Last weekend I sat down in the London Olympic Park and delved into a long list of brilliant questions submitted via the Community tab on my YouTube channel and Instagram Stories.
Here’s a list of the questions with the timestamps in case you’d like to navigate to a particular part of what became an epic video:
Contents of this video
0:00 Intro Stratford Olympic Park
01:32 Grotty Fringe of the Olympic Park
02:21 Will you do more South London walks?
02:49 Most memorable bit of folklore
04:24 Which era of London would you most like to walk around
06:19 Do you get scared walking on your own
06:47 If you could say one thing to planners and architects what would it be
08:21 If you needed your ashes scattered in London where would it be
09:28 Favourite pre-Roman or prehistoric site in London
10:14 Particular walking book you would like to see reprinted
10:38 Is there a river flowing from Hampstead Heath through Belsize Park
11:05 Do you listen to music on your walks
11:22 Where have you felt the most remote
12:00 What’s your longest walk
12:42 How I started my walks
13:56 Would you consider walking further afield such as the Thames Estuary around Tilbury and Gravesend
15:02 Where are the women psychogeographers
19:01 Favourite discovery on a walk
20:07 Who was Jack the Ripper?
23:23 Will we ever know more about Boudicca?
24:39 What is your professional background or upbringing
26:07 Growing up in the Chilterns
26:52 Austin Osman Spare walk
27:42 First Job and have you been unemployed for a long period of time
29:38 What got you into psychogeography
32:05 Psychogeography outside London
34:26 Best thing you found on your travels
35:02 When will you do a walk through Temple
35:35 Radical Rambler Cap?
36:00 Will the Leytonstone Centre for Contemporary Art make a comeback?
36:20 Would you another City e.g Bristol
37:30 Favourite Author, Novel, Ale
38:29 Views on some modern architecture
39:10 Will you do a Southend walk to the Anglo Saxon burial site at Prittlewell
39:20Thames Bridges walk
40:02 How does your wife feel about your long walks
41:21 Strangest encounter on a walk
43:44 If you could walk anywhere in the world where would it be and why?
45:20 Kray Twins walk?
46:22 Most disappointing walk
47:34 Will you get a haircut after the restrictions are lifted
47:40 Will you write another book?
48:31 Any trouble or threatened on a walk?
50:15 Inspiration to start and film these walks
53:10 Thank you for your questions
Related links and videos:
South London Walks
The Legend of Horsenden Hill
Remapping High Wycombe
My Longest Walk
Thames Estuary Tilbury Walk
Dr Tina Richardson – psychogeographer
Rachel Lichtenstein
Laura Oldfield Ford
Janet Cardiff The Missing Voice
Austin Osman Spare Strange Attractor Press
Leytonstone Centre for Contemporary Art
Watching from Pennsylvania U.S. I try and watch a walk a day. I LOVED The question and answer video! I am using an old iPad and we have terrible internet so when I get to watch a video I feel I’ve won the lottery and am getting signals from Mars! And I love your endings! Please keep on walking!!!
Many thanks indeed Chriss- what a great place to be watching from. I’ll do a walk to Penn village some time
Wonderful! Hopefully you and your leg are recovered from walk near Heathrow!!👍👍cheers!!
Hi John,
Interesting to hear your answers to so many questions – and I learnt quite a lot. Impressive that you answered so much spontaneously.
I was surprised to hear you’ve not walked along the estuary on the south bank out past Greenwich – some pictures in my East from Gravesend https://www.blurb.co.uk/b/6856376-east-from-gravesend show what you have so far missed – certainly one of my favourite walks to Cliffe, and then on to the station at Higham, but otherwise transport home gets a little tricky. I’ve done a bit more on a bike around there – and also on the Essex side. Also interesting to walk from Strood but I’ve only done a little of that. A few more pictures from Cliffe etc from 1985 in my ‘South of the River: Deptford to Cliffe’ album at https://www.flickr.com/photos/petermarshall/albums/72157713906368657 though I took more later on.
https://www.blurb.co.uk/b/4048897-london-derives ‘London Dérives’ is perhaps my only explicitly psychogeographical book (and includes what I think is the best English translation of a short quotation from Guy Debord about the idea) but I think a couple of the others might qualify, though others are perhaps rather too differently organised.
Peter
Many thanks for that info and links Peter
Interesting thoughts on the concept of Physcogeography, in a way we are all psychogeographers if that means thinking about places and what they mean to ourselves and others. A walker would have to be very devoid of imagination if places dont conjure up feelings of history and prospect. London has this in multitudinous layers and the mind can wander in all sorts of directions on a mere ten minute stroll down a city backstreet. If videos inspire us to consider the concept that perhaps the father of PG is Ian Nairn and then refined and made darkly satirical by the likes of Jonathan Meades. In art there is no end of PG, you just look at a landscape and bring it forth. In literature Iain Sinclair is seen as the leading proponent but try that dreamy literature of between the wars, the prose of the place is both removed but still resonant IMHO. Though for my money Dickens was the first literary PG. Thanks for the video.