Gernika is the happiest town in the world. Its affairs are run by a group of peasants who meet beneath an oak tree and always make the fairest decisions.      Jean-Jacques Rousseau c.1760

From the village of Mundaka, we boarded a single-track railway line which took us through tidal flats and salt marshes, past sun-scorched fishing boats and pampas grass. Yellow-billed storks sat motionless on the branches of bleached trees and, in the distance lay the snow-covered mountains of Cantabria.

The first thing you notice about Gernika (the Basque spelling is preferred), is that, unlike its near neighbours, Bilbao and San Sebastian, there are no shady, narrow streets, no ornate iron railings, no covered wooden balconies, no clothes drying on washing lines. Gernika is a modern town, open and spacious, full of plazas, parks and apartment buildings.

The Basques are an ancient people with a long history of self-reliance and a strong desire for autonomy. The Basque Republic was founded in Gernika in October 1936 in the shadow of the Gernika oak tree, which, over hundreds of years, has evolved into a symbol of freedom for all Basque people.

The Spanish Civil War began in July 1936. Initially, Franco was pre-occupied with the Republicans in the south but, by the spring of 1937, he and his generals had turned their attention to the Basques in the north.

Monday April 26^th was market day in Gernika and people from all over Vizcaya were in town to buy food and livestock. The fighter planes with their machine guns were the first to arrive, weaving and dipping, flying so low that their wing tips stroked the grass along the riverbank. They were closely followed by the bombers. The two worked in shifts and flew in waves across the town. Relentlessly. For three hours. Around 5pm, the bombers began to drop incendiary cluster bombs: They came down like rain, like silver pencils that exploded. Through the dust and the smoke they looked like hundreds of candle flames burning. We found some that had not exploded. They were all engraved with the German eagle. (Jose Ramon Segues). Hitler had agreed to support Franco in the bombing of Gernika as it offered him an opportunity to test new weapons and strategies. Intense aerial bombardment later became a significant part of his Blitzkrieg tactics.

By nightfall, the fires were so intense and the debris so overwhelming that many survivors, calling from beneath the rubble, could not be rescued. That was horrible – more horrible than the bombing itself (Carmen Zabaljauregi).

1,654 people were killed that day and 85.22% of the buildings in the town were destroyed. Franco’s army never acknowledged responsibility for the attack. On the contrary, he blamed the Basque republicans, claiming that they had exploded dynamite in the sewers and used gasoline to set the fires. Priests were brought to Gernika to perpetuate the story from the pulpits. Those who disputed it were given prison sentences and children in schools were  ‘re-educated’. It was not until Franco died in 1975 that the narrative began to shift in Spain. It was not until 1997 that Germany finally acknowledged responsibility for its role in the bombing of Gernika.

On May 1^st 1937, just five days after the bombing, Pablo Picasso, who was living in Paris, began work on Guernica. He offered the painting, on extended loan, to the Museum of Modern Art in New York with the understanding that it would remain outside Spain until such time as democracy was re-established in his homeland. It was not until 1981 that Guernica, travelling on a commercial flight from New York to Madrid, arrived in Spain. As the plane touched down at Barajas airport, the captain made an unexpected announcement: Ladies and Gentlemen, Guernica has returned to Spain.

As we made our way back up the coast to Mundaka, I thought about the people of Gernika, who like the citizens of Mariupol, Aleppo and Hiroshima, awoke with ordinary expectations for the day ahead. By nightfall, in the words of Joseba Elosegui: There were people standing in front of the place where their homes had been, screaming the names of their loved ones who were missing.

The Day Guernica Was Bombed – A Story Told by Witnesses and Survivors  William L. Smallwood

Yesterday I lost my wallet. By late morning, having conducted repeated searches of the same pockets and all the rest, I decided that it was time to call the bank. My money was safe and that was a relief, but where was my velvet purse with its white beaded stitching? – a gift from a friend in America.

In 1992, we were living in Switzerland. Our daughter Polly, who was 3 years old at the time, had a favourite bear who was her constant companion. At the English Church Christmas Bazaar in Bern that year, she lost him. Anticipating weeks of tears and sleepless nights, I put a small ad in the newspaper offering a reward to anyone who found him. Polly remained strangely calm, explaining that Bear had gone to the North Pole to help Father Christmas. He’ll be back in the New Year, she assured us.

