Inside A Mountain: walking real and imaginary landscape with Charlie Lee-Potter Charlie Lee-Potter

Artist Jake Tilson doesn't care if his projects take decades to complete - in fact, he likes it when they do. He's just finished recreating his vision of Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo, an art project which took him years and involved walking around the market for thousands of miles. His recent solo show, which included miniature recreations of some of Tsukiji's 1,700 fish stalls, was a triumph of imagination, technical skill and eccentricity. The work is also a ghostly tribute to a market which no longer exists. In this episode Jake explains why walking and typography are so crucial to his work - and how to make a typeface out of eels. 
 

Jake's miniature fish stalls on show at White Conduit Projects
Photo credit: Jake Tilson

Jake's vast walking map of Tsukiji
Photo credit: Jake Tilson
 

The legendary pink pay 'phone 
Photo credit: Agnese Sanvito

Jade Angeles Fitton had been living a frenetic, toxic life in London, trapped in an abusive relationship and seemingly willingly to continue living that way. But, having been abandoned in a remote Devon barn when the relationship finally collapsed for good, she discovers the powerful consolation that silence can bring. Living as a hermit, she relishes the soothing solace of living alone and speaking to no-one. Her memoir, Hermit: A memoir of finding freedom in a wild place, celebrates isolation - a way of life that's so often misunderstood. Charlie and Jade take a walk from the Devon beach of Croyde to Baggy Point on the cliffs above - the path that Jade used to tread every day alone.... 

Jade Angeles Fitton at Baggy Point and, below, the calming presence of Lundy on the horizon. 

This episode takes a walk, but a very short one. That's because my companion is Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, professor of English at Magdalen College, Oxford, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2017. The disease has wrecked his capacity to walk more than a few hundred metres - and wonky, clumsy metres at that. But Robert has substituted physical walks with imaginative ones, scanning his mind for ways of reading himself through literature. His powerful, funny and frank memoir Metamorphosis: A Life in Pieces is a sparkling demonstration of the places our minds can take us when our feet can't. 


 

SERIES 2
Episode 2: Night Walking with Anthologist Duncan Minshull
The writer Duncan Minshull has compiled five anthologies about walking, the latest being Where My Feet Fall. In this episode, Duncan and Charlie explore the streets of London at night to see what effect the darkness has on the way they think. There's a long tradition of writers and artists walking at night: Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, Thomas de Quincey. What was it about the gloom they craved? 

Duncan Minshull on Hamilton Terrace
 

The canal in Little Venice where Duncan and Charlie start their night walk

SERIES 2
Episode 1: Dodging Falling Trees with Ian McMillan 
The poet Ian McMillan, presenter of The Verb on BBC Radio 3 and poet-in-residence at Barnsley Football Club, tells stories by the yard - eccentric, ridiculous, compassionate and wise. Ian has lived in the same South Yorkshire village of Darfield his entire life and writes about it with a unique mix of pride and hilarity. He's a performance poet and author of biographical stories such as My Sand Life, My Pebble Life: a Memoir of Childhood and the Sea, and Neither Nowt Nor Summat, a perplexed rummage in the mystery of what it means to be 'Yorkshire enough'. His writing has readers weeping with laughter, but there's deep human kindness in there too.  Ian and Charlie start their walk in the graveyard of Darfield Church, but they don't get very far before trees intervene...

 

 

EPISODE 6
Tom Chivers' book London Clay: Journeys in the Deep City is erudite and meticulously researched, but it's also funny, poetic and at times very moving. Tom digs down below the surface of the city to find its ancient, lost rivers, whilst also examining his own past. The book is part geological, part historical, and part reflective. 
In this episode, Tom and Charlie explore an ancient, subterranean Roman temple, go mudlarking, and find treasure. 
 

The Temple of Mithras (3 AD) 7 metres below ground level

Mudlarking with Tom Chivers on the foreshore of the River Thames
 
Tom Chivers, London Clay: Journeys in the Deep City (Doubleday, 2021)
 
Produced, edited, written and presented by Charlie Lee-Potter