Four centuries of killing hedgehogs, and what the empty verges mean
“The divine art of Printing and Gunpowder have frighted away Robin-good-fellow and the Fayries.”
John Aubrey,
Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme
1686–87
Walk with us. We'll keep your confidences and talk only when warranted.
Hey, I'm Lewis
I was born and raised in London, but have been living in Lisbon since 2021.
I'm grateful for my situation (Lisbon really is very nice), but a couple of years back I started properly missing England – or at least my personal idea of Englishness.
So I did something I couldn't have done a few years before: I gave an AI agent a (highly subjective) list of the things I miss about England (folk horror, the seaside, underground art and music, the BBC, country villages, urban edgelands, Oliver Postgate, Alan Moore, the psychedelic Sixties, etc.). Then I asked it to find other stuff like that, and write it up for me to read.
AI is many things, not all of them deserving of celebration. But on this occasion, with this task, it did good – the stuff it sent my way was both fascinating and (frequently) bananas.
People make floral costumes for wells in Derbyshire? There's a street in Milton Keynes deliberately aligned with the Midsummer sunrise? People were paid to kill hedgehogs? All of the stories are fully sourced and fact-checked – and pretty soon I found myself a bit addicted to them.
Then I thought: some of my friends back home would enjoy this stuff – so I put it all on a website.
And then I thought: other people might happen upon this site and enjoy it too – so I best be clear that, while Odd Country was dreamed up and designed by an actual human (me), the Zine is drawn from the same AI pieces I've been reading in bed at night for much of the last 2 years.
So welcome to Odd Country: a hopefully interesting and very possibly unnecessary cranny in the internet, freely available to anyone who appreciates the weirder, more wayward side of dear old England.
I hope you enjoy the site.