Sure enough, in early February, a parcel arrived and there was Bear. An accompanying note explained that he had been discovered behind a filing cabinet in the church office. The kind woman who returned him to us recalled reading about the little girl who had lost her bear.  She said she’d cut out the piece and pinned it to the notice board in the office.

We were over the moon. Polly was delighted too, although her reaction was more muted. I told you he’d be back she said.

Polly has a little girl of her own now and Bear, although quite elderly, still lives in the nursery alongside several newer, fluffier versions of himself.

I was getting ready to go to bed last night when there was a knock at the front door. A woman I had never seen before handed me my wallet. She told me that she had found it on the street on her way to work. She apologized for not returning it earlier but explained that she had only just come off her shift.

If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants  Sir Isaac Newton 1643 – 1727

Rikon, founded in 1926, is a leading Swiss brand of cookware. In the early 2000s, a factory worker, who had been with the company for many years, retired. His job had been to remove pans from a controlled heating environment and feed them on to a conveyor belt. As he took each pan from the heat, he developed a habit of knocking the base against a flat block of wood. This evened out any bubbles or ridges which might form once the metal cooled. This was not anything the man had been told to do. It wasn’t written down in any corporate manual. It was simply an instinctive movement he had developed as a result of his long experience on the job.

Within weeks of the man’s retirement, Rikon started receiving complaints. Saucepans were returned at an alarming rate. Pans were said to be chipping and surfaces were uneven. No-one could figure out why this was happening. Eventually, someone suggested speaking to the recently retired employee at which point his unique technique was revealed.

Over the course of 50 years, my parents, Peter and Lea O’Connell ran an English Language school. One of the important things I learnt, growing up in a busy school for foreign students, was the significance of accumulated experience and knowledge. In 1962, when my parents bought a former clinic to house their expanding school, they took on the building’s caretaker. Denis Clatworthy had been a ‘Desert Rat’, part of the 8^th Army in North Africa during WWII and my father liked to joke that it was in fact Denis who ran the school and without him it would collapse. In his welcome address at the start of each new term, Peter always referenced the office and the maintenance staff. This admiration and respect my parents had for the non-academic members of the school filtered through to the students. I recall that at the end of one term, Denis and his team were formally presented with an enormous card, signed by one hundred and twenty students. Thank you they wrote, for keeping our School so beautifully clean and nice. 

In 2005, I sold the school and a new manager arrived to steer the organisation in a new direction. I  suggested he speak to those who had spent their careers at The School of English Studies, the ones with long years of experience, the ones who remembered the successes and the failures, the ones  who understood the cycles of change.

A new broom sweeps clean but an old broom knows the corners.   

In 1953, my father, Peter O’Connell, was teaching at Groton School in Massachusetts. Shortly before he returned to England for the summer vacation, he was asked to direct Groton’s Bellringing Society for the autumn term. His understanding of the rules of bellringing was minimal and he decided to acquire as much knowledge and skill as possible during his two months in England. Within days of his arrival, he had made an appointment to see Mr. Hughes at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. Established in 1570, the foundry had cast Big Ben, the bells of St. Paul’s, Westminster Abbey and the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. Peter had an abiding belief that learning from the best possible teachers gave you the best possible chance of joining the ranks of excellence.         

I spent two fascinating hours with Mr. Hughes who is related to the original family. He received me in his office – a low ceilinged, panelled room with pictures of bells and cathedrals on the walls. He wore a velvet bow tie and reminded me of one of Dickens’ Cheeryble brothers. He was most affable and spoke of Groton with affection. He first went there in 1908 and knew Mr. Sturgis well. He thought the ringing execrable. He took me through the foundry and told me countless stories of bells. He also put me in touch with the most suitable ringers from whom I can learn.

The following evening, Peter made his way to Hounslow to meet John Chilcott a young, eager and charming fellow and one of the finest ringers in the country. Mr. Chilcott, a senior ringer at St. Paul’s Cathedral, had, just a few weeks earlier, led a four hour peal for the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth. He took Peter to a rural church in Cranford to practice on a bell cast in 1380. It was here I learnt how little I know. They ring very fast and without calling leads or treble plain leads. I failed humiliatingly but everyone was very nice and encouraging. We finished the evening at the Queen’s Head with several pints of bass and some handbell ringing. The association of churches and pubs is very appropriate for a historian. All historians ought to be bellringers.

