I’m charmed by a new book that recently arrived in the post: The Camden Town Hoard is a catalogue of detritus that’s been given a new spin.
It’s creator and curator, Natalia Zagorska-Thomas, has published, with the consistently fabulous small press C B Editions, a collection of images of incomprehensible objects dredged from the Grand Union Canal as it galumphs through Camden, and beside each one is a learned label, elucidating the object. Natalia invited a group of writers to choose an object to write about. I was late to the party, as I had been too deadline-hectic to notice the project’s beginnings. But she kindly roped me in and sent me a picture of this horrible thing.
I didn’t write and I didn’t write. But after some nudging from Natalia, I pulled myself together and wrote something, (which of course I really enjoyed, just like making myself go for a walk) despite my initial blood-out-of -a-stone resistance. It’s lovely to be asked. I expect all these weird lumps and barnacled pipelets are metaphorical portraits of the people whose words accompany them. There are some spectacular writers being inventive in here, and the book is a tenner.
My learned museum label
I have also been savouring a new anthology: Living With Other People , (another tenner well spent) edited by a small team of poets under the banner Corrupted Poetry. They are Fiona Larkin, Nic Stringer and Michelle Penn. This book modestly contains no poetry by them, but pulls together a kind of gritty survey with work by so many poets I admire, and interwoven with original drawings and other visual experiments by people (like me) who are not pure advocates of one medium only.
I have two quite personal, and very slowly written, poems in the book: ‘Cold Buffet’, marks an abrubtly ended friendship, and ‘Some Mirrors Held up to the Child’ is a poem I’ve worked on on and off for about 15 years, a kind of cubist portrait of my autistic/learning disabled son, made of language used by him, by us his family, and by many of the professionals that step in and out of our lives: culled from reports from teachers, occupational therapists, psychologists. I am grateful to be cushioned by a chorus of other voices who hit different notes and angles on the pain and delight that come from living with other people! Look out for a launch in London in mid March where some of the featured poets (including me) will be reading.
Two more by me in the latest edition of Cyphers – a long established literary journal based in Ireland. The underlying theme for this issue was ‘heritage’. One of my poems is a prose poem called South London Jew, and the other contains a story. SeekingArtemisia recounts an interail pilgrimage I made in my art school twenties, to see the paintings of Artemisia Gentileschi. Both poems put a solitary woman in a world that might or might not be her own and leave her there. Cyphers is a beautiful magazine and its editor, legend Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, was part of the original group that set it up in 1975. It was exciting to connect with some brilliant Irish poets at Belfast Book Festival last summer, and this feels like a nice way to continue that conversation.
Hanging out with some Irish poets in Belfasts Botanic Gardens, 2022
Huge thanks to all the editors mentioned, for giving me the opportunities to get my work into the world. Thanks too, for reading my blog – about which please read on! It has now mostly migrated to its own page on my evolving new website.
I made these puppets for the stage show of Velkom to Inklandt – the child in the cardi is ready to welcome you to my website – please don’t be put off!
Because of my work spiralling off in so many media I have tried to limit the section headers – I resist putting different strands of my practice in separate categories, everything is just ‘the work’.
Is it a poem, a stage set or yesterdays walk?
The website design is being ingeniously devised by artist Joe Bradley Hill who has done a revolutionary job of helping me get organised and sort out my long built up layers of studio activity – do take a look: new website in progress – sign up for the newsletter, and have a rummage. Many pages are still empty or in their early stages – but if you do go to the embryonic poetry page & click on the word INDEX – at least you’ll find a brand new prophesy at the top to add its seasoning to your day. (If you don’t like the first one, click refresh!)
Over 2022 I was back on the live story collecting and drawing road, taking my ink and brushes both round the corner in south London – and all over the UK.
Fresh ink drawings pegged up under a mulberry tree in Mecklenburgh Square at a story collecting gig this summer at a party for Jewish Renaissance magazine.
To recap: this process is one I’ve written about before. It usually involves me sitting with a person and having a conversation, often on a theme, (like food) which I then draw and write live in front of them, using ink and brush and a distilled selection of their own words. Each narrator gets a copy of their story to keep, either on the day if we have a helper and access to an A3 copier, or later, by post.
