Festial

Yes, it really is today. Cold, damp and drizzly and I'm about to get onto my bike …

All welcome at the launch this evening if you happen to be in Norfolk! 6pm at St Andrew's Church, Wood Dalling for ale, buns and gingerbread. Oh, and a powerpoint presentation.

See you there.

A post from sunny Eigg! Just 50p in the ‘honesty plastic cup’ gets me 30 minutes on the internet. No electricity at the cottage, but the generator here at the cafe makes it possible to keep in touch with the modern world. Festial thoughts and ideas bubbling up, to be captured in the old fashioned way – in a notebook. Meanwhile the sun really is shining and the sight, sound and smell of the sea are never far away.

An unexpected delay has given me an extra couple of days of Festial time. A few more things ticked off my 'to do' list: churchwardens and church keyholder now duly invited to launch … more press releases sent … explanatory posters and flyers deposited in Wood Dalling church and village Post Office.

We arrived at the latter by bike in the rain. Publicity materials having been accepted for display by the friendly shop assistant (indeed, the poster instantly and very deftly being given a prominent position in the front window!), we discovered that the back of the otherwise-typical village shop is given over to secondhand books. Like predatory birds we swooped. I fancied a 1975 bird book; Trevor looked longingly at a thick leather-bound volume on the Domesday Book (just £1) and also a vintage-looking book of vintage cricket photographs (yes, well …). Anyway, we had come out without any cash between us, so resignedly we pedalled off home for a cup of tea through the slightly worsening rain.

Off to Eigg tomorrow, where there is no electricity and where Festial might well seem a long way away, were it not for the fact that I'll be taking research material with me. 'Popular Medieval Religion 1000-1500' might not seem like light holiday reading to ordinary sane people!

I'm also taking 'Medicine & Society in Later Medieval England' by Carole Rawcliffe which has been sitting here reproachfully for some weeks now while I try in vain to find time to read it. The cover picture is a medieval illustration of a man with Zodiac characters covering his body in the areas where they are (still) said to exert influence. So, for example, he has a crab at his throat, a ram on his head and a bull across his shoulders. I think I'm going to find a lot of useful stuff in there! And the author is a professor at the University of East Anglia just a few miles away. She's agreed to a meeting to answer any questions I have at the end of June, and sounds interested in the project. So I'm looking forward to that.

Back to other blogs. I'm enjoying Cathryn Jiggens' blog very much, and looking into her previous work I can see threads that link our two practices. Cathryn is interested in a 'collective forgetfulness' – and collective memory, forgetfulness and instinct are themes I explore in my own work, including (I expect) Festial.

www.world-tree.co.uk/festial.html

festial[at]world-tree[dot]co[dot]uk

The potters did a great job – the pots really look quite medieval, right down to the amazing pie-crust edges on the bowls. And it's not long now until they're needed for the first time on Festial's launch day, May 29. I'm feeling a bit calmer and more organised than I did a few days ago, but this may be a delusion.

Press releases have been sent out too, and I've had a response from BBC Radio Norfolk who are going to interview me on their afternoon show just after the Rogationtide feast days. I've never done anything like that before, but for some reason I don't feel nervous – yet.

I've decided, too, on the interventions I'm going to make around the boundary of Wood Dalling parish on the Rogationtide days, and luckily I'll need minimal equipment for them. Well, I say 'minimal', but by the time you add in camera, video camera, tripod, a packed lunch for two and plenty of tea (Trevor's coming with me!) I think sizeable backpacks will be required.