On Sunday, Peter was invited to the bell tower at St. Paul’s Cathedral. Herbert Langdon led a 20 minute touch of Stedman Cinques. It was beautiful ringing and made our little efforts at Groton seem forlorn. He subsequently accompanied Mr. Hughes back to his home in Whitechapel for lunch a solid, old fashioned English meal with sherry served as table wine. What a wonderful old Londoner Mr. H is! He is the perfect Cockney and has a greater claim than most to that proud title. Not only was he born within the sound of Bow Bells but his family cast them. Peter was diligent about doing his homework. He listened to bell recordings, lent to him by John Chilcott, studied books and at odd moments during the day he rang handbells in his head. At the invitation of Mr. Hughes, he returned to the Whitechapel workshop to spend a day observing the casting process. I watched Ernie Oliver, whose great grandfather cast Big Ben, turning hand bells. I watched the mould makers, clapper and ironwork blacksmiths and carpenters on wheels (elm, ash and oak) and I learnt a lot of value to me personally at Groton.

Peter rang in many different towers during the course of that summer, including the Norman church of St. Bartholomew The Great in Smithfield, which has one of the oldest peals of bells in the world. After ringing, the little group retired for a pint at The Hand and Shears, reputedly the oldest licensed premises in the city. In spite of Peter’s dedication, he writes: I feel depressed at my slow progress. There is little improvement in my ringing skills and many disappointments but, I shall peg away and I think cope enough to get things on a sound basis next year.

Peter never became a particularly fluent bell ringer. The frustration he felt about his own shortcomings bled out and swamped the boys at Groton. He complained of their ignorant and loutish behaviour and within two weeks, Bingham and Keyes had told Mr. O’Connell that they didn’t like bell ringing and were quitting. Peter was undaunted and arranged for the school carpenter to build a cabinet for the handbells. He also took the clapper bolts to the blacksmith in  the nearby town of Ayer for repair and asked him to install steel bars in the ringing chamber in order to secure the tower for the boys. Sometimes practice went well the boys are beginning to feel the meaning of rhythm and to sense the enjoyment gained from correct ringing and fast clean striking. From time to time, Williams and Schieffelin came to his study after supper and together they rang handbells We got through Grandsire Doubles double handed, after a bit of a struggle. On November 7^th, he writes I lost my temper this evening and shouted the boys down. I also turned Higginson out of the tower for fooling with the ropes.

Douglas Brown arrived at Groton as a third former in the fall of 1953 and joined Peter’s bellringing group. After graduating from Harvard, he spent a decade building church organs before returning to Groton in 1970. As well as teaching woodwork, Douglas was in charge of bellringing. He recalls that in the winter of 1972, my father returned to Groton for a visit and complained about the lack of adult supervision in the chapel tower, something Peter considered to be both irresponsible and dangerous. Douglas assured him that safety was not being compromised but Peter insisted on climbing the bell tower to reprimand the boys for their folly. They must have been both startled and mystified by the sudden appearance of this hapless Englishman who clearly had neither the authority to be questioning the rules of the school, nor to be scolding its students for what he considered to be improper behaviour.

My father encouraged me to become a bellringer and, on a few occasions, I joined him in the bell tower at St. Mary and St. Eanswythe in Folkestone but it felt too much like corporal Maths to me. I either lost control of the rope or lost count of the bell calls. This ultimately allowed my father to reign supreme as our family’s most accomplished and experienced bellringer, a status he assumed with pride.

Peter’s friendship with Mr. Hughes endured. The latter sent letters, written on elegantly headed, onion-skin notepaper, sharing news of bells and festivals, offering advice on clapper stays and ringing technique and commiserating with my father on his disappointments: I am sorry to hear that Groton ringing has not been very successful this past year; perhaps the arrival of Wintie and Sam over here and visits to Towers may be of such help that when they return they will be of greater help to you. We are just as busy as ever. In about three weeks we shall be trying out the new twelve, Tenor 34cwt at St. Giles’ Cripplegate. I am going to Liverpool next weekend for a ringing ‘do’ at the Cathedral to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the laying of the foundation stone. Times were good for the Whitechapel Bell Foundry and, the following year, Mr. Hughes writes We are just piled up with handbell orders for the U.S. and the waiting list is now over twelve months. In 1955, Mr. and Mrs. Hughes visited the East Coast of America and were disappointed to learn that Mr. O’Connell was no longer teaching at Groton.

