July was a month bookended by very special archaeological discoveries. Filled with comics and screen-related creativity, and mythology both the Homeric and Hameric.

Things I did

As alluded to last month, I spent a fantastic five days (taking me into July) volunteering with the Culver Archaeological Project (CAP) at Bridge Farm, the site of a fascinating Roman industrial complex at a crossroads. I learnt so much about archaeology, the practical techniques and the wonderful mystery of this site, so picturesquely placed by the Ouse with South Downs views.

Standing atop the spoil heap, and looking from down in the trench to silhouetted figures and their wheelbarrows atop it, were equally as awe-inspiring. My first day and a half was down trying to find the shape of the defensive ditch.

Trowelling back the surface, level with the top of that ditch trench, revealed all the finds below. I'll never forget uncovering that pottery sherd rim, or some of the sparkly slag to come. The highlight though was revealing a section of the road down to Pevensey.

Every new flint that I scraped the trowel against then brushed back to reveal was magical. Even more so when I could stand back at the end of the day and see a whole section, a surface not trod upon for 1600 years.

At the end of my time there I received a full tour, to see the amazing foundations of kilns, a potential line of postholes for some sort of structure where the roads meet, very deep pits and the ditches the other side of the road. I also had a brief go at flotation!

The day after we finished, it was up to the Midlands to see family. I also saw a mini comics display in Cannock Library, featuring work from Kieron Gillen.

CAP had its open day and so we returend to Bridge Farm to see what they’d made of this year’s work and have a longer look at all the finds from the twenty years of digging around Barcombe, including some we saw unearthed.

Kane Wilson very kindly sent me the link for We Dream In Colour, which I spent a day on as an extra last November. Such a stunningly beautiful, thought-provoking short. A fresh, prescient take on concepts of our future, whilst very intimate. Every department delivered. The script, acting, costumes, HMU to the camera work and lighting, sound, editing and VFX. Truly a dream in colour, with an incredible soundtrack too.

My third time attending one of Sarah Nocquet’s filmmakers meetup at Blighty Cafe was equally as inspiring and uplifting, catching up with familiar faces and always making new connections. Which leads nicely onto my next London event…

The South London Comics and Zine Fair did not disappoint. I arrived in time for the talk on comics collectives, run by Joe Stone of WIP Comics and featuring creatives new to me. It was great seeing some more WIP faces as I explored the two halls, and finally meeting the co-runners and another contrubtor to GLUE the zine in person! I spent the rest of the day with them, admiring their other works and being overjoyed with each copy of the zine sold. My short story, comic and poems were going out into the world! I’ve heard that issue #3 is also brewing…

I saw The Odyssey and was initially underwhelmed by the actual journey aspects of the film, though beautiful. The message hammered home with the homecoming and Troy flashbacks made it an excellent film, though. The first play I was in, I had bit parts of parts of Odysseus’s crew. I was eaten by Polyphemus (becoming the voice of the other cyclopes asking about nobody) and then seen with the dead with one cast, and then with the other survived, became a pig and braved the sirens and our shadow-puppet scylla. So, in a way, my twelve year journey between those retellings came to a circular close, like Nolan’s storytelling.

But as a mentioned in the intro, from the Homeric to the Hameric, I’ve been on a Odyssey of my own this year (and really, the last five years). My voyage wasn’t to home, but to a cave I visited as a child, one of those spacial memories that seems embellished, and yet…

You may remember Children of Shadows, the story I first began at age ten and have returned to over the years. When I started writing the novel version of that story, I realised how rooted it was in the village where I went to primary school. This was in 2021-22, and I must’ve searched online and in person for the real cave on the North Downs… but obviously not hard enough.

This January, I managed to find a thread on the Megalithic Portal that seemed to describe the site, from 2012 (probably the summer when my childhood friend and I ventured in). It gave me just enough information to visit earlier this year. However, the grid reference and cave name produced by somebody else’s research were for a different nearby hole. So, that visit yielded no results.

But on that visit, I did a better google search for the name of the other cave, and discovered an old PDF, with a 1973 survey of that Flittermouse Hole… and a plan of the one unnamed that matched my memory. Through contacting various societies, I managed to obtain the number of that certain spelunker. And he very, very kindly not only gave me instructions, but actually met me nearby to show me. And it wasn’t like entering Polyphemus’s cave, it was like stringing that bow.

It was actually larger than I remember, a cavity with a root-balustrade down, beneath the caring hand-roots of a half-felled beech, an oak and a yew. Guided by little me and the characters of my story, I entered the near-darkness of the chamber to the right, and gazed upon the wall where I’d always envisaged the prophecy I’d imagined as a boy. There was a perfect flat canvas.

Entering deeper still, I started to notice the cave spiders, the black flints sticking out from the chalk like the faces of curious mice, and some graffiti. I think the oldest dated I found (through the crawl-necessitating entrance to the left chamber) was 1920. Someone was there a hundred years ago, in that same cramped, wondrous space, where people much more ancient may have lay if indeed it is natural.

