Taking part in an arts festival - Sue Purkiss

 The first bank holiday weekend in May is known in these parts for being the Chaff weekend. 'Chaff' stands for 'Cheddar Arts Fringe Festival', and it began eleven years ago, when a group of artists in Cheddar decided that it had become too expensive to take part in the county-wide arts festival, and had the notion of developing a trail in Cheddar - the idea was that people would walk from house to house, and see the artists' work and chat to them about it. There were various add-ons: one was a grant for a local willow weaver, Sophie Courtier, to create a group of goats made of willow (wild goats are endemic to the gorge) which would be placed at the bottom of the gorge. They're still there, though they need attention every few years - willow doesn't last as stone or bronze does, but it's very embelmatic of the Somerset countryside. (Pause here for a very unsubtle plug for my children's book, The Willow Man).

For the first couple of years, I offered a free writing workshop as part of the festival. In 2020, there were exciting plans for the festival to be themed around the 75th anniversary of the end of the war. I decided with my writing group to produce a book, a collection of memoirs and short stories to do with the war. We called it Encounters With War. Putting this together was a really interesting process. I particularly remember the piece written by Phyllis Goddard, a hugely valued member of the group - sadly no longer with us - who was living and working in London at the time of the Bltz, and had written in a previous collection of an encounter with General de Gaulle, and of crossing the Thames one evening when the river itself seemed to be aflame.

But of course, we all know what happened in 2020. Covid came along, and the festival that year had to be cancelled.

After that, for a few years we had a table as a writing group, to publicise it and hopefully sell a few books. But this year, I decided to take part fully as one of the artists. Of course, taking part as a writer is rather different to taking part as a visual artist. If you sell a painting, you will hopefully make a reasonable amount of money in return for your work - and you can sell cards too. If I sell a book, I will make two or three pounds' profit if I'm lucky. It's just the bizarre economics of writing, and there it is.

So I knew I wasn't going to make any money - but that wasn't why I was doing it. So why was I? Well, mostly, it was about feeling part of a bigger community. For this reason, I wanted to be in a venue with other artists. (Well, and let's be honest, I also hoped to benefit from the footfall that the artists would attract.) And this worked beautifully. I was in a venue with Ellen Watson, who is a textile artist; Gemma Lane, a painter; and Nico Mann, a sculptor of beautiful abstract shapes. It was a delight to spend three days in the company of such talented, interesting, creative, and thoroughly nice people. For more information about their work, and the work of others, please take a look at the Chaff website, which has information about all the artists and examples of their work.

The venue. My books are on the table on the left, Nico's sculptures are on the table and shelves. The hangings were done by Ellen's textiles group.

We were in a busy spot at the bottom of the gorge, so we got quite a lot of tourists coming in to see what was going on, as well as people who had come specifically to take part in the trail, and there were lots of interesting conversations to be had. I'd hoped that my forthcoming book An Ordinary War might be ready in time. That wasn't to be, but I had the cover on display and was able to chat to people about it. And there were extra treats too: friends I used to teach with back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and lots of other more recent friends whom it was lovely to catch up with. And it was specially precious to meet the remarkable Phyllis Goddard's daughter-in-law, who said how much the writing group had meant to her. I sold a small but respectable number of books too - Warrior King, which is about Alfred the Great and his daughter Aethelflaed and is mostly set on the Somerset levels not far from here, was the most popular.

But before the festival could take place, an enormous amount of work had to be put in by the committee, who were all fantastic organisers, and very patient with those of us who were at times slightly bemused by the requirements of social media communication. In partuclar, I'm thinking of potter Jo Brimble, who came up with brilliant posts on Instagram etc (and helped me to concoct some photographs of my work which weren't just book covers), and Adam Clutterbuck and Lucy James, who sorted us all out with charm and patience. 

All in all, it was an overwhelmingly positive experience. My only regret is that I wasn't able to get round and see many of the other artists' work - and there are a lot of them now: over 40 this year. Next year, perhaps!