Worthington

Several more locations visited earlier this week in the brief interlude between thick grey cloud blanket. Although there is yet time some twenty plus locations have yet to be photographed and given that the loose deadline I set myself for this part of the project is fast approaching (I intended to have all my source images completed by end of February) it was important to get some completed this week. I have commented before that it is perhaps surprising how ignorant one can be of places maybe only a few miles and minutes from one's home. On this occasion I found myself wandering through parts of villages I didn't even know existed.

As a topographical exercise I have been recording each of the places of worship and each pub I have come across. A rather sad aspect of this has been the number of pubs that are boarded up...usually within the last few years, months or even weeks. Given that quite a few of the smaller villages have no retail facilities (or post office etc.) pubs might be the one and only sign of life in a tiny hamlet. Certainly all three villages on this trip were utterly silent during the period from 11 in the morning till three thirty in the afternoon. This lends an eerie and elegiac feel to one's meanderings...and especially to the sounds around. In such rural locations sound takes on new significance - from at least a mile away I heard approaching horses and riders - who took twelve or fifteen minutes to pass me. How one can encompass such aural experience in what is essentially a visual project needs much thought.