<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><!DOCTYPE rss PUBLIC "-//Netscape Communications//DTD RSS 2.0//EN" "http://my.netscape.com/publish/formats/rss-2.0.dtd">
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" 
xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" 
xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/" 
xmlns:admin="http://webns.net/mvcb/" 
xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#" 
xmlns:creativeCommons="http://backend.userland.com/creativeCommonsRssModule" 
xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"
>
<channel>
<atom:link href="http://mikegtn.net/rss.php" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
<title>Lost::MikeGTN</title>
<link>https://www.mikegtn.net</link>
<description>Another largely irrelevant personal blog, mostly featuring trains, music and musings on place...</description>
<image>
<title>Lost::MikeGTN</title>
<url>https://www.mikegtn.net/images/lost.png</url>
<link>https://www.mikegtn.net</link>
</image>
<dc:language>en-gb</dc:language>
<dc:creator/>
<dc:rights>Copyright Mike Newman 1999-2026</dc:rights>
<creativeCommons:license>http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/1.0</creativeCommons:license><dc:date>2026-04-07T11:17:43+00:00</dc:date>
<item>
<title>Fragment 6: Ermine Street</title>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://mikegtn.net/1934</guid>
<link>http://www.mikegtn.net/1934</link>
<description>The Fragments</description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<img src="http://www.mikegtn.net/images/normal_IMG_2927.jpeg" align="right">]]>
<![CDATA[There is far less excuse for this fragment lying incomplete, dating as it does from the tail end of Summer 2019. Looking back, that feels like a strangely gentle time in the world - though it was already a bubbling pot of future horror: looming and contentious US elections, the last desperate flaps of the dead Brexit fish, and interminable local politics. I remember little of the motivation given the time which has elapsed since I struck out from Liverpool Street that morning, but I clearly wanted a walk in the northeastern corner of the city and was looking for...]]></content:encoded>
<dc:date>2022-11-20T13:11:00+00:00</dc:date>
<dc:subject>The Fragments</dc:subject>
</item>
<item>
<title>Fragment 5: The Paddington Arm</title>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://mikegtn.net/1932</guid>
<link>http://www.mikegtn.net/1932</link>
<description>The Fragments</description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<img src="http://www.mikegtn.net/images/under_western_ave_padd_arm_2019.jpeg" align="right">]]>
<![CDATA[It's not clear to me why I didn't finish this fairly advanced piece, which describes a wet but fulfilling walk along the canal from the far western edge of London into the city. Around this time I know I'd sold my laptop, and my opportunities to snatch moments to write in coffee shop corners were limited - but I'd clearly put a good deal of research into this. Perhaps if the urgency of the following month's political exorcism hadn't taken my time, and if the world hadn't descended into chaos just a few months later, I'd have completed the over-detailed...]]></content:encoded>
<dc:date>2022-11-13T12:11:00+00:00</dc:date>
<dc:subject>The Fragments</dc:subject>
</item>
<item>
<title>Fragment 4: London Ordinal - The A5</title>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://mikegtn.net/1907</guid>
<link>http://www.mikegtn.net/1907</link>
<description>The Fragments</description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<img src="http://www.mikegtn.net/images/still_water_sculpture.jpeg" align="right">]]>
<![CDATA[This fragment dates back to the Spring of 2019 - which seems like a lifetime ago. I had completed the London Ordinal walks, heading into the city along each of the ordinal routes, via a walk along the A5. As it was a shorter walk in some respects, I'd started a little further out of London. It was a surprisingly engaging walk considering I'd been concerned about the potential for a dull slog along familiar streets for a good part of the way. On my return though - I struggled to manage the idea that I'd actually completed something. I'd...]]></content:encoded>
<dc:date>2022-11-05T21:11:00+00:00</dc:date>
<dc:subject>The Fragments</dc:subject>
</item>
<item>
<title>Fragment 3: Western Avenue</title>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://mikegtn.net/1941</guid>
<link>http://www.mikegtn.net/1941</link>
<description>The Fragments</description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<img src="http://www.mikegtn.net/images/western_avenue_bw.jpg" align="right">]]>
<![CDATA[This fragment was nothing more than a placeholder and an image gallery. It spoke of intentions, expectations and sadly, presumptions which would be unfulfilled. The memory of it is stronger now, not least because of the intense aerial coverage of the Royal Family on their journeys to and from RAF Northolt, including of course the final journey of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II into London. 20th September 2020 This was a return to the epic walking into London trope which I'd begun five years ago when I was thankful for being able to continue my walks despite challenges at home....]]></content:encoded>
<dc:date>2022-10-23T22:10:00+00:00</dc:date>
<dc:subject>The Fragments</dc:subject>
</item>
<item>
<title>Fragment 2: Isolation Drills - The Forest and the Angel</title>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://mikegtn.net/1940</guid>
<link>http://www.mikegtn.net/1940</link>
<description>The Fragments</description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<img src="http://www.mikegtn.net/images/lords_bushes_aug_2020.jpeg" align="right">]]>
