My Twenty-Five

I turned twenty-five the other day and to commemorate it I decided to do a walk.

Ten years ago, Mike Pearson did when back to the landscape of his childhood to do a performance walk. Within his ‘square mile’ he took a group of people, comprising of locals, family and friends on a guided tour to various sites of personal significance. This piece became Bubbling Tom that for me has become a landmark in itself for walking as performance.

Therefore as Pearson’s piece also commemorated his fiftieth birthday, I thought I would do something in a similar vein. If Pearson did his square mile when he was fifty, I would do a half square mile at twenty-five. However there would be other significant differences. Firstly, having lived in different places throughout my life, my square mile is scattered across varying geographies. My major challenge therefore would be to compress these geographies into moments, a long a tightly bound route. I would decide the sights in advance, but I would not learn a large script, but instead remember on-the-spot, using the current geography to create a past one: A site for every year since my birth. In the planning stages, I wrote hundreds of words for each year, trying desperately to fit my life into my walk. However, it soon became apparent that twenty-five years of life cannot be so easily squashed into two hours, and not all the geographies would be mentioned. I decided therefore to not present a history, but a series of moments triggered by the geographies they were situated in: to fold in city streets, welsh mountains and school classrooms into a collage of tectonic movement in which Oldbury, Abersywtyth, Worcester and Exeter were temporarily brought side by side and layered with time.

So on Monday 22^nd November 2010 I waited outside my house for my guests to arrive. There were five of us in total on that cold and slightly overcast day. The postman arrives with a package for me, it is a birthday present. I open it in front of the group. It’s a ‘Gromit’s Smashing Pizza Kit’ and it’s from my nextdoor neighbour Mrs S. (she knows that I liked them as a child).

‘Baby Darby’

In which, I am brought to my first house a newborn baby. I’m a month premature and very tiny.

I show the birthday card I received this morning from my parents. I leave this photo on the wall. A small child toddles past with her mother.

Forest

I unlock the door and show the group my first house. I take them to the kitchen and make them tea and we eat a packet of Party Rings, the biscuits I had at birthdays when I was a child.

I couldn’t walk yet and sat surrounded by toys, a big television, some horrible brown sofas and some tall house plants.

I leave this photo on the television.

5G

We go out the backdoor into the garden.

I can walk, my first shoes are size 5G. The garden is long and green, with a grape vine in the corner and a christmas tree that has grown up with me.

I peg this photo to the clothesline.

Holly

We go out the back gate and walk behind the houses.

In Savacentre with Daddy choosing a toy for my new baby sister. I choose a pink dog.

I phone Holly and put her on loud speaker. She remembers the big garden, running in the living room and her bright bedroom. I show the group the card I received from Holly that morning.

Train

Still behind the houses, walking downhill, leaves and concrete.

On Aberdyfi Beach watching a red steam engine coming towards me. I love trains.

Laurence

Alongside the train track now.

I’m in Sorento Materniry ward. I have a new brother, but I’m playing with the new toy I’ve got, a Ghostbuster trap.

Walking for Money

The other side of the road, moving into the suburbs.

I’m in the Beavers, doing a sponsored walk: 4 laps of the same beat of my neighbourhood. I enjoy looking for the same landmarks again and again.

Fields of Maize

Quiet suburban road.

A gite in Questembert with a field of maize as far as the eye can see. My first trip abroad.

The Narrator

Walking atop a wall, above the group.

On stage at Primary School Narrating a dramatisation of Beowulf.

Cardboard City

Outside the graveyard.

Moving into our second house, with boxes in the living room piled from floor to ceiling. A cardboard cityscape in our living room.

Leaving Oldbury and crossing the border into Worcester.

Swinging Rocks

Between two electrical boxes.

I’m in Geneva swinging on some branches between rocks outside the apartment block my auntie Nettie lives in.

Being Sociable

Entrance to the park.

In Scotland. My brother, sister and I are unusually being sociable with other children.

The Watkin Path

The park.

Climbing up Mount Snowdon as a family. The first of many walks.

Naveta de Tudon

A small painted roundabout.

The temple of Naveta de Tudon, built by two brothers who became enemies.

11 minutes

Outside a Scout Hut.

Brixham cliffs, watching the sun disappear for 11 minutes in an eclipse.

Framed

Outside a Primary School.

On stage at school in a production of Tom Sawyer. I’m Muff Potter and I’m being arrested for a crime I didn’t commit. Grandad Plester shouts for them to get their hands off his grandson.

Giant Steps

Wall next to the primary school. I feel the textures of the new bricks that have just been delivered.

A vast cliff of Basalt columnar jointing, akin to that of Giant’s Causeway. I thought they were linked under the sea. I’ve always been interested in Geology.

The Bravest Thing

Outside a corner shop.

In Graphics, and ask the prettiest girl in school to go with me to the End of Year Ball. She says yes.

Lines?

A dead end.

On stage in a college production entitled S.W.A.L.K. I forget all my lines.

Seeing in the Dark

A small park.

Still at College. Playing Dysart in Equus. I decide I want to stick with Drama.

Leaving Worcester and crossing the border into Aberystwyth.

My Heart

A shortcut through the backstreets.

Walking to my first drama meeting at Aberystwyth University. Its raining. I fall in love with this place. I found love here and lost someone very dear to me.

The Composer

Opposite another school.

I am Amadeus, telling the members of the royal court in Salzburg about the importance of opera. My girlfriend is in the audience. I can see the light reflecting off her glasses.

Castell-Y-Bere

Outside a factory.

Castell-Y-Bere a castle in Wales. We’re here to soak up some atmosphere for our production of Macbeth.

Leaving Abersytwyth, stopping briefly in Worcester before crossing over the border into Exeter.

Somewhere I Want to Live

Outside a graveyard.

Hiking in Tongariro National Park on the North Island of New Zealand. In the distance is Mount Ngauruhoe.

Shortcut

The side of a busy road.

Shortcut to the Drama Department of Exeter. A cycle path that is beautifully lit at night.

Now

My Exeter home. An empty picture frame that is held up in front of me.

I don’t know how I feel yet about this one. I felt quite distanced. Ironically I think half a square mile was too big for this. I kept trying to fill the gaps between sites. The notion of ‘gaps’ has cropped up a lot in my research with regards to site-based work, particularly through the writings of Fiona Wilkie, Cathy Turner and James Meyer. Particularly with the guided tour physical gaps between sites are often interpreted by audience members as intervals or indeed gaps between performances. Stopping indicates a performance will begin and walking signals that it is over. To counter this I would often talk while walking, however my audience of walkers were well-behaved anyway.

At times, I was worried that a particular site wouldn’t be interesting, and I felt tempted to over dramatise, to embellish and to fabricate my stories. However, memory I feel has an ability to do this anyway and for this particular walk, it wasn’t about making the story interesting but indeed the juxtaposition of a remembered landscape with the present one. To find similarities, tensions and contradictions. To create a hand-in-glove relationship in which gloves of different sizes and types are tried on by the same hand. But also to embrace coincidence and use the performativity of everyday.

I spoke to the people who walked with me, and they said that they found the experience effective, mapping their own route in parralell to mine.

Personally though, I like the leaving behind of photos. I like the feeling that even just for today, my twenty-five years of existence are out there held together by a walk.

To see a photo from each year of your life next to each other is an interesting experience, and transferring that life journey to an actual one is an interesting experience. I urge you to do it, to map your twenty-five.