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!

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 52: Fucking Blackbird

Hippie alert.

Hello. I've done something stupid. I decided to pick up the guitar for the first time in about three years. And now my wrists hurt. So this will be a short post. Basically I loved it and couldn't stop and now my RSI has flared up. When will I learn that I can't compute AND play.

I made a video with the idea of showing progression, but not sure I'll be playing again for a while. Still, some muscle memory is there from learning this song about 15 years ago. Also, birds (what are birds?)!

Enjoy my pain, Schadenfreudsters.

There's a blackbird hanging around the garden at the moment btw – it's got a really lovely tune. Not like those great tits!

Thanks

Today I am thankful for TREES! We took a trip to the next park over from yesterday's Manor Farm Park to Ley Hill to see the Giant Redwoods (!) and take a stroll around Merritt's Hill. The trees there were something else.

Also got home in time for a Zoom gender reveal on my next great niece or nephew, who is due in October. They fired a cannon with pink or blue smoke. It was quite exciting. And they are going to have… whatever gender pink is! I probably should have checked. 😉

A Giant Redwood at Ley Hill, nearly 6m round and quite high, presumably with a long way to go.
There were some crazy carvings up there too, including a rabbit, bear and a tree with a hole in it.
Tiny Pete – is far away – but it is still a big tree.

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


Pandemic diary 51: Stirchley's Von Trapps* in lockdown (guest post)

Every Wednesday a fresh load of songs arrive. How do you write a positive song anyway? Or any song?

Another guest post has come in – hurrah! This is especially welcome as I have spent eight hours editing financial B2B copy and have nothing left to give. This insight on lockdown life is from a highly talented musical, digital and culinary friend – Lobelia – who I've had the pleasure of knowing for nine years this year. She lives in Stirchley with her pro musician husband, Steve, and their super smart young son (who used to interrupt his coding to give me a hug back in the good old hugging days). Please say hello to Lo!

__

I have avoided writing much about my time so far in lockdown due to Covid-19. I think that’s largely because I’m trying to avoid the realities in a sort of ‘fake it till you make it’ kind of scenario. It’s not that I’m not acutely aware of what’s going on, but rather that I’m employing a technique of not allowing myself to dwell on it. At least as much as possible.

I felt a bit guilty at first being comfortable in the environment of staying home. I have a husband and a 10-year-old son, and I feel quite content being close to them. My husband and I work from home mostly, and our son is quite self-contained, so we are great at being together in a small space. I only struggle with people eating cereal near me (that’s a whole other story) or my son wearing headphones and bellowing talking at full volume on his Zoom calls. 

As a techy musician (I’m a techy geek by day working in sustainable transport/wellness) and a musician otherwise running gigs, writing songs and working as a studio singer on various projects, I feel like my training in both were tailor-made for this kind of scenario.

I was furloughed quite early on from my day job, at 100% salary for the first month, which has since decreased to 80% and soon to fall to 60% if the Tories have their way about it.

My brain isn’t great at being idle, so I immediately fell into devising and working on a project with a friend called The Positive Songs Project, which encourages members to write and record one positive song a week in times of despair and uncertainty. I don’t think I’d ever intentionally written a positive song in my 25+ year career as a songwriter so I’m amazed to find that, five weeks in, I’ve got part of a Bandcamp album of positive music under my belt.

Working on this project has definitely kept me focused and feeling mostly OK, although I do have days where I can’t function. It’s always the tipping point of an article in the news I shouldn’t have read, or someone I know that is affected. 

All and all, I feel very lucky. I can still perform from home with high-quality streaming gigs (thanks to fast wi-fi), release music (thanks to Bandcamp) and I live in a gorgeous area in a lovely little house with very connected and community-focused neighbours.

There are parks and green spaces all around me. My expenses are low with no car and very reasonable rent and I can spend time on the things that are important to me.

The feeling of community that has built up around this crisis is wonderful on my street, we even have Zoom calls with drinks to connect and bond.

I still despair about the state of the world and those who are not as lucky as me and I have no idea what’s going to happen in future – but I’m just going to focus on doing my best for my family and helping others as much as possible and take it one day at a time

Fiona back again – I highly recommend tuning into the Positive Songs Project. You don't have to write a song for it (maybe one day) but there are some lovely recordings on there. My favourite so far is Granfalloon's The Pigeon. It's quite hypnotic and all about birds, my new lockdown interest.

* PS. Sorry for calling you the Von Trapps but you are the most positive musical family I know. Stirchley's rubble hills are alive with the sound of positive songs. Plus, you guys are a few of My favourite things!

Thanks

I saw a friend posting photos from a local park I'd never heard of. I looked it up and it is only 10 minutes away in the car. How have I never known about it? It's hidden right there behind the trees lining the Bristol Road on the way to Northfield.

So this evening we went for a walk around Manor Farm Park, which is part lake (currently drained so extra interesting), part park, part meadow, part woodland, part manor (it was once the grounds of Northfield Manor House). It's massive and quite fairytale-esque in many places with little waterfalls and glades. If you ever read 'The Magic Faraway Tree' as a child, then I'm pretty sure you'll relate to this park.

