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Female Calculations – a short film on female safety algorithms

This five-minute video essay was extracted from the longer video installation from the British Council-sponsored Parallel Walking exhibition at Artefact Gallery, Stirchley in February 2022. It is combined here with the 'Female Calculations' text from Parallel Walking zine (text below).

The film is available for showing at film nights and festivals. Please get in touch if you'd like to show it. The longer video installation is 1 hr 40 mins and lives here.

Zine / exhibtion info and links: http://walkspace.uk/parallel-walking/

Female Calculations transcription

What will happen if I enter this space?

A lone female walker in the city often brings a subjective algorithm of fear to her walk, one that factors in both positive and negative data points.

For example:

  • weather
  • lighting
  • time of day
  • the number, gender and proximity of others
  • type of area
  • path type
  • visibility
  • clear exit
  • proximity to help
  • shoe type
  • femininity of clothing
  • previous location knowledge
  • lived experience
  • attitude
  • locator apps
  • self-defence weapon
  • skills in kung fu
  • unconscious bias
  • …and more.

You can optimise your personal algorithm to reduce the fear.

For example by:

  • walking tall
  • looking fierce
  • wearing running shoes
  • avoiding shortcuts
  • holding keys as a weapon
  • …and so on.

But the calculation still takes place. It informs how, when and where you walk. I enjoy walking the pedestrian paths in my city. But sometimes the simple act of going for a walk can feel like a psychological battle.

Hire/commission me: fiona [at] fionacullinan.com

Parallel Walking – and trying not to fall over

Hello. I'm baaaaack. Haiiii long-term subscribers (aka people I know)! And anyone else new to these random textual shores. Bless me Father for I have sinned. It's been seven months since my last blog session.

A quick diary post is in order because the last six months have been kind of crazy on the art walking front, taking me from How Women Walk at 4WCoP, to Parallel Walking with women in Yogyakarta, to Female Calculations in South Birmingham (announcements on that and other exciting things soon).

For those who don't jump the links, the summary is that November to March was dominated by Walkspace's first funded project – a Parallel Walking project with Jalan Gembira (a female-led walking collective in Indonesia) that was funded by the British Council. There was a cross-cultural exhibition, a zine, an online launch and artist talks, two digital collages, both a long and short film, and a whole lot of 12-hour days on helping pull it all together. (Links and details.)

The result of doing that on top of my day job was that I had a visually induced vertigo attack that has taken a few weeks to subside. I then became allergic to my meds for it. And the visual dizziness made my day job very difficult since it was triggered by too much screen work – and I'm a digital editor.

But after a week away, new anti-blue-light occupational glasses and screen breaks every 20 minutes, I think I'm back – and able to blog again.

Which is a good thing because there are a few big announcements coming up. Stay tuned!

How women walk

Back in April, I emailed the organisers of the 4th World Congress of Pyschogeography (4WCoP) to ask: "Might there be a interesting discussion in the idea of how women walk together…" Mainly I wanted to get some wider framing/context for the Crone and Dazzle walks, to connect with other female walkers and also listen to other women share their walk experiences.

That Fiona Weir and Sonia Overall immediately picked it up and ran with it, taking part themselves on top of running the 4WCoP, was generous to say the least. They pulled it together with Dr Sheree Mack, North East Leader for Black Girls Hike and neurodivergent Midlands artist and writer …kruse to make a panel of five. We kept our presentations brief (3-5 mins) to allow for a starter question asking people to contribute a word they associated with how women walk (see the sad word cloud at the top of this post) and also plenty of space for others to talk after. We also had a word/theme to guide each of us – Play, Privilege, Presence, Purpose and Permission.

The recording is here and my talk pasted below. It's looking like there will be some follow-up as the conversation is continuing. Watch this space.

My P-word for today is ‘Presence’, so I’m going to talk about two walks. One is all about presence, the other all about absence but both are about being seen on your own terms. 

A bit about me…

  • Started a walking practice in 2016 to become fitter – this was mostly walking at night after work in the dark
  • For safety I kept to main roads but sometimes I blended into the darkness, unseen
  • Realised I liked being invisible. I felt safer – it gave me back some power in not feeling like a potential target all the time
  • My first bit of walk-based writing was about entering my local park at night, ninja like, hopping behind trees, in order not to be seen [read link]. 
  • The other thing that has become a part of my practice is becoming an activist.
  • They say that when your oestrogen runs out, you are less likely to put up with all the crap that women have to deal with. And that was me. I started getting angry and wanting to change things – also I realised that this was partly a function of going through the menopause. I think that comes across both walks.

Crone Walk

Send in the Crones

In May a group of four of us decided to stake our place in the city. We were all at that certain age where women start to become invisible and we wondered what it would be like to walk in order to be ‘seen’. Where and when we walked seemed important but also how.

So we spent an hour walking where women might feel less comfortable – on canal towpaths, in subways, etc. We also walked around Broad Street and the entertainment district where everyone was 30 years younger and which was very crowded on the first Saturday night out of lockdown. 

We dressed up in bright colours, played with female stereotypes and carried props of stuffed toys. We walked in silence as if in a procession and a photographer papped us as we walked. Which has the effect of shining a spotlight directly on us.

