A Trip Down Memory Lane
Photo: © F.Hardy
Swindon Festival of Literature
Swindon Festival of Literature on Friday 10th May was an event like no other. I’d been invited to stay overnight at Lower Shaw Farm, which meant arriving there before my 8pm ‘in conversation with the author’ interview. There was time to drop off my overnight bag, grab a cup of tea, and then get a lift to the Swindon Arts Centre with Matt Holland - tenant and co-director of Lower Shaw Farm, who’s also founder and director of the festival. Since the 1970s, together with his wife and various helpers, he has run courses at the farm. You can stay there for a yoga or meditation weekend, learn printmaking, creative writing, mosaics, organic gardening, or take a family break.
At the former dairy farm, there’s a large building where cows were once milked and where a Circus Fun Weekend had just taken place. There's also a rustic workshop, theatre space, the farmhouse itself, where Matt and his wife live, and various outbuildings – one of which I was staying in.
But who would have expected to find a small farm, complete with pigs, sheep, and a former dairy, in the heart of the bustling railway town of Swindon? The town, known for its technology and pharmaceutical companies, the national headquarters for insurance company Zurich and the Nationwide Building Society, and home to the fourth-biggest Amazon warehouse in the country, is not the first place you'd expect to find a tranquil farm.
Photo: © F.Hardy
I was given my own dressing room at the theatre, which was a first for me. Then I went on stage, and the interview was among the best of the sixteen events I’ve attended in a year. And as for the audience…the questions flowed. Eight people in the audience put up their hands when Matt asked how many people were the children of refugees. The number eight didn’t include Matt and me.
One woman asked for the name of my grandfather’s stockings and tights company when he came to the UK. ‘Was it Lovely Lady?’ she said.
‘Yes, it was. How do you know that?’ I said.
‘My best friend’s father worked there. Dolfi Tupler. He was an Austrian refugee.’
I remember Mr Tupler well. He was a lovely man who used to drive my sister and me to Frinton-on-Sea for our annual summer holiday. I asked his daughter’s friend why he would have driven me from London to Essex, and back.
‘The family had a house there,’ she said.
Books for sale at the theatre. Photo: © F.Hardy
Also in the audience was a friend, Helen, whom I hadn’t seen since leaving Harrow School of Art in the late 1970s. It was great to catch up, although there was not much time to chat before I was whisked back to Lower Shaw Farm for a late dinner of homemade vegetable tagine. The farm grows all of its own herbs and vegetables.
My interview came straight after Hilary Bradt’s. The 80-something-year-old woman has travelled the world and run a world-famous publishing company. She’s clearly had some amazing adventures during her life, and hasn’t stopped just because she’s in her 80s.
All in all, it was a memorable evening for me – one that will be hard to follow.
Before the interview. Photo: © Swindon Festival of Literature
