When I begin this commission for the Whitstable Biennial (2010) , a friend said: “Whitstable? That’s where Dracula landed”. The mistake was soon rectified, but when I discovered Peter Cushing lived in Whitstable, that settled it. I decided to write a sort of vampire novel entitled The Pearl Fisher. Based on Bram Stoker’s diary form, but without the benefit of plot or supernatural threat, my novel soon became an aimless ramble through forests of coincidence and disappointment. Its narrative was the only thing loosely connecting the films I later presented. The first was a set of three ghostly apparitions born of obsessive watching of Hammer horror films and an interest in Victorian theatrical magic. The second, a series of informal blue films made at the beach, and finally a film of a male bingo caller, calling to the ladies of Whitstable’s Oxford Bingo Club.