It was more intense than the photo maybe shows. People did comment and stare but really it was more about our experience of reclaiming space as older women, and also about the bonding process of women walking together and talking together and of doing something for themselves. 

I liked the idea of radical softness – this was a quiet act of provocation in the landscape.

Afterwards there was a lot of discussion about ageing and gender. I had a lot of thoughts – too many for here so I wrote a big essay called Send in The Crones. I’d be interested to know if anyone else is doing walking based on these topics of gender+age.

Dazzle Walks

Birmingham Dazzle Walk

This was a commission from The Dazzle Club which explores surveillance in public spaces. As a middle-aged women, I’ve discovered I’m literally invisible to facial recognition systems and a lot of digital capture. Long story short, I’ve become beige with age! 

And that’s how the Beige City Strollers became the unofficial title of the first Birmingham Dazzle Walk. I invited …kruse to walk with me and use the camouflage of age as anti-surveillance countermeasures. We wore low contrast clothing and makeup to become less visible and make it harder for the cameras to find the markers of our face. We literally became the stereotypes of invisible older women as we walked through the city centre, unnoticed and unobserved in our blandness.

In stark contrast a month later I did a second female Dazzle Walk and this time we painted our faces with Dazzle paint to confuse facial recognition systems. We were approached so many times by men that I lost count. We even ended up following one because he started following a single woman after approaching us.

Again there is a lot to talk about in terms of the work that women do to feel safe when they walk, or to discourage approaches by strangers – and the conflict that we should have to jump through these hoops at all. One for the discussion. 

Thanks for listening!

Birmingham Life on Lockdown archived in collage

By summer 2020, various museums and archives were looking for material to illustrate what life was like for people in the early stages of the pandemic. I submitted my 'First 100 Days of Lockdown' pandemic diary – kept as a public record of my own experience – to a couple of archives in the UK and US, and also four collages from Birmingham Collage Collective's monthly prompts into a new Birmingham Life on Lockdown project.

The Life on Lockdown project began in May 2020 with a call out to Birmingham's citizens, which ran for six months. Birmingham Museums Trust started collecting digital content of the Brummie experiences during lockdown with the aim of keeping a record of the Covid-19 pandemic "to ensure that future generations could learn about this extraordinary time".

More than 400 photos, videos, poems, artworks, songs, performances, and stories were collected, "creating a snapshot of 184 days from lockdown, to the easing of restrictions, to Tiers; from a heatwave through to winter". The material is online at Flickr and also currently being displayed in an exhibition at Thinktank at Millennium Point.

© Birmingham Museums Trust, 2021: https://www.birminghammuseums.org.uk/blog/posts/life-on-lockdown-thank-you-to-the-people-of-birmingham

It was great to see two of my collages appear in the project video, at 1 min 42 secs (dark!) and 3 mins 49 secs (upbeat!).

The five collages in the Thinktank display are:

More collages / info on my collage practice can be found on my Collage project page. I also post to Instagram: @editoriat.

New Year's Resolution – to live like a dog

Although 2020 was a sh*tshow and 2021 isn't looking much better, I still couldn't resist making plans in January. It's something I've been doing annually since my life got bent out of shape in 2001 and I ended up becoming a bit of recluse for a year or several (not unlike the past 12 months).

Proper plans tend work a lot better than resolutions and I end up getting v excited about the year ahead. It started with a Word doc in 2001 and has escalated to whiteboarding the crap out of my life, printing the scans and pinning them somewhere to keep me moving forward on things.

I've got my main focuses down for this year – walking, writing, health, collage – with a generous smattering of extras that occasionally threaten to take over the main courses. The first big thing is to get my '100 days of the pandemic diary' into an ebook format. I've never done anything like that before but I'm aiming to have it ready for the March anniversary of the first UK lockdown. (There I've said it publicly so… wish me luck.)

But then this exhortation from my vet arrived in my peripheral vision… to live life more like a dog. Now those are resolutions to live by.

So maybe I'll just follow this instead and ask WWADD (what would a dog do?) for life's dilemmas. Sharing on…

New Year dog resolutions

Best books I've read in the bath in 2020

Favourite female artists – in the reference library.

For years I've kept a list in the back of my diary of books I've read (recently I've started adding my media diet too). That's how I know that I read 37 books in 2019 and, weirdly, it'll be exactly 37 by the end of 2020. There's consistent pacing for you.

This is a massive jump up from my reading levels of a few years ago. Working from home since 2009 has meant no commute which has also meant no book time since reading is all about the habit.

But then I discovered bath time reading (and also rejoined my local library, which has been fantastic for even the latest books). Reading is now part of my end-of-night routine, involving either a long soak with a good book – or a short soak with a dull book. Anyway, the result is that I'm back to getting through a book every 9.86 days, on average.

Everyone's taste in books is different but here are my top three books of the past year in case any take your fancy. Some are available to borrow.

1. Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life

William Finnegan's Pulitzer prize-winning surf autobiography covers the golden era of surfing (60s, 70s and 80s), from his childhood spent in California and Hawaii then travelling and discovering surf breaks around Asia, the South Pacific, Europe and Africa that are now world-famous. How someone can write about waves for 400 pages and keep each one fresh is quite astounding but he did go on to a career as a journalist and is now a staff writer at The New Yorker so he has the word chops.

