The Ragged Optimist 51
Life in a bookshop
I’m back in Margate, and living above a bookshop. Which is quite the temptation.
To avoid buying lots of books in the few days I have been here, I have headed out, enjoying a staycation (in the proper sense of the word) while the sun is out. I have bumped into so many old friends - the brilliant painter Graham Ward outside Morrisons, printmaker Charlie Evaristo Boyce in his pop-up gallery above designer Zoe Murphy’s workshop, Jenny Duff at the makers’ market she runs at Turner (where I also got to meet ace illustrator and printmaker Mat Pringle - finally - and catch up with Hope Fitzgerald), Helen Heckety at Turner too, and a bunch of others.*
And I got to visit Sebastian Cox, a furniture maker with a real, deep commitment to an environmentally sustainable and fully regenerative practice. “We act as an example that businesses can be forces for positive change. We are for-profit, but act in the interest of addressing three pressing subjects: the decline of biodiversity, climate breakdown, and our wasteful material culture. If the first two remain unsolved they threaten the existence of all life on this planet, including our own species.” He’s based in the old Bobby & Co printing works, which were subject of a project I was working on that was shot down by Covid. It was great to talk to him about the heritage of the building he’s working in, which is next door to Bobby & Co’s old furniture factory. And to see his incredible work, including a wonderful model of Bayleaf farmhouse.
It felt so hopeful to see the old faces, the people who put so much into Margate before it was a certain bet, are still here, and to meet the new wave of people moving to town, in one weekend.
It’s always hard to build connections, when everyone is working so hard, but that has to be the aim, surely? The only way to a deep, Regenerative Creative Practice is through building relationships across practices, nurturing collaborations, sharing ancestral knowledge about the places where we live. It used to be that the Arts Development Officer at the local council would at least go some way to doing that. I don’t know what the model is now, fifteen years into austerity government, but maybe we can work it out together.
*It takes ages to put all those links in. Please click them, and find some great people to follow on Instagram.
People in Sussex who are depressed, lonely or anxious are to be offered free, easily accessible support through the Friendship Bench project. It's a project pioneered in Zimbabwe which has been well researched and found to be surprisingly effective.
A north London stream that has been constrained within a narrow concrete channel since the 1950s is flowing freely again. Burnt Oak Brook, which runs through Watling Park, had been forced into a narrow channel but now has a restored wide, sloping meandering path which will allow plants and animals to thrive and which will provide more space for water after heavy rain.
I'm starting the UK chapter of the Kat Abughazaleh fan club. A proper, bold vision for a better USA - a politics of hope, not hate or fear.
$30 billion in US medical debt has been wiped out by a charity. It follows on from Michael Sheen wiping out a million pounds of Welsh debt.
A 100-year-old Western Galápagos Tortoise at Philadelphia Zoo has become a mother for the first time. Dad’s the same age. The sleepless nights will be hell for ‘em.
I love the Guardian's Pass Notes series. Here they are on the de-extinction of Dire Wolves.
Also in The Guardian - Chanel Tapper's extraordinary tongue. C’mon, that’s got to make you smile.
Thomas Pynchon is publishing Shadow Ticket, his first novel in more than a decade. The elusive 87-year-old author’s new book is a noir caper set during the big band era following a detective in search of a cheese heiress. Bad form announcing it now - they could have waited for the annual Pynchon In Public Day, when you’ll find me reading The Crying of Lot 49 somewhere in Margate.
A former daffodil farm is to be returned to carbon-storing wetland. The project at 721-acre High Fen site in Methwold, Norfolk, is being undertaken by a private company called Nattergal. No beavers?
There is a beaver at Park In The Past, but nobody’s sure how it got there. Set in an ancient Welsh landscape, the park comprises 120 acres of outstanding natural beauty offering woodlands and wetlands, a magnificent 35-acre lake and the gorgeous River Alyn, and a beaver keeps munching on trees. Park In The Past are building a full-scale Roman fort (the first built in - checks notes - 2000 years) and a Celtic village.
And finally - I’ve been working on Dan Thompson’s Seaside History Club, for First Friday Margate, as part of the UK-wide Beach of Dreams Festival. Put Friday 2nd May in your diary, and come down to Margate to see me. I’ve got badges.
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