Dressing the toad, vaccine dip, books, painting and poetry
Last weekend we went on an overcast walk to Bexhill from St Leonard’s and my eye was caught by an old white painted tin beach hut amidst the many more wooden ones lined along the beach. It was an interesting walk but the weather wasn’t brilliant, and Bexhill has certainly been seen in a better light. I miss being able to visit the De la Warr pavilion, and even the Bexhill museum my children loved but I got totally bored of!
When we got back from the coast we walked back to Rusthall via a drink at the Toad Rock Retreat, and a little look into the Dressing of the Toad event so brilliantly organised by Karen Gardener. I wasn’t there for all of it but it was clearly a creative and energising event, and I love the detail and creative talent going into the offerings on the railings.
Monday saw me heading to Tonbridge for the second dose of the Covid vaccine, a long anticipated moment. Tonbridge is a welcome change of scene in these times of hardly going anywhere; I like the way the river runs a calm ribbon through the town. There was time to stop at the Oxfam bookshop and pick up a few books; a history of the High Weald full of fascinating old pictures of Ticehurst and Lamberhurst, a history of Sissinghurst by Adam Nicolson and a book about beginning a garden in a small space - something I am trying to edge towards, although I don’t often have time.
This week sees the start of the Tunbridge Wells Fringe Festival , and it was great to take my always scribbling future author daughter along to a free creative writing workshop with children’s writer Nikki Young. It took place outside the Zero Waste shop on the Pantiles on a sunny after school evening, and it felt like a great excuse to try some of their yummy cake while we were there solving the crime at Dragonstone Castle.
In the middle of the week I definitely felt the vaccine dip, not fluey this time but a little out of sorts and overwhelmed. I’m just starting to feel back to myself again, in time for two wonderful interviews for the September issue of Rusthall Life magazine at Daily Bread. First the artist Ben Marchant, whose inspirations come from portraits with a difference and the juxtoposition of the expected with the unexpected talked about his upcoming exhibition at the Arty Farty Retreat in Southborough. The conversation with poet Jessica Mookherjee ranged wide through continents and subjects, from Bangladesh to South Wales, East London and Rusthall through feminism, motherhood, imagining our parents’ lives, and the legacies of empire. Her poems are a space for readers to find the rich and complicated stories that go into the making of everyone of us, and explore how women’s greatest act of creation can be their own sense of self.
Poetry books by Jessican Mookherjee
