This sub-suburban savant has plenty of devoted followers. Russell Brand, Will Self and Iain Sinclair queued up to sing his praises on recent documentary The London Perambulator. Now he has his own book, and what a strage and wonderful work it is. Scarp is a doubly compelling book: both as an exploration of lands you probably never considered, and as an insight into the workings of their eccentric biographer. What’s going on here. Not only are most of my historical comments on this blog inauthentic but somebody else is now writing the blogs themselves. Home use the word ‘horrid’ ? I should coco! Comment by mistertrippy on 2009-04-30 17:45:03 +0000 Rogers is an excellent storyteller surrounded by excellent stories” Los Angeles Review of Books on This Other London

It's not always a comfortable read. One section weaves a number of unconnected real-life murders into a supernatural storyline. Elsewhere, a confused squirrel is graphically eviscerated by oncoming traffic. But even these vignettes are done with a brutal beauty.St Chad’s well is (i believe) somewhere in that area between the eastern avenue and billet road near the road that leads to fairlop waters. You can see some little streams in that area if you look on a map. Papadimitriou describes his work as deep topography and sets himself a little apart from the Psychogeographer. I was sceptical about the need to do so at first, but now I think I accept it a little more. He takes a sort of amalgam of old Ordnance Survey atlas, decommissioned guide book prose and personal recollection, and rewalks the landscape with no preconception. He accepts its stories, often it's casualties without judgement and most importantly without recourse to human sciences or politics to justify the links he makes. The prose is sometimes edgy, fast-paced and visceral - but is equally prone to longer passages of lush descriptive work - not least when Papadimitriou strays from a well-worn personal path and finds a new vista just feet from his more routine walks. The thrill of this is palpable in his writing, and having felt this same heart-leap at a sudden turn of a corner and never quite expressed it, it gave me huge pleasure to see it described in print. It’s been a strangely comforting and therapeutic experience. It could be the memories of a simpler time, before ‘ the virus’. Also a period when I was very much learning how to make a documentary (a process that never ends). There’s the nostalgic aesthetic of Standard Definition video tape as opposed to Ultra High Definition (4K) video clips recorded on a SD card, the camera running as it roves across the landscape looking for a subject to settle on. There’s some good stuff in those out-takes that didn’t make the final cut that premiered in the East End Film Festival at The Whitechapel Gallery in April 2009. Mr K decides that from now on he will act as if he were dead, to see how the world gets along without him. For some while he has realised that things between him and the world are no longer proceeding as they did before; before they seemed to expect something, one of the other, he and the world, now he no longer recalls what there was too expect, good or bad, or why this expectation kept him in a perpetually agitated, anxious state.

I really hope you don’t mind this suggestion – and sorry again if you’ve already covered it and I haven’t found it yet! I passed beneath the mighty Mill Hill Viaduct in time to see the sun aligned with the apex of its giant arches and approached Totteridge and Whetstone just after sunset. It reminded me that a visit to this area in 2015 to film the situation on the Sweets Way Estate first alerted me to the existence of the Dollis Valley Greenwalk and I vowed to return to do the walk. And over six years later here I was.Philips appeared shaken by Self’s odd reply to her question, which might explain why having opened the session by talking up her own academic expertise in the areas of psychogeography and urban walking, she closed by asking why these activities appealed only to men. Sinclair soon put her straight by explaining that most of those wanting to do walks with him were women, and of course Philips’ own academic research also served to disprove her final assertion. Afterwards a good number of those present headed up to the Whitechapel bar, where Self’s claim that Papadimitriou was a contemporary Rimbaud came in for some heavy criticism. On the basis of the Rogers’ film, it would appear that Papadimitriou is principally concerned with observation, whereas Rimbaud’s focus was transformation; such differences clearly render Self’s claim untenable. I’m enjoying your series on London churches and the rest but have a minor beef re: your references – in the Church films and elsewhere – to the role of the ‘great and the good’ in building many of these epic buildings. My point, such as it is, was made far more eloquently by Bertolt Brecht in 1935: The London Perambulator was screened as a part of the East London Film Festival (23-30 April 2009, various locations)._

Scarp utilizes a decidedly unusual thematic throughout, and it's a mixture of memoir, travelogue, fantasy and psychogeography, all taking place within the 17-mile north Middlesex/south Hertfordshire escarpment . It seems from a cursory scan to be a haphazard patchwork of styles, but it is held together by some extraordinarily beautiful prose. The fragments of his personal history shed much needed light on the author’s current psychogeographic monomania.It’s no good. Several words in recent blogs disagree with our mediation. ‘Horrid’ in the last blog was bad enough but words like ‘dialectic’, ‘Goldsmiths’, ‘liminal’ and ‘Chris Petit’ are counter-revelationary. Comment by mistertrippy on 2009-04-30 17:02:45 +0000 After the screening there was a panel talk featuring Rogers, Sinclair and Self, with Goldsmiths College academic Andrea Philips as chair. Rogers and Sinclair acquitted themselves well. Unfortunately, the discussion became somewhat strained when Andrea Philips asked Self whether there was a master/slave relationship between him and Papadimitriou. Self jumped down her throat by denouncing this as a detour into the bondage parlour, whereas it seemed to me that Philips was invoking Hegel’s famous and much discussed master/slave dialectic as a reference point. Likewise, my impression was that Philips was putting Papadimitriou forward as the more senior partner in his obviously close and collaborative relationship with Self, but the media personality angrily responded that Papadimitriou was in no way beholden to him. It is difficult to imagine anyone who had just seen Rogers’ film coming away with that impression, since after viewing it only a reversal of Self’s perspective would seem in the least bit feasible. He’s the everyman’s psychogeographer, hobbling across the hilltops with only a can of Stella and a dodgy knee for company…. Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths in Barnet, Finchley and Hendon, Wharncliffe Books, 19 Feb 2009 ( ISBN 978-1845630645) You have a great affinity with the natural world, from the mating cycles of urban foxes to the ‘lunch meat’ of adders. Have you found yourself in any tight spots when encountering the wildlife around London?

Explore second hand bookshops. Buy books on topography – on areas, regions, counties. Study them. Then walk around and see whether you can make sense of the present landscape in relation to the past. This way you’ll get more tension and depth in your engagement with the landscape. In the New Voices extract you describe a cluster of violent road accidents on ‘Suicide Corner’. As a nation do you think we’re adept at blotting out these kinds stories from the fringes of society and our history? Dear Mr Home, did you remind Mr Self that he had once, in a fit of camp pique, labelled you as “that nasty Situationist skinhead.” Comment by Howling Wizard, Shrieking Toad on 2009-04-30 13:33:32 +0000 Sounds like an interesting event. I’d love to know more of what Sinclair had to say, especially in the context of his literary output over the last several years. Did you get a chance to ask any questions of the panel? Comment by mistertrippy on 2009-04-30 15:47:50 +0000 John Rogers has been one of the most prominent psychogeographical writers and filmmakers of the last decade. Fiercely independent and with a strong DIY sensibility towards his creative responses to London, his work is a vital component and documentation of a city still in a phase of hyper-development and gentrification.”Clitterhouse Farm means ‘clay house’ farm. Earliest known origin of this farm dates from c.1321 when it was owned by John de Langton. Up until around the 1770s it was a manor and was owned by St Bartholomew’s Hospital from the 15 th to 20th centuries. ” The survey by Cranfield University mentions that some of the farm buildings still exist in one corner of the playing field.