So yeah thanks P-Bantz for the recommendation. B31 2AB is the postcode for your satnavs. Here are some photos to prove how lovely it is.

Oak trees, brooks, waterfalls and Pete.
Wetland in south Birmingham.
Secret riverside walks through the glade.
A deep silt plain, formerly the lake but perhaps the work is on hold due to lockdown.

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


Pandemic diary 41: The dark side of the Rea

Sunday. We are both feeling better today.

Slept and slept, nearly 10 hours in all. Two Mad Mens for breakfast. A rich chocolate brownie for lunch. Gardening and rabbit runabout. The day ended with a bit of exciting work as a logistics client went out on an SOS call to help get desperately needed incoming deliveries of PPE (personal protective equipment) from Turkey moving along the supply chain and into the NHS. I'll be working on filling out this story on their website tomorrow. Maybe I'll slot in a cheeky backlink from here for an SEO boost, ha ha.

Around 7pm we then took a walk to follow up on the tree identification live demo yesterday along the River Rea Route – the other unofficial path, the overgrown dark side. I also wanted to do today's #distancedrift walking prompt by walking artist and author Sonia Overall. Her prompt was to find islands on our travels: I've yet to process my photos but I've found islands made of plants, litter, salty efflorescence, cat's eye lights, rocks in the river, road markings and more.

It's good to get out of the house and your head.

Pete's photos of this lockdown walk are here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/peteashton/albums/72157714151240013

Other people's found islands in the lockdown landscape can be found under #distancedrifts hashtag on Twitter.

Things to be thankful for

Today I am thankful for… wild garlic, tons of it, on our walk. I foraged some and added it into tonight's chicken quorna curry.

Also it was lovely to have a distanced doorstep hello with my great nephew M who informed us that he is now three-and-eight-twelfths, and that he is not allowed to come into our house "until the lockdown ends". And then he sang T-Rex 'Get It On, bang a gong' and danced to Gangnam Style. Oh to be three!

There was also a bonus mysterious Robson – Walkspace collaborator – as we walked out today. He's done a very readable, borderline poetic series of lockdown walk writings over on Walkspace recently. Check them out here: 'Robson on…'

Remember that giftbox with a tree in it that I mentioned yesterday? Pete has turned it into a rabbit engagement tunnel for Clem. She hides from us there. But I am always waiting with my camera for Madame Showpony.

Finally, for added cuteness, we spotted a dog on our evening forage walk. But we could only see a fraction of it under the garden fence. We both took a photo. This dog is an excellent model. And goes to show sometimes you don't need to see the whole picture to appreciate the view.

A. Pete's pic.
B. Fiona's photo.

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


Pandemic diary 29: The lure of the open road

No bunny today. Trying out my new birthday trekking poles on the streets of Stirchley. All pics: Pete Ashton.

One of the things I have started doing is walking down the middle of the road. Empty roads, big gaps in traffic, an invitation to reclaim the highway from the automobile. The lure of the open road. It's very satisfying, although not relaxing as you still have to keep an eye and ear out. Slower, quieter streets are safer but bigger main roads feel more of a coup. Sometimes there is a central chevron path, sometimes a single white line.

Pete labelled this 'street walking' until I set him straight.

More coronavirus lockdown changes…

I go to press the button at three pedestrian crossings and then realise there is no need.

Never has speeding been so attractive to so many. Speed limits have become token. Those 20mph test zones – ha ha. The 'meringue' sound of the speedway from streets away.

Pedestrians criss-cross frequently to avoid meeting on the pavement. Movement outdoors has become one big do-si-do of scale.

Joggers and cyclists everywhere. It is the walkers who must move out of the way. Recently I read an article about the need to avoid their slipstream by up to 10m as they leave a much longer trail of potentially contagious droplets. No wonder thinking about this invisible thing is so mind-wrecking. The figure of 2m is burned into our brains but what if it is wrong?

Hiking Stirchley's rubble hills.

Thanks NHS!

Today I am thankful for the NHS (once again), this time for my elderly friend who has had to go into hospital for non-Covid-19 reasons. I hate that he is on his own but it should only be a quick visit hopefully. That is one of the worst things about this situation – no contact. But the emergency services have been fantastic and got to him so quickly. Get well soon, old friend.


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


Pandemic diary 6: Good sunrise, sad memories and bad ears

Stirchley around 6.55am after the clocks went forwards

I've swapped out the bunnies today for a photo of sunrise on the first day of British Summer Time.

It's been a strange day, which is saying something in these strange times. Getting up at 5am (6 if you count the clocks going forward, which no-one does on the first day) was always going to be tough but a quick curtain twitch told me the sunrise would be worth it.

I'd said to Andy (of Video Strolls and Walkspace) that I'd meet him on the bridge on Mary Vale Road. This and Hunts Road were the two local options for sunrise-road alignment, according to the lovely Photographer's Ephemeris app, which shows sunrise, sunset and moon rise alignments. Here is this morning's map:

While making takeaway coffee and toast, I popped into the garden to hear the dawn chorus. Not too many birds were awake but it was pretty chirpful in the dusk before dawn.