Out of all the places Finnegan surfed, San Francisco's cold wild waters and Madeira's mid-ocean, round-island currents are the one that stand out as he comes to the edge of his surfing capabilities.

I'll also remember this book as a much-needed escape during the first coronavirus lockdown. It was a birthday gift from Pete, and is currently on loan to a friend, but tap me up if you want to borrow it at some point.

2. Suite Venetienne

Sophie Calle is more than an artist. She is like the bastard modern lovechild of journalism, multimedia and the kind of quirky ideas that you want to see played out (almost story pitches to an editor). She then lives these ideas out and processes them into artistic, often autobiographical outcomes. She is the only artist where I've had to queue to get to her books because other women were in the way discussing how much they loved her show. This was at the Photographer's Gallery in 2017 when she was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Prize.

Ina very French way, she took up art aged 27 or so because she was bored. She started following people as artistic explorations – and this culminated in Suite Venetienne, her first 'artist's book', published in 1988.

In it she meets a man at a party in her home city of Paris and decides to follow him to Venice. The book is a diary log of detection, surveillance and photography of and around her target (prey?). I like how it turns the power dynamic of a male-female stalking around – in her feminine world she doesn't actually want to meet him but have a sort of affair with him in her head. She is a thinking woman and perhaps he is the crumpet although the book isn't really about him while being all about him.

I also like what happens when you act on a crazy idea that takes you on a personal journey – it was an apt start to her art career (she is now in nearly 70). All her books are great but this one is a strangely poetic ride.

3. Fleischman is in Trouble

If I had to pick a fiction book this year, Taffy Brodesser-Akner's book is probably the one. Not because of all the plaudits it received but because of its initially confusing but later clever little inserts of unrest in the narration that changes, well, everything – even the whole nature of the novel you thought you were reading.

You follow the story of the main character – a fortysometing man whose marriage has fallen apart through no seeming fault of his own and is now sinking and swimming in the shock modern world of sex-in-your-face dating. Meanwhile his wife has run off somewhere – a yoga retreat upstate – and he has been left holding the baby (two kids). But who is really telling this story and why?

Clever, smart and a bit of a sleeper until the end – much like another favourite book of mine 'A Prayer for Owen Meany' which I hated until the last 100 pages.

No spoilers. I've already said too much.

Bonus best bath books of 2019

If none of the above takes your fancy, 2019 was an even better year for books. I'd highly recommend:

Educated by Tara Westover – the most incredible memoir of an escape from a batshit crazy family through the power of education.

What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding by Kristin Newman – a travel autobiography that's funny and honest about the world of backpacking and torrid affairs abroad.

The Salt Path by Raynor Wynn – what happens to a middle-age couple when they go bankrupt, receive a terminal illness diagnosis and decide to walk the SW Coastal Path together on benefits.

Honourable mentions for Three Women by Lisa Taddeo (about women and desire), Circe by Madeleine Miller (a female perspective on the Ancient Greek gods and co) and The Walker's Guide to Outdoor Clues and Signs by Tristan Gooley (a compendium of cool shit you can drop into your walk conversations and sound like a wise old ancient).

Pandemic diary 101: My first Covid test

Allotment greens for the Bunminster crew

Oh hello! I'm back! And here we all are again. In a local lockdown – one of so many, let's just call it a national lockdown, shall we? Effectively we all relaxed in the summer and now we're on the upstroke of a steepening second wave, which threatens to be much worse than the first, as forewarned by the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. (Check out the three 1918 waves in spring, autumn and winter – the second one is the largest by far.)

Here in Birmingham we've already been in a local lockdown since 11 September – not allowed to mix indoors or outdoors with members of other households but ok to go to the pub and meet (because they are legally Covid-safe and we keep forgetting at home that we mustn't hug or hold hands or hand over cuppas).

This week a three-tier system (medium, high and very high) was brought in to standardise all the different lockdown restrictions happening around the UK (predominantly in the North, east and west).

Brum is in tier 2 – high. The good news is we can meet in the garden again with up to six households. The bad news is we can't meet family or friends indoors anywhere, not even at the pub. And it's autumn so it's getting cold. This is very bad news, affecting our family, of course, but also our local community groups and the high street which is all about the 'Stirchley Beer Mile', independent restaurants and eating out. Also my 91-year-old friend in a care home now won't be able to see any visitors and my 85-year-old friend who goes to visit her every day is suffering because he needs routine and social contact due to dementia.

Kenneth Williams in tiers. Via a friend via Twitter .

So that's the lay of the land. Not too surprising.

It's not just the UK where it's all going tits-up. Europe is also fighting a surge in cases. Although New Zealand and Australia seem to have it under control (or just suppressed, postponing the inevitable spread?). Meds are being researched and used in medical responses. Vaccines are in development. Test and trace systems are being put in place to greater or lesser success. The phrase, the 'new normal' was bandied around a lot for a while back there, but now we're back to 'unprecedented times'.

