Moon Mania (by sarah)

A thing I bring - Moon Mania

A kind of extended festival or series of events to mark the Moon Landings and space exploration, looking at everything from ancient myths and legends through to the mineralogy of moon rocks and the politics that fuelled the Space Race using arts, crafts, engineering, story telling, rocks.... you name it!

Inspired by my dad telling me about the landings and the TV coverage around it where they had a mix and match of anything and everything to do with the moon - so I thought this was the way to go with it.

I have already done three days of Space Craft workshops with kids on a bit of a Moon Tour of the Libraries here in Gloucestershire and there shall definitely be more of that to come!

Having actually worked on meteorites and even a lunar sample at the Natural History Museum London, UCL, Birbeck et al many years ago now, I am excited to try and show people just what is so awesome about our nearest celestial neighbour, what rocks can tell us about our own origins and planetary science as a whole. Then there is the engineering, political and economic angles which are great discussion points (both the good and the bad). Then there is the art and craft aspect - I see art and science and craft and engineering as the same sorts of things they all come under one banner... Creativity and that creativity is something I want to bring to the general public.

Gloucester the city where I live is hosting a series of events including a Giant Moon at the Cathedral and the Museum is having a Moon exhibitions including a series of talks, story telling and rock handling - I am some of this but not all of it and the exhibition they have lined up is awesome including vintage telescopes and a chunk of the moon on loan to them! They have one of THE GREATS of story telling coming in and so much more!

So what actually am I up to with Moon Mania - well first off I have struggled to get funding but due to bookings of workshops and things and kind donations I have managed to get the ball rolling - I will also confess that I am about a year and a half behind schedule so am kind of just doing it all... RIGHT NOW. I am behind due to miscarriages and family deaths which suck but are a part of life and have actually focused for me how important stuff like this is - this isn't just a series of events it is something more, it is paving a future, it is archiving, it is wonder.

And actually I began to feel that the hunt for funding was beginning to cripple the project, stagnating it when there were bits of it I could be moving forward with. So I cobbled together some other monies - my own and kind donations from friends.

But what am I actually doing? The Space Craft stuff is fun and I love taking it out and about at festivals but Moon Mania is something more than that - something with the potential to leave a wonderful legacy and to preserve this momentous moment in the history of human achievement - WE WENT TO ANOTHER PLANET!!!!!

There are several aspects to the project:

Moon Memories

I am collecting peoples reminiscences of the moon landings for a website and later a book including getting them archived properly as I fear we are now loosing these memories for ever - my own dad died earlier this year half way through writing his own memories, for this reason I am all the more determined that it has to happen.

I envision these as cafe events where people can come and sit and talk to me over tea and biscuits - younger people may have stories about how the inspiration from the space race etc… formed some aspect of their lives even if they did not see the actual moon landings - kind of intergenerational awesomeness (or the alternatives).

We are loosing these memories as a culture, as a species, they are slipping from us with death and decay of synapses and just the fog of memory.

Dad's memories will still be including incomplete as they are and I will probably add notes of things he'd said about it all to me.

This part of the project was initially a minor part of something else several of us were working on with the Gloucestershire Archives and Heritage Hub but has become a large thing in and of itself. I am going doing some training on how to record interviews and archive them properly and am very excited about how helpful the hub has been with research etc...

Moon Mania Mega Make

This is a community textiles project and is a series of banners depicting various space related scenes using embroidery, appliqué, rag rigging etc… each banner will be brought a long to various communities/general public groups and gatherings etc… Everyone is welcome to do a bit of even if it is only a couple of stitches. I currently only have enough funds for one banner at the moment but hope to get more. What I would like is to again bring it along and let people have a go at it and in the longer term have places where the finished banners can be put up for exhibitions at the very minimum they will appear in the local community gallery.

I have already gotten a banner printed and ready to go on recycled polyester - I picked this material because it is recycled but is less prone to things like moth which attack natural fibres in the hope of increasing its life span. It is printed to make following what colour needs to go where easier and is a copy of Celestial Montage which was part of a multi media piece I did for the European Space Agencies Spaces project. The original is drawn in fine liner from a series of Hubble and other space images in the ESA archive. I thought the bright colours would make this a good one to start with.

This part of the project launches this weekend Sat 8th of June 2019 at a Scout Fund raising event in Cranham called Grove Fest (it's in the Grove funnily enough!) and is 4pm until late with live music, open mic, wet and wild play, BBQ and bar. That is Cranham Gloucestershire UK.

