Commentary, projects and musings from Rich Hill
I spent a month learning to ring church bells with a local Tuesday band, from my first panicked pull to a shaky attempt at plain hunt. What I found was less about campanology and more about patience, listening and the quiet persistence of a 400-year-old team ritual.
My town's highest point sits somewhere around eighty-odd metres and is, according to the map, a waterworks. So I spent a month standing on the top of every postcode district I could walk to — reservoir banks, car-park ramps and one very windy spoil heap included. Here's what I found, and why I'd do it again.
The household waste centre is supposed to be the end of the line. But behind the skips, a reuse shop keeps a small economy of rescued lamps, bikes and garden chairs moving. I spent four Saturdays finding out who saves what, and why the tip has become one of the town’s quieter social clubs.
A damp November month on a local allotment site reveals more than leeks and leaf mould. Behind the gate code sits an unwritten constitution of shed etiquette, seed swaps, honesty-box tomatoes and hedge-line diplomacy.
Four weeks inside the volunteer committee, council officers and shopkeepers who get a town's Christmas lights switched on. It is less tinsel-and-fairy-dust than risk assessments, raffle tickets and a borrowed cherry picker — and somehow all the more charming for it.
For a month I did every wash at the same high street launderette, notebook on my knee and a bag of fifty-pence pieces in my pocket. What I found was less about clean clothes and more about the quiet rules, small kindnesses and strange clubhouse atmosphere of a room everyone uses and nobody talks about.
A month following one Sunday league side through drizzle, postponements and post-match tea taught me that grassroots football is less about the score and more about the people who turn up anyway. The touchline, it turns out, is where a town quietly keeps itself together.
For thirty days I spent the final hour before closing in my local library. What I found wasn’t a quiet room winding down — it was the most honest hour in town.
A month behind the till and in the sorting room of my local charity shop, where £1.50 buys a paperback, a bit of company and a very honest view of the high street in 2026.
I spent a month hanging around the foyers, bars and interval queues of local theatres — from crumbling civic playhouses to church-hall productions — to see what audiences do when the curtain drops. Turns out the best drama of the night is usually happening beside the raffle table.
For four weeks I became the unofficial parcel drop-off for my street — a doorstep middleman for couriers, neighbours and one extremely determined cat. It was part logistics, part social experiment, and mostly a lesson in how much trust hides behind a simple knock at the door.
Britain's red telephone boxes are no longer for ringing. They are for borrowing, resuscitating, browsing and caffeine. I spent a month visiting the tiny civic conversions that are quietly outliving the dial tone — and asked whether they are charming relics or a genuinely workable model.
One pad of writing paper, thirty second-class stamps and a month of walking to pillar boxes in all weathers. What came back — and the surprisingly practical case for putting pen to paper in 2026.
Forty-one benches, four weeks, and a lot of awkward eye contact. A personal experiment in sitting down on purpose — and what it reveals about who our towns expect to stop, rest and stay a while.
Lost cats, bin-day confusion, a planning row and one very persistent hedge: I spent a month in my local WhatsApp group to see what happens when a street tries to become its own news desk. The answer is useful, chaotic and occasionally in need of an editor.
Four weekends in surviving working men’s clubs, where a £3 pint, a meat raffle and a tribute act are not nostalgia but infrastructure. A warm look at the rooms that still matter in 2026 — and the closures, younger members and committee politics behind them.
For a month I photographed the noticeboards of corner shops, libraries and launderettes — missing cats, guitar lessons, parish council spats and all. The scruffy corkboard turns out to be a better model for community than most social platforms, and a useful reminder that online spaces could stand to be smaller, temporary and considerably less dramatic.
For a month I treated ordinary local buses as a cheap seat in the best travelling theatre in Britain — always upstairs, always at the front. What I saw was less about transport and more about how our towns actually work.
For thirty days in October 2026 I paid for everything in cash — buses, coffee, the weekly shop, even a parking meter that seemed personally offended by a twenty-pence piece. This is what the friction taught me about spending, access, and the shops that still count coins.
Every second Saturday, a village hall fills with faulty kettles, split seams and small electronics that have not quite died. I spent a month at my local repair café, learning which end of a screwdriver to hold and why mending things is secretly a social club.