Spooky

Call of the wild – Sat 21st Feb

Someone has started strapping soft toys to lampposts. I came across the first one a couple of days ago (see image for 18th Feb) then three more on the way to the pub last night, and then two more today. Why? What’s going on?

Possible explanations:

  1. A dark witch or wizard living in the area has decided to put a hex on someone. Unfortunately because of various EU/Health and safety regulations, it is no longer possible to get hold of live animals to sacrifice; pre-packed nuggets, chops, burgers and cutlets, while real flesh, just don’t look right, and so she/he has had to be inventive; at least soft toys look a bit like whole animals.
  2. Something similar could apply to a local mafia boss, who, faced with the same regulations and the impossibility of getting hold of substantial equine parts to leave in the bed of rivals, is instead leaving coded messages along the lines of ‘You’ll be the next one to get stuffed. Remember Luca Brazzi…’
  3. A couple of robbers have ‘done over’ one of the local toy shops, been startled by the intruder alarm and fled, grabbing the nearest boxes of stock in their escape. These boxes have turned out not to be filled with highly desirable and re-saleable sega-wii-station-play consoles (or whatever they are called) but the aforementioned cuddly animals. In a fit of pique the robbers are now making a ‘statement’ by leaving them around town strapped to lampposts.
  4. They aren’t toys at all but cunningly disguised aliens hoping that people will take them home somewhere warm where they will be able to spawn. This strategy clearly hasn’t worked as they are all still there.
  5. A local lothario has purchased for each one of his unwitting harem a soft toy as a valentine’s gift. Unbeknownst to him these love-crossed women have recently found out about each other and are hatching a plan, the first part of which is to truss his duplicitous gifts to lampposts. I tremble to think of what might follow.
  6. An ogre has moved into the area and is hoping to use the toys as bait to lure children to their doom, a bit like leaving a trail of sweets in the forest. Again, this is proving a failure as a strategy because Brighton, having become gentrified of late, is filled with children who can recognise the difference between acrylic and natural fibres and therefore spurn these cheap goods.
  7. Going back to the Aliens theory, it might be that the toys are actually the fruiting bodies of fungus-based life forms from an asteroid that will soon explode filling the streets with mutant spores.

I’m hoping this last theory isn’t true as the idea has scared me a bit just thinking about it.

Ghosts – Tues 17th Feb

‘There was an alien object in view — a figure whose right of presence I instantly, passionately questioned. I recollect counting over perfectly the possibilities, reminding myself that nothing was more natural, for instance, than the appearance of one of the men about the place, or even of a messenger, a postman, or a tradesman’s boy, from the village. That reminder had as little effect on my practical certitude as I was conscious — still even without looking — of its having upon the character and attitude of our visitor. Nothing was more natural than that these things should be the other things that they absolutely were not.’

From ‘The Turn of the Screw’ Henry James 1898

The Dark Side – Mon 16th Feb

‘Whatever’s inside that cupboard is so terrible, so powerful, that it amplified the fears of an ordinary little boy across all the barriers of time and space, through crimson stars and silent stars and tumbling nebulas like oceans set on fire; through empires of glass and civilizations of pure thought in a whole terrible, wonderful universe of impossibilities. You see these eyes? They are old eyes. And one thing I can tell you … monsters are real.’

Dr Who: ‘Night terrors’ Series 6 (11th Doctor)

Gargoyle – Weds 21st Jan

Over the past few months I’ve visited the beach on most days to look for interesting stones. I’ve found quite a few, including ones that look like a severed finger, a gaping jaw with teeth, a shop mannequin, a pigs snout… I’ve even stumbled upon a fairy loaf – something which would have been prized by our Neolithic antecedents – but none of these finds prepared me for what I came across a few weeks ago.

Most of the pieces I’ve selected have been relatively easy to photograph. Their charm has been apparent in one particular angle revealing the likeness that attracted me to them. Others have been more problematic, losing something in a two-dimensional representation because their objectness has gone beyond one facet. However, even these have succumbed to the camera, allowing one select image to sum them up, rather in the same way that a single photograph out of many, of an unwilling relative or loved one, will be able to capture them. For several weeks now I have re-photographed it from a number of angles. I even made a short video, turning it this way and that for the lens, but without success. I finally gave up selecting one particular viewing point and here instead have opted for a composite of several images to best display its appearance, but even these do not truly convey the experience of holding it.