Moon Miscellany

A collection of myths, legends, stories, poems and science about the moon - based on the BBC broadcasts around the actual moon landings where they collected together every and anything to do with the moon. A lot of the poets and story tellers are local to Gloucester/shire and so there is scope there for performance. I have some amazing artists and writers involved in this already and even a trainee astronaut (not based in Gloucestshire but Australia but he was once a Stroudy).

The collection is still open to submissions but there is no pay other than royalty share as I have no proper funding (boo hiss), I have been amazed already at artists and writers who have jumped on board knowing this and am so grateful <3

These stories and poems are very much a part of the legacy and need to be preserved and more importantly shared, some folk tales for example are in danger of vanishing for ever and some poets have little moon poems that have never seen the light of day (or the reflection of it from the lunar surface!).

Science essays are wide and varying too, from bouncing radio waves off the surface for amateur radio to the organics round in comets!

Moon Meets

A general interest group that meet up to talk all things space, to make and create - a kind of variant on the Creative Teas that me and Alaric host - unlike most of the stuff this isn't open to the general public as such nor is it a specific event but more a group of us who are planning to meet up regularly. There are about ten of us so far and there will be some over lap with the community textiles stuff but some people need a none public safe space to just be and so that is what I am providing with this part - I am currently waiting to see if I am getting any funding for this part.

Moon Music and The Planet Pageant

This is the newest addition to the project and so is still forming.

Many moons ago... I attended a song writing workshop with Paul Murphy who was wonder and lovely as well as being an extraordinary musician. He really encouraged me and kept in touch right up until he died. He knew I mainly just played and made songs up for the kids at home and made me realise that that was alright and that there was value in that but also that there was the potential for there to be more.

Since then I have met so many lovely musicians and taken part in some improve stuff and now have so many many musical instruments! Sometimes I bring boxes of them out for groups of kids to play with.

Then I made the sound panel and designed the sensory cave with sounds made by actual celestial objects ie planets with magnetospheres sing! This was one of my first complex multimedia pieces and was part of the Please Touch exhibition in Cheltenham and later the Science Art Exhibition but I organised the latter myself!

The lady who asked me to be part of the exhibition is a wonderful children's improve musician and is a real motivator who has shown me that the key is giving permission to kids and grown ups alike to just play with sound!

She has also agreed to be part of the project! AWESOME

I then took part last year in the Spaces Project just as part of a scratch choir but it was wonderful and the musician in charge of that asked me if I wanted to go on a song writing day with a man called Boo which I jumped at (especially as it was free for us song writers types as was Pauls - still not sure how I ended up on them!). Within five minutes of starting this workshop I was writing about the moon.. and then events season hit and I have been out at all sorts of events including making junk music shakers with kids and some how BOOM there is a new part to the project.

I am currently trying to fix and decorate old tambourines and adopting the instrument making to be planet themed and adapting the stuff I did with the sound panel so kids or adults or anyone really can come and play. I even have a lot of coloured ping pong balls and rice grains to make rattly whizzing bouncing planets and moons and asteroids - yep I have black, white, green, red, yellow etc... and have tested how easily it is to paint planet texture onto the balls along with how easy it is to post rice grains into the balls to make them shakers and attach the cord so you have and orbiting pair!

I am making custom planets for the kids to get noises out of and am bringing in some amazing musicians for these workshops.

So that's the music part but what of the pageant part?

To me movement, music and the flow of what you are wearing with that movement adds something, having worked with the idea of dress up, cosplay, choreography, improve acting and parade via various events including the Smash Fest science outreach day and the amazing work the University of Gloucestershires drama students performed, the Stroud Drama Festival, the Aethelflead stuff last year not to mention my current work on Carnival.

The upshot of this is the idea of making costumes themed on space and planets and adding movement and dance to the mix. Having an eight year old who is obsessed with dance has also some what formed this concept.

This is something that can be as simple or as complex as people want and it will be beautiful.

Things I Need for Realisation

More musicians and dancers/choreographers aboard Broken instruments to fix up Electronic supplies - Cheltenham Hackspace is already helping me out with some of this. Spaces and groups to work with potentially over a period for costumes if wanted. Funding pots to apply for as currently I will have to charge for this to cover costs, expenses etc...

