Commentary, projects and musings from Rich Hill
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.
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.
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.
Seven days with only local BBC radio, no national stations and no skipping. The week brought pothole phone-ins, farm reports, obituaries, traffic bulletins and a surprising amount of comfort. It was also a clear-eyed look at community, loneliness and what disappears when regional broadcasting shrinks in 2026.
Four Sundays, one muddy field and a thermos: I treated the local car boot sale as a proper field experiment. What I found was haggling as theatre, regulars with alliances, bizarre finds and a set of unwritten rules. In 2026, this gloriously unscripted Sunday ritual deserves to be treated as a British cultural institution.
Cinema hasn't lost its magic; it's lost its casualness. A cheap Saturday morning screening could be the easiest win in town — for families, night-shift workers and anyone who misses seeing a film without checking their bank balance.
A good pub quiz isn't a test — it's a room full of people arguing happily about the name of a dog from a 1990s advert. Here's how I'd run one in 2026 without turning it into a Google race.
Tickets for under a tenner, a raffle with a meat voucher as the top prize, and a PA that came out of somebody's loft. Village halls and community centres are quietly putting on the most interesting nights out in Britain right now — and I think we should stop treating them like a last resort.
For one week I stripped my personal site back to hand-written HTML, a hit counter and a guestbook that actually worked. It was meant to be a bit of nostalgia. It turned into the most useful audit of how I use the internet that I've done in years.