Flat Watery Lands

I love our marshy wilderness. Here's a superb little film of our home waters from ifitsmedia.

 

'A wide waste of debatable ground contested by sea and land, subject to incessant incursions from the former, but stubbornly maintained by the latter.'  Sabine Baring Gould 

Mersea Island Food Drink and Leisure Festival

May with it's darling buds, light evenings and the promise of warmer weather is my favourite month.  And (wincing slightly with that sentence starter 'And') it has TWO bank holidays!  Yes, TWO.  In England we have two long weekends each May which feels naughtily decadent (but very welcome).   The one coming up is giving me the jitters...

I've signed on the dotted line and will be standing to attention manning my stand at the Mersea Island Food Drink and Leisure Festival (24th/25th May).  Four hours at the Christmas NSPCC fair exhausts me...   I'm not sure I've got the stamina for two whole days of festival.

The Mersea Island  'food drink and leisure'  Festival is held each year over the second May bank holiday weekend. It's a brilliant event but has a title that grates on my sensibilities-  so much so I've put the words I don't like in italics (and inverted commas).  I have no sensible grounds for my prejudice and rejecting the event would be ridiculous, so I am swallowing that awful 'leisure' word and getting on with it.

Despite its moniker the festival is a cracking event.  Held in the grounds of a vineyard, bands will be playing, folk will be singing and food will be sizzling;  there is always a good crowd from bee keepers to belly dancers; lots to do and see and I will be there selling art, cards, prints and all the Leafy Dumas Illustration products I can muster. If you're coming along come and seek me out.

I will be on the lower lawn, sharing a blue and white gazebo with fellow islander, neighbour and silky-seaweed-cushion-maker, Vinny Stapley.  Vinny is a textile artist (there is more to her than cushions), click here for a peak at some of her work.   Click here for the festival website.

I am borrowing much needed trestle tables from my parents for this event.  I went to measure them last night and came home with a riddle on a scrap of paper:

Two inches more than two foot,
Two inches less that six foot.

Now, are two of those going to fit in Vinny's 3m square gazebo?  (Along with both of us, lunch, spare stock, a couple of easels, a daughter or two, chair(s), and all my accompanying paraphernalia.)

East Coast Events Guide 2014

Feeling a little bit proud (and slightly embarrassed) to be featured in this year's East Coast Events Guide;  I'm trying to forget the nonsense about pride being a sin.

The ECEG, run and compiled by Gill Moon and Tim Allen, describes itself as a 'one stop resource for all things nautical along the coasts of Essex and Suffolk'.  Published annually at Easter, the guide aims to cover all marine and waterside events for the year.  

As well as an article on the 'inspiring coastline' featuring artists and writers (and me),  there is a piece on Mersea Island (illustrated with my Coast Road map).   I am attaching the relevant pages as images below.