The constant dreams have now stopped, but I'm missing Millennium Mills an enormous amount. It's not just the adrenaline, I loved being in there. A very private world.

Here's the first of the Legacy background films.  I am constructing a solar powered toy rowing boat during a firework display.  Enjoy.

3.30am - all alone in a strange place, just the way I like it.

I had just carried another four bags in to join the previous three.  Everything had changed for the worse, so it took me 8 hours to get to this point.  It should be getting easier each time but it's really really not.

Large deserted buildings make a surprising amount of noise and I knew no one else was in the place.  The ticking sound is water dripping through the ceiling.  Getting there.

So the wonderful Mark Fry and Friends show has been and gone, and what a resounding success it was.  We'd all like to do more shows together, and judging from the reaction of the audience at Village Underground they'd like us to as well.  Watch this space.

From the heady heights of Thursday night it's back to the previous, slightly grubby matter in hand - nice grubby, rather than grubby grubby that is - Legacy preparation continues.  I'm glad it's been raining recently, fills the reservoirs.  Not enough for the farmers, but enough for me.  (See footnote below.)

Film below:  I guess you could call this Pre-Legacy prep.  I don't know the programme, just caught it on late night TV.  A lot of these old buildings are used as charismatic backdrops for TV programmes, which can be quite useful for planning, and it's always a buzz to see 'your' gaff on the telly.  The only reason I can think of recommending the appalling film Sahara is to catch its Pyestock moments - Cell 3 and Cell 4 both dolled up for Matthew McConaughey and Penelope Cruz... I must say I pity the poor bastard assigned the job of getting the pigeon shit off everything before filming started.  

Why at least some of these remarkable places can't be preserved in some historically relevant way, rather than just knocking them down for lorry distribution centres or turning them into inappropriate flats is beyond me.  Go around the Ruhr valley and you'll see disused industrial works turned into art and public spaces that respect the history of the place.  A couple of years ago I live mixed John Cale's Dark Days installation in the old coal works in Essen, now partially art spaces and a kind of a park.  Families walking around, cafeterias, good buzz, while all the time the original coal machinery looms over you, reminds you how the place once was.  I might be being a bit naive - when I naughtily popped over a locked gate to see the coal works close up I wound up in the junkie's den, not quite the family atmosphere I'm describing - but at least they're trying something, respecting where it all came from, appreciating how it defines the area and the people in it.

Not so here in the UK.  Flatten it, move on.  I would say Rant Over but I haven't even started yet.

Footnote:  Someone told me recently I was being a right tease with the obtuse way I'm presenting what I'm doing at the moment, and to a certain extent I am, but there is a proper reason for that too:  I'm not even half way through setting up this installation - by far the most complicated thing I've taken on -  and if I made too much of a song and dance of it I'd probably have to abandon the whole thing.  I've been planning this for months, with tricky-to-research purchases from China, Athens and Argos, so abandoning it is not an option, especially as I'm way beyond the 14 day return period for Argos.

Preparation for my next project.

Carrying a 70 litre bag of J Arthur Bower's Multipurpose Compost up to a high floor of an abandoned building. This is the final stage of a complicated 3 hour journey carrying 3 bags.

I originally included this Cell 4 photo with my latest Pyestock set below but I prefer it on its own.  Très noir.  Did you know Nosferatu is public domain, a free download? Excellent music, not sure who by. 

Inside Cell 4 - from the Plenum Chamber along the pipes to the Exhaust Heat Diffuser.

It's a very well known shot of Pyestock this one, but we didn't stumble across the area it's in until the third visit - we'd always gone round the other way.  All the thrill seeing one of those world famous icons in the flesh for the first time, but unlike most of them, which grow large in the mind's eye and then turn out to be just tiny in real life - the Mona Lisa, the Laughing Cavalier, the White House, Mick Jagger - it was much bigger than I'd expected.  Huge, it is - that's me on the right.  Not the world's crispest photo, but it was taken before dawn so long exposure, post processing galore yadda yadda.

I've been to Pyestock many times, always with a camera.  I thought I'd start an occasional series of photos of this remarkable place.

Here's Cell 4, looking down on the enormous turbine test equipment and pipes, used famously to test Concorde's engines in the 60's.  This was the first visit, and we really didn't know how to get into the buildings - we had to climb up high and found a door that had been removed.  This photo means a lot to me - what a beautiful, astonishing sight to greet your first entrance.  We were so excited.  The atmosphere inside was magical - there was a blackbird singing on its own just before first light (heard on the audio player above the pic) and occasional clattering from the structure of the building itself.  It was very dark - this photo is a 30 second exposure.  We stayed up here for a whispered 10 minutes, wondering if we were alone, before working our way down and through.


Isn't it remarkable how quickly even a small degree of familiarity changes your perspective.  Nowadays I'd be quite happy to go into Pyestock in a hi-vis jacket playing a pair of marching cymbals, but there's nothing like the first time.  When this picture was taken it was so new and breath-takingly exciting - crouched on a high gantry, wondering what was below, with the metallic echos of the first bird of the dawn chorus ringing around this sleeping giant.

First, the American way of getting over a barbed wire fence.  I love this video - Hard Men You Wouldn't Want To Mess With, Carrying Guns.  With a Soundtrack that Delivers, hell yeah.  With what is, let's face it, a really crap solution to getting over a fence.  Especially it you've got wire cutters and you're going to use them.

Now the English way.  Let's say you've got a barbed wire overhang, and you're not Special Forces with boltcutters and submachine guns.  Here we go.

If you wanted to try this for yourself, and let's face it who wouldn't:  Make a 12ft rope ladder by cutting up 1ft sections of broom handle tied together as rungs, attached to a 20ft long rope extension with a weight on it.  Throw rubber sheeting over the barbed wire immediately to the side of the fence posts - the wire will bow less there.  Throw the weight attached to the extension rope right over the fence and the rubber sheeting so it'll slide, and here's the clever bit - once the weight has landed pull back on the rope so that the weight lifts off the ground, and swings back to the touch the other side of the fence.  You can then ease the extension rope back through to your side at the bottom, and then by pulling on the extension rope (now poking through to your side) you can pull the rope ladder up to and a bit over the rubber matting.  When it's the right height, clip off the extension rope to one of the links at the bottom to keep it all firm, and you're up and over.  Piece of cake.  It's quicker to do than it is to read.  Now where's my Blue Peter badge?

This is a staged shot, using actors.  The opinions above are not in any way designed to help people break the law.  Mea Non Culpa. See The Pirate Bay, Limewire et al.