Preparing for change on the coast

2011 video from Managing Coastal Change about 'an innovative scheme to recreate salt marsh'.

Under an East Coast Moon

 

William Adamson 'Under an East Coast Moon' - more Sebald contrails?According to the Gilles Peterson site:

"William Adamson, the former talisman of acid jazz pioneers Galliano and sporadic poet Earl Zinger releases his debut album on Brownswood on 18th March. Produced by heritage futurists 2 Banks Of 4, the multi-faceted Gallagher has created a topographical travelogue – a concept album in the truest sense – where the songs tell fragments of stories that have grown out of a small region in the Eastern Horn of England, with sounds more akin to recordings emanating from the Louisiana marshlands"

Reading RheuMatisM

More Eerie Anglia explorations, Suffolk hauntology via Mordant Music, Travelogues 11: Reading RheuMatisM. Here's Baron Mordant's description:

"Ohm vanishing land...Woodbridge via Dunwich via Hastings...hand dryer via ad-hoc car park choir via esturial mud-slapping...plenty of rheum at the reading rooms...Sebald's contrails...Eno's nose...'local mafia'...k_punk silted up for the duration..."


Read full review of Travelogues 11: Reading RheuMatisM - MORDANT MUSIC on Boomkat.com ©

Hollow - Adam dials in his verdict

The Found-Footage film is a small but burgeoning sub-genre of horror cinema, the most famous being the lower-than-low budget The Blair Witch Project which took the world by storm back in 1999. Other films have followed in its path, some adding successfully to the genre; the post 9/11 Manhattan dinosaur disaster movie Cloverfield (2008) & Spanish zombie film with a twist [REC] (2007) being two of the most prominent to date.

Cannibal Holocaust (1980) is generally accepted as being the first to utilise ‘Found-Footage’, an odd coupling between 1970s ‘snuff movie’ urban legends & the home video camera (an initial premise best exploited in 1993’s Man Bites Dog). But it wasn’t until the influential but little known The Last Broadcast (1998) & the ensuing worldwide interest resulting from Blair Witch that the ‘Found Footage’ film as a genre really began to take off. These range from the sublime but diminishing creeps of The Paranormal Activity series (2007 - present) & the deft daftness of Norway’s Trolljegeren (2010), to a raft of predictable demonic possession/exorcism-gone-wrong films like The Last Exorcism (2010) & The Devil Inside (2012).

British additions to the genre are scarce to the point of non-existence, which seems at odds with the country’s reputation for being one of the most haunted in the world. Michael Axelgaard and Matthew Holt’s Hollow (2012) attempts to redress this, with a film that tries valiantly but ultimately fails to escape from the long dark shadows of its more successful predecessors. Beginning with a Police evidence caption (a technique first seen in Cloverfield ) from the fictitious ‘East Anglia’ force, Hollow follows a small party of fairly unlikeable young people heading into the wilds of Suffolk for a weekend visit to a dead relative’s cottage. Fortunately for us, one of their number has seen fit to bring along his video camera to record this trip to the English countryside. So far, so clichéd.

Another riotous assembly

Tidal Protection Barrier for Sutton Saltmarsh (2009) by Simon Read

Sept. 15th [1632]

Affidavit of John Hunns, of Tyd St. Giles, co. Cambridge, Labourer.
On the 26th July last James Balder, accompanied by George Tilson the elder, and various others, came in a riotous manner into Sutton Salt Marsh, lately inned from the sea by Sir Cornelius Vermuyden. They demanded of deponent whose man he was. He answered he was employed by Sir Cornelius. They replied in a scornful manner that Sir Cornelius had nothing to do there, neither should any horses which belonged to the workmen stay there. They then destroyed a gate and a bridge, and assaulted deponent and tore all his clothes from his back.

