Species of Spaces

Available for over a year

Huddersfield postman and writer Kevin Boniface invites us to join him on his round. He reveals the hidden lives of the everyday spaces we all move through but never truly notice. Gates screech open and closed, gravel crunches, letter boxes clang, dogs bark and snap at hurriedly withdrawn fingers. Kevin transports us from the desolate, windswept static caravan park on the moor (where pretend owls outnumber the human population two-to-one), to nostalgia-saturated rural idylls, to the eerie former psychiatric hospital where time stopped decades ago. “I feel like I’m walking around in one of those terrifying 1970s public information films where everyone eventually meets a sticky end because they decide to go for a swim in a slurry pit or climb into an electricity substation to retrieve a frisbee.” Since suffering a breakdown in younger years, Kevin has found solace in obsessively recording spaces: their shifting character, the hidden ways they shape us and we shape them. As we deliver mail on urban streets and country lanes, he creates a taxonomy of all the ‘species of spaces’ he encounters. Following in the footsteps of his hero, the great French polymath Georges Perec, he reveals the fascinating depth and contingent comedy of the everyday. As he goes about his mission, Kevin draws on the perspectives of other ‘space travellers’: poet Kei Miller and artist Joanne Lee. The programme includes archive provided by the BFI National Archive. Producer: Dave Anderson A 7digital production for BBC Radio 3