The Handwriting Club with Sally Kindberg

Posted on October 15, 2026 by SallyK

Why handwriting?

The next Handwriting Club is on October 15th at Swedenborg House – check out their website for times, tickets and my next event later this month.

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Sally Kindberg in Norwich

Posted on September 30, 2026 by SallyK

Last week I visited a school outside Norwich to run one of the RLF Bridge workshop days, which included lively discussions about AI as well as practical writing tasks for Sixth Form students.  The school asked us to arrive at 8.20am, so after travelling from London, I stayed overnight at a hotel, hoping to have a room overlooking the River Wensum (as advertised) but unfortunately it was just above a busy carpark at the back.  I cast longing eyes at the little boats moored on the river, which loops round the city. Maybe next time, as I love rowing, slowly that is. Not much time to explore on this visit, but a kind Norwich colleague gave me an early evening whistle stop tour of its ancient cobbled alleyways, and a walk through the Cathedral.  Due to a throat bug, I tired easily although we called in at the Maid’s Head for something to eat.  A member of staff, obviously very proud of the venue, boasted: ‘it’s the most haunted location in the city … ghosts pop up everywhere.’ Didn’t spot any, just as well as I left to go to bed very early in preparation for next day’s writing sessions.

And, as my previous post was about postcard maps painted by ‘Maisie’ Peck, here’s her helpful postcard of Norwich, which shows several of the places I’ve mentioned.

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Artworkers Guild Table Top Museum 2026

Posted on September 28, 2026 by SallyK

What fun! It was the annual Table Top Museum event – you have to apply each time with a different collection.  I joined thirty other exhibitors with my collection of postcard maps painted by MF (Maisie) Peck in the 1950s and 60s.  Every time I visited somewhere I picked up a couple – one to post, one to keep.  They’re delightful.  Many are of the SW because that’s where I was born and where I visit whenever I can.  Are they nostalgic?  Possibly.  And even nostalgic for a time not so long ago when stamps weren’t ridiculously expensive and a postcard might even arrive before you did.  Peck’s work was usually published by J Salmon Printers.

So enjoyable at the AWG event when some of the 809 visitors – a record by the way – stopped at my table and pointing to a map, told me that was where they were born, or where they’d had a holiday adventure, or a relevant story.  I also included some of my own maps on the table.

I’d always assumed MF Peck was a man, but then was delighted to discover she was a female painter, though sad to learn that she, like me, was partially deaf.  She died tragically in a car crash.  However, her postcards still give joy, and can still be found tucked into the carousels of old newsagents etc.  For several years I painted maps for newspapers and magazines, including anecdotes and observations.

Other exhibits included tin whistles, Soviet baubles, coloured slides of animal sperm, Coke cans squashed by cars and abandoned lists.

Visitors were sometimes as visually intriguing as the Table Top displays themselves.

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The Museum of Dust talk and workshop at St Wendreda’s in the Fens

Posted on September 4, 2026 by SallyK

Yesterday, despite the frustrating vagaries of public transport, I arrived at St Wendreda’s Church Hall in March, Cambridgeshire with my Museum of Dust to give a talk and workshop. I rather like the idea of travelling along the old route of the Fen Causeway with my museum on my back, although in fact it was in a large Leylands carrier bag in case of wet weather.  As it happened, it didn’t rain, but it was very gusty.

Why dust? I was asked, and explained how I thought the tiny samples might evoke an event, a character or a location. Star dust was also mentioned. Stories about my dust quest included a visit behind the scenes at the British Museum’s mummy storage (I was researching something for one of my children’s books), a walk to the Treacle Well at Binsey, and a very brief exploration of the Great Wall of China when I was part of a book festival in Beijing.

Yesterday I was joined by 14 people including one child, a man who unpacked numerous models about the lines of the galaxies and a lady who told me about her dust experiences when she worked for the VSO in south Sudan.

The galaxy man explained that his surname meant ‘dust’ btw. His theories sounded a bit complicated. Sadly I didn’t have time to ponder on them but his models were impressive.

After the talk I encouraged participants to draw/write what they might include in their own museum – something they treasured.  ‘My belief in Father Christmas’, and a ‘smile from someone you haven’t seen for a long time’ were included.  The Rev Ruth (what a power house!) brought out tea and blackberry cake she’d made.  Her ministry includes several other churches, a prison and a nearby Army base apparently.  The afternoon was great fun, meeting a mix of lovely people and sharing stories, including my niche enthusiasms.