Drawing at Marie’s house in Brixton
Early in the year I worked with a group of women from across the African diaspora, who are meeting to cook together and share stories with Brixton chef and teacher Marie Mingle, and doctoral researcher Natasha Dyer. We spent a day in Marie’s kitchen, and as well as doing one to one story drawing, I was invited to cook and eat with the group. I learned about some fantastic spice mixtures and recipes, as well as hearing of many tough situations that the women I met are dealing with, both here and back home. The food and company were delicious, also, bittersweet. I took home a jar of Marie’s green sauce which gives everything a lift.
Violeta’s wonderful motherBuilding a house on a nurse’s wages: a topical story from Vimbai.
Still in London and still with the African diaspora, the people at UK book HQ – ie The British Library, are in the middle of a major project to connect their Sound Archive back with some of the communities the recordings represent. Chandan Mahal and Emma Brinkhurst from the BL team got in touch to see if I could do some listening with a group of Somali Londoners, together with Mancunian East African poet, Elmi, and a bunch of recordings from the 1980s – collected by ethnomusicologist John Low.
Maryam Mursal, Somali star.
To begin with, we all listened to the magnificent voice and music of iconic Somali singer Maryam Mursal . I drew her from a video clip and wrote down some of what she said, as well as what was said about her, by the people gathered for the session. Over subsequent weeks we listened together to lullabies, house building songs, herding songs and other examples of Somali music.
This is Ubah, from the Camden community group. There were parts of conversation that were so poetic no pictures were needed.
A high spot for me was listening to the women sing and ululate live in the room where we gathered. Their voices animated the air – a spell to mend post-lockdown hearts.
‘ it’s like confetti!’I’d brought coloured pencils along as well as ink, in case there would be kids there who might like to draw too. As it happened only the grown ups came that day, but I was glad to attempt to catch the colour in Hinda and Halima’s aleendi (woven scarves.)
As a thank you to the group and for continuity, the library produced this booklet based on the project, with pictures by me, a new poem by Elmi – many quotations and insights from the participants and a QR link to the music recordings. I think you can request one from the British Library as they have a few.
Booklet produced by the British Library Sound Archive. The painting on the cover is an attempt by me to translate the sound of a particular song into colour and form. Elmi Ali, making me wish I’d paid attention as a child to my friend Navyn, who turned up at my primary school in 1972 from Tanzania, and tried to teach me Swahili. From Elmi, whose grandmother was the survivor of a shocking and wild tale.
In September, I travelled to Glasgow, where the university, along with those of St Andrew’s and Edinburgh, is working with a newly set up body called the Scottish Council on Global Affairs. The SCGA has been set up to ‘deepen the debate’ around migration and citizenship, amongst other things. I was very proud to participate in such conversations, invited by two enterprising doctors of History: Rachel Chin and Sarah Dunstan. There were speakers from the worlds of law, local and international politics, grassroots migrant organisations – and many practical and potent ideas were expressed to challenge ongoing Brexit rhetoric.
Members of the morning panel at the Citizen Witness Seminar L to R: Joseph Brady, Dr Sarah Kyambi, Jennifer Todd, Dr Rachel Chin
After the talks I listened to and drew stories from some of the participants. Every story was a glimpse into the hidden worlds we all carry, of family, memory, home.
Here I am with PhD candidate Pinar Aksu, who gave a talk about the work she does with refugees and asylum seekers, helping them to raise their own voices to campaign for rights and opportunities to education and work. A story collected from Pinar. She is a marigold too! Bright, bold and energising. A feast to hear about the sequin runner and golden rice pudding. Now I am referring to all blankets as kavatourts. A great word coined by Nathalie’s gran, whose own language was spurned. The day I returned from Glasgow, my train sped along under a grey kavatourt of rain.
I heard more treasures of inherited language at a recent gig at JW3 . As the event was to thank people who had supported the charity – I was asking narrators to tell me stories of things they’d been given, or learned from their parents, or things they would hope to pass on… Debby’s rather roguish dad had a family whistle, her mother: a Yiddish lullaby.
Dad, uh, how embarrassing!
Marcel didn’t know his parents, but became surprisingly conversant with the glamour of the Folies Bergère, aged four. He still speaks, with an almost indiscernible French accent, and great pride, of his astonishing rescuers.
What Marcel didn’t tell me, but another guest did, is that having become a successful dentist in the UK, he was able to pay for Olga and Esther’s care in their old age.
