There are two provisional atmospheric hubs – places where meetings of ambiguity and difference cluster – in the mythogeography of Devon. The first in the cellar of the Well House Tavern in Cathedral Square in Exeter.
The second is the complex of buildings around the Devonport Guildhall.
Of course, this is all very foolish, sentimental and subjective. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of such hubs. Attempting to map them all, while satisfyingly completionist in theory, is, fortunately, impractical – any individual or organisation capable of doing such a thing would, by definition of the task, be unsuitable for it.
Far more admirable and re-usable (yet partial) are these ‘grabs’: the skeleton in the glass case in the wall of the Well House cellar (inscription, SO crucially: “birth is the first step unto death”) is actually two persons, one young and male, the other older and female, an alchemical and chemical marriage, forced by the pressure of 100,000 burials from the burial ground into the cellar – now office workers and tourists picnic on the smooth green grass above the bones.
At the top of Ker Street, Plymouth, is a collection of buildings and spectres that if they were sited in an Italian city would bring a coach every 15 minutes: an Egyptian House every bit as exquisite as that at Penzance, but this one fused with the disco and bar accoutrements of a working class social club, a Hindu Temple that is gone, a school – bombed, a pillar that can be seen from the centre of Plymouth (uncapped by any statue due to lack of funds), and a pub that once served as hostel for the masons that created the military-industrial complex here.The scene, then, is set. What follows here is a set of monologues delivered as part of a performance by musicians The Children of the Drone at the Exeter tEXt Festival 2006 at the Phoenix, Exeter.