This morning I received this from the Rev Ruth …

Before I left March, a couple of people told me about the ‘Fenland Tigers’, some of the local population who were opposed to landowners’ schemes for draining the Fens in the 17th and 18th centuries. This morning I saw this BBC article … ‘I drank rainwater laced with sticklebacks as a Fenland child’ was the intriguing headline, and I thought about my walk from March railway station to the church, over marshy land once intersected by dykes, lodes and grimmers.

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Eclipse and more in Cornwall

Posted on August 19, 2026 by SallyK

After a prolonged train journey – rails were overheated, there were speed restrictions in place after two recent train crashes – I arrived in Penzance just in time to see the eclipse. My kind B&B hosts supplied celebratory champagne, and the special specs I’d saved from the 1999 eclipse were in demand from other guests.  I wasn’t really that interested either in the eclipse or the champagne; I was just relieved to not be in a city ill-suited to temperatures of 34º , and so happy to be back in Cornwall.

I wanted to forget, if only briefly, news of division and drought.   The sudden coolness of the earth as the moon gradually blocked the sun was welcome, although local seagulls shouted their displeasure.

An unpoliticised sea flag fluttered as later I returned to my tiny room looking out to the ocean and the headland of Mousehole.

There was a very high (Spring) tide the following evening.  There’s a stone slipway against the sea wall about a few minutes from my B&B. I sat hesitating on its edge before slipping into the sea.  Bliss.  And strangely for an English sea, not really cold. After my swim I struggled a bit getting back onto the slipway – the sea was very boisterous – but a kind Penzance lad gave me a hand.  The photo below is of a calmer evening …

Penlee House, as well as having a fascinating and eclectic museum, was showing an exhibition of women artists, with a machine to draw on afterwards.

The next few days I walked by the sea and gazed at it, my favourite holiday pastime, or visited galleries such at Newlyn and Penlee House, and nipped into (subscription only) Morrab Library set in glorious sub tropical gardens, only minimally affected by the drought.  I heard later that an area near Land’s End was on fire, one of more than a thousand wildfires reported in the UK.

I’d already booked into the geothermal saltwater Jubilee Pool, which somehow didn’t seem appropriate in such warm weather, but delightful nevertheless.

One afternoon I watched the Odyssey at Newlyn Filmhouse, walking there and back appropriately by the sea, and amused the following morning by this review in the Independent. By the way, re scary stuff , I think nothing can beat Ray Harryhausen’s skeleton warriors in the 1960s film Jason and the Argonauts. which Odyssey film director Christopher Nolan referenced when zombie-like warriors burst up out of the ground at one point.

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Sally Kindberg’s Hatch An Egg workshop at the Fitzrovia Fete 2026

Posted on August 18, 2026 by SallyK

A couple of weeks ago I encouraged participants of all ages to hatch an egg at this year’s Fitzrovia Fete in London.  Maybe with a surprise inside?  It was a draw, cut out and lift-the-flap kind of hatching, with a couple of my earlier children’s books to hopefully inspire participants.  And there certainly were surprises.  It was sunny, a hot day, the cover over my table lent a sort of pinkish hue to photos of the event.  People danced, fairies paraded and a band played as visitors made magic happen on my drawing table, one of several table where creativity flourished.

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Sally Kindberg and another Royal Literary Fund podcast

Posted on July 24, 2026 by SallyK

The Royal Literary Fund asked me to be interviewed by Jonathan Tulloch, another RLF Fellow, for one of their podcasts in the Collected series.  The idea was I would chat about my work process, as well as listening to and commenting on two other short podcasts by different writers, and also talk about the 100th anniversary of the appearance of A. A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh, and what Pooh meant to me. Meanwhile, to celebrate the anniversary, Queen Camilla played Poohsticks in Ashdown Forest, and in Kings Cross Railway Station concourse, a giant Fortnum & Mason beehive is currently advertising jars of ‘Hundred Aker Wood Hunny’.

The Pooh connection to the RLF is this: A. A. Milne kindly left a quarter of his copyright to the RLF; they then later sold the Pooh merchandising rights to Disney. When encouraging good writing practices in a University, and more recently in Sixth Forms in various state schools, and telling students briefly about the writers helped by the RLF (Dylan Thomas, D.H. Lawrence, Bram Stoker, Ali Smith and many others), students often look blank until I mention Winnie the Pooh, and yes, they recognise him.  They were occasionally mildly amused when I explained that indirectly, he pays me to come into their schools.  But sadly, I now had to admit to an awful truth.  I never read Winnie the Pooh as a child, and never was it read to me.  During the week before the podcast recording, I read the book, and was delighted by its characters and the general feeling of optimism, although wondering how Milne and Shepard could have come up with this despite both, in different circumstances, having witnessed the horrors of the First World War.  Perhaps that’s the point.  Visiting Hundred Aker Wood is an escape into a gentler, happier world.