In December 2016, it was announced that, after 450 years, the Whitechapel Bell Foundry was to close. The owners, Mr. and Mrs. Hughes attributed its closure to declining trade. The days of being piled up with orders for hand, church and cathedral bells had long gone. I decided to visit the foundry before it disappeared. The building is much as I had imagined it – a wooden, butterscotch-coloured store front with Palladian windows and brass signs. Inside, glass fronted cabinets showed old photographs of famous bells, including the 9/11 Bell, cast and gifted to the people of New York on the first anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Centre. The inscription read: To the greater glory of God and in recognition of the enduring links between the City of London and the City of New York. Forged in adversity, 11 September 2001.

My daughters had given me a bronze handbell from the foundry for my birthday that year and I decided to order a second one as a gift for Douglas when I next visited Groton. When he heard the news that the foundry was to close, he was shocked and visibly saddened. He told me that two representatives from Whitechapel had come to the school in the spring of 2016 to service the chapel bells. They had removed the clappers, taken them back to London and returned in the autumn to re-install them. Douglas wondered whether the foundry would continue to service bells even if they were no longer casting them. I asked him when, before 2016, Groton’s bells had last been overhauled, to which he replied, without a trace of irony Oh, about 50 years ago. Douglas said he thought he might build a frame for his handbell and I was gratified to see that he liked my gift and that it offered him the opportunity to reflect on memories which spanned more than six decades. Peter may not have been the finest nor the most forgiving of bell masters, but Douglas Brown followed his lead up the chapel tower and, in 1972, he accompanied a group of Groton boys on a bellringing tour of England. They rang at York Minister and visited the Loughborough Bell Foundry, which, following the closure of Whitechapel, became the world’s largest working foundry.

This article was first published in The Ringing World and appears here with kind permission of the Editor. www.ringingworld.co.uk

Chris is a soft-spoken, modest man who engages the world with a gentle smile and a kindly manner. Being around Chris always makes me feel relaxed and, for a few moments at least, I can lay aside some of the things I normally find tricky and sticky and painful.

Chris recently appeared on The Repair Shop, a popular British television programme where a team of master craftsmen repair the nation’s broken treasures. It is formulaic in its presentation but each piece and each story is unique. Chris brought his cornet to be repaired and, as he explained to Pete, the conservator, it was given to him by his parents when he was eleven years old. The instrument was dented and chipped, parts were missing and it was held together with sticking plaster: This cornet changed my life. It’s the reason I am where I am now, he said.

It was an inspiring and heartfelt story and I subsequently asked Chris if I could interview him and write a longer, more detailed piece about his life.

Chris Bassett grew up on a council estate in High Wycombe in the 1960s.  His paternal grandfather, born in the Welsh valleys, was a resourceful man, who managed a snooker hall and worked as an upholsterer. Chris’ father, Reg was employed at the local Hoover factory, became a national convener for the company union and, while his five children were still at school, he studied for his Bachelor’s degree. Chris’ mother, Betty, was orphaned as a small child and raised by a neighbour. As an adult, she struggled with her mental health and was hospitalised for extended periods. In her absence, Chris and his siblings were sent to children’s homes.

When Chris was eight years old, he fell off his bicycle and fractured his skull. A year later, he fell off a garage roof and fractured it again. He was taken to the spinal injuries centre at Stoke Mandeville and subsequently spent two years in Marlborough Children’s Hospital. His parents visited once a month but he didn’t see his siblings again until he was eleven.

Chris recovered physically from his accidents but he never recovered academically. He started at secondary school but was subsequently transferred to the adjoining vocational unit and it was at this point that his parents bought him the cornet. It opened up a new world, he said. Although he could no longer read words or add up numbers, he discovered that he could sight-read music. His brass band teacher encouraged him to join the local Salvation Army Band and the High Wycombe Youth Band.