The personal update is that I got a sudden cold/cough on Wednesday. (How, given everything is so sanitised!?) I logged the symptoms in my Zoe Covid app as always. But this time, being in a high Covid incidence area, I got an email asking me to go for a (voluntary) test:

Thank you so much for using the COVID Symptom Study app and helping to fight the outbreak. ZOE is very excited to be able to offer you a chance to get tested for COVID-19. By getting tested, your results will help understand the level of COVID-19 infections in your area, so this really will make a difference.

Tim Spector on behalf of ZOE

I guess it helps them to rule out cold symptoms. Anyway yesterday's official invitation was from the Department of Health "to have a PCR swab test to confirm whether you are currently positive or negative for the virus". I got an appointment offered within a couple of hours and off I went to the walk-in at the University of Birmingham.

The white field hospital tent (next to my old gym, waaah!) was like something out of the quarantine scene in ET. I scanned in with a QR-code on my phone, hand sanitised, picked up my test kit and was directed to one of the 10 or so cordoned off tent booths. In it was a table, chair, mirror, light, bin and instruction posters on the wall.

Inside the kit, was a tissue. First job: blow your nose to get rid of excess mucous. Then comes the fun part – get the swab, find tonsils using the mirror and poke them with the swab stick for 10 seconds. This is a long time to be tickling your gag reflex and I was not surprised when the sound of a young kid crying filled the marquee. It must be horrible for them. Then you stick the tonsil swab up one nostril, which was a bit stingy but fine. Put the swab in the tube, cap it and seal in an envelope, which then goes in another sealed envelope.

Then discard all that waste. So much single use plastic – there has to be a better way? This was the most upsetting thing about the test, realising how much plastic we are creating and throwing away.

The bag was then scanned by the assistant and I was told I'd receive results within 72 hours. I threw my pack into a fringed window at the end of the tent and accidentally touched the fringe. Cue mini freak. If you're going to catch Covid anywhere…

On the way out a whiteboard announced: 11,393 tests carried out at the site so far. Each day there are something like 150 slots available. Maybe I'll be back. I overheard another visitor saying this was her third test.

So that happened. I'm pretty sure it is just a seasonal cold. You’ve caught October, said Pete.

Update: Result was negative.

Today I am thankful for my allotment, which is still giving up the goods even though it is nearly November. Thankyou plot 59b for the pattypan squash, runner beans, tomatillos and salad leaves.

A last walk around the Stirchley Co-op – a photo essay

On 25th January 2020, the Stirchley Co-op sadly closed forever. The urge to see it one last time was strong. It was a strange feeling, after all it was just a shop. And yet… this was the supermarket I had grown up with in the 1970s-80s and returned to in the 2000s-10s.

Now, as we entered another decade, it was finally disappearing. The Co-op had been in Stirchley since 1875 and on the Umberslade Rd/Hazelwell Lane site since 1914. Its closure was big local news. In the era of late capitalism, it felt as if this was part of a wider crumbling in the way we run our society, the Co-op somehow a victim of a race to the bottom.

But that's a different post… To say goodbye I wanted to take a slow walk around Stirchley’s greatest ever retail character.

++

My Co-op memories

It was a supermarket I grew up with from childhood. I remember it when it was a thriving shop with a large dairy and rows of milk carts, where the lower car park is now.

I remember being allowed the treat of licking the Co-op Blue Saver and Green Shield stamps and sticking them in a stamp book so Mum could get some money off the groceries. Someone said on Twitter today that Stirchley was never a working class area – "as working class as Shoreditch". I beg to differ. There wasn't a lot of money around here in the '70s. Any money off was coveted.

It was also our local pop-to shop where our Irish catholic working class parents got their whisky ‘n’ fags before KwikSave moved into the high street and undercut them. I moved to London in the late 1980s but would help Mum shop there. She often bumped into friends and would stop for a catchup chat in the aisles. I have no memory of my Dad ever setting foot in it – feminism came late to our house and arrived courtesy of the women on the belt at Cadbury's somewhere in the 1980s.

Years later, I was back and single and heartbroken – and grieving. I recall many Friday/Saturday nights when popping to the Co-op was the tragic highlight of my evening. A place of comfort and loneliness all in one. Is this what my life had become I wondered as I walked across the two pedestrian crossings, past the brimming Three Horseshoes, tears rolling silently down my face. Still, be positive… I got a good Coop saver deal on my saucepans.

The ‘Society Café’ past the tills was where I went on a date circa 2003 – for dating irony at this point. We had tea and cake on the sofas while a mini brass band ensemble and carol singers played Christmas carols. Then he lent me music and books that I pretended to like, as was the dating tradition.

The café was also a destination for pensioners, local councillors, kids and hipsters alike. These were the days before Stirchley had many daytime cafés to escape to. Where you could get an unbranded cuppa char for £1.50. 

I didn’t realise I was building up such nostalgia for this shop that many other B30 residents lambasted for its high prices and empty shelves, especially in its final years. The arrival of the cut-price German supermarkets, Aldi and Lidl, and food e-tailers were sounding the death knell.

At a corporate level the Co-op Group had been going through some turbulent economic times, with the near collapse of its bank in 2013 (it is now out of the banking business). But I always forgave the Co-op because it had more ethical policies in place than other cheaper supermarkets.