<![CDATA[I ventured out into the wider world in August 2020 for the first time in four months. It felt daring, a little foolish and somewhat risky - but after months of watching the numbers, managing expectations and trying to bolster my flagging mental well-being, the balance felt right. This fragment begins with my surprise at how the world had changed: the hiatus pre-vaccine and before 'the new normal' will be little remembered in future I'm sure, but it had a strange feeling of waking and blinking in the light which perhaps only brave souls and keyworkers every really experienced. My...]]></content:encoded>
<dc:date>2022-10-23T11:48:00+00:00</dc:date>
<dc:subject>The Fragments</dc:subject>
</item>
<item>
<title>Fragment 1: The Chingford Conspiracy Bin</title>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://mikegtn.net/1943</guid>
<link>http://www.mikegtn.net/1943</link>
<description>The Fragments</description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<img src="http://www.mikegtn.net/images/conspiracy_bin.jpeg" align="right">]]>
<![CDATA[By the middle of 2021, life felt like it was returning to normal. At least, a strangely attenuated existence which we were encouraged to regard as the 'new normal'. We took the opportunity to get away to London, to stay in a nice hotel which was heavily discounted, and to indulge our respective passions for fibrecraft and urban tramping. The drive to London was exhilarating, with every service station feeling like a metropolis of masked people waking up, blinking. I had nothing planned for the walk, but something about an early morning start from Liverpool Street has always pulled me...]]></content:encoded>
<dc:date>2022-10-16T16:10:00+00:00</dc:date>
<dc:subject>The Fragments</dc:subject>
</item>
<item>
<title>The Fragments</title>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://mikegtn.net/1945</guid>
<link>http://www.mikegtn.net/1945</link>
<description>The Fragments</description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<img src="http://www.mikegtn.net/images/fragments.png" align="right">]]>
<![CDATA[When I walked dejectedly out of my office on 12th March 2020, I didn't realise that both personal and global change was afoot. We were approaching the end of a two-week-long regulatory inspection which hadn't gone well - there was a sense of growing unease, and leaders who wanted to be anywhere but here right now. And then, on a Thursday lunchtime, as we prepared to hear our final feedback, the Inspectors left. An undisclosed 'incident' had been reported which had compromised their work. We all secretly knew it was a whistleblower - and most of us knew who. We'd...]]></content:encoded>
<dc:date>2022-10-16T09:10:00+00:00</dc:date>
<dc:subject>The Fragments</dc:subject>
</item>
<item>
<title>Back to the Black and Grey</title>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://mikegtn.net/1939</guid>
<link>http://www.mikegtn.net/1939</link>
<description>Updates</description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<img src="http://www.mikegtn.net/images/wsm_pylon_lockdown_walk.jpeg" align="right">]]>
<![CDATA[Today I walked... I've read a lot these past months about the best intentions of others - to use the period of enforced retreat from society to learn a new skill, to change a long-entrenched habit, or to unclutter their life of unwanted people or things. For most of us though, I suspect the reality was very different. Certainly, I didn't experience the much-publicised shame of seeing others managing to skate serenely through the 'lockdown' on social media - because, mostly, I didn't see many people doing much more than coping - and that sometimes only marginally. I took a...]]></content:encoded>
<dc:date>2020-07-24T19:07:00+00:00</dc:date>
<dc:subject>Updates</dc:subject>
</item>
<item>
<title>The Curse of the Curious: A Last Walk before Lockdown</title>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://mikegtn.net/1938</guid>
<link>http://www.mikegtn.net/1938</link>
<description>London</description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<img src="http://www.mikegtn.net/images/overbury_road_graffiti_2020.jpeg" align="right">]]>
<![CDATA[Pre Amble I began writing about this walk during mid-April 2020. The UK is heading into the fourth week of 'lockdown' - a precarious moment when a review of these conditions suggested it wasn't yet time to relax them. The mood hovers between unexpectedly good-natured compliance and the growing sense of a national tantrum about to burst. The economy is stuttering, but those least engaged with it struggle most. For them, the monotony of their normal is only broken by some of the things they've seen stolen by this unseen adversary: a precious moment of peace when everyone leaves the...]]></content:encoded>
<dc:date>2020-03-07T22:03:00+00:00</dc:date>
<dc:subject>London</dc:subject>
</item>
<item>
<title>A Little Bit of Musical History...</title>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://mikegtn.net/1936</guid>
<link>http://www.mikegtn.net/1936</link>
<description>SHOFT</description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<img src="http://www.mikegtn.net/images/TTad.jpg" align="right">]]>
<![CDATA[Now and then, the internet still amazes me. It's easy to sometimes dismiss any remaining capacity for surprise in this cavernous echo chamber which I've been roaming since 1996, but oddly and when least expected it can come up trumps. On Twitter today I was amazed to see someone sharing an interview I did with Daniel Johnson back in 1992. I prepared to cringe at the irritating exuberance of my youth, but it actually remained fairly interesting and aside from a perhaps not-unexpected fascination with Daniel's very personal style of composition, the answers gave a little insight into someone who...]]></content:encoded>
<dc:date>2020-01-11T16:01:00+00:00</dc:date>
<dc:subject>SHOFT</dc:subject>
</item>
</channel>
</rss>
