Name: Jerome Fletcher Occupation: Writer Tale Title: The Diver's Tale Destination: The Thames Barrier, London
The Diver's Tale - Jerome Fletcher's Tale was a complex mixture of metaphorical references and actual observations - he rowed, with a friend, in a Venetian boat along the Thames past the market to the Thames Barrier ...
"The idea of Pilgrimage brought to mind two specific ideas. Firstly that of a site, an extra-ordinary place. A site of pilgrimage was often the locus of violent death and it was therefore incumbent upon the pilgrim to reflect on the nature of that violent death, often associated with martyrdom or sacrifice. Hence the importance of remembrance.
But Pilgrimage is also about the journey, which itself consists of two parts - the going out and the return. For the pilgrimage to fulfil its 'sacred' function, it has to involve some sort of transformation. The pilgrim has to return a different person from the one who set out. The returning pilgrim has to be re-constituted.
With this in mind, the river journey to a relic of the Cold War - a military machine - and a return with a tale of re-membering, formed a cohesive notion. And there was even something fitting about the fact that when we arrived at the site, the relic had disappeared."
The Diver's Prologue (Real Media, 3.5mins)
The Diver's Tale (Real Media, 11mins)