Still I was sad to see it run down over the years. More recently, with nowhere else to go in the rain, it became a place we took my new great-nephew for a pram ride around the aisles (if that isn't an indictment of our capitalist society and leisure offerings, I don't know what is). And when he started toddling, a trip to The Works concession at the back of the store for a book or toy. To him, it was still a world of exciting colour and riding the shopping trolleys. 

++

The Co-op walk we had to cancel

The Stirchley Co-op’s last day was a Saturday and there wasn’t much shopping to be done anymore. The shelves had been slowly emptying over the previous weeks and whole sections of the store were now being closed off. The number of open tills shrank and then were removed. The raw infrastructure of the supermarket was being revealed in a slow uncovering of hook-on shelving, wire racks and easy-clean metal racks.

Locals were tweeting about the ‘apocalyptic scenes’ as if the end were nigh. Given what was to come, it was prescient.

Little did we know that a global pandemic was about to hit. That panic buying loo rolls and hand sanitiser was about to become a national sport. Or that we would soon have to travel much further afield to get basic food supplies during lockdown.

Before we knew any of this was coming, fellow Stirchley resident and psychogeographer Andy Howlett and I decided to walk the Co-op.

To: “mournfully walk up and down the empty isles, browsing instead the infrastructure that remains”.

To embrace: “The stark angles of empty metal shelving! The receding vistas of shopper-free aisles! The rhythm of its layout and walkways! The final beeps of the disappearing tills! The barren promotional structures offering no deals!” 

To say a last goodbye.

We decided to put it up as an event on Facebook for friends and residents to join us. But when 120 people expressed an interest, we knew we’d hit a nerve and this walk would either be a great thing – or trouble.

Sadly our funereal store procession was not to be… 

We received a nudge from the councillor and an alarmed email from a respected Neighbourhood Forum member that the walk wouldn’t go down well with staff. Although staff had all been offered new jobs with Morrison’s, who had taken over the site, it was felt a walk by the public would be inappropriate.

And so we cancelled the event. (It still lives on at LiveBrum listings archive – someone added it to the site and it lives on as a memorial marker perhaps.) To be honest we didn’t think so many people would want to come. We probably shouldn’t have formalised it into a group ‘walk’.

I sometimes wonder if the staff would have understood the sense of occasion and the community's wish to mark a historical day. Perhaps even enjoyed the shenanigans like the flash mobs of old. Instead the Co-op slipped quietly away.

++

Goodbye Stirchley Co-op

On closing day, just three of us went ahead for a last walk up and down the aisles of this iconic store. We met outside, slightly worried that 100 people might still show up. They didn't.

Keri, Andy and I walked slowly around the store, visiting every area that was still open, talking about the changes and taking photos. Staff were laughing and joking. Maybe they were relieved. A near-empty supermarket, shorn of its shiny goods, has to be demoralising. 

The Stirchley History Group had set up a small exhibition of the history of Co-ops in the area. It showed the incredible Harrods-like original building on the corner of Umberslade Rd. My elderly friend Rita, now 90, fondly recalls a hat concession on the upstairs level. Why it was knocked down and replaced with a box and the upstairs never used, I don't know. Progress, I suppose.

The exhibition also had a supercuts model of a local TASCO (Ten Acres & Stirchley Co-operative Society). More local TASCO historical photos here.

After visiting it, the three of us went for a ceremonial tea in the Society Café, where we reminisced. Then, as a surprise, Keri pulled out a poem he had written to mark this day.

It was his way of saying goodbye to the Co-op. He read it out for us and I wished the staff could have heard it, too. Reproduced here with permission.

Elegy to a Co-op

In Stirchley, fair Stirchley, a proud beacon burns
To a positive wealth of cooperative firms
There’s Artefact, Loaf and of course the Bike Foundry 
But now we are faced with a very sad quandary
By the gyratory, where the cars stop,
The mum of them all is now shutting up shop.

Over the years, we have given a wave
To Fitness First, Ten Pin and (less missed) KwikSave
The Co-op has fallen foul of a sad plot
So more than a Lidl – we’ll miss you a lot

You’re not just a supermarket. You offered more
As Stirchley’s own miniature department store
With bedding and linens, and cheap deep fat fryers
Tellies and vacuums and big tumble driers.
And there at the back an enormous amount
Of books that you’d not even want at a discount

When needing some supper we’d pop along late
To shuffle through food near its best-before date
Each one yellow-stickered and begging ‘choose me’
Like sad Cinderella, disconsolately

An eclectic selection contained in our hand,
Then we’d be faced with a different demand
The challenge that buying your purchases posed
With nine tills and checkouts – and eight of them closed

And on Sunday mornings, now where will we go for
An eight-item breakfast on black leather sofa?
Though some people avoided you, some people dissed
Please understand that you’ll always be missed

And so what approaches us from the horizon?
The future is brought to us by Mister Morrison
He means well, I’m sure, with his newly found operatives
But sadly for us, they will be un – Cooperative

++

A new beginning

And so it ended. We each left and turned in different directions.

The Stirchley Co-op is dead, long live its new cooperatives (Loaf, Bike Foundry and Artefact). And with their Stirchley Co-operative Development plans for the corner of Hunts Rd/Pershore Rd currently going through local planning and endorsed by MP Steve McCabe, perhaps in some way the baton has been passed on.

