Fort Process

I've just heard about this event - sounds great.  My friends English Heretic and Haunted Shoreline should be appearing.  Many childhood holidays were spent on a caravan site next to the fort, which in those days was derelict and dangerous and became a site of fascination for me.   More here.

More Hastings Characters

Rollo Ahmed, who I discovered when trawling through the Gerald Yorke Archive (in a letter sent by his wife to Frieda Harris) at the Warburg Institute (presently under threat of closure, please sign this petition) lived nearby in the mid-1950s - in fact next door to the house that would later be home to John Martyn (see earlier post), has a two part article devoted to his life in this and next month's Fortean Times.  He was a friend of Dennis Wheatley and appears in Phil Baker's excellent biography which is where I obtained most of my information on him for a footnote in Netherwood.  Ahmed's a mysterious character and someone I thought about doing more research on myself, so I'm glad Christopher Josiffe has saved me the trouble.

Personally I think that Edge of the Orison is Iain Sinclair's worst book (way too long and self-indulgent), but part of that project the walk of humble poet John Clare from Epping Forest to Northamptonshire, has been made into a film that includes Toby Jones, son of that bizarre actor Freddie (who's apparently also in it) and directed by local film maker Andrew Kotting (mentioned in earlier posts).  Funding is needed to complete the editing and can be contributed to via Kickstarter.  Northampton resident Alan Moore is also involved - he's one of the contributors to the forthcoming Lord of Strange Deaths.   A straw man from the Whittlesea Straw Bear festival plays a part - I visited this amazing event a few years ago and took some photos - one above.  

Miscellany

The Motorpsycho show at the Jazz Cafe was excellent, a number of moments of pure transcendence - hard psychedelic rock, few traces of the prog evident on The Death Defying Unicorn (none of it was played) - guitarist from Dungen amazing on mellotron and guitar.  Looking at their gear afterwards someone pointed out a set of Taurus bass pedals as used by Mike Rutherford of Genesis in the glory days; also got to meet the group backstage afterwards, which was nice.

Last week went to the Electric Palace to see the Mott Road Crew reminisce about working for Mott, David Bowie, Queen etc.  Some interesting home movies from Morgan Fisher.

Also went to the London Fortean Society to see Gary Lachman give an impassioned talk to a very crowded room about the late Colin Wilson - Wilson's wife and daughter were there.

This sounds as if it could be interesting.

Details of the Whistler walk here.

The William Burroughs walk I did with Bill Redwood will probably be repeated in early September, in the meantime another exhibition in London.

The Philosophytown weekend events can be found here.  I'm speaking on Sunday, but hope to get there for Saturday.

It looks as if Lord of Strange Deaths, the book about Sax Rohmer may be appearing this summer, a bumper 400 pages now apparently.  I've arranged an evening with Phil Baker, Gary Lachman and myself talking about Rohmer, Fu Manchu and the occult at Kensington Central Library in December.  More details to follow.