About the size of a hens egg, it can sit in the palm of my hand as if made for it. Indeed it does seem made, more than developed through some obscure geological process, and while crude, it is perfect in its likeness of a small head; not just a mask, and not just any head, but that of a shrunken effigy, devil or gargoyle; a laughing satyr, something that would truly earn the appellation of a grotesque.

Yet I have no doubt it is naturally formed. There are no marks to suggest any kind of human intervention in its manufacture and I have come across other stones of the same composition, if not likeness. It happened, but how? Why? Is there any reason? Should there be one? It has sat on my desk for over a month now, looking back at me with the same wide smile whenever I glance at it. It delights, but also disconcerts me.

1000 rulers – Fri 9th Jan

If, on a winter’s day when the wind is up, you find yourself in search of something, but not entirely sure what that something is, go and find a copse of young deciduous trees. It is important that they are growing close together; a small thicket of self-set saplings is best, of a kind you’d find in unmanaged woodland or derelict lots.

Then press your ear against one of the trunks, and wait, and listen.

Witches cottages – Fri 14th Nov

In fairy stories, you will always find witches cottages in the middle of the woods, at a crossroads, or on a mountainside, places that are out of the way, but also, importantly, places you need to go close to in order to accomplish a task. They are always sited on the lonely route from A to B.

Magic always takes place on the borders of things: the threshold between life and death, coming and going, doorways, portals, mirrors…

So where might you find witches cottages if they existed today? The woods are full of picnic tables, the mountains are filled with skiers, and few of us still live the pastoral ways, yet have we not created our own woods out of our endless streets – the urban equivalent of the scary forest full of bad things that might waylay you?

They would have to be on or near somewhere we have to pass each day, most likely still the traditional crossroads, and also be sited at a border, a liminal space which is neither one thing or the other. And while unnoticeable except to trained eyes, passing them would be made difficult.

The fact is, they do still exist and one is sited quite close to where I live, near the viaduct at the point where the railway crosses New England Hill. This might explain the daily traffic snarl ups on this route and the constant train delays in and out of Brighton. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it is actually lived in, but it is inhabited. I know of several others around the city. Maybe there is one near where you live?

Fairy loaves – Tues 11th Nov

The practice across England of collecting fairy loaves and placing them in burial mounds and graves, dates back as far as the Palaeolithic era and persisted up until Anglo Saxon times. Indeed within local lore they have been seen as protection from witchcraft, this belief even continuing today in certain circles.

But what are fairy loaves? Small stones with five-point symmetry shaped remarkably like a small loaf of bread, they are in fact the fossilized remains of sea urchins, pre-dating our own species by millions of years. The chances of finding one on a seashore covered entirely with pebbles, so that the beach here acts like an enormous grinder, are about as likely as finding hens teeth. Are they magic? I do hope so since I’ve now got one, found on my search for today’s stone of the day.

I was going to tell you a story about a flock of starlings and some tandoori chicken but that’ll have to wait till another time.

All Souls Day – Sat 1st Nov

All Souls Day, the day after the night of All Hallows Eve. I assume its safe to wander abroad again? There are tell tale signs in the streets that gruesome things have been happening in the witching hours and, judging by the abandoned empties, there has been a lot of communion with the spirits… Ha! geddit? Stick to the script Chris…

Through an open first floor window I can see the head of a young man with bleached blond hair and hear him recounting his adventures. Has he just woken up, or is he carrying on still from last night? A broken drain bleeds moss onto a wall, pigeons preen and wisps of moulted fancy dress cling to the pavement.

What starts out grey and rainy begins to break up and small and tantalising scraps of cyan spread across the sky, turning it once again into a deep and crystal blue. Is it really November? I’m not complaining.

Today’s stone of the day has a distinctly antipodean flavour…