From upper case Co-op to lower case co-ops, perhaps this shift in in our high street augurs for a better society and a more modern 'Stirchley'.

Next week on 9 July 2020, delayed by the Covid-19 lockdown, a new Morrison’s will open on the site. Anyone fancy a walk?

++

Update: Last walks around other Coops

20 Nov 2022: It seems I'm not the only one who has emotions about their childhood Coop. With permission, I'm reposting the response below from Ricky in Devon. Anyone else out there doing a last walk around their closing Coops?

I have just read your article online about the Last Walk around Stirchley Co-op. I found it fascinating and I can relate to how you felt and your need to visit the store before closure. 

I'm reading a book called The Co-op in Birmingham, it's a great read and full of pictures, and it's mind blowing how important the Co-op was, especially throughout the war years, Co-op was a way of life and they provided endless services to the people in our country. In the book they book they spoke about the Stirchley Co-op, so I researched the site and sadly discovered it closed down two years ago after being there for over 100 years.

I live down in Devon, but the two Co-op stores in my home town have just closed down, one large one and one little one. As a child after school my mum would take me to the Co-op to do our weekly shop, I have fond memories of the staff and the shopping trips. I'm only 26 but my whole life I've used that store, I even worked there for a year or so. Tesco opened in the town in 2011 and Co-op struggled since, and they have now shut down and sold the large site to Aldi, and the small store to Spar, it's very upsetting as the store has been in the centre of the town for years and it was a real community hub. Plus it has lots of memories for me and it's very nostalgic. Luckily Aldi cannot demolish the building so I'm pleased the building will stay standing. 

A week before the large store closed down, I walked around, spoke to all the staff, and I left feeling really sad it would be the last time I would step foot in there. Weird how a supermarket can make you so emotional.

People don't appreciate the Co-op as much as they should. In the town I live now we have a large Co-op which I always use, but I hear that one is now closing down too. 

++

Further info and walks

The Stirchley Coop walk and photo essay is part my 'Perambulate With Me' series of walks around Stirchley. More on this and other walking projects on the Walking page. See also the Mapping Stirchley project and Walkspace website.

Pandemic diary 100: Looking back at 100 days of lockdown

Don't doom-scroll the news, says Clem. #toptip

I'm not going to lie, personally I already miss the lockdown.

Despite the ongoing anxiety-inducing circumstances of a global pandemic, the lockdown itself was often a time of peace and quiet and reflection and safety, free of many of the usual obligations of life.

Looking back, I mostly remember it for the May heatwave spent in the garden, for scary trips out to the supermarket, for walks in the middle of local empty streets, for the birdsong and clean air, for allotment visits, for the utter joy of seeing other people in real life when that was allowed, for the weird enforced distance with loved ones, for the escapism of my media diet, for the Thursday community clap, and, of course, for writing this daily (nighttimely?) diary.

Already I'm forgetting what those early days were like. As the rules shifted and changed so did our emotions, responses and reactions to the threat. It's good to have written it all down in real time – and I've already submitted this diary to several archive projects for the record.

The start

I started writing the day full lockdown in the UK started on 24 March, although I'd been writing privately well before that (rounded up in Pandemic diary 3: a brief history of coronavirus in Stirchley, Birmingham).

I was sitting in the garden and heard a row breaking out across the street (Pandemic diary 1: First fracas). I remembering wondering if this was what was going to happen when people were cooped up together and not really allowed out. Domestic violence has been a big issue of this time (Pandemic diary 94: A down day), along with George Floyd and Black Lives Matter (Pandemic diary 69: The murder of George Floyd).

From day one, I decided there needed to be bunny photos in each post to lighten the mood. The template quickly became: BUNNIES, BLOGGING, BLESSINGS!

Back then we had two rabbits, of course. We lost one around four weeks later and didn't get to be with him at the end because of coronavirus (Pandemic diary 23: Goodbye Bunminster).

The diary acted as therapy, social record and a letter to the future. I thought it would last a week, then a month and then 100 seemed the next round number, and here we are.

Make hay while the bun shines – or eat it, recommends Bunminster. RIP.

Writer's cramp brings in new perspectives

I had an RSI flare-up in the middle of the diary when, on top of working and daily blogging, I both went for a job (Pandemic diary 87: Socially distanced job interview) and submitted a long piece of creative writing work to a publisher (neither successful). Writing every day was a pain in the neck at the end of a long day, literally.

Thank goodness then for guest diarists who were kind enough to write a post about their lockdown life.

It was great to get the perspectives of others. There were 12 or 13 in all, I think – from funny entries to angry rants, to the in-depth experiences of friends who were shielding, were inadvertently part of coronavirus transmission due to the government's slow pandemic response or were severely ill with Covid-19. They came from Brum, London and as far away as New Zealand.

Thank you for offering your insights but even more for giving me a night off!

No, seriously, I feel honoured. Ta babs!

What kept me going

Mostly sheer will but also regular readers and feedback. I joke that I work for praise…

The blog stats for the period show 2,300 users and 5,200 unique visits which is incredible. And partly why I added the 'hire/commission me' line at the end of each post – the work of freelance writers is precarious at the best of times.

