If you enjoyed ‘Seasons of Change’ then you might like to know I’m now Kickstarting to raise funds to self-publish another book, ‘B-Sides, EPs, and Rarities’, documenting some 18 years of travel. Writing this has been my lockdown project, working through a cupboard full of old notebooks and files of photographs. It’s been a joy.
You can pre-order copies here;
The centrepiece is an account of my five journeys to China in the 2000s, ostensibly to see the last working steam railways in the world, but really to see a nation of well over a billion people undergoing a colossal industrial revolution at breakneck speed, with all the societal and environmental pressures that entails.
It’s only really by going back through the notes and photographs of these journeys that I’ve realised what a singular moment in time I was lucky enough to capture.
Some of the anecdotes have become well worn through the telling, others I’d forgotten until I went back through my archive. All told, they were some of the best and most meaningful moments of my life, and re-living them was hugely emotional and exciting.
From attending a battle of the bands in a scungy rock club in Beijing, to exploding birthday cakes in Uighur Xinjiang, via steelworks that employed over 100,000 people, and inadvertently introducing Inner Mongolia to Magical Trevor, I doubt I’ll see times like it again.
There are also lengthy sections set in South and Central America, trips to Eritrea, Romania, Cyprus, as well as chapters much closer to home, such as Knoydart, the Welsh valleys, and the Bridgewater canal.
It would be wonderful to get this made, and this Kickstarter is to raise the funds to pay it to be printed. I hope you enjoy it.
Tom
