layerings of Digbeth while making this film with Ben Waddington:

Getting back into that mindset I headed straight for Stirchley high street, camera in hand, and was immediately bombarded by text from all directions: “Elite apple”, “Pandora’s Box”, “Wine Wanker?”, “No free newspapers”. My favourite discovery however was this vintage notice on the side of a postbox. I can’t even comprehend what’s being communicated here. The past is a foreign country and its mystifying artefacts hide in plain sight:

I left the high street, headed down some residential roads and made my way to the canal. The bombardment subsided and I actually had to start paying attention. The textual treasures were still plentiful however:

It was nice to walk without a route or destination pre-planned and instead just allow myself to be guided by the poetry of the streets. I ended up in a deserted industrial estate and passed back into the civilisation of Kings Norton through an avenue of lime trees before returning home.

When back I uploaded my photos and had a go some detournement of my own. It was fun.

---

---

---

Once again thanks to Morag for this opportunity to walk together, alone. Until actual group walks become a thing again this is a valuable substitute.

Today at 2pm I “joined” Blake Morris and The Loiterers Resistance Movement for a remote but synchronised Sunday stroll. Every first Sunday of the month the Manchester based LRM, lead by Morag Rose get together to walk creatively and engage critically with the city. Their walks are open to everyone but in light of the lockdown they’re having to be even more creative: can collective walking be compatible with social distancing? Yes.

This month’s solution was to team up with Northampton based walking artist Blake Morris whose 52 Scores project fits the brief perfectly:

Every day I am picking a piece of scrap paper to add to a weekly walking collage. After 7 additions the collage will form a walking score, i.e. instructions for walking. Each score will be finished on Friday, made public Saturday, and walked on Sunday.

At 2pm BST Sunday 5th April Morag Rose will be at home in Manchester and will begin a walk guided by the score from her home, while I do the same in Northampton. We invite you to join us wherever you are.

I took up this invitation from my home in Birmingham and got myself a copy of the score from Blake’s website:

At the agreed time I stepped outside and gave myself an hour to complete a circuit of my chosen block. I stayed much closer to my house than on my usual state-sanctioned daily strolls and I walked at a much slower pace meaning I was able to really tune in to my immediate environment while contemplating the cryptic lines of Blake’s score.

I set myself the challenge of taking a photo for each line of the score and here are the results:

Thanks to Morag Rose and Blake Morris for this opportunity to walk together alone. I’m sure there will be more to come.

On the day the Government ordered total lockdown I went for a stroll in the leafy parks of South Birmingham looking for signs of the Apocalypse.