He followed his older brother into the Army Cadets and, at the age of fourteen, Chris applied to join the British Army. He flunked the entrance test but the recruiting sergeant, recognising that the boy was musically gifted, suggested he apply directly to the Royal Green Jackets. He was accepted but had to give up his cornet in exchange for the French horn. Two years later, Chris won a place at the Royal Military School of Music in Twickenham.  I loved my time in the army, he told me. I was a musician, not a soldier and we toured the UK every year, playing at ceremonies and marching displays, school concerts and fetes.

He left the army in 1975 and worked as a postman, a Securicor manager and a fireman, before training as a ventriloquist and puppeteer. In 2004 Chris began working in secondary schools, supporting pupils, especially teenage boys, with emotional, behavioural and mental health needs.

After he retired in 2020 he applied to be a volunteer mentor for GRIT – Growing Resilience in Teenagers. At the interview, Chris was asked to speak about his own experiences with resilience and positive change and he recounted the story of his cornet. It was Claire on the  interview panel who suggested he contact The Repair Shop.

When Chris’ cornet was unveiled, he was deeply moved. He gently picked up the instrument and played it again for the first time in fifty years. He chose Edelweiss, he explained, because it was the first piece he had ever played in public. I never got to say thank you to my Mum and Dad because by the time I realised the impact this cornet had had on my life, it was too late. I don’t know why they bought it, but I’m so grateful they did. It was a life changer. I’d like to think that they are proud of me.

The injuries Chris sustained as a boy have been disturbingly echoed in the life of his youngest son. In 2011, at the age of nineteen, Matthew suffered a spinal cord injury in a swimming accident which left him a tetraplegic. Just like his father, he neither leads with, nor defines himself by his injury. In interviews he is relaxed, engaged and quick-witted. Since his accident, Matthew has got married to Amanda, climbed Mount Snowdon, gone skiing in Sweden and, last year he went surfing off the Gower Peninsula. I made peace with the sea again, he said. Life isn’t defined by what I can’t do – it’s about what I can do. If you’ve got the right attitude, you can do more or less anything. It’s about looking at the small things that create something important for you.

As we came to the end of our time together, Chris took his shiny old cornet out of its new carrying case and, at my request he played Edelweiss, a song which always reminds me of my Swiss mother.

Chris Bassett on The Repair Shop BBC iplayer: Series 7 Episode 40

Matthew Bassett on Weatherman Walking, Surf’s Up BBC iplayer

January 5^th, 2022 marked the one hundredth anniversary of the death of Sir Ernest Shackleton, the polar explorer who died during his final journey to the Antarctic at the age of forty seven.

In 2002, a television series, recounting the story of Shackleton’s 1914 journey to the South Pole, received international acclaim. As it was filmed on location in Iceland and Greenland, the actors experienced some of the conditions under which the early polar explorers would have travelled across the Antarctic.

Our daughters, Polly and Lucy were pupils at St. Christopher, Letchworth where the uncle of a boy in the Junior School had had a major role in the film. The school invited him to a morning assembly to speak about his experiences on location. His talk was enthralling and his pitch was perfect, providing tense excitement without being boastful or overly inflated. During the Q+A session, I expected the children to ask questions about the extreme temperatures, the presence of dangerous animals and how the actors spent their time when they weren’t filming. Instead, the questions were very personal: Do you live in a flat or a house? Do you have any pets? What’s your favourite food?’ The Head teacher was clearly embarrassed and encouraged the pupils to be relevant to the topic in hand. The children’s interest, however, was focussed on Jake’s uncle and not on his life as a working actor. What kind of man was he? How and where did he live? Was he kind to animals? They were indifferent to his fame and the people he knew; what concerned them was his authenticity. Was he a good person? Was he trustworthy?

Ernest Shackleton was a leading figure in early Polar exploration. He was undoubtedly a brave man. He was also an inspirational one. His men trusted him, they respected him and they followed him.

The Child is Father of the Man by William Wordsworth, taken from My Heart Leaps Up, 1802

In the spring of 2016 I was on a night flight out of Seattle. My travelling companions were two-year old Poppy and her mother. Poppy’s grandfather had been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and they were flying to North Carolina to be with him. Poppy told me long stories in a language I didn’t understand, in a tone that was both passionate and thoughtful. As we flew over the lights of the city, she pressed her nose to the window and said ‘Wow, Wow ….’  over and over again.

