It was never meant to be, this urban reserve tucked between flats and roads and railway arches.  If there hand been no global downturn, no subsequent recession, it would already have been a rash of buildings by now, towering over its neighbours. Offices, shops, bars, more flats - probably elegant squares, raised flower beds, a few graceful, obedient trees. 

Instead, chancer edgeland plants took advantage of every gap and crack in the concrete remains of this patch of land and turned it into their scrappy, verdant, wasteland home.  For ignorant years I paid it no heed - never truly even saw it there.  I'm not sure when my moment of conversion arrived, but one day I wondered, and wandered, and was hooked.

What?  Where?  I'm talking about Middlewood Locks in Salford, at the erstwhile start of the Manchester Bolton Bury canal.  It's across the road from Hot Bed Press, and has been a scrubby stretch of unkempt land ever since I joined the printmaking studio.  Now it's fenced off and full of bulldozers, towering hills of soil, of bricks, and becoming after all what was originally intended.  

But while it lasted it had a fragile beauty on the unbuilt, gentle slope.  During the warmer months, a summer tapestry in old gold, shot through with threads of jade and sunshine, soft ruby and clear skies.  The comfortable hum of bumble bees, the heat-shimmer whirr of grasshoppers; impressionist butterfly wings, jazzy daytime moths.  Above the acid green marbling on the truncated stretches of canal darted electric blue damselflies.  Birds?  I never saw much beyond pigeons and corvids, although I heard there were wheatears in summer.  Mostly I was looking down, like those people in the carpet ads, seeing what was underfoot. 

In winter it shrank back to a world of concrete and tarmac, scattered with tired grass and hinting at nothing.  No whispers of the vast drifts of coltsfoot to come; not a single thing to hint at a later season's bee orchids.  The joy of the place was not so much in the individual plants (although it was that too) as in their joint profusion.  That tapestry again - the differing leaf shapes, shades, textures, the interweaving of colours and heights, the mass of insect life.  Everything belonged.  Ragwort, for instance - it wouldn't be welcome anywhere else, but here it was at home, side by side with red clover and melilot, moon daisies and vetches.  Nothing crowded out anything else, there was room for all.

This was no park.  It was an abandoned site, and while in that state it was doubtless used for all sorts.  Plenty of rubbish was dotted around but it didn't appear to dominate, or perhaps I just took little notice - it wasn't what I was there for.  In truth Middlewood Locks was a confusion of common weeds, large and small, of regular insects, of scummy water and detritus, nothing more, but for me this temporary and shabby oasis was a world of small beauties, slow pleasures.  It yielded up its secret delights when it chose.

It was closer looking that delivered little thrills.  It took me many visits before I noticed, for instance, that at the heart of each hogweed umbrel (well, probably hogweed - I remain wary around a group of superficially similar flowers that encompasses many poisonous ones, including hemlock) there was a single floret coloured anything from blush pink to deep, rich, wine red.  

In the end the site was re-sold, after which transformation was only a matter of time.  A bank and ditch system was flung up around its border - a hint of hill fort - and now it has become a fortress, barred and locked and guarded.  Who knows, perhaps its ephemeral state was a part of the attraction?  Certainly, that a rich and varied garden could grow on such unpromising ground was heartening, and it consoles me to know that the natural world has the ability to take advantage of the slightest window.  In the end, wherever, it tends to win out.  I find that hopeful.    

I mentioned that Earthlines magazine had very generously shown an interest in some of my work being in their magazine?  Well it's happened, and I'm delighted.  I don't quite believe in it - seeing it printed there on the page creates an odd sort of distance.  It's still mine, but...  Anyway, it arrived on that friday (you know the one) and gave me something to smile about. 

I've spent a scant few hours at Fringe Arts Bath (FaB) this week, and even that amount has left me brimming with enthusiasm and excitement.  Not exactly filled with ideas, because they're a lot too undeveloped for that, but something like, something that might turn into ideas and then into work. 

The festival lasts for two weeks, bookended with weekends, and on the evidence of my two short stints I'm pretty sure I could turn up for most of every day and always see something new, engaging and quite likely challenging in one way or another.  There's just so much on.  Take the Time Machine, downstairs in the 44AD gallery.  I turned up when Pat Jamieson and Carol Laidler's Ten Thousand Years of Rain was on, but it was only there for that day!  A new event/exhibition/etc will be set up every single day, which I find mind boggling enough.  Ten Thousand Years of Rain was a beautiful set, all light and bright and greens, with the sound of dropping water and a film of ripples and watery movement - it felt vibrantly alive, cool, fresh, and to think that in less than a mayfly span it would be stripped out ready for the next thing was difficult to accept.  I might have missed it.  As it is, I'll miss all the other shows in that space.    

