Archives: Episode

#10: What About Work?

In this episode we talk about what it’s like to be in work, to be out of work, and what it’s like looking for work in a pandemic.

Bonus Episode: Canberra By Covid

What’s it like to be twelve and in lockdown
In this short bonus episode our niece Kayla has recorded her reflections on the ways Covid-19 has impacted on her and her friends.
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We love everything about our nieces and nephew: their creativity, their questions, the songs they sing, the art they make… Every time we video call Tom and Sadie, Tom needs proof that if it’s day there, then it’s night here, and visa versa. Sadie has impeccable comedic timing for someone so young (she really does). And Kayla, who’s almost a teenager, loves, among other things, reading, writing and drawing. The artwork for this episode is hers. She’s a winter baby, and I met her a few hours after she was born — wrapped in a blanket and beanie. It’s hard to reconcile today’s independent 12-year-old with the tiny human who could hardly open her eyes back in 2008. I was on my way to live in Timor-Leste with Shona (she’d already left Australia to take up her new job) and didn’t know when I’d be back, so it was important to be there for those first hours, days and weeks of Kayla’s life. I’m not sure if humans do the same thing as some birds, but there’s an imprinting thing that happens where the babies imprint on a ‘suitable moving stimulus’ (ideally a parent bird). On the off chance humans do that as well, I wanted to be there. So, whether she likes it or not, Kayla’s stuck with me. Tom’s a runner and a climber, and Sadie’s into anything and everything her older brother is — she does not like to be left out, and fair call, too. The youngest is always pushing to be included. In saying that, they look after each other. We miss them all. Even in Australia, where we lived, Meanjin (Brisbane), is a long way from Tom and Sadie in Naarm (Melbourne), and from Kayla in Canberra, so we don’t always see them as much as we’d like. Being so far from home at the moment with so few options to return in the near future, it’s the video calls and photos bringing us regular updates on loose teeth, artworks, science experiments, cricket, ‘Bluey’, skiing, books, cubby houses, backgammon, trampoline-ing, lego, grazed knees, star wars, afl, and butterfly wings that keeps us going.
ThanksOpening & Closing Credits by Unregistered Master Builder Background music, ‘Touching Moments’ by Ketsa (Free Music Archive) Background music, Markus J Buehler Viral Counterpoint of the Coronavirus Spike Protein (2019-nCoV)
If Lockdown’s Getting You DownHow to Access Mental Health Services (NHS site)Mental Health AustraliaOnly Human Radio ShowPink Therapy
ContactFacebook: @CraigsAudioWorks  Twitter & Instagram: @LDNbylockdown Available linktr.ee/LondonbyLockdown

#5: Covid Dreams

In this episode we turn our attention to those everyday sounds we often overlook: the creaks, the squeaks, the buzzes and the pops that we build our daily soundtracks around without necessarily noticing.
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Whenever travelling in a new place it’s easy for our attention to be hijacked by the grandiose: the British Museum, Tower of London, Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, Tower Bridge. End to end, our flat is a modest 32 footsteps. At first, when we paused to listen closer, all we heard were random, almost opaque, individual noises, but as we refocussed our attention — maybe as we plodded into lockdown, maybe as we fell into restlessness and insomnia, maybe as the world we knew ground to a stop — patterns of composition, harmony and story took shape. And it was the familiarity of these stories that comforted me, despite having never listened to them before. I found a grounded counterpoint in an emerging world that isn’t mine (or yours, for that matter — it is too much to say here it’s now the virus’s). For me, lockdown is like sleepwalking though a restless Dream-Wake hybrid world punctuated by fatigue, insomnia and curious dreams that, dull at their edges and obtuse and fractured, create No Time. And I’m not alone, lockdown has spawned a world-wide epidemic of weird, mysterious and self-contradictory dreams.
In this soundscape, we explore, and in part decipher, the mental and physical landscapes of London during lockdown. Through the intricacies and half-spaces of a recurring dream about leaving a house — any house, my house, your house — we attempt to uncover the overlooked stories of our homes.
Thanks Opening & Closing Credits by Unregistered Master Builder Background music, Markus J Buehler Viral Counterpoint of the Coronavirus Spike Protein (2019-nCoV)Justin Mullins for SFXBBC SFX ArchivesLondon Improvisers Orchestra (LIO Bandcamp page) Facebook:@londonimprovisersorchestraSound Design at Greenwich blog Facebook:@SoundGreenwich
ArticlesCoronavirus has created an epidemic of weird dreamsWhy is Ryanair taking to the skies when there’s nowhere to fly?Transition Events (excerpt from my novel set in a hybrid Sleep­–Wake world where nothing is as it seems)
Contact Facebook: @CraigsAudioWorks  Twitter & Instagram: @LDNbylockdownAvailable linktr.ee/LondonbyLockdown

