Nottingham Mental Mapping Workshop
Pre Dawn Drift
Saturday, 26 October 1997, 5 to 6 AM
GMT
message on web page:
I will be drifting
through Nottingham for an hour just before dawn breaks,
aiming for the high points of the city.
Guide me, tell me where to go, ask me what I see,
send your comments and requests live to this page. Just
type it in the box below and I'll read it from my mobile
phone.
I will constantly be in contact with the site and I'll
send instant replies.
Photos of the derive will be on-line after 6 o'clock.
rapport of the derive:
5 o'clock
feels like time has stopped. It must be a few years since
I last saw this time of the day from the beginning and
not from the end while stumbling back from a party or
something. So I feel dizzy and strange to wake up at
three in the morning to wander around the town, but the
time is set and I'm ready to go.
Go.
I meet up at the site base at Intermedia and everybody
looks more dead than me, they've been up and working for
about 16 hours now. No wonder.
I leave Intermedia and I think that from this place
William Booth had his vision from God telling him to set
up the Salvation Army. Now it's an edit suite but the
Army still comes in with their tambourines every so often
and pray. So William had this vision and set the all
thing up from here.
The Salvation Army. How did I ended up doing some work
with them? I always despised them on principle, a
Christian Army, the two very things that I left behind
me, one I got tired of, the other I deserted.
Margaret, that's how. She runs the S.A. Charity Shop in
Sneinton and she's just brilliant. And so are the people
who hang about the shop. So, slowly S.A. has ceased to
mean The Organisation to me and started to mean The
People. Pretty amazed of myself.
Lace Market hilltop. I just came straight here, it's one
of the few nice parts of Nottingham left and I think that
somebody once told me this was the site of the first
settlement, the first hill north of the river Trent,
together with the Castle. Yeah, the Castle hill is just
on my left. On my right I see the Windmill, on top of
another hill. Sneinton Windmill, appearing on many mental
maps drawn by the people in the shop. I'm going to go
there. I head down, in the slump between the two hills.
Marshy Black Death mass graves for centuries, Ice Stadium
and Market nowadays. Sneinton market, slowly melting into
yuppie land "they're never gonna change this
place, there's a shelter down there, a soup kitchen up
there and us down here, they'll never get rid of all the
dossers around here, ha ha ha". Love you
Margaret. I take for an uphill road and reach the S.A.
complex, which happens to just lay at the bottom of the
Windmill. I know is there but I can't see it. Walk round,
it seems further away, but the view is good. Police car,
slows down, goes off, two faces staring at me.
Mobile goes off. It's a message from Bertrand: 'Turn left
now'. He's in California, the only one who's up to call
me. One more than I did expect. Turn left, I do, it's
some stairs and I'm at the bottom of the hill again.
Cheers Bertrand.
I make my way up again and this time I see him getting
nearer and nearer until there's only a field between me
and him. Big Windmill on a hill. I'm there. I lay down,
exhausted. I look at the town under us waking up. I look
at my watch: it's 6 o'clock. I look at the sky and see a
shooting star. I swear I saw it.
Today's going to be a good day. If I wake up.
Thanks to Dario who followed me and took some
pictures. They'll be up here when we'll develop them.
Dade Fasic for the Nottingham Psychogeographical Unit
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