Structo issue 13

Catherine wheel-ing off their tyres as they head toward town. They’re dirty beyond belief, the land laying a second skin over them. I peer down at my boots, already mud-slathered, abstract patterns working their way up my trouser legs.

Pylons march from horizon to horizon. ‘Some people don’t like them but I think they’re just as much a part of the landscape as anything else,’ says Ben. They are, it’s true, strangely evocative, photogenic, completely at home here. In my lifetime they’ve always been present. We pass wire mesh fences, guarding buildings whose purpose I don’t know. I could nd out but the mystery is part of the appeal of being out here. I feel and hear the thrum of energy. The fences are hung with warning signs, a gallery of disincentives, these premises are protected by sight & sound security solutions, thieves beware – Forensic Trap Devices in Use. I ponder why this landscape feels so under-represented in cinema. Too much space for contemplation, too melancholy, too at and unexciting.

Green and white Environment Agency signs present a comprehensive list of danger. Wasp-coloured exclamation marks everywhere.

In the distance I spy a group of mobile homes, trailers in need of a wash, mud-spattered like my jeans. I know Kent used to home many travellers, both traditional gypsies and the New Agers who appeared in the 80s.

Maybe it still does, somewhere. My dad, in his social worker days, had many tales of sixteen-year-olds bare-knuckle boxing on patches of Kentish wasteland. ‘Hard, hard people.’ A mate of my uncle’s, a mechanic, was Romany. My mum has worked in many schools across the county and has taught numerous Irish travellers who would ripple through a school for a few terms before moving on. ‘Lots of fun, to be honest, the gypsy kids.

Caused problems though.’

A few months back at a gig in Tottenham, I spoke to the lead singer of radical folk band Firepit Collective. I was drunk and happy and eager to question him about the origins of the song The Pirate Captain Ward they’d just performed onstage.

The song was an adaptation of a Kentish sea shanty going back ve centuries, based on the life of one John Ward (also known as Jack Ward, Birdy, and Yusuf Reis). His place of birth? According to the scant sources available, Faversham, circa 1553. He could have been there when Elizabeth visited the town two decades later. History tells how he became one of her privateers, hunting down Spanish ships and stealing their gold. The line between privateer and pirate was always blurry and ill-dened.

When James I came to the throne, the war with Spain was over, and 