Space and Aviation Science puppets

I already have puppets which come out for story telling and science craft workshops, comedy etc… and though I do have two that work for space themed things Einstein (physicist) and Brahmagupta (ancient Indian astronomer and mathematician who’s work our whole mathematics system is based on), I would like to make two more these being Caroline Hershel (Astronomer who’s legacy is possibly greater than her brother’s and who had to fight for ever ounce of recognition but ended up being head of the Royal Astronomy Society!) and Amelia Earhart who was an aviation visionary and would be an important figure in helping me explain the aerodynamics and flight mechanics that were involved with the space race and flight in general.

Issue here is that I don’t have enough funds for the textiles to make them and comes back down to funding but hope that as the project progresses this will remedy itself.

Moon Mania Money

Which brings me to the bits I am charging for to help provide the rest but are fun valid things in and of themselves and includes actual space rock and moon!

Rock Handling

I have meteorites ranging from Chondrites to iron, including a tiny slither of the Moon and Mars as well as some space ship specs from various missions as well as terrestrial analogues (rocks from Earth that are similar to meteorites and can tell us a lot about how they formed). I also have a 200 yr old ships telescope to show people to talk about astronomy.

One of the bits of ship I have is minute but it has been to the far side of the moon! And I have a an inclusion in one of the meteorites that contains pre solar grains which is pretty amazing and special.

Big thank you has to go to Dr Rebbecca Wilson for helping me with this.

This can also be part of a larger workshop looking at how we find meteorites, analyse them and the nature of impacts, the biggest version of which contains a sit in sand pit!

Wants

I would love a microscope with cross polars and that can do reflected ligh as transmitted plus the cross sections (slides) to go in it of various minerals.

Space Craft

Kids sci-craft workshops including stomp rockets, junk modelling and puppets, this has already been going out in the Libraries and can be a whole event with six or more activities or just a single craft activity, there is a huge list of craft projects including some new ones. A typical workshop contains 6 different activities and lasts for a couple of hours. It is £250-£400 depending on exactly which crafts are picked and can include rock handling.

I am also offering smaller one off activities:

Stomp Rockets

Junk Modelling space station design

Star Coaster decorating

Space themed origami

Balloon Rockets

Solar System mobile/hanging charms

Cardboard telescopes

Alien finger and stick puppets with cosmic and star back drops

Astronaut window clings and general colouring in

Space dress up and toy play

Story Telling and Puppets

Making planet shakers - also part of Moon Music

Model solar system

Cardboard Hubble Telescopes

Giant card rocket - for colouring in

Messy stuff:

Mini Moon Lamps - papier mache messy

Paper Plate spin planets - paint

Paper mâché solar system - Large

Paper mâché rocket - Large

If an outside space is available then we also have:

Coke and mento/vingar and baking soda rockets

Impact craters - involves mud and sand

Clay Alien modelling

Tea bag hot air balloons

Water rockets

Still under development/need more money to make

laser cut model rockets for the children to construct

Sit in play rocket

Talks

These can including rock handing - I used to work on lunar samples and impact rocks at the Natural History Museum in London and currently will be doing talks in the Museum of Gloucester as well as going over to the Wilson in Cheltenham, I also have other speakers that I can bring in. And though the Apollo missions were an amazing achievement for humanity as a whole there are several aspects that are not brilliant such as it coming out of a militaristic state of affairs and the use of NAZI technology, not to mention the fact that we have not been back, and the environmental cost etc… so I am completely happy to run debates on these types of subjects too.

Talks currently available:

My journey to the Moon - about my time at the Natural History Museum and what it’s like to actually work on Lunar samples

The Kreepy Moon - an exploration into the geochemistry and mineral of the lunar surface

Apollo - a whirl wind tour of the moon landings

First Steps - how it nearly all went wrong - the tail of how we almost never went to the moon

NASA Is Not The Only One - how many space agencies are there?

Moon Quakes, and how the Sun Shakes - find out about Earthquakes and their planetary equivalents including what they can tell us

Ice and Fire - how we find the shooting stars that have come to Earth

Meteorites: A History

Craters and Impact Rocks

So What Now?

Well realistically I can do a lot of this - I have already been booked for about ten activities/talks but to bring this to it's full potential I will need more money - I will attempt to set up some sort of kick starter/sponsume page.

There are a couple of other things I would really love to fit into this but need to design them a bit more and price them up before I announce them.

A schedule needs to be forth coming too! I am starting the Mega Make on Saturday and having my first Moon Meet on Sunday - July is the actual anniversary month so that is when I will be popping out some little Moon Pouches and starting my events proper including talks at the museums etc.. but this is a long reaching project that I plan to match the duration of the Apollo Missions so not just this year though this will be the main/foundation one of course.

