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editor: Sarer Scotthorne
art & design: Bob Modem

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est. circa 2012
an unfunded small press
based in Bristol
The Perambulator
Should we Meet at the Crossroads, Keep Walking

cover artwork: John Holten
cover art photo/author photo: Kevin Pollard
editor: Chris Ryan
Flycatcher linocut: Anna-Stina Jungerstam
typeset by Bob Modem
ISBN: 978-1999915339
perfect bound 360 page paperback
12.3.21
Ltd. edition paperback in slip case cover (first 100 copies) ships from Kallio, Helsinki, where the novel is set 17€ + p&p ︎︎︎BUY

ACT 42 Merikukka – Happy Spring / Kristina Bruuk – Pleasant Valley Sunday ltd. edition 7” + paperback Ltd to 12 copies 20€ + p&p ships from Kallio, Helsinki ︎︎︎BUY

Standard paperback £12.50 + p&p ︎︎︎BUY




“Brilliant but difficult”
– Bill Drummond

“Beautiful, mysterious and weird. The Perambulator’s deep observations bring these strange and wondrous characters and landscapes to life. What is the Helsinki Stone Circle? Who is Kristina Bruuk and what is perambulation? Find that out and you’ve discovered the key to everything”
– Brad Warner  (Hardcore Zen)

Flycatcher is celebrating the release of this classic work of literary psychedelic realism with a limited edition 7″ single, as heard between the lines in the book. Merikukka is a living legend who needs no introduction in Kallio – Kristina on the other hand has been lying low for some time. Pleasant Valley Sunday is an out-take from Drummond and Manning’s mythical Heaven and Helsinki / Bad Wisdom album sessions, recorded in Helsinki a quarter of a century ago and due for release, as ever, sometime soon.

In 2012 Don McCracken hung out with Leonid Paukku. In 2013 he created his Perambulator alter ego. In 2014 he first saw Nightbird perform. In 2015 he began to construct the Helsinki Stone Circle sculpture, the same year he found the long-lost Kristina Bruuk album Between Heaven and Helsinki by tracking down the sound engineer. In 2016 he started to write a short novella that incorporated all of the above. By 2017 it was clear that this was a novel. In 2018 he hardly met any friends. In 2019 he found out how it all ended. In 2020 he offered the finished book to Paul at Hesterglock Press.

Don lives in Helsinki, Finland, where he runs ︎︎︎Flycatcher and works behind the Musta Kissa bar.

The Glorified Walking Stick is a forty second play by Bill Drummond. He wrote it after reading The Perambulator’s book. Read it ︎︎︎ HERE.



The Sound of One Man Reading Bill Drummond’s play The Glorified Walking Stick as the Kallio Church Bells Chime is taken from the forthcoming Flycatcher EP The Sound of One Man Walking. The play is based on Should We Meet at the Crossroads Keep Walking by The Perambulator.


A I V O S U M U – The Sound of One Man Reading Bill Drummond’s play The Glorified Walking Stick as the Kallio Church Bells Chime (Twisted Honeysuckle Spiral mix) is a remix of ACT 39 The Sound of One Man Reading Bill Drummond’s play The Glorified Walking Stick as the Kallio Church Bells Chime.

Listen to Don reading from the novel. The Sound of One Man Walking is taken from The Dreary Heather Club album. 


Perambulation first appeared on the ACT 15 e.p. The video was assembled by Markku Essel from footage shot on the Helsinki Radio Lemuria Stone Circle Drive (ACT 16) by Kevin Pollard.

KRISTINA BRUUK Between Heaven and Helsinki

Kristina Bruuk took her own life on the 31st of December 1999. At the time she was living in Naples, after having moved from her home city of Helsinki some months earlier. Her suicide note was a hand written memoir of no less than 100,000 words.

Kristina Bruuk had been a Finnish singer songwriter. In her early 20s she had been part of the thriving Helsinki scene in the mid 60s, ‘dating’ numerous of the rock musicians, poets and artists of the era. Her own attempts at the time to make any artistic impression seemed to flounder.  Peter Laakkonen, the now legendary Finnish rock star, financed Kristina Bruuk to make a number of recordings. Some of these were released a 7” 45s, but all failed critically and commercially. After the Helsinki scene stagnated and collapsed she moved to Paris in time for the riots of ’68. From there she moved to Barcelona in the early 70s and onto Oporto in Portugal. There were various other European cities she lived in for short periods. By the late 1990s she was living in Berlin. She was there when the Wall came down.

With each new city she would keep writing both poetry and prose and make a living in whatever way she could. But her various addictions and abusive relationships seemed to have a habit of always catching up with her. By the late 1980s a new scene had begun to blossom in Helsinki. Within this scene the now impossibly rare Kristina Bruuk singles from the late 60s, had become the ultimate collectable records.  They were the touchstones for the new young bohemians. By this time no one in Helsinki had any idea of the where abouts of Kristina Bruuk. Most assumed she was long dead. Some Helsinki bands even started to cover her songs. One of these bands being Dracula’s Daughter, an all female four-piece indie rock band. Dracula’s Daughter successfully tracked her down in Berlin and invited her to return to Finland and sing on some of their own recordings. One of these was a song called Candy. This was subsequently released as a single on the Finish label Kalevala. The underground success of this record then led to the Kalevala label signing Kristina Bruuk to write and record her own album. Although the album was recorded, Kristina Bruuk is said to have fallen out with not only all the musicians on the sessions, but with Hannu Puttonen, the boss of the record label. He had taken it upon himself to pay for her to go into rehab and have a therapy crash course. She walked out of both of these within days of starting. All plans to release the album were shelved, and Kristina Bruuk soon left Helsinki for the last time, heading for Italy and another ‘new’ life.

That was one version of history.

There is another.

Bill Drummond
Easter Sunday, 2016
(excerpt from Bill’s original sleeve notes to Between Heaven and Helsinki)