Poppy found the long flight difficult and she cried a lot. Her mother rocked and soothed her and apologised to me for the disturbance. She carried her little girl up and down the aisle but nothing could stop the crying. The mother was clearly challenged and utterly helpless in the face of her daughter’s distress. I sat with my eyes closed, managing my own feelings of empathy and physical discomfort. In a quiet moment, I felt a gentle kiss on my arm as Poppy offered me a small apology of her own.

In order to become a parent, you don’t need to be wealthy or a particular height or skilled in any way. There are no degree programmes, no pass or fail. As parents all we really have available to us are internships, the ones we received in childhood as we watched our own parents be parents. There are 7 billion people on the planet and only two of them are our biological parents. It is a unique and never to be repeated relationship. We talk about the places we used to live, the organisations we worked for, the people we were married to, but we never talk about our ‘ex mothers’ or our ‘former fathers’. The attitude and the behaviour may be there, but there is no language for it in any  culture. Our parents may not be what we longed for, but they are what we have been given and there is nothing we can do to change that. We can deny it, we can wish it away but we can’t stop it being true.

When we got off the plane in Charlotte, Poppy was fast asleep in her mother’s arms and, as we re-claimed our bags at the carousel, the little girl’s mother apologized to me one last time. I told her how much I had enjoyed meeting them both and how fortunate they were to be related to one another.

Folkestone’s most famous Channel swimmer is undoubtedly the delightfully-named Sam Rockett who, following his success in 1950, trained Channel swimmers, managed the open-air pool and owned The Frogmore Tearooms in Sandgate Road.

In 1987, Peter Jurzynski became the 329^th person to swim the English Channel. Over the next twenty years he made the crossing from Shakespeare Beach to Cap Gris-Nez fourteen times. His record time was 12 hours and 7 minutes. Today more than 4000 people, from orchestral conductors to garage managers, have successfully swum the Channel, a crossing that is still recognised as the Blue Riband of open-water swimming, the Everest of the seas.

Every summer, for more than a decade, Jurzynski, a city councillor from Massachusetts,  came to the School of English Studies in Folkestone to talk to our students about his experiences. One of SES’s Japanese students successfully followed his  lead and swam the Channel in the late 1990s. Peter, now 69, retired from Channel swimming in 2010, but still returns to his ‘adopted hometown’ twice a year. From his home in Naugatuck, Connecticut,  Peter spoke to me about his passion for the Channel and his affection for Folkestone.

One of the greatest challenges of crossing the Straits of Dover is the tidal drift, so although it’s only 21 miles to France, the shifting tides can result in swimmers covering twice that distance. Peter recalls that one year he was just 200 yards shy of the French coast when tides and a strong wind pushed him back out to sea. Eventually he surrendered to exhaustion. As part of his daily training, therefore, Peter would swim against the tide from the Leas Lift to Sandgate.

The waters of the English Channel are notoriously cold and infested with jellyfish, although Peter says he was more concerned with rough seas, wind chop and the fact that the Channel is the busiest shipping lane in the world: there can be up to 600 vessels in the Straits on any one day. Fog, swimming at night and high seas all contribute to the possibility that escort boats can lose sight of their charges. Much has changed since Peter first swam the Channel thirty-four years ago. Boats have GPS, and whilst he ate biscuits and drank orange juice on his ‘feeds’, today’s swimmers are sustained by electrolytes and energy drinks.

The first person to swim the Channel was Matthew Webb in 1875. A 27 year-old Englishman, wearing porpoise fat and red silk swimming trunks, he completed the crossing in 21 hours and 45 minutes. He was to die eight years later attempting to cross the rapids at Niagara Falls. A bronze bust of Captain Webb stands on Marine Parade in Dover.

Channel swimming is an expensive hobby and Peter, like many swimmers, was on a tight budget. In 1985 the cost of hiring an escort boat and pilot was £600. Today that figure is closer to £3,000. Waiting for the right conditions requires patience and, following his daily acclimatization training, Peter would spend time at Folkestone Library where he read the newspapers and developed a lifelong interest in British politics.

