Our farmhouse is only about a mile away from Dartington Hall so we live at home during the festival but it isn’t home life as we know it. It’s hardly home life at all; we spend about 16 hours each day on-site at Dartington flitting from event to event, checking writers have arrived, meeting, greeting and eating with the speakers. When we are here we find the house is full of family and friends who are helping at the festival so each morning starts with about 10 people round the breakfast table and ends with a glass of whisky as everyone reports back on their experiences and observations from the day. Ten days feels like six months but then it is all over for another year. The banners come down, Waterstones packs the leftover books, Van Rouge drives their Parisian fire engines away and we move our office back to Droridge Farm. When I went camping as a girl guide we were told that when we left no-one should know that a girl guide had passed that way. I feel the same about Dartington Hall. Thousands of people have tramped over the medieval stones at Dartington Hall, sat on the window sills of the Great Hall, walked by the herbaceous borders, but we try to be good tenants so that when we leave it is as if Ways With Words hadn’t happened. We remove all traces of our presence, then drive away to the seaside to have a last meal with our house guests before they leave.
“Do we feel flat when the festival finishes?” people often ask. “Do you collapse with exhaustion?” “Are you relieved it’s over?” No, no, no. Festivals can only exist for short, sharp bursts. They are wonderful when they are happening but I expect Michael Eavis is glad to return to milking his cows after Glastonbury. Droridge Farm isn’t a working farm so I can’t claim to be returning to my dairy herd but we are back in our barn; it is filled with Apple Macs rather than apples. Like Seamus Heaney we dig with our pens not with spades but there is a lot of spade work to be done before Ways With Words is buried for this year.
Eventually we start to think about forthcoming events. Ways With Words Southwold programmes have arrived on people’s mats, so in November we shall be moving East. But now we are packing to go to France to prepare for our Memoir Writing Course with Penelope Lively and Julia Blackburn. From there we shall move to Italy for our Holiday Courses in art, writing, book groups, philosophy. Mary Knott, Blake Morrison, James Long, Kate Adie and Michael Buerk will join us to run the courses in Italy.
Life can’t be all festivals but I do want a generous sprinkling of them throughout the year.
If festive living suits you check our forthcoming events on the website:
The Art of Memoir in France: 8-12 September
Holiday Courses in Italy: 27 Sept. – 4 October, 4 October – 11 October
Ways With Words Southwold Festival: 6-10 November
Bravo! We appreciate the work you put in even if few ever say so...
Posted by: Sullivan the Poet | Monday, 18 August 2008 at 14:18