They All Happened Here
by Andy Pilsbury & Chris Neophytou

We grew up in Newport, Shropshire its the place we went to school, built life-long friendships and the place where we began to work out who we were. Both us now live somewhere else and have done for sometime. A combination of time and distance, in some ways, has given us a new insight. A thread for us to follow, to pull at, and see what unravels.

We have spent the past year irregularly returning to this small market town where we grew up, wandering its streets, parks, and waterways, wading through a haze of nostalgia. The serenity of the warm light prodding at uncomfortable memory.

There has always been, at least to us, a darkness simmering under the surface of what is ostensibly a picturesque Shropshire market town. A notion that is heavily drawn from our experiences as young men and how we were shaped by our time there. How much is indebted to this physical place that knows all our secrets. Did we shape this place in our minds or did these marshy waterways, trees and alleys drag us into their ancient shadowy orbit.

I have not done many things that I am ashamed of, but they all happened here.