Unusually for blogs these days, there were lots of comments. Thanks to regular readers and commenters both on Facebook and on the blog, I didn't feel so alone. In truth, they kept me going (Pandemic diary – day 30: Do I keep writing?).

Thanks Chris, Liz, Hazel, Tracey, the Wrinkly Rocker, other Liz, Sheena, Tania, Sue, Kerry, John, Kate, Camilla, Lo, Frank, Julia and others. And, of course, husband Pete who read the blog every night – often voluntarily – and proofread some of the tougher ones.

If I'd kept everything in my own private diary then you bet I'd have skipped a few days or weeks or just flung a few notes down when I was tired. Having an online community was an important part of the process.

To be fair, connecting over tech is how many people have held it together in the face of sudden extreme isolation.

Name check and shout-outs here to The Artefact Quiz and our distributed quiz team (Pandemic diary 67: The Artefact Quiz – pandemic edition), the fellow ukenauts of Moselele (Pandemic diary: Day 10 – Moselele turns 10), drinking pals (Pandemic diary 45: To the pub!) and friends and family for Zoom birthday celebrations, baby gender reveals and online coffee mornings.

Highlights and lowlights

On day 54 I wrote a post about death and getting my affairs in order – just in case (Pandemic diary 54: Confronting death pt 1). But there was never a pt2 philosophical/spiritual followup. Because somewhere along the way, all this became a 'new normal' – as the coronavocab would have it. The immediate oppressive thoughts of death somehow receded, to the point where a lot of us now are pretending like there is no killer virus risk and especially not at the beach (Pandemic diary 93: Lockdown all but lifted).

Posting 'the numbers' on Covid cases and deaths locally, nationally and worldwide did help keep me focused. Pretty sobering. I should add them here but I can't face it. (Update at 12/7/20:289,603 UK cases, 44,819 Covid-associated UK deaths , 21 additional deaths on 11/7/20 and 650 further cases. There were 25,767 cases across the West Midlands. And in Birmingham 4,853 cases and 1,162 deaths with 63 new cases last week. Comparisons are shaky but on deaths per thousand, it looks as if the UK has been the hardest hit of the leading G7 nations. The death rate for this time of year has now returned to normal with no excess deaths. Sources: Gov.uk and BBC.)

My best blog headline was clickbait: Pandemic diary 36: Great tits.

My most read was: Pandemic diary 23: Goodbye Bunminster.

The second most read was: Pandemic diary 81: Lockdown walks lead to a new map – a community project which arose from walking the same streets every day on our state-sanctioned walks.

There were multimedia attempts to address the challenges of mental and physical health, more to entertain myself and fill the days: Pandemic diary 60: Surfing meditation gets bitchin' real and Pandemic diary 8: Exercising with bunnies.

I don't have a favourite post but I did enjoy the journey in this one: Pandemic diary 71: A peripatetic tale of sunscreen.

There were down days: Pandemic diary 82: When melancholia hits…, Pandemic diary 94: A down day.

There were good days: Pandemic diary 90: I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of Stirchley, Pandemic diary 73: Amuselele.

And there were moments of change and big discussion:

There were new common traditions:

There was the very first post: Pandemic diary 1: first fracas

And now the very last: Pandemic diary 100: Looking back at 100 days of lockdown.

'Thanks'

Then there were the thanks at the end of each post – the things and people I was grateful for or brought me joy. I might have to gather them into a whole separate post one day. Yes, the fluffy bunny at the start and the upbeat thanks formed a 'shit sandwich' but there is another reason.

In 2019, I learnt the power of gratitude from going to a dementia therapy group with a newly diagnosed friend. There I learnt that focusing on what you are thankful for can bring joy, especially amid anxiety and the unknown. A gratitude/goal diary can be very helpful as a way to deal with challenging mental health situations. It also helps programme the brain to think more positively and combats that frequent negative internal monologue and other doom-laden thoughts.

Gratitude brings joy into everyday moments. As a certain TED and Netflix vulnerability guru says…

A good life happens when you stop and are grateful for the ordinary moments that so many of us just steamroll over to try to find those extraordinary moments.

Brene Brown

So today I am thankful for so many things despite the ever-present 'situation'. I'm also thankful that things are changing. Life goes on. Thankfully.

What did I learn, what did I gain?

I'm not sure yet. It helped me sleep, for sure! There is nothing like emptying out your brain every evening for a good night's sleep. And I've learnt I can write every day, come what may. There is now no excuse for putting off 'the book'.

'100 days of lockdown' has done its job and fulfilled its purpose – it's here, these things happened and have been recorded. There is a social record from my little corner of the world. We're not through this pandemic yet, so maybe I'll be back – if I need it.

But also I need to stop. I'm looking forward to taking a break and getting back to 'normal'. Whatever that may be.

I hope I've inspired, entertained or connected with people at some point along the way. Maybe someone reading this will start a diary. Now that would make me really happy.

100 days! Can you believe it?

Wash your paws after you touch new doors – says young rescue bun Nathan, who is arriving in a couple of weeks where he will be renamed Dymaxion, the 'son' of Professor Bunminster Fuller.