Sept. 15th [1632]

Affidavit of William Leake, of Newark -upon-Trent, co. Notts, and John Hunns, mentioned in the preceding article. They depose to another riotous assembly of Capt. Skipwith, James Balder, George Tilson the elder, and others in Sutton Salt Marsh, on the 12th inst. They threatened to pull down a house of one of Sir Cornelius Vermuyden's labourers, took the horses of the labourers, cut their halters, and violently pulled some of the labourers from their horses to the peril of their lives.

from Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reign of Charles I: 1631-1633

As radioactive as an old joke

UK nuclear sites at risk of flooding

     Governments fall from sheer indifference. Authority figures,
deprived of the vampiric energy they suck off their constituents,
are seen for what they are: dead empty masks manipulated by
computers. And what is behind the computers? Remote control.
Of course. Don't intend to be here when this shithouse goes up.
Nothing here now but the recordings. Shut them off, they are
as radioactive as an old joke.
     Look at the prison you are in, we are all in. This is a penal
colony that is now a Death Camp. Place of the Second and Final
Death.
     Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only
those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed
in can hope to escape.

from The Western Lands (1988) by William S. Burroughs.

Will O' The Wisp.

Illustration from Robert Mudie's A Popular Guide to the Observation of Nature (1836)

 I have often seen this, although it is every day becoming more rare from the extension of drainage. The first I saw was in a fenny bog called "Quy Bottom," a few miles from Cambridge, on the Newmarket road. I have seen them since, both in Norfolk and Suffolk. Probably W. might procure a sight of one if he would inquire of some rustic where they most frequently occur. But for this purpose he must know the venacular name in the district in which he lives. In Herts they are called "hob o' lanterns," or "hobby-lanterns." Along the valley of the Waveney they are called "Syleham lamps," from a village in Suffolk named Syleham, where formerly they were common, although now destroyed by good drainage. In Norfolk they are called "lantern-men," and it is popularly believed that if a man with a lighted lantern goes near one, the enraged "lanternman" will knock him down and burst his lantern to pieces. More than one labourer, whose truthfulness I have no reason to question, has assured me that such a thing has happened to himself. Quest, Can the lighted lantern have ignited the gas, and caused an explosion, which has startled the rustic and burst his lantern? I have generally seen them at the end of October and beginning of November, probably because the marsh vegetation is then beginning to decay. But I find in my diary that I saw one on the second day of March, 1844.

I do not think that any one could be led astray by a Will o' the Wisp. Its appearance is so peculiar, and its movements so fanstastic, that I cannot imagine it to be mistaken for a light in a house, or a lantern carried by a man. In Norfolk a person who has lost his way, and cannot find a gate or stile, with the situation of which he ought to be familiar, and is in fact utterly bewildered, is said to be "ledwilled." A common remedy with rustics, in such a case, is to turn the left stocking wrong side outwards, and then to renew the search. Forby, and after him Halliwell, derive this phrase "ledwilled" from being led by Will o' the Wisp. But I am inclined to suggest a different origin for it. There is an obsolete adjective "wille," given by Halliwell and Jamieson, signifying lost in doubt: "will of wone," at a loss for a habitation; "will of rede," without advice. Jamieson compares it with Su. G., will, Isl. vill-a, error; Isl. vill-az, to lead astray. He has also, "Wilsum, in a wandering state, implying the ideas of dreariness and ignorance of one's way." This, in Old English, seems to have been wilful. For, in the Robin Hood ballad (Percy's Reliques), Sir Guy of Gisborne says :

"'I am wilful of my way,' quo' the yeman,
     'And of my morning tyde.'
'I'll lead thee through the wood,' sayd Robin,
  'Good fellow, I'll be thy guide.'"

This word, like the Scotch wilsum, seems to answer completely to the Norfolk "ledwilled," which thus would mean "will of leading, at a loss to guide oneself." In the notes to Canto IV. of The Lady of the Lake, Scott quotes from Jamieson's translation of the Kæmpe Viser:

"'Up, will of rede, the husbande stood,
 Wi' heart fu' sad and sair," &c.

To which he appends the following glossorial note :

"Will of rede, bewildered in thought; in the Danish original vildraadage, Lat. inopa consilii; Gr. ἀπορωψ."

 "This expression," he adds, "is obsolete in the Danish as well as in the English." If, however, my conjectural etymology be correct, it is not obsolete in the Norfolk dialect.   E. G. R.

 The anonymous "E.G.R." (1855), Will o' the Wisp. In Notes and Queries, 13th October 1855, p.290.