# data[].attributes.body
How do you express that feeling of floating in time, floating in a pocket a hundred metres squared in which everything and everyone who has ever stepped into this same pocket is also floating next to you/you next to them at the exact same time?

# data[].attributes.body
above ground - the stone is warm with the sun, dry and abrasive to the touch, easy to graze your ankle.
below ground - i feel enveloped in. my skin is damp. my hair frizzes with the moisture. I smell the cold. the temperature shifts with each step through a tunnel, with each new cave space, drying my lips.

# data[].attributes.body
An urge not to turn around. all the paths look the same. A moment of safety, bursting out of the trees only to look out upon an unfamiliar corner of the Cheshire Plain. It must be the Cheshire Plain, right? the back to the path down amongst the high walls and the unending trees.

# data[].attributes.body
I smell the sweet damp of spring, the earth exhaling. I exhale too. Is this relief mine or theirs?

# data[].attributes.body
... the drip of water from the rock onto the floor. My breath, heavy, after climbing through the mines

# data[].attributes.body
My own footsteps, making no mark.

# data[].attributes.body
There's a bird, somewhere, I can't see it, above my head. I don't recognise its call. It sounds like a creature crying.

# data[].attributes.body
pfffft... plep... plep... drip... drip... plft... bloop... bloop... bloop....

# data[].attributes.body
At Stormy Point, looking down at the ground, at the smooth white quartz eroding up. Didn't people use to throw white stones in one of the wells to get wishes?

# data[].attributes.body
I'm up on Stormy Point. It's pre-dawn, that time of day when all the colour has been leached out of the landscape. I can only see in 2D - I see layers of black ink brushed across the horizon.

# data[].attributes.headline
Looking at the earth feels like looking at the sky

# data[].attributes.subject
Looking at the earth feels like looking at the sky

# data[].attributes.body
Under the ground, mineral deposits bloom on the rockface like a starscape.

# data[].attributes.headline
Why did they put the grate there (Field Notes)?

# data[].attributes.subject
Why did they put the grate there (Field Notes)?

# data[].attributes.body
Standing at the edge of the rock on Stormy Point, looking down into the fissure. Why did they put the grate there? To stop people falling in? So why not the fissure too?
To stop things from coming... out? Ha! Right.

Two days later I stood right on top of that point to watch the sunset. About 10 minutes after it set I wasn't quite as cynical as I had been in daylight.

# data[].attributes.body
Twisting, turning, terrible, darkness. I am grateful for the way the blue rock shines.

# data[].attributes.body
It's daytime, and I'm walking back through the woods from the Beacon. I get lost - how is that possible in such a small, well-trodden, practically suburban place, full of dog-walkers? I feel embarrassed, but also unnerved - a strangely rapid onset of panic.
It's night time, and I'm on the Edge in near darkness, with one companion. I hear the sound of wheels rattling over the ground, and a shape emerges out of the gloom. It's a horse and cart, travelling directly towards us. For an instant, I'm terrified. I think I swear. Then the picture sharpens into focus. A family returning from a late evening picnic, pulling a wagon along behind them. I'm so embarrassed. How could my imagination make that slip?

# data[].attributes.headline
What can you hear? Night time near Stormy Point

# data[].attributes.subject
What can you hear? Night time near Stormy Point

# data[].attributes.body
Wind rustling in the trees, louder than you'd expect.

# data[].attributes.body
From Castle Rock I can see the tops of trees, flat green fields and the towers of Manchester in the hazy distance, planes sliding in to the airport along the horizon.

# data[].attributes.headline
Under the Edge (Creative Workshop participant, April 2021)

# data[].attributes.subject
Under the Edge (Creative Workshop participant, April 2021)

# data[].attributes.body
My sisters and I were born of Alderley Edge. Our lives went by as we dared ourselves to enter Devil’s Grave; as we collected magic green stone at Giant’s Mouth, as we knew, knew, that the knights slept beneath us. We were never lost because they would never be lost. They would never let us be lost. Each man and horse dreamt of us as we bounded through our endless knowing lives. I have no doubts that they awoke to stand guard by my sisters, as each drifted into long time sleep: the first as a child, confident of the knights’ protection; the second as an adult, herself armoured for arrows of hurt. Then, later my dad, who drifted away with his own short myth of a loving God in heaven. I hope so much he isn't disappointed to now be sleeping beneath us, his head against a strong white horse. My dad, the legend of Alderley Edge.

# data[].attributes.headline
Changing Light (Perceptions of the Edge Workshop, July 2021)

# data[].attributes.subject
Changing Light (Perceptions of the Edge Workshop, July 2021)

# data[].attributes.body
I have been there, say, as a young person, as a teenager, at dusk, and then suddenly thought - the atmosphere can change. Nothing has physically changed but something has altered. And suddenly, and it may be a trick of the light as it gets dark, but suddenly the trees marching away into the dusk seem to take on a much more sinister quality than they did before and I can remember almost running down the side of Saddlebole just to get out of the trees and into the light again.

I felt that closing in. That being squeezed by something, and then I had to get out of there. I didn’t feel directly under threat by another human being, which actually probably would have been slightly less uneasy because that would have been more palpable, but this was something quite different, this was a need not to be there any more and just to get out into the light and get away from under the tree canopy.

# data[].attributes.headline
Virtual Field Notes: Senses and feelings

# data[].attributes.subject
Virtual Field Notes: Senses and feelings

# data[].attributes.body
•What can you feel, touch, smell, taste?

•How do you feel? (emotional response)

•Are you alone or with others?

•Is it day or night?

# data[].attributes.headline
Bird Song (Perceptions of the Edge Workshop, July 2021)

# data[].attributes.subject
Bird Song (Perceptions of the Edge Workshop, July 2021)

# data[].attributes.body
You may or may not remember this from the Weirdstone of Brisingamen, but Alan Garner puts a line in that one of the many strange things about the Edge is that you never hear birds singing or if you do, you only hear very few in proportion to the amount of woodland that there is. I took some friends up to the Edge on Saturday and they’d never visited the area before - they’re from the countryside in Montgomery – and the first thing they all said is, ‘Where are all the birds?’ There was virtually no birdsong and very few birds to see. I don’t know if that is a nature thing or a natural thing, but it has always struck me as being very odd. The woods should be full of birdsong but they never are.

Comment: Today it isn't odd. Many woods have very little birdsong. Sorry if this runs counter to the creative response imagined, but it's connected with the degradation of the natural world, not weirdness. Birds like nightingales and turtle doves -- so familiar from literature -- are only heard in very limited sites today.

# data[].attributes.body
•Day or night?

•What location on the Edge?

•Close by or in the distance?

•Soundsheds

•Nature, archaeology, people...

# data[].attributes.headline
Now and Then (Invisible Worlds Website Response October 2021)

# data[].attributes.subject
Now and Then (Invisible Worlds Website Response October 2021)

# data[].attributes.body
Not far from us the great dish of Jodrell Bank is gathering radiowaves from receding stars and distant galaxies. Dad had once told me this. Ancient data from light-years away from before the earth was made. Before stardust formed us. And in the rocks up high on the Edge are shells from an ancient seabed lifted above by tectonic shifts. Unfathomable.

And below the Edge the Wizard’s Well and the legend of the farmer and his horse and the sleeping knights, waiting. A different layer. Ancient memories embedded in local tales and stone.

This warp and weft of cosmic science and ancient folklore...

And inside the Edge we’re eating jam sandwiches

# data[].attributes.body
•Day or night?

•What location on the Edge?

•Above or below ground?

•Looking up or down?

•What's near to you, what's in the distance?

•Sightline

•Nature, archaeology, people...