Wherein we keep you apprised of making our way down the dark roads and dark, dark woods on our saunter around the continent on these Nights of Grief & Mystery.
You’ve heard the expression: Life on the road.
That’s the fabrication of someone who wasn’t there, or someone who is trying to fool their family or friends. The road is no kind of life, not really. It’s what you’re doing instead of your life, something you hope your normal life tolerates on a good day, survives on the rest of them. Part piratical ensemble, part motorcycle gang, part asylum choir, your companions on the road close ranks to stay sane and pliable, and you are wise to draw nigh to their care-laden ministrations. Mostly heavy weather, obliging you to peak just at the time of day that almost everyone within five hundred kilometres is cooling down, you strangely privileged and burdened and shanghaied by your fate, the road is stern and lacks moderation or compromise. It can be a riot of adamant joy, too, and redeeming. But that’s not the general weather of the thing. How to duck and avoid blinking at the same time: that’s the strategy.
Once in a while one of your confederates peeks out from under the teflon veneer, gains something like focus, and takes the measure of things. What you have here is Gregory Hoskins doing that as the Nights of Grief & Mystery erupt and ebb across the UK, and Canada, and the United States, in 2019. I for one rely on these notices from the fray, since my position in the scheme banishes whatever chance I’d have to attend one of these nights and see for myself. They are chance and momentous encounters with Our Times, and Mr. Hoskins is just left-of centre stage to get the hang of the thing.
So I recommend his glimpses of the road. Saves you the ordeal, and lends you gratitude for the ordinary days.
Stephen Jenkinson
Gregory Hoskins 