PS. I'll leave you with our new bun from Fat Fluffs Rescue who will be arriving in a couple of weeks. He'll be bonded with Clementine Bundango once he's recovered from the snip. Say hi to Dymaxion! #allthenames

Commission/hire me: fiona [at] fionacullinan.com

Pandemic diary 99: Collaging lockdown, dreaming of future escapes and the holiday issue

A friend commented on one of my earlier posts that I was "really LIVING each day". Which did make me smile since I have found lockdown life pretty limiting. I'm not sure if she was referring to the daily writing here or the sudden interest in my allotment or my rich inner life where I imagine going surfing, for example. But 'really living' for me usually involves going somewhere with sea and mountains. Preferably a warm country far away but, more often now, Wales and Cornwall.

Since the recent announcements around lifting travel and holiday restrictions, my dreaming of holidays has escalated. Yesterday, I ended up having a collage session in which three 'map women' emerged from my subconscious.

Map women – slowly becoming a collage series.

Prior to that it was walking and surfing that came out of my collage sessions.

The walkers were all alone and distanced. Often they had their hands raised in triumph and joy. They were also torn, which gave them an extra divided, emotional feel. All the cuts and tears were of open countryside because walking mags don't really show urban walking. (Maybe they should since so many of us have rediscovered our local zones and the area within a mile of so of our homes.)

'Left, right, left, right, left, right.'

In our case, we also discovered 'extreme noticing' by walking the same streets over and over during lockdown, and this led to creating a local map of our findings, which has opened up new ways of thinking about and walking our local area.

The surfing was just expressing a desire to see the sea (or dive into the sky, which some of the waves were made from). Brummies have a thing about the 'seaside' – we need to see the sea once a year in order to live in a landlocked city the rest of the time.

‘You should have been here yesterday.’ I read a 500-page surf biography Barbarian Days during lockdown and stormy big waves were on my mind for about three weeks.

Before the holiday dreaming started, my collages were a bit darker. I wanted to log them here as responses to lockdown life. Every two weeks members of Birmingham Collage Collective were invited to submit a Birmingham-themed collage responding to the lockdown.

My collages were not the best I've done as I felt quite blocked and frustrated at the time, but they did reflect the isolation and social distancing, the work furloughs and the growing death toll.

I did four over the project and I'll post them here for the record.

April 22: 'Distancing'
May 6: 'Furloughed from the Wesleyan, Birmingham'.
May 6: There is a six-week backlog of burials in Birmingham, said my neighbour.
May 22: 'Toxic hands'

After writing about Commitment issues a couple of days ago, I think I will commit to doing a bit more collage practice. And maybe combine it with walking.

Update: these and other Birmingham Collage Collective lockdown collages are now being added to a Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery archive around Birmingham life in lockdown (see Flickr site and project info).

Holiday – yes or no?

I won't be going on holiday for some time yet. At least, not internationally. I'm not ready to get on a plane but, much more than that, I'm not willing to risk getting ill with Covid-19 overseas. Not just for healthcare reasons but because of the potential financial impact.

My friend Jill, who is a travel journalist, said that almost no insurers will cover the cost of Covid-19 now – or if borders closed again, or quarantine was required. And thanks to Brexit, Brits will only have EHIC coverage until the end of this year. So her best advice is stick to the EU in 2020.

As for next year or going long-haul, who can afford a potential hospital stay, possibly in intensive care? Surely this could bankrupt people!? Not worth the risk for a week or two away.

Jill started a discussion on LinkedIn about holidays and airbridges. She said that she would be booking to get away as soon as she possibly could (although not flying… yet).

Others responded to say that potential contagion meant they had "lost their enthusiasm for travel" or that being freelance "I don't want to blow money on a holiday, if I could be out of work in a couple of months" or "I won't be doing any international travel until a vaccine is created for this virus". Basically health, finances and anxieties meant foreign travel is a no-no for many people. My favourite response was from a cyclist: "I have been delightfully surprised at just how much a sense of travel I can experience within a 12 mile radius of home." Preach!

The balancing responses were: "A totally 'risk-free' life frankly isn't much of a life" and "already booked a flight to Italy" and city dwellers may be desperate for "some fresh air and green space" by now. Meanwhile, an independent travel agent seemed relieved their industry was cranking to life: "I have been making sure I keep up to date with hotel, airline and airport regulations so I can advise my clients on how to travel safely."

We've all got different risk profiles. I'm looking at Wales or Devon by car – but as a freelancer I also need to be sure I've got the income first. Warm swimming pool seas may have to remain a dream until 2021 or even 2022.

Roll on the vaccine, so to speak.

Thanks

Today I am thankful for my GP. I've delayed checking out some new moles – a non-essential thing (hopefully). With no face-to-face appointments I took photos, sent them in and booked in for a follow-up chat.

Turns out they are not even moles but th lesions of ageing and, man, they have some fancy names. One of the two suspect items is called a Campbell de Morgan. Also called cherry angioma (another top name). It's so posh, I might start introducing it to friends. Or perhaps name a bunny after it: Lady Bunnella Campbell de Morgan?


Commission/hire me: fiona [at] fionacullinan.com