Matt’s Bird of the Week – Waxwing
31 January 2011 // Matt's Bird of the Week
Bombycilla garrulus by Matt Sewell. I’ve always been sceptical whether these birds exist or not, Waxwings blow my mind. They’re like a computer generated samurai finch designed by a norse god. Those little red waxy droplets are amazingly improbable, their fade colourway and their menacing headwear and dark warpaint are too bewilderingly accomplished to be [...]
Growing Things (continued)
by Helen Jukes. Part two: As well as stimulating my imagination and sense of connection with my surroundings, it was also cultivating skills and capacities within me. The ability to nurture, to accept and care for fragility, to weed out and exercise a bit of (non-aggressive) pest control. I learnt that by thinning out a [...]
Growing Things
by Helen Jukes. Part One: We are sitting on plastic chairs outside a ramshackle shed in the centre of Soho. Piled-up apartment blocks reach sky-high on all sides, and the smoggy hum of traffic hangs in among wildflowers where we are sitting, on our plastic chairs, discussing spiders. Chris – resident gardener here at Phoenix [...]
Libraries Gave Us Power
Another day, another deflated rant about the state of the nation. This time, it’s the wholly depressing local council cuts threatening library services. First things first, an aside to get to the point – my little library story. Last summer, I ran an arts project out of a mobile library that trundled a mellow path [...]
Third Light Home
Some of our favourite things to hit the net in recent months have been Friend Of The River Ian Preece’s brilliant Third Light Home radio shows on the Seeks Music website. In this installment, the nicest man in publishing explores music from the outer limits of Rob Young’s exemplary Electric Eden . Perfect for the [...]
Hawk Attack
from Joel Stanbury: I saw the picture of the Kestrels on your website. Beautiful! I thought I might share the following pics with you. I was tying flies in my spare bedroom and happened to look out my window and saw this hawk sitting on my fence. I slowly went and got my camera and [...]
Saturn’s Return
Back in September, we took a Caught By The River expedition to the British Library for Landscaping, a day long series of talks on mapping. One presentation of particular interest was a talk by director Grant Gee (director of the 2006 Joy Division documentary) on his as-then unfinished film loosely based on W.G. Sebald’s Rings [...]
Pleasures of…..January
Pigmeat is What I Crave by Glenn Taylor The title comes from an old blues song by Bo Carter in which he sings, “When I die you need not bury me at’all/ hang me up against that pigmeats wall/ and you can give me pigmeat.” Mr. Carter’s song seemed a good place to begin in [...]
The Fisherman’s Bedside Medicine
In a need to shake off the anguish caused by too long an absence from the river bank I decided to live vicariously. These two pieces of angling poetry – which are taken from ‘B.B.’s treasure trove, ‘The Fisherman’s Bedside Book’ – brought only temporary relief, but in the hope of helping fellow sufferers we [...]
Your Heart Out: Skimming Stones
Sometime Caught by the River contributor Kevin Pearce continues to singlehandedly (and single-mindedly) champion pop culture’s wild-hearted outsiders. A special edition of his online magazine Your Heart Out – titled Skimming Stones – is available to download for free here. After some revealing romps in the archives of The Pop Group and the Mad Professor’s [...]