Here are a couple more stories from London Jews: I heard these in the summer and include them here for their thematic resonance. Language: lost and found.
I heard these two in the summer at the party in Mecklenburgh Square. Like Daisy below, part of what settled Fozi into her sense of self was the comfort of a half remembered language. The surprise of understanding Arabic!
On another type of story jaunt – project Phakama was participating in a brand new festival in Brighton, and so myself and fellow associate artist (and dear pal) Charlie Folorunsho headed to Wildfest, in glorious Stanmer Park.
Charlie and myself at the end of our LORE workshop, photo by poet Pauline Sewards.
Charlie and I were trying out an IRL version of a project initiated by him, with support from a Phakama Digital bursary in 2021. Called The LORE, which stands for Language Of Resilient Expression, it started online as part of an artistic response to the pandemic. We’ve been joint facilitators: getting together with small groups of people online, sharing stories of the ways we have managed to cope and keep going through the challenge of covid and austerity and difficulties with health. This was our first go at presenting the workshop face to face. People came and practiced listening to and drawing each other’s stories. Charlie asked participants to reinvent the LORE, and try alternative R words that might help us survive – we heard ‘revolutionary’, ‘rebellious,’ ‘resourceful’ – please add your own, however ‘regrettable’ & join us. We hope to make a book of the LORE one day, in which we collate all we have heard and drawn from and with participants. A kind of survival kit.
Yet a different variety of live drawing was called for by poet Kirsten Luckins, who asked me to record the goings on at an inaugural Women Poets’ Festival, which she was organising with The Rebecca Swift Foundation, to be held at The National Centre for Writing in Norwich, in their epic Tudor Dragon Hall, as well as online. I travelled up with the day’s first speaker, ace poet and friend Jacqueline Saphra.
Her talk followed a guided meditation to begin the event in calm, led by poet Ros Goddard.
As my participation in the guided meditation I also let my ink and water slowly sink into the quiet moment.
Jacqueline gave an inspiring talk on rhyme, which she packed with dazzling examples from some of her favourite poems. I drew what I could catch – trying not to get so absorbed that I forgot to move my brush across the paper.
After a sonnet by American poet Jericho BrownSome of Anne Sexton’s groundbreaking boldness
Jacqueline’s talk was followed by a presentation from Debris Stevenson who got us all to shake, and talked about what had provoked her towards her path of poetry and performance.
Debris was fired up by grime music and her dyslexia, among other things.Can’t argue with that.
The last speaker was current TS Eliot prize shortlistee Victoria Adukwei Bulley who gave a talk on the practicalities of getting funded to make work, and showed us clips from her fascinating film, Mother Tongue, which explores language in exile and the poetry born from and inherent in that. Notice a theme?
Shaping one’s thinking through pertinent questions, with Victoria Adukwei Bulley Translations: A mother is a kind of gold you can’t buy in the market.
There was a great buffet lunch and a fallow period to follow, in which I ran a kind of rolling collage studio – and also read peoples’ fortunes from INDEX.
My scraps find a page of their own in Norwich
The last part of the day heralded the grand announcements of who had won this years Women Poets’ Prize. There were three winners chosen from a shortlist of thirty. You can read more about the judges, all the poets and their brilliant work, on the Rebecca Swift Foundation website, as well as on social media.
The first winner to be announced was Prerana Kumar – a natural performer with a glowing poem.
The huge and ancient wood-beamed hall fell silent. Intimate worlds were spilled by the poets into the room from the stage and even from the video screens. Suddenly after all the busy whir of chat, meeting friends and jotting down ideas, we were in a different space. A mirror to the morning meditation we’d begun with – a contemplative zone.
Winner Dillon Jaxx read their poem via the video link. A fearless piece moving between family dinners to mountain and sea.
I had made over 35 drawings, and was pleased to see that many of the assembled poets had also made fabulous collage poems and zines in my portable studio. It was a truly creative day.
One of the three winners, Jennifer Lee Tsai created a beautiful, distilled atmosphere with this poem inspired by her grandfather
Huge thanks to all those who have shared stories with me, and all those who have found the imagination, space and funding to commission me to do this ongoing work which means so much to me.
And of course, thanks for reading my blog. Wishing you peace and poetry in 2023.
Besides a lot of scooting about lately, and the heat, I’ve been staying grounded with some focused paper-cutting in the cool vaults of mythology.