My childhood was fractured by uncertainties.  Some of it was spent unwillingly with my even more unwilling grandmother in her large Nottingham house.  At the age of about three, I badly missed my mother, who was elsewhere.  I often refused to eat, wash or have my hair brushed.  The latter grew so tangled my grandmother showed me a copy of Struwwelpeter, a book of dire warnings to children.  ‘If you don’t let me brush your hair,’ warned my grandmother sternly, ‘you will end up looking like this!’ She showed me Struwwelpeter’s cover portrait and I was filled with admiration.  ‘I do hope so!’ I said.  Many years later, I wrote and illustrated a book about hair, published by Walker Books.

 

 

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The Museum of Dust continuing on its travels

Posted on July 16, 2026 by SallyK

Adding to the Museum is always an adventure … meeting people on my journeys and discovering stories about a location, event or a character.  My miniature dustpan and brush, essential for the collection process, has to be replaced after a child chewed (and ingested?) the brush’s bristles.  Accompanied by the Museum, I’ll be giving a short talk and workshop at St Wendreda’s Church, home of one hundred and eighteen carved 16th century angels, in early September, see info in the poster above.  The Museum of Dust will be returning to Swedenborg House later this year, date tbc.

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Sally Kindberg and Robin Hood

Posted on June 20, 2026 by SallyK

Sad to learn yesterday that the giant oak tree, aka the Major Oak, in Sherwood Forest has died.  It was over a thousand years old, its ancient and gnarled branches supported by metal struts, but apparently the hot weather finished this old link with Robin Hood.  Maybe he hid in its branches when hiding from the Sheriff of Nottingham, who knows, but the tree and Robin were definitely part of my childhood lore.  The four frames here are part of an early iteration of my mystery/memoir comic strip story.

As a child I watched the TV series featuring Richard Greene as Robin Hood, another early hero, and at a much later visit to the ancient oak, picked this leaf before investigating the disappointing Sherwood Forest cafe nearby. Where were the Merry Men?

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Angels in the Fens

Posted on May 31, 2026 by SallyK

After hearing a compelling podcast by Robert Macfarlane about a church full of extraordinary angels I took a couple of trains to the small town of March in Cambridgeshire. The walk from the station to the church goes through the town for about a couple of miles, crossing the river Nene. I discovered afterwards the road is part of the Fen Causeway; before the marshland was drained, the church would probably have been on an island.  I’d noticed glints of small waterways on my train journey here, and the dark purple, almost black colour of the soil, due to its peatiness.

Earlier I’d contacted the Reverend Ruth at the church of St Wendreda, whose hammer beam roof space houses these winged marvels. Their wings are based on those of the hen or marsh harrier which would have been a common sight in the 16th century, when these were carved out of oak by two brothers, the Rollesburys of Norfolk.

I’m rather keen on angels, and was excited at the prospect of seeing 118 of them at one go.  There may actually be 120 angels, but they can be tricky to count. There are carved saints as well, including statues of St Wendreda, possibly a seventh century Saxon princess, and her sister of Ely Cathedral fame, St Etheldreda.

To get a clearer sight of the angels, it’s best to lie on the church floor.  ‘Sometimes people have difficulty getting up again,’ Ruth said.  It’s not just the physical effort of getting up off the floor.  The angels are almost overwhelming.  How much more so if you lived hundreds of years ago, and were more aware of their spiritual meaning.

On one wall hang images of William and Alice Dredeman, who funded the carvings, exchanging Latin comments in elegant speech bubbles above their heads.  William, a canny Tudor networker, may be the reason the angels were never destroyed during the Reformation’s vandalism.  Or maybe the angels were just too high to reach? Sadly the angels are currently imperilled by a practical threat as the church spire is collapsing. As the Reverend Ruth kindly supplied tea and cake later she explained how it’s possible to sponsor an angel to provide funds needed to repair the spire.

Later this year I’m hoping to visit St Wendreda again and give a talk/run a workshop in aid of the fund. Dates to be confirmed.  Meanwhile I’ve added some dust, some of it having drifted down from 16th century celestial beings, to my Museum of Dust.

 

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