#4: Exploring New Cross (+ bonus song)

In this episode we learn about the place we now call home.
“In the beginning there was a river. The river became a road and the road branched out to the whole world. And because the road was once a river it was always hungry.”
So eloquent is the opening to Ben Okri’s The Famished Road (one of my all-time favourite novels), that those three sentences, drifting as they do between histories and worlds, truths and fictions, contain all the confusion, lyricism and complexity of a full-blown biblia sacra. The simple enormity of it: how one thing is in fact many. My sister gave me a copy for my 21st and it’s travelled with me across the globe, a beautiful old dog-eared and fox-blotched thing. In it Okri asks whose stories should we believe: those told by people with self-proclaimed authority, or those we tell each other? Our local histories birth and sustain our homes, the places we live: material, self evident and layered; our daily battles prove we’re not as fragile as maybe we imagine — despite logical misgivings and insecurities about the world outside; and our shared stories branch out to the whole world, continuing further than one individual, beyond each of us, not limited to one time or place.
Join us as we walk the streets of our Borough, learning about its fearless history (the ‘Battle of Lewisham’, the tragic New Cross Road Fire and how the New Cross Library was saved) and discover the day-to-day actions of the people keeping us safe, connected and sane during lockdown (mutual aid groups, Telegraph Hill Radio, the Doorstep Disco). We acknowledge everyone who keeps the stories of SE14 alive.
Thanks to Jay, Vedina & Unregistered Master Builder for letting us use their audio Jay Bernard: www.jaybernard.co.uk Jay’s work can also be found at Speaking Volumes. Vedina Rose: www.vedinarosemusic.com Opening & Closing Credits by Unregistered Master Builder Background music, ‘Touching Moments’ by Ketsa (Free Music Archive) Background music, Markus J Buehler Viral Counterpoint of the Coronavirus Spike Protein (2019-nCoV)
Not in the mood for anything too heavy? Here are some cool London links we’ve come across Bookcase Credibility: Twitter @BCredibility and Instagram #bookcaseTelegraph Hill Radio (enjoy the ‘doorstep disco’)Waltham Stories PodcastBlack History MonthLondon Community Video ArchiveGreat women you should know about 
Contact Facebook: @CraigsAudioWorks  Twitter & Instagram: @LDNbylockdownAvailable linktr.ee/LondonbyLockdown

#2: House Hunting in a Pandemic

In this episode we reflect on a confusing couple of weeks and try to make sense of events that almost don’t make any sense at all.
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During February and March we were house hunting. My memories of those confused weeks are thin — I’d just arrived from the other side of the world, and as much as I search for a linear and coherent story, none exists. I remember having to shake off claustrophobic thoughts before going into potential homes for house interviews; the intricate combinations of smell and light and sound; and the time before physical distancing. Our precautions came with caveats and weight: we didn’t shake hands, we used hand sanitiser, we Zoomed if we could. I flinched at every cough. As potential housemates, we discussed move-in dates, rent and bills, all without hashing out what ‘our house’ might look like if we, strangers, were plunged into indefinite 24/7 lockdown, except that’s one thing we needed to discuss. We all spoke as if coronavirus was happening to characters in other people’s dreams. But Shona and I had a hard move-out date, the lockdown’s bottlenecks had created myriad uncertainties, and the weeks were slipping away, so we increased our budget; began looking further afield, despite loving Leytonstone; and, somewhat reluctantly, decided no housemates. We also sent a ‘hail Mary’ email to Shona’s colleagues (when all bets are off …). A friend of a friend had a flat in south London. Four days later, moving day, March 24, Day 1 of lockdown: the removalists arrived three hours late, then we took an uneasy Tube trip across town to a part of London we’d never visited, holding an unsigned contract with landlords we’d never met, to move into a flat we’d never seen.
Thanks Opening & Closing Credits by Unregistered Master Builder Touching Moments by Ketsa (Free Music Archive) Markus J Buehler Viral Counterpoint of the Coronavirus Spike Protein (2019-nCoV)
If Lockdown is Getting You Down How to Access Mental Health Services (NHS site) Mental Health AustraliaOnly Human Radio ShowPink Therapy
ContactFacebook: @CraigsAudioWorks  Twitter & Instagram: @LDNbylockdown Available linktr.ee/LondonbyLockdown