It was a green day, that first day.  I've never considered that the weather might influence what I choose to like on any given occasion, but I think it did.  It was humid (as Bath so often is in the warmer months) and I'm convinced that green works told me they were refreshing.  A theory to test, maybe?  Do I like warming shades on cold days?  Cheerful shades to combat the grey and dreary days?    Whatever, upstairs from the Time Machine was the Bath Open Art Prize, where nearly all my favourite pieces were variations on green (one of which was a giclee reproduction, which I struggled with, but I liked the image enough to stamp down on my natural disapproval).  Apologies for not noting down the fourth artist while I was there - hopefully people will go see the show for themselves.

The following day's session started on Walcot Street, which has a number of FaB venues. On the ground floor of FaB2 was Photomarathon's walls of photos.  At the time I never quite got to grips with it, but I've read about it since (see link just back there) and now it makes more sense.  In a room beyond that was Shadowlands, a wall-to-ceiling cut paper scene which, I gathered from the person who had put it together, was a total nightmare to hang (I spent time looking at the ceiling to see how he'd done it, and I believe him), and in the room next door a rather neat little idea - an exhibition of Hanging Instructions.  There were more ground floor exhibitions here too - FaB2 is positively stuffed with shows.

Downstairs and upstairs was Utopia:Dystopia.  The basement was dim and grimy, filled with items definitely at the dystopia end of the spectrum.  I suppose I engaged with the theme on a pretty shallow level, sort of getting the idea while not always going to the trouble of thinking any further, but as a rule I'm quite happy just to interact with a piece on the basis of whether it does something for me or not, and even at that sort of standard I was overwhelmed.  I might have been distracted by things that were (probably) not part of the show, like the tattered walls and a grimy power point, but in both those cases I decided they fitted well with the theme.  Which (a slight tangent here) is another thing that I have found with FaB, this year and two years ago - the themed exhibitions have expanded beyond their boundaries, sharpened or altered my observation, changed the world around me.  It could be a 'well duh' point to most people, but for me it's something of a revelation.  Not unprecedented in other patches of my life, but wild all the same.

Among other things I liked the yellow wallpaper prints (which I've definitely seen before somewhere), the heads, and particularly Ruaraidh Monies' Invisible People - not an original idea, I know, but I loved his book of photos and a particularly scrappy frame.  After the basement I went up to the first floor and took a nice deep breath of light.  The contrast in atmosphere was quite something, but although there was plenty to like on this floor, I wasn't quite convinced that the theme shone through.  Click for larger images, and hover for more artists and/or info.  Where lacking, more apologies to the artists, and to anyone else, go see the real thing.   

It turned out that there was more Utopia:Dystopia at Walcot Chapel, a venue I love for its setting in an oasis of graveyard tranquility.  Again, plenty to capture the attention and encourage the mind to work, sometimes fitting into the theme quite easily, sometimes being enjoyable for itself.  I was particularly taken by the layers of imagery on Emma Finch's ceramics, as well as Rebecca Bradley's views from train windows, April Virgoe's smoky constructions, and now I think about it lots of the other works too - really, the only way to appreciate these shows to the full is to go visit them.

It was around this point that time began to be an issue, so my trip to FaB1's Cartesian Cut? was taken at a brisker pace.  Broadly, it dealt in a variety of ways with the body.  Full of fascinating and often disturbing pieces, here are three views of Red Pools (Absence/Presence) by Nikki Allford, a work that's uneasy and beautiful in equal measure, and Cartesian Cut? by curator Eloise Govier, a frozen piece that (to my eyes) creates ghost fossils as it melts. 

A final dash to see Pattern: Found, Exchanged, Unravelled in Milsom Place, but I really didn't have the time left to do it any kind of justice - it looked good and (I realise this isn't what it's all about) I did like the shop front/window, but no time, no time. 

And that was it for this year; when I get back it'll all be over except (fortuitously) the exhibition The Man who Bought Stonehenge and Other Stories with my artist book Guilty in.  That's on for an extra fortnight.  But really, I'd recommend anyone to dip into the enormous spread of exhibitions, performances, events that go to form FaB - I've barely scratched the surface even of the exhibitions I did see.  One week left, and far too long till the next one.  Don't miss it.