I am happy to do all of this stuff outside of Gloucester but once outside of my walking range you will have to pay travel expenses and if far enough away then accommodation as well 🙂

I am very excited and hoping my moon badges arrive before Saturday so that I can give them out to the Cubs, Scouts and Beavers!

September Events 2018 (by sarah)

Weds 5th - 1-2 pm Women Pioneers in Computer Science at the Museum of Gloucester by Alaric part of our Ada Lovelace Day celebrations - Cuddly Science Histories

Weds 5th - 7 pm Space Album Launch Party at the Guild Hall part of the Gloucester History Festival free but ticketed - Sarah and Jean are part of the album which celebrates local historical places and people

Sat 8th - Pride Day in Gloucester Park - stall selling art work and offering free colouring in - in the Community Tent - Gloucester

Wed 12th - 7:30 pm Book Club Talks - Ada, Ada and Ada - part of our Ada Lovelace Day 10 year special series - Cuddly Science Histories - Cheltenham Bottle of Sauce

Thurs 13th - 6-8 pm - Back To the Future Gloucester PechaKucha - part of our Ada Lovelace Day 10 yr celebrations - Cuddly Science Histories - Eastgate Viewing Camber (the ruins in the ground near Boots) - Gloucester History Festival - Gloucester

Sat 15th - 11:30 am - 3 pm Mighty Girls of the Past - Gloucester Library - kids fun day as part of the Gloucester History Festival including puppets, activities and colouring in. Ada, Aethelflead and Mary Anning are amongst some of the Mighty Girls of the past coming to join us - includes the ever popular sandpit dig (yes inside the library!) - Free and open to all ages and abilities - Cuddly Science

Later in the month there should be some poetry events but just waiting for confirmation 🙂

Rome-Christanity and the Ending of Worlds (by sarah)

When confronted with a graph on facebook showing the "dark ages" and the ensuing arguments over weather Christianity was the savour/cause of it... I write this:

The two events were entwined - the fall of the Empire was also plagued by natural and human fed disaster which led to desperation which fuelled the new religion which in some cases caused its own disasters but also monotheism in general was on the rise - if we'd have ended up with an Abrahamic religion which ever way we turned - the world was ending and they are doomsday/death cults on the most basic of levels. The loss of information and learning oscillated between the Christians and the Vikings with both also picking up the slack at moving education forward at various points of history as well as being the book burning racists at others ie one good period in England for education was due to Christian Missionaries from Africa (before the Norman conquest). History is a many threaded rug.

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This maybe why people get grumpy with me on Facebook. Obviously this is a very very simplified statement and that in general is the issue with history - everyone wants and was taught simple narratives which not only do not paint the full picture but are often twisted to agendas and that's before you look at how biased the original sources were anyway - remember history was written by the battle winners and as writing was often the preserve of priests of one variety or another they are tinged with that element plus of cause the story telling needs and until relatively recently history was seen as something that was given to you by divine inspiration - a little factoid is missing or inconvenient? Pray and get a juicer more interesting thing to put in your script. Many of the older religions ie Judaism have mechanisms to try and prevent these copying errors/mutations but even then you are looking at scripts that spent many generations as oral transitions before they were ever confirmed in script on a page.

So yeah the Roman Empire's falling - but you know it was gradual - it became too big for it's communication network - it tried having multiple leaders which started well until Constantine decided to murder the other Empire and his son - the kid was his nephew - he let his sister live. And yes he was the first Christian Emperor due to a miracle he saw on route to battle (probably a meteor breaking up before it impacted the ground - if there was anything at all - but equally it could have been something else - maybe even the divine). But it was a political move also, a lot of the wealthy in the Empire where playing with the new religion - it was hip and trendy - it had eeking out past it's oppression (just) - it was the religion of the town - pagan comes from the latin for country side as the pantheon of gods got pushed out of the cities and was considered to only be for the unenlightened.

I think it was his mother that was obsessed with the new religion and traveled to the holy lands to find the roads that Jesus trod - she in many respects is the first archaeologists we have on record and her somewhat mythical landscape is still imprinted on the area with many pilgrims still following all that she found and was told - though this was hundreds of years after Christ had actually walked those roads.

But this was only one time in the break up of the Empire - another saw the reclaiming of the Mediterranean sea as an Imperial lake and a rejuvenation of trade and art... only to be struck down by the first virulent plague out break - the Emperor survived - his wife didn't and he was fatigued and in constant pain afterwards - many blamed his wife for being a hoar (she was a dancer when he met her and fell in love).