I’ve been laying into sheets of black paper with scissors and scalpel, and summoning a great variety of goddesses, and their assorted props and consorts for the next book. The Mighty Goddess – a collection of 52 myths and stories for adults, gathered over many years with intrepid care and respect, and written in her own inimitable style by old friend and collaborator Pomme Clayton. This is to be published next spring by The History Press. We raised extra funds to create the book via our Kickstarter campaign. Thanks to all who supported that.
Laying out the stories with their pictures and post it notes on the floor.
Some of the stories are very familiar to me. Pomme and I have had four of our children’s fairy tale and myth collections published over the years. I’ve painted Durga, Ama Terasu, Demeter… Our first book together: Tales of Amazing Maidens, came out with Orchard Books in 1995. It featured Inuit goddess Sedna on the front cover. So I enjoyed revisiting her (as an Arctic elder must inevitably also do – or she will be in discomfort under the sea with her tangled hair. ) Richard Price has dived into this material too, in his beautiful collection The Owner of the Sea. Sedna provides fish and poetic inspiration in equal measure.
I was glad to discover a creature called the ribbon seal, lolling about on the internet, graphic as a papercut. And Sedna. Without her, no plenty more fish in the sea!
As with previous projects, like INDEX, & 60 Lovers to Make and Do, I have branched out from using only plain papers, to finding tone and texture in old black and white photographic images, which I use as collage material.
Green Tara – a goddess/saint from the Buddhist pantheon – cut from a book called Collectible Spoons.
I like the playfulness of scale between the objects in the photographs (spoons, cakes, shrubs) and the grandeur of a deity – a being so large it cannot be seen or comprehended, let alone fit on a page.
Hekate – she looks three ways at once. I cut her from a page in an old cookbook and was gratified to see her turn the puddings into timeless stone.
Then again – some goddesses are known through their small scale manifestations, St Bridget is in the snowdrops, Persephone sparkles on in every pomegranate seed –
Snowdrops for Bridget The crowned majesty of madam pomegranate
Other stories were familiar in another way: Artemis/Diana the huntress, turning Actaeon into a stag for spying on her naked beauty as she bathed… I remember copying Titian’s version of this, that hangs here in London at the National Gallery.
Diana and Actaeon, by Titian.
We Camberwell foundation students of 1982 were each set a painting to study as an exercise in composition. We were instructed to make three versions: reducing it further in each incarnation – eventually making it into a 3 colour abstraction. I recall that laborious absorbing afternoon.
I returned to Titian for help with my papercut, loving how he caught Actaeon’s bodily astonishment at the moment of transformation.
Actaeon as papercut – turned into a stag and devoured by his own dogs.
There’s another Artemis story in the book too – of the young girls apprenticed to the goddess – who dressed as bears to play hunting games in the forest.
Bear faced chic! A papercut I made for the story of Artemis, whose apprentices accompany the goddess, learn to hunt.
Other stories were a total revelation. The violence and incest, sex and torment in many of the tales – from Māori creation myth to ancient Egypt. Stories to make even the most jaded Twitter user gasp.
Sekhmet. Lion headed goddess loves to eat awful human law breakers.
I felt nervous about making images of Isis and Sekhmet, partly because I so love and admire Egyptian art – and did not feel I could add anything to the perfect depictions we know so well from the tombs and the looted beauties I grew up staring at in the British Museum. Of course that made snipping these goddesses and their head dresses all the more exciting in the end. ‘Only do something that you know you CANNOT do’ – as I’m fond of telling my students.
Isis and her brother/husband Osiris – Lord of the Underworld. Again, I found them in the spoon book. On the road: I was at some different tables over June, luckily paper, blades and goddesses are portable entities
Reading and rereading these ancient myths was a balm in these times. These stories remind us of our own impermanence and solidity at the same time, always useful. Thank Goddess for the power of imagination.
Lilith becoming a snake, giving birth to demons
In other news, I was grateful to poets Kathryn Gray and Andrew Neilson, the editors of online poetry journal Bad Lilies for including my poem Eggs and Bacon in their latest issue. A poem that also skirts around power.
I grew these ones. Amazing colours, quite weird smell!
Those bad lilies sure got a nose for a poem. One they published last summer in their second issue: Pollen, by the amazing Clare Pollard has been nominated for best single flower in the Forward Prizes.
Athena: paradoxical and mighty goddess of wisdom and war.