There was evidence of burning, and then suddenly, I realised I’d gone past cave art!!! I noticed at the time the difference between the older black-outlined orange and the newer paint that was already flaking off. But with re-reading that old thread mentioning a horned figure as I write this, I can see it!

Reminding me of a Celtic deity or the ‘Sea God’ mosiac at St Albans… another section I thought was a leg is definitely their’s. The posts from the 2010s mentioned it was mostly destroyed. I’m wondering now if the newer paint wasn’t there then, because there’s a lot more of it to the left of this figure that they don’t mention… but those are the horns in the newer paint. So perhaps added to a less horny figure?

I’ve also noticed the scratched chalk surface is over where the figure’s face was. They reminded me of course of bear marks in French caves… but on the North Downs the only creature could’ve been a fox! So it looks like someone intentionally repeatedly scratched away the face. There’s a story there. Intriguing to say the least…

I did contact my friend George Nash and he warned me I was becoming an archaeologist…

Flittermouse Hole was so much larger than I thought - just off the path on the Downs I thought I knew so well. It turns out there was this whole other aspect to the landscape, with red flashes of tiger moths (Jersey?), towering buddlea, a scared-frozen shrew, and peacock butterflies resting in the tapering end of the cave. So bright. And so tall. The mouth of this hole was cyclops sized for sure, with perfect lines of black flint, just like those I saw last July at Grime’s Graves.

Also larger than I imagined was the road-bissected remains of a ‘long barrow’ (probably a monument more similar to fellow Medway Megalith Coldrum) at Addington. Suddenly noticing, or more like feeling, the rise and fall shape of the mound with its few scattered sarsens (and couple standing ones where the portal was), was just as magical as each scrape of flint adding to the road surface I uncovered.

Things I wrote

This newsletter…

The kickstarter page for this year’s WIP Comics anthology is up! Please go and have a little look and sign up to be notified on launch to really help us out! I have already seen so many brilliant submissions from fellow WIP members, and it has been such a joy and a privilege to see my collaborator, artist Asia Kazub, develop our idea.

From my initial spark after hearing this anthology’s twist, we came to an outline through bouncing ideas back and forth. Then successive plans, sketches and inked and coloured work were realised from my script. So detailed, something to make ancient mosaicists proud. I may be biased, but this will really be special (Orphic, one could say) and I’d love if you supported us by pledging.

I wrote a 7,000-word short story for a very exciting opportunity. They had plenty of prompt ideas for stories, and me being me decided to use all the prompts! Even doing that, I found it hard to reach the 7,000 mark for the story I’d envisaged. But I poured extra heart and soul and dismay at the state of the world and AI and the constant tide of heatwaves into the 30 pages! Cathartic.

I’ve also outlined another short story which I may reveal more about next month, or in September’s roundup.

For the CBA Festival of Archaeology Haiku competition, I wrote an ode to Bridge Farm:

Post holes in a line

Fired clay marks ancient kilns

Flint-sharp Roman road

Here’s a link to the instagram post with the haiku and twenty photos of the site!

Two more short films were also penned for… something. And the last few days of this month, before writing this newsletter, were spent working on another project, something rewarding to see and something I’ve been lacking, which a friend is currenty working on…

2026 Projects Written

Comic: 1

Comic Outline: 1

Pitch decks: 3

Poems: 7

Rewrites: 8

Short Films: 4

Short Stories: 7

Steam Page: 1

Things I gained

This month’s Star Wars comics continued two great series, and provided another fantastic entry into the anthology celebrating ten years of Rogue One. Also pictured above are some of my goodies from SLCZF. I couldn’t resist a sci-fi anthology based around a Star Trek dog pun, nor could I resist the fantastic art of Emily Read or Laura Estiveira-Bishop’s two little zines, one whimsical, one horrifying.

Potentially the most eclectic mix of books you’ve ever seen from me. Top-down, driving past the site of the Staffordshire Hoard every time we’re up there, I needed a book with a deep-dive on the staggering Anglo-Saxon craftwork. Then we get philosophocal. Thought I’d see what Aristotle was on about, and the same for Steiner considering I went to a Waldorf-Steiner school…

And now I have a copy of Da Vinci’s drawings to flick through after visiting his house last month. Some folk tales and Jane Goodall seemed good sources of inspiration too, whenever I find the time to attack my Monte Tesaccio-level tbr pile.

As a backer of the book, I was chuffed with the wonderful swag that arrived: the three art cards, sticker, bookplate and handmade bookmark.

And I was very grateful to then receive a review copy of this book from the publisher, Stars and Sabers. Thanks to Editor-in-Chief Jendia Gammon!

Of Dread, Decay, and Doom is a perfect collection for fans of the horror genre, or those wishing to peek through their fingers and dip their toes in, filled with standout stories equally as inspiring and terrifying! As the editors envisioned, the anthology speaks to both the universality and diversity of horror, with so many unique voices and concepts that stayed with me when the reading light went off.

Thank you so much for your continued support. And if you’re a new reader, I hope you’ll consider subscribing to hear about everything I’m doing, writing and gaining. I’m suddenly realising this newsletter is reaching its three year anniversary…