Yet another ending saw a sop of an Emperor, who fled the city of Rome leaving his sister as a prisoner of the Goth's - yes this was the sacking of Rome by Alaric in 410 AD - there were fires so fierce that they fused gold coin and limestone pavements - it was off course a misunderstanding - climate change and war had left the Goths with no home and little food and they considered themselves to still be part of the Empire that had still been wringing taxes out of anyone and everyone they could reach. So they fled to the capital as refugees hoping for aid - the Emperor panicked and a lot of the damage was done by the Romans themselves.

This is often seen as The End and the Emperor's sister married Alaric's bother (can't remember if it was a half/step or full brother) and it seemed to be a marriage for love and not politics.

But that wasn't The end as there was Holy Roman Empire's and time periods shift and change slowly on human time scales. And things where up and down and up and down.

The end of Roman Britain is the beginning of Anglo-Saxon/Viking Britain - but it wasn't a distinct cut off it was an overlap - and one that was gradual as the Romans pulled out the tribes come and saw no resistance, warred and then settled. The Romans took their time pulling out and didn't even really all go as many of them where intermarried and actually native born by this point.

Because I have an interest in this stuff anyway and because it is relevant to my novel series I have spent my teens and adult life reading and watching and prodding at ruins (well mostly taking photographs) - not full time - not even really part time - I am not an historian or archaeologist though people keep insisting on calling me that at the moment (last night I was referred to as a "proper" medievalist when I went to speak to someone about their talk on medieval humour and art - they were worried that I would pick holes in their talk! O.o ). I have collected a kind of over view - being a geologist I tend to bring things back to the rocks and the earth systems and this is my take on it:

The plagues did a lot of damage - the plagues were caused by over crowded cities with good travel and trade interconnects - a transport networks for the disease vectors to move along. But the plagues could only get a hold of a population if and when they became malnourished as that weakens the immune system - this is the difference between it being an outbreak and it going full blow PLAGUE. Healthy individuals who are cared for have good chances of surviving even the roughest of illnesses. Weak, hungry, over crowded, tired and overworked people with little scope for cleaning, washing or just having contaminated water to begin with - they... will not recover - they will die and it will spread like wild fire.

Weather calamities muck up food production - hungry people war over resources which causes even worse resource problems as it cuts down trade - you get a sickness, starvation, war cycle - this of course results in DEATH - the four horse men are ridding out. Religion sometimes precipitated the disaster and ones that were avoidable or had the chances for some serious damage limitation where exploded into carnage (I think it was the 13th century European plague out break that saw families abandoning the sick because it was seen as a judgement from god thus increasing the death toll drastically - sick people need to be fed during the recovery period or they will die of starvation if not relapse of the illness). OF course religion at other junctures was the balm that allowed to people to care for they're stricken neighbours and to rebuild afterwards.

When proper pandemics hit with no modern medical care (possibly even with) - you have a crash in population numbers - civilisation relies on an intricate series of feedback loops that all rely on everyone doing their part of the system. If you loose a chunk of your population - you have a problem. Even 10% is going to have a huge impact - that is 1 in 10 of the farmers, the teachers, the army. You can't produce as much food, education and knowledge transfer falters and you are in a weaker position to those around you who may be having similar food issues.

So actually my conclusion in looking at history as a whole is that these turning points - the collapsing civilisations and transition appear to be connected to the weather - to climate. Whether it is an increase in drought, damp, stupid long winters that catch you expected or rising sea levels. Some of these seem to be linked to volcanic events and others to human activity ie deforestation by the meso-ammerican cultures occurred around the right time to be a factor in the mini-iceage which is thought to have been a big factor in the "dark ages" of Europe - these things are global but we often only look at the localised focal most relevant to us.

I have asked historians at talks and so on if they think this is plausible - most just look at me slightly confused so this really is just my thoughts on the subjects. I even think the witch trials and things can basically be boiled down to... something disrupted the system and people panicked. That something I think is nearly always factors beyond our control - what then happens during the disastors is very much humanities own invention... war, famine, plague loop-la-lopping around each other in diminishing loops until things have settled and are stable again. The "dark ages" is probably the last BIG one of these but it is not the only one and I don't even think it was the biggest it is just most people don't seem to realise what a wealth of very very old and advanced history there is outside of Europe.

Below the Surface (by sarah)

Alaric discovered this amazing website Below the Surface. This is a fusion of maintaining environments, urban upkeep, archeology, social out reach and art!

