Place, Parallax, and a Sense of Community | Article

In June 2022 the fountains in Nottingham’s Old Market Square were turned off after water was discovered leaking into an electrical control area below the mechanism. The water features were a draw for children and their families during hot weather, with youngsters playing in the pools and beneath the jets as shoppers trundled past. In December 2023, and with Nottingham City Council having effectively declared bankruptcy, the local authority confirmed that the features would be switched off permanently in an effort to save £30,000 per year. When I went to the city last year this was indeed the case; Nottingham Council House looked on sternly as the attractive stonework stayed bone-dry. The early morning square was desolate save for pigeons and shop workers walking to their places of employment.

Financial issues affecting town and city centre aesthetics is not unique to Nottingham. In July 2024 the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce said that the city centre was in need of ‘fresh life’, whilst Birmingham City Council’s bankruptcy has resulted in dirtier streets and threats to cultural heritage in England’s second city. In straightened financial times it is easy to understand why local authorities choose to cut seemingly frivolous spending first; after all, shouldn’t we prioritise services like social care and education over the maintenance of water features or ensuring that the facades of historic buildings are scrubbed clean?

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Excessive Dislike of Extraneous Noise | Article

After a long dalliance with the idea, I recently bought myself an antique typewriter on Ebay – a 1935 Remington Model 1. The purchase was somewhere between a harmless indulgence (my perspective) and a desperate reach for a threadbare writing stereotype (also my perspective). I will admit to daydreams of tinkering with the type mechanism, of slowly bringing the antique machinery to life, of clacking out short stories and articles a la Hemingway, freed from the tyrannical leash of internet-enabled smartphone or laptop.

The Remington duly arrived, all black and silver keys, pockmarked chrome, and decayed rubber – a true relic of pre-war administration. My nascent dreams of amateur tinkering were however soon under threat from a formidable supporting literature discussing carriage returns, ribbon spools, and platen knobs. I began to understand that this was a precision instrument, built in an era where precision, craftsmanship, and longevity mattered; it was not long before I concluded that the Remington Model 1 was far beyond my technical nous.

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The Scramble for Stories | Article

Everyone loves a good mystery. Where we used to gather around campfires, now we cluster around flatscreen televisions or curl up with our Kindles. Stories are how we approach liminal spaces within our psyches, with conjecture, narrative, and counter-narrative serving to titillate and inform.

Society’s appetite for stories is so overwhelming that we forget that their retelling is sometimes invasive. During the disappearance of Nicola Bulley near the River Wyre in January 2023, people flocked to the area to take selfies and to carry out their own investigations. Sky and ITV approached Bulley’s family after a body was found, despite their express wish for privacy[1].

It is tempting to link such exploitative behaviour and the prioritisation of story over protagonist to modern mediums such as TikTok and YouTube. However, long before electronic media made communicating a matter of moving our thumbs across mobile phones, stories were shared via word of mouth, over wirelesses, and in print.

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