Congrats to the wondrous Chrissy Williams too, poet and editor of online journal Perverse. Two poems first published there have made the same auspicious list – one by Louisa Campbell and one by Cecelia Knapp. No shortage of goddesses in this post as it turns out.
Hindu goddess Lakshmi has elephants to splash her with water in the heat.
And nobody creates new work entirely alone. We only get good by reading/looking/listening to/rubbing shoulders with other people who read and make, so this goes out to all those who aren’t on a shortlist either… and who are slogging away anyway! May Lakshmi’s elephants cool you & may Athena’s owl toot wisdom instead of war!
Poem for Alison & her wasps nest
Here is a non prize winning wasp poem I made from phrases clipped from a child’s encyclopaedia I found on a wall near my house. I made it for my poet friend Alison Winch who inspired me with her wasp poems. They’re not published yet, but watch out! Thanks for reading my blog & strength to all creative resisters in the long hot jam of now.
Earlier this spring, I was excited to get a commission to write a new poem inspired by William Blake. I jumped up and down like a song of innocence whose experience has been recognised!
A new stone commissioned by The Blake Society and carved by Lida Cardozo was laid in 2018, and marks Blake’s actual burial spot.
Poets on zoom (screenshot from the St James’ Blake Now film) top row: Julia Bird, me, Natalie Linh Bolderston, bottom row: Ruth Awolola, Joseph Coelho, Ankita Saxena.
St James’ is an inclusive church, full of ideas, people and action coming together to address contemporary issues – and as it’s the place where Blake was baptised in 1757, and home to The Blake Society, this poetry project was focused on how Blake’s radicalism could still speak to us today, and encourage creative forms of activism.
When it came to it, I was the only one who could get to the west end in a COVID safe manner by the date in March agreed for filming. I put on my poetry dress and best jewels and tubed it to Green Park in my matching gold mask.
In the courtyard in front of the church a magnolia was shedding its furred khaki buds as the blossoms burst & raised their pink glazed teacups to beneficent blue sky. Piccadilly was hungry for footsteps, but was quieter than a backstreet in suburbia. Mr Fortnum and Mr Mason came out of their clock to nod and bow the hour to nobody. It was a strange dream to be abroad in the loaded yet familiar grandeur of my native city after over a year of absence.
I was allowed to climb up and preach some Blake subversion from the outdoor pulpit. Photo by Julia Bird.
Christopher Wren designed St James’, and the buildings exterior leans on the sheer quantity of its tiny warm coloured bricks, which mass to enormity like an epic congregation, contrasting with the vast transparencies of its glittering windows.
Carved from lime wood, this Grinling Gibbons reredos has been restored to its original 17th century brightness after some centuries of deadening varnish.
Inside there are miraculous carvings in lime wood and marble by Grinling Gibbons, including the font in which Blake was baptised. (I’d like to meet the mother who looked at her newborn and decided to call him Grinling Gibbons as well, a poem there surely!)
So grateful that I have a poetry dress for an occasion such as this! I screen printed the satin myself in Peckham , with poems and collages from my book 60 Lovers to Make and Do and my great friend, dress designer and maker extraordinaire, Linda Brooker whipped it into this wrap dress & trimmed it with pompoms. Photo: Sam Allen
So enough with the gold dress and fancy schmancy carvings! Where are the poems? You can watch the movie on YouTube at this link: Blake Now – and if you’d rather have a quiet read: here is my poem.
Look out for all the commissioned poems, those by Joseph Coelho, Ruth Awolola, Natalie Lin Bolderston, Ankita Saxena and myself will all be available via the Poetry Society website and on St James’ site too in coming weeks. Meanwhile, thank you so much to both organisations for this golden opportunity, and to you dear reader, for reading!
Tonight is the prelaunch reading for my new collection INDEX !
Pile of the original cardsIdeas for the reverse of the cards
The Kickstarter campaign set up by brilliant Tom Jenks at zimZalla, has met its target – so the printing can go ahead. There’s still time to register for a pack of prophetic cards at a 40% discount. And there are strange extra rewards for anyone who is inclined or able to pay extra!
Sachet of choice phrases
I’ll be reading alongside the amazing poet Philip Terry whose newest publication, TURNS, is an Oulipian box of surprises also made by poetry object press zimZalla. Do sign up!
