Episode Five - The Famished Road by Ben Okri by Freya Warsi

We’re now on Episode Four. This week I’ll be reading Wanderlust by Rebecca Solnit. It’s a book about the History of Walking, and in light of the protests that are happening all over the world right now, I’ve chosen to read a part which talks about how you can choose to walk as a revolutionary act. I learnt so much from reading this book, about how walking can be used to help writers frame and understand the pace of their stories, and that the repetitive motion of putting one foot in-front of the other can induce such an uninhibited and inspired state of mind. I’d like to thank Sam Simmons, a poet and writer from Herne Bay, for introducing me to this book.

We’re now on Episode Three, this podcast is still in it’s very early infancy and I’m excited to see where it will go, there are certainly lots more books I want to read aloud to you. I hope those listening have enjoyed the stories so far, this psychogeographical genre seems more apposite than ever, as we still need to stay safe, going to places through your imagination or through audio instead of packing out beaches or parks. The lockdown guidelines have become vague and malleable but the danger still remains the same.

I am going to read you Kew Gardens by Virginia Woolf, not strictly a psychogeographical story, but a good one nonetheless, and one I consider to be relevant.

Virginia Woolf wrote this short story in 1917 during the First World War, in a time that’s not so unlike the times we’re living through right now. I love to hear in detail about how the actions that make up a moment affect so many different creatures, such as the snail mentioned, and the stain of the coloured petals that fall onto it’s shell and onto the brown earth beneath. I got into Virginia Woolf’s books around three years ago, after reading A Room of Ones Own. I enjoyed it so much I read it in one sitting whilst in a bookshop cafe. I’d never read anything so timeless before, and from there I became a huge fan of Woolf’s work. I often think about the gardeners at Kew, about what it must be like to walk around freely during lockdown with nobody else there. You can now watch a virtual tour of an empty Kew Gardens online, which I found to be quite a strange but relaxing experience. We’re now going back to a time when it was filled with life.

Today we’ll be exploring the seedy side of the seaside towns of Kent, in All the Devils are Here by David Seabrook. This is one of the most interesting books I’ve read in a long time. I bought it on a whim with a Christmas book voucher I’d been given as a present. I’d been in the bookstore for hours, carefully thinking about what to spend it on. I recognised the title, I’d seen it on blogs, in The Margate Bookshop, and it had somehow slid its way into my mind through conversations I’d overheard whilst sitting in a coffee shop in Margate.

I’ll admit, before I read the book I looked at the pastel pink and blue cover and the play-doh white font and thought ‘devils’ was meant in a teasing, trivial sense. After a few pages I realised that Seabrook was deadly serious, he was talking about the real thing.

Everyone I have spoken to about this book has marvelled over it. It’s darkness and eerie conjuring of the ghosts that inhabit the string of towns dotted along the coast here make for an intense and sobering read.

I’m going to start by reading the Prelude, and then a chapter called In Town Tonight which zooms in on a small and exclusive residential estate called North Foreland in Broadstairs, and a couple of it’s most famous residents…

After finishing this book, I was left in that place that only a few pieces of writing have had the ability to take me to, a feeling that I’d been changed, for better or worse, I can never tell.…I was interested in finding out more about David Seabrook and his other books. An online search directed me to his skeletal Wikipedia page, near the bottom of the page it says “Until his death he lived alone at Westside Apartments in Canterbury. He was discovered dead in his flat by Kent police.[1] There is unconfirmed speculation that Seabrook was murdered. However, this has never been officially established.[2]". He was 49. The true crime writer, investigator, antagonistic people prodder, lifter of veils, found dead in his flat in Canterbury under suspicious circumstances. Seabrook has transcended, he himself has become one of the ghosts that haunt the spaces between the lines of his writing.

I want to thank Granta publishers for allowing me to read some of this book to you. You can buy a copy direct from Granta, I’ve put the link up on my website www.waterboatwoman.com

Trailer for Episode One of Water Boatwoman.

- the pub at the Plain went back to the name 'The Cape of Good Hope' in 2009, when the first paperback edition of Isolarion came out.

This is a book by James Attlee, called Isolarion. It follows Attlee’s journey down Cowley Road, a street that is well known to its locals, but to the outside is very often overshadowed by the sprawling campus of the university and the other tourist hotspots Oxford has to offer.

James Attlee is a brilliant writer, I first picked up one of his books ‘Nocturne’ during a visit to the Turner Gallery in Margate. The exhibition was called ‘A Place That Only Exists In Moonlight’ by Katie Paterson, and featured work by JMW Turner himself. It was an exploration of space, and the night sky. It was wonderful. One of the installations featured a player piano performing a version of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, only this version was based on a recording that had been beamed up to the moon and back again, complete with radio interference patterns and gaps in the score.

Nocturne was sitting on a shelf amongst other recommendations by Katie Paterson. I really enjoyed the book, and it left me wanting to read more. Enter Isolarion, the pilgrimage starts at the top of Cowley Road, at a place called ‘The Pub, Oxford’ (which was once more imaginatively called ‘The Cape Of Good Hope’) and ending at the MINI Cooper Plant. It’s a fascinating psycho geographical trip that takes the reader down the most culturally vibrant and buzzing street in Oxford.

My family and I moved around the city a lot before we eventually settled in Rose Hill, which is an area just South of Cowley Road. Reading James’s descriptions of my favourite part of Oxford didn’t just transport me back to the place itself, but rekindled embers of distant memories made during my time working behind the bar at The Hi-Lo Jamaican Eating House. Memories at the Bullingdon watching bands with my friends, of buying alcohol at the ‘dodgy’ deli, and getting ingredients for my Dad’s famous Dal from Continental, the Indian supermarket.

Through his writing, James hones in on the minutiae, finding inspiration in the intricate details and unique characters which collide together along Cowley Road and paints a vivid and exciting picture of an atmosphere that to those that know it well, feels like a place unlike anywhere in the world, yet as he states in the book ‘it is both unique and nothing special. It could be any number of streets in your town. For that reason alone, it seems as good a place as any from which to start a journey.’

I want to take a moment to thank James Attlee and his publishers And Other Stories, for giving me permission to share this book with you.