18 years ago, I published a work called ‘Balm of Gilead’. It was a collection of stories and articles about mystical and visionary experience, fringe religious movements, occult groups and practices, and art and music that relates to these themes. It was very good, if I say so myself.
Once the work had been published, I was faced with the task of distributing it. I offered the collection for sale through a variety of niche websites, including the website that I operated at the time, which led to me being visited at my place of work by an eccentric character who I went on to form a stormy relationship with thereafter (it’s calmed down now, and we get along well, but it was in the balance for a few years).
Having exhausted these channels, I was forced to transcend my shyness and timidity in order to request that specialist bookshops might offer it for sale. This enterprise proved broadly successful, and the work appeared on the shelves of the Atlantis Bookshop in London and Rare and Racy in Sheffield, amongst other places.
But copies of ‘Balm of Gilead’ remained, so I took to hawking them around less immediately fitting outlets, including what I termed ‘a psychic junkshop’ on South Road, Walkley.
This ‘psychic junkshop’ accepted one copy, closed down, and later emerged in expanded form as the purveyors of the extraordinary plate that is here paraded before your eyes.
Sheffield Patrol Group 