Over the last year I’ve been making little cut up poems and pasting them onto pastel coloured index cards. Like a lot of things I do this began as a mild diversion creeping out from the side of a couple of big projects that were claiming my daylight attention.
It continued in this way – every few days I’d find a couple of hours to pore over the collage stash I’d been hacking to bits for my last book: 60 Lovers to Make and Do, and I’d skim the prose for phrases that seemed particularly pointed or musical or visually charged.
Source material on studio floor
I love the drama in old fashioned phrases from the Biggles Annual or Girl: any 1960s & 70s books and journals from the decades when I was a child, full of advice, morality, implicit and occasionally overt -isms of every sort. Favourites that also inspired 60 Lovers, were activity books including craft and recipe books.
I couldn’t use text by named authors – nothing where the notion of authorship vaunts loftiness or self consciousness – this wouldn’t be raw material for my own authorship and would feel more like stealing than repurposing.
When I got to that dream residency studio in Berkeley last December – I had the fun of assembling a transatlantic collage stash – which I wrote about at the time. I found a good selection of index cards and boxes to stack them as well, at the wonderful Elmwood Stationers on my local parade.
When I was finding my big paintings heavygoing – I would just put the colours to one side, and get snipping through the treasures I’d accumulated – with extra delight at the different language opening up from this American material.
I gotta tell you
Dan Schifrin, the residency manager, asked me a good question: What’s it like to inhabit the body of the person who makes these big gestural paintings and the person who makes these tiny cut up collage poems?
Studio with peonies, phrases, painting in progress
I found this impossible to answer, so I wrote a short play in which two very different women have to share a studio. They don’t get on, although they do respect each other’s processes. Gloria, the painter, is full of exclamations about the wonder of nature. She gets on Edith’s nerves. Edith, the misunderstood poet, is introverted and terse. She can sometimes be soothed with a nice coffee and home made cookie from Gloria. I sent the play to Dan, and for fun added this photograph taken of Gloria and Edith on one of the rare occasions when they were in the studio together.
Gloria the painter & Edith the poet
For now, I, London Sophie, have a few things to sort out between now and the reading. Hope to see you there.
Well 60 Lovers to Make and Do came out, and we had a great time launching it at the charismatic Cinema Museum, which occupies the site of Lambeths former workhouse, and still maintains an atmosphere in which the word poetry is allowed to blink out like imaginary dodgy neon from the word poverty.
I impulsively printed myself 4 metres of gold satin with collages from the book, at 3rd Rail screen printing studio in Peckham.
My good friend and former studio neighbour, incredible dress designer and maker, Linda Brooker, cut from it enough to make this dress, and trim it with red pompoms for good measure.
Photo by Andrea Reece
The book contains 65 poems in which women create their own lovers from things they find lying around at home or at work. These are accompanied by collages in which hidden lovers are cut from unlikely and unpeopled pages from magazines or broken books. When I’ve read from the book people seem to find it funny.
Who knows, perhaps they recognise something about the absurdity of love and relationship. The wildness of our projections… Could this make the book quite a nice present for the lover who doesn’t even know that it’s poetry they love? Just saying.
You can get hold of a copy direct from the publishers here: https://www.henninghamfamilypress.co.uk/product/60-lovers-to-make-and-do/, or please order it from your local bookshop. It’s already being stocked by one of my personal favourites, the Bookartbookshop near Old Street tube, as well as Herne Hill Books. Also, soon it will be available at The Second Shelf in Soho, and Circus in Brixton Market.
I’m proud to be a ‘distinguished friend’ of The Migration Museum Project and was recently invited to hang 100 of my drawings collected live in ink on the theme of home, in their current premises on Lambeth High Street.
If you’d like to see them fluttering along the high walkway like inky washing, they’ll be up until September 2nd. I’ll be at a special late opening there on Thursday 26th July. Please come.
I was invited to make an installation for a unique space in the lovely town of Lewes.
Come to a private view and reading of three massive collage poems that are hanging in the window of this sweet ex sweetshop. I’ll read the windows and there’ll be milling and chatting under the sherbet lemon sun… right round the corner from Lewes Station, you’ll find the Lansdown Sweet Shop and opposite that is the Symposium Wine Emporium where there will be a table and a glass of something chilled…
I’m proud to be a ‘distinguished friend’ of 
spilling the ink with Sophie Herxheimer 