As Derry, Northern Ireland, which Abridged calls home has been hit by even more torrential summer rain than usual it got me thinking that one of the (admittedly minor)  reasons we had a theme called Floodland was that traditionally Derry drainage is terrible and there wasn’t a winter (and sometimes summer) in which part of the town wasn’t under water to some degree much to the fury of the people that live here. We do have occasional nods to our locality. For example Abridged 0 – 21: Magnolia was a nod to the seemingly ‘you can have any colour as long as it’s a shade of yellowish-white’ for houses in Donegal. Likewise Abridged 0 – 31: Crash was inspired by the terrible roads in Donegal and the border counties. Possibly just a shade too dark…or maybe not. Word on the Street and On the Cards were terrible titles for Derry based postcard projects. I love card projects but these were funded by the local authority (when they used to fund even slightly different things) and therefore not as stark as we usually are wont to be. They didn’t for the most part work, with one or two exceptions. And had admittedly awful titles. Crash was more like ourselves. Once a Railroad was a (not so) subtle dig at the dereliction of Derry’s railway heritage in favour of a mostly imagined or accidental maritime history and the quest for some indeterminate big gallery/museum/whateveritscalled… It’s true that we often focus on the big picture and an apocalyptic sublime but there are often admittedly darkly humourous nods to the local in an issue…