1: The Interchange – Thin Places in Hard Concrete, story by story

The first story in my new collection, Thin Places in Hard Concrete, is called ‘The Interchange’ and is about a road that should not be there.

This story is already out there in audio form thanks to a collaboration with Giles Booth, creator of the podcast Listen With Other. It’s read by me and Giles has mixed it with my own field recordings and synthesiser drones.

‘The Interchange’ was on my to-write list for years and its origins can be traced back to a single image shared on Twitter (RIP) by the brilliant LCC Municipal account which has since migrated to BlueSky.

Here’s the image which Ian, creator of LCC Municipal, kindly shared with me in a higher resolution scan back in July 2020:

I mean, look at it. Just look at it. It tells a story without me needing to write one, really. The lone vehicle, so small and lost; the confusing geometry of the roads; the uncannily blue sky.

I was so fascinated by it I acquired a set of original architectural plans for the Almdonsbury interchange from eBay, which I incorporated into the poster below. Don’t they look strangely organic to you? Almost Gigeresque.

I’m generally pretty fascinated with motorways, though, and have written about them before, including this piece about the M32 originally published in The Modernist, and a story in my first collection, Municipal Gothic, called ‘Rainbow Pit’.

I blame this obsession on growing up on the Sydenham estate in Bridgwater. It’s a place where, even when it’s completely silent, it isn’t, because you can always hear the white noise of the M5.

My 2019 photo-zine project Bristol Without Cars also ties in, now I think of it. Depending on your point of view that was built around a series of images of empty roads that are either utopian or apocalyptic, depending on your point of view, and which are certainly somewhat eerie either way.

In recent years, I’ve also read quite a bit of J.G. Ballard who wrote in 1971:

If I were asked to condense the whole of the present century into one mental picture I would pick a familiar everyday sight: a man in a motor car, driving along a concrete highway to some unknown destination.

As it happens, that line is referenced by filmmaker and writer Chris Petit in the latest edition of the BFI magazine Sight & Sound which reminds me that I also saw his weird 1979 British road movie Radio On for the first time in 2022.

Radio On is full of images of roads, motorways, roundabouts and off-ramps – including rare footage of the ‘temporary’ flyover at Bristol Temple Meads which was actually in place for 30 years.

I can’t say I exactly enjoyed Crash, from 1973, but it certainly lodged in my brain. Concrete Island from 1974 did rather chime with me, though, feeling closer to weird fiction. It’s about a commuter whose car crashes through a barrier stranding him on a patch of wasteland between flyovers in West London. However he tries, he cannot escape – or is it that he doesn’t really want to? If we’re talking influential images, look at this cover design by Paul Bacon for the US first edition.

I must also mention Broken Veil, a faux-documentary fiction podcast by Joel Morris and Will Maclean that I very much admired. Among its many uncanny ideas there is a “roundabout to nowhere” in the Essex countryside which confuses the protagonist-hosts attempts to find the location where the strange events of the story take place.

Finally, I must mention The Appointment, a 1981/82 film that has slowly emerged from obscurity thanks to a recent BFI Blu-ray release. It opens with a voiceover reading an official report which helps sell the reality of the strange events that follow…

“Extract from police report number 727a, strictly confidential, unpublished and unavailable. Subject: Sandy Freemont. The last positive sighting was on her way home from a school orchestra rehearsal. This was on Tuesday May 14th at approximately 6:30 in the evening. At about this time her friend Janey Carr places her positively as entering the footpath through the area known as Cromley Woods, a then popular shortcut for several of the children living in Millard Heights…”

Hopefully this, and the similar posts to follow for each story in the collection, will answer that recurring question “Where do you get your ideas?” The short answer is: by reading, looking, walking, and by giving my subconscious time (years) to digest the resulting soup.

Thin Places in Hard Concrete is out on 30 April 2026. You can pre-order the eBook now and the paperback will be available to order from 23 April. I’ll also have paperback copies to sell directly – details to follow.