At 6.30am I had Stirchley High St to myself. I walked on the white lines in the middle of the road, snapped the Stirchley Gorilla and took some 360 video of the closed down emptiness. This was isolation from the isolation. I walked around the school block and up the hill to the bridge for sunrise at 6.48am. Of course, it's a bit later in a hilly city, clearing the horizon about 10 minutes later.

A lone figure was standing on the Mary Vale Rd canal/rail bridge – Andy. We chatted briefly about Blake Morris and Desmond Morris (no relation) at a safe distance while watching the sun rise over Stirchley.

The sky lit up pink and orange briefly before the sun rose over the horizon and we could look at it no more – a proper sunrise.

Andy headed off to the canal towpath on his walk and I drove to Raddlebarn Park for a second sunrise and breakfast.

For the first time in a few weeks I felt I was living life rather than being suppressed by it. There is something transcendent about these moments in nature and something powerful about experiencing it alone with your thoughts, uninterrupted by human chatter. I felt free and uncaged. Soon I would return to my home 'prison' but not before seeing a second sunrise over the park and kneeling down next to a long line of spring daffodils in full bloom along Warwards Lane.

One last strange thing… in the park I was transported back in time to 2001 by the view and location. I realised I had been looking at the last view my Mum had. She had a garden room in St Mary's Hospice which sits inside but at the edge of Raddlebarn Park. After a long night when we had kept watch over her, she had opened her eyes that chill November morning, the winter sun shone in on her and she slipped away, changing our world for ever. I miss her. Especially now.

Later: Perhaps it is tiredness or the stress coming out but the past few days I've had a low tinnitus hum in my ears and a pressure in my head. My hearing feels dulled and I can pop my ears but it doesn't clear anything. Today I started getting that dizzy-woozy unbalanced feeling. I'm really hoping this doesn't trip into vertigo. Now is really not the time to be ill.

Today I am thankful for British Summer Time and some short-lived freedom. For the privilege of being able to be with my Mum at the end. And for snuggling my boo, Bunminster, who is too slow to run away.

See, there's a bunny after all.


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


Capturing the moon – reflections on Full Moon Walking

How can you share a walk beyond the walk? What can be the artifact that arises from, for example, our recent full moon walk, which drew 22 people into 'an expedition to explore our local waterways by full moon'.

A poem seems most apt as a way of processing the experience in text – if I had any skill in that direction. A walk report – doable, journalistic and a useful archive document but that's what I know and want to move away from. A Q&A or blog post to process the experience, as last time? A photo – there are some posted here on Walkspace, but they are Pete's photos not mine. A video – too dark. Some moon water – I did indeed capture the moon in water but spilled it to mark the lunar spell's boundaries. A map – I like that idea. An artwork, a collage? A single overriding memory? Some kind of feedback loop from the 22 people who came on the walk? Did their wishes, prayers and intentions come true, for example?

Maybe the walk is the thing. But creating an artifact from it makes each walk live on beyond the thing itself, and gives something to revisit.

If I have any kind of 'practice' it is the diary. My entry from the pre-walk check reads like a set of mythographer's travel notes:

…River Rea bridge troll, parallel tunnels, bridge ladder to a floating island, Lifford lake monster, Orion tracking/hunting the night walkers, the upturned Plough, tree of shoes, cachunking of the mineral automaton, a lost bridge, corrugated rusting barn, brutal concrete water tower, guillotine locks for chopping off heads of giants, moon water at the junction of waterways, the moon travelling alongside us in the canal, cat's eyes watching the alley behind the houses, the river stopped, freeze-framed in mid-flow.

Diary entry, 2 March 2020

While these notes conjure up the walk for me but they feel more like raw material for something else. The post-walk artifact is something I want to think about a bit more for future walks, and they are going to need some planning.

I particularly like Hamish Fulton's videos of slow group walks (especially his Penzance Beach walk) and Craig Mod's SMS book 'Pachinko Road Walk With Me' that tapped into the real-time activity of his long distance walk and created a book from his SMS texts (he explains the tensions of real time v asynchronicity in a great newsletter/video post).

There is also Richard Long's The Line and his other way markings. And a favourite from the recent Walking's New Movement's conference: Miranda Whall, who crawled the sheep tracks of Wales with a bunch of cameras attached and which led to an atmospheric multiscreen, soundtracked exhibition. Finally I love Sophie Calle's multimedia outputs and recordings, for example, her book log of surveillance activity and photos from when she walked (stalked!) a man from Paris to Venice.

These walk artifacts are what I aspire to but I've yet to figure out what I can create from a walk that will be of lasting value. Last year, when I expressed an interest in art, my mentor Kate Spence said to use this time for exploration and play. Be interested and interesting. So I guess you can expect more random walk experiments in the months to come.

And if you've come across creative outputs from walkers or walking artists. I'd be interested to hear about them. Please do leave a link in the comments.


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