Cataloguing all the finds from the river Amstel in Amsterdam during train line works they have built up an amazing image archive showing the depths and ages of the objects, you can explore this catalogue, find out things about the civil engineering around the project and create your own displays with the finds that catch your interest.

This is all free and on line - the internet is starting to have these little lovely treasure troves of sites. This was what I envisioned the Internet being used for. For me though this project is tinged with a "could have been" here in Gloucester something like this was created back in the early days of the Internet and had the scholars and volunteers and council members enthused and then... it basically got unplugged and lost (early days of the internet I did say - things were different in those call up days!).

Many museums and research institutes are also putting their photo archives on line - Below the Surface how ever is a lovely smooth and easily searchable interface which is slightly more unusual!

There are over 700, 000 finds and the time periods spanned is more than written history - it is an awesome resource!

Word Fest (by sarah)

So Gloucester is about it have it's first ever Literature Festival in the form of Word Fest organised by the Cathedral. The line up looks amazing (I should probably say at the point that I am now involved with performance and stuff at the festival and I am notorious for getting excited and carried away with events! And am therefore not impartial! But seriously...).

I am hoping that my hospital appointment doesn't clash with a few things I want to go and see on Friday including a talk on Aethelflaed - hence me taking in Puppet Aethelflaed this weekend to tell people about poetry 🙂

Also I am continuing with my Aethelflaed Quest and Search for All Things Anglo-Saxon so really really hoping 🙂

There are lots of ways you can link history to literature - Anglo-Saxon monarchs are excessively easy to do this with as they were still running on the bardic tradition of getting epic poems about themselves published. And that's before you then have like a thousand years pulse of stories being written about them!

I like how you can follow the political trends of the day by how figures such as Judith from the bible is depicted in literature and art through out time. Aethelflaed is one of the Queens who was associated with this even more archaic symbol and Judith is very much a symbol - her name means lit. Jewish Lady O.o

I am running a little preview event this weekend at the Quays shopping centre to tell people about the festival, wax lyrical with poetry (and not just mine) and pester people with puppets! I will also have some writing workshop stuff with me and have the first proper outing for the Pandora Prose Story Cubes which I am very excited about and have been working on for months. I have been chugging away at the old WigglyPet Press 🙂

We will be by the Nike shop on Sat 30th of June 11 am to 2 pm and Sun 1st of July 11 am to 1:30 pm followed by the Gloucester Poetry Societies monthly session at the Waterstones in town. This is one of the regular poetry events that I host 🙂

The actual festival is the 6-8th of July - again we have the space in the Quays from 11 am - 2 pm, because bizarrely I am in more demand than I ever thought possible I am then wizzing over to Ledbury Poetry Festival which is also AWESOME and AMAZING and performing there. This means I am missing not only the Gloucester slam but, Poetry, Pie and Pint with one of the Stroud Poets I love - seriously Eley Furrell can send goose bumps down your arms with his word craft and performance. There are workshops and talks and Elvis... got to mention Elvis McGonagall - I have a claim to fame - he once said he liked my poem - can't remember which lit fest it was now or even which poem! (Ok so it's not a big claim to fame but still!).

Sunday I am hoping to get to a story telling workshop and take part in the Story Telling Slam - I love Chloe The Midnight Story Teller's work - when we first moved to the Cotswolds I was struggling to find creativity and inspiration that wasn't bloody water colours of landscapes or slightly more pagany hears :/ But we went to story telling night in the Village of Edge I think and there was Chloe and an American lady and they set my blood on fire again and I started writing again - this was at a point where I had been severely ill with Jean's pregnancy and moved away from all my friends and family - I needed that creativity - but more I needed the determinate fire and that is something Chloe is very good at giving to audiences. A few years later I met her again at a local poetry night in Cheltenham and she encouraged me to be getting up and performing and at that point I needed someone to say that to me.

Since then I have caught her story telling antics for both kids and adults when ever and where ever I can 🙂 Both the kids love her work and Jean even bought her audio book/CD with her own pocket money!

And lo! She is doing story telling for kids on the 7th - a free event so I know where my kids will be 😉 Nightshade's Tales of Tooth and Claw.

Then the Sunday - if I am not too worn out from Ledbury I plan to go to her Storytelling workshop - Hot off the Tongue and take part in the story telling slam.

Last I checked there is still space in both the poetry slam (sadly clashing with Ledbury) and the story telling slam - so knowing other performers and writers out there in the local environs - if you are interested you should email helen.jeffrey@gloucestercathedral.org.uk.