—
For Geographical

Imagination fired by a picture of his father outside an Arctic shed, artist and writer Dan Richards sets off in search of places that ‘allow mankind a foothold in otherwise inhospitable terrain’.

Icelandic ‘houses of joy’ (not what they sound like), fire-watching belvederes, a Mars-research training facility, an offshore lighthouse: Richards hankers after the ‘astringent’ and ‘spartan’ architectures of these fixtures built ‘where nature takes over’. And though he’s not the type to wrestle overmuch with definitions, the bothies of the Highlands perhaps come closest to his ideal of ‘small emergency refuge shelter only.’

Ranulph Fiennes he is not, however. Slightly harried, somewhat clumsy (he smashes his phone before he even gets to Iceland), terribly enthusiastic, the tone of Outpost is part adventure/travelogue, part live-in art project. He has a tendency to the poetic phrase, and is extremely generous towards artistic sensibilities (not all readers will be convinced by the Turner Prize-winning shed-made-into-a-boat-then-into-a-shed-again chapter), but he avoids the pitfalls of a lot of earnest and/or politically-motivated nature writing. And while he dutifully name-checks the usual suspects like Robert Macfarlane, Roger Deakin and Wendell Berry, he is by inclination, one feels, more likely to refer to Werner Herzog movies, or Björk.

The end result is like a more-upbeat Geoff Dyer, written in engaging and thoughtful prose – literally: he narrates his thoughts sometimes – with occasional mock-ingenuousness, and cheerful punning. He has a nicely self-deflating sense of humour (the Arctic shed, he notes, is just that: a common-or-garden shed, noteworthy only for the fact that it’s in Svalbard). I chuckled frequently. He’s also not afraid of detours or of anticlimaxes, and is creditably shy of being seen to ‘retrofit significance’.

It would be wrong to suggest Outpost is more about the journeys than the destinations – but Richards’ real talent is in people-watching. One of his outposts is in fact a writers’ retreat in Switzerland (complete with heated floors), in which he concludes that few of us, honestly, do our best work in isolation. And just how viable is that sort of lonely travel, these days? ‘How far was far enough to truly be remote’? (One wonders, frankly, if more folk mightn’t travel further/harder if ‘not dying’ was more or less their sole objective).

Quite fittingly, he never makes it to Ny-Ålesund, whither his father went: it is protected now. Jack Kerouac wrote that ‘no man should go through life without once experiencing healthy, even bored solitude in the wilderness’. To this Dan Richards adds the imperative of ‘making guardians of consumers’ in our besieged environment.

—
For Geographical

— The Nelson Evening Mail, June 22 1909
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A six-year-old has become a multimillionaire, reviewing toys on YouTube.

The US has the world’s 2^nd highest prison population, with 693 prisoners per 100,000.

Icelandic sea cucumbers fetch £438 per kilogram.

‘Word up’ means ‘I comprehend what you are saying and verify that your statement is true, my good brother.’

Jerusalem is not the capital of Israel.

Ms Reeva Steenkamp has never been a stripper or a ho.

The hearsomeness of the burger felicitates the whole of the polis.

Gary Ross Dahl invented the pet rock in 1975.

Necrophilia is legal if you don’t know it’s a corpse.

The Worshipful Company of Poulters host an annual inter-livery pancake race.

Matt ‘Toast’ Berry really does do voiceover work, for Absolute Radio.

Everyone is going to paint a portrait of Peter Hitchens, until he likes one.

We need to talk about the real problem with ‘unlikeable’ women.
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— The Nelson Evening Mail, January 6 1909
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In LA there is a chess set designed for the East India Company, featuring Sikh soldiers vs Afghans.

Among a certain kind of people, being ‘passionate about Israel/Palestine’ is usually a substitute for having any actual political thought.

During WWII, in Germany, a Django Reinhardt record was worth 2kgs of butter on the black market.

A sailor has a tattoo of a swallow for every 5,000 nautical miles he has travelled.

Sam Lewis Craft has been named the Rain Men Player of the Year.

Alfred the Great of England believed that a thorough grounding in the liberal arts was essential for those called to exercise judgement and authority.

A South Benfleet millionaire has revealed how she earns £1,472/hr.

A town in Iceland has painted 3D zebra crossings in an attempt to slow down speeding cars.

Bobby Kennedy had an affair with Marilyn Monroe, then had her killed by Communists.

Truth is harder to bear than ignorance, and so ignorance is valued more.

Brett Dean’s new opera, Hamlet, contains precisely zero tunes.

The Fuegian word ‘mamihlapintafoi’ means ‘(two people) looking at each other, hoping that either will offer to do something which both parties desire but are unwilling to do’.

In 2017 over half the people living in absolute poverty work for a living.
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— The Nelson Evening Mail, September 8 1908

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Ben Stokes is the sixth Englishman to have his name on the honours boards at Lord’s for both batting and bowling.

The smell of hot food is not very common on building sites.

Annalise was stunning in Neighbours. But what she looks like now is insane.

Irish people ended up in Kilburn because the Holyhead train came into Euston and the Fishguard train came into Paddington.

The bite of a tarantula can be cured by musick.

The National Health Service will be £350m better off per week after Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union.

In South Africa there is a town called Nilstrom, because the Afrikans voortrekkers thought that they had found the Nile.

Sebastian Faulks takes his own alcohol to Iceland.

The first American performance of Peter Grimes was conducted by Leonard Bernstein.

A man in Reading is celebrating after his penis is confirmed as being the longest in the world.

The Chinese invented gunpowder while searching for the elixir of life.

Big hair don’t care.

The paraphrast draws only from the Book of Daniel.

— The Nelson Evening Mail, January 22 1907

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It is a German conceit, that the vertebrae are absolutely undeveloped skulls.

Vladivostock is 1000km east of Beijing.

The Publications Manual of the American Psychological Association allows for two spaces after a full stop in draft manuscripts, but recommends one space in published work.

Journalists are suicide merchants.

A dachshund has never won Crufts.

A lawyer representing an alleged arsonist has set his trousers on fire.

Iceland has an official Naming Committee which rules on the validity of children’s names.

The piccolo is known as ‘Satan’s instrument’.

Sri Lanka has 94 members of parliament without any O Levels.

The official Nudie Jeans Online Shop has the best selection of Nudie Jeans denim.

Sick Boy’s real name in Trainspotting was Simon Williamson.

Kurt Franz, final commandant of the Treblinka death camp, kept an album of his time there titled ‘Beautiful Years’.

It is never worth pointing out the irony. In life. To anyone. Ever.