In 2008, Jurzynski underwent by-pass surgery and although he made two further attempts at swimming the Channel, he was not successful. I don’t view them as failures, he said. I’m not competing with others, but with myself. Some of the best swimmers in the world fail the English Channel. I made it 14 times.

Covid restrictions permitting, Peter will return next month for his forty-fourth visit to Folkestone.

My favourite vegetarian restaurant in Folkestone fell foul of the pandemic and is no more.  Its successor, The Nook is, however, a fine substitute. The eggy crumpets, soaked and fried on the griddle, topped with avocado, paprika and pea shoots are excellent and my American husband described his American pancakes as fluffy and delicious.

Eleanor Townley and her partner, James Canter grew up in Folkestone. They left at 18 and went to university – James to study Criminology at Southampton, Eleanor to read History and Politics at UEA. Then, they returned to their hometown, because … well …why wouldn’t they? In 2021 The Sunday Times, Harpers Bazaar and The Evening Standard all rated Folkestone as one of the best places to live in the UK.

Eleanor’s mother, Clare, has run Mermaids Cafe on the Lower Leas for more than 20 years. Her aunt and uncle, Jessica and Simon, manage the Champagne Bar on the Harbour Arm. James’ Uncle Paul, a former grill chef at the Savoy in London, ran Paul’s Restaurant on Bouverie Road West for more than 40 years. James learnt to cook from his mother. Between them, these two families know a lot about Folkestone and they know a lot about hospitality.

When they were growing up, the town offered very little in the way of cafe culture. ‘We all used to meet at Starbucks’ recalls Eleanor. ‘After university, most of our friends went to live in London. Now, they have all moved back to Folkestone’. She and James are deeply embedded in the community and they recognise that the support of family, friends and local businesses has been invaluable, especially during these globally challenging times. Siblings help out in the cafe and Eleanor’s sister, Rebecca, who works as an Assistant Producer at the Folkestone Fringe, painted the illustrations for the wall menu.

A family business is generally inherited from the previous generation. What’s unusual about James and Eleanor’s families is that their cafes and restaurants all launched at different times and are independent of one another, with each family providing something a little different to the local community. They are all located within walking distance of each other.  ‘It’s a lifestyle choice’ explains James. ‘The freedom to manage our own time is important to all of us. We work weekends and we close on Mondays and Tuesdays. On our days off we enjoy spending time together. Someone cooks, we go on trips, we walk our dogs. We all have dogs’. Bella, who is part Jack Russell, part sausage dog, sits quietly on Eleanor’s lap as we talk.

I will return to The Nook, not just because the food is great and Eleanor and James are friendly people but because I love family stories. And this is a wonderful Folkestone family story.

Adapted from an article published in Go Folkestone,  November 2021

Our granddaughter has recently learnt to say ‘Hi’ and ‘Bye’, sounds that are accompanied by an outstretched arm and a small wave. As any parent remembers and any grandparent knows, it is a captivating and charming development in the life of an infant.

Thea is generous and inclusive with her salutations. She greets the lady sweeping leaves, the grandfather feeding ducks, the delivery man runnning with his parcels. Sometimes the person smiles and waves back.  A brief respite. A moment of connection.

In Salinger’s novel, ‘A Catcher in the Rye’, Holden Caulfield feels responsible for all the little children playing in a field of rye. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around – nobody big, I mean – except me. He imagines having to catch the children before they all go over a cliff. His sister, Phoebe explains that he’s misremembered the words from the Robert Burns poem. She tells him that it’s  ‘meet’ not ‘catch’.

Thea has taught me something important. She has taught me how to greet those I meet in a field of rye. She has taught me to smile at strangers, not all strangers but the kind I am prone to overly-analyse  – the man with the growling wolf tattoo on his upper arm, the woman with the too-short skirt. Before my brain clicks into its well-worn groove, I try and catch myself. I smile. And when I do, I think of Thea.

Holden’s right. Those who are ‘big’ have a responsibility to guard and protect those who are ‘little’. But those of us who are big have also been provided with opportunities to witness the innocence, the single-pointed attention and the wonder of those who are still little.  Thea has taught me the value of smiling at strangers.

     Gin a body meet a body, comin thro’ the rye, Gin a body kiss a body, need a body cry;                                                       from ‘Comin thro’ the Rye’ Robert Burns, 1782