Crouch End Festival Crowdfunding is now live, live, live!

I've written before about the wonder thing that is The Crouch End Festival. The event gives much pleasure to so many people from school kids to pensioners - everyone wins and the whole area comes alive with creativity, celebration and community. 

It's a great endorsement of why Crouch End is such a great place to live and work in.

However, the festival cannot happen properly without local support and so with a crowdfunding campaign The Crouch End Festival organisers made it really easy for you to donate and be part of the festival.

You can donate as little as £10 and in return you get a badge and we tweet about you and you get a warm fuzzy glow from really being part of the community and contributing to its wonderfulness. What can be easier than that? 

Make your local festival happen for the price of 4 coffees in one of Crouch End's coffee shops! 

Please, please, please help us make the festival happen by supporting the Crouch End Festival crowdfunding campaign - it really does make a difference to your neighbourhood and you just have to click here to start the process .

Come on board and help make the Crouch End Festival even better!

Crouch End Festival

6 - 15 June 2014

www.crouchendfestival.org

@crouchendfest

http://www.flickr.com/groups/crouchendfestival/

Crouch End Christmas Fair

The Crouch End Festival Craft Fair is on 14th December outside Hornsey Town Hall. If last year is anything to go by, it's going to be a splendid event, with fabulous festive gifts, festive music and festive spirit in abundance. 

The craft fair is part of Crouch End 'Shop Local Campaign' encouraging everyone to make a difference to the local economy and community by shopping in the local high street. So watch out for posters galore in shop windows and please support your local shops, local community and local businesses this year!

Christmas decorations by Made in Crouch End

Don't forget to leave your festive shopping for the 14th of December!

Christmas Craft Market

Crouch End Broadway

London N8

14 December 2013

Jazz and Swing in North London

Photo: BBC 

I've been loving the new BBC Two drama, Dancing on Edge directed by Stephen Poliakoff and starring the fantastic Chiwetel Eijofor and Matthew Goode, among other big stars. It's a story of a jazz and swing band in 1930's London, and the acting, direction, plot and above all the music have really impressed me.

So when I had an email  from the wonderful Jazz and Swing band Down for the Count that they will be at The Music Palace in Crouch End this Friday (today, sorry for the last minute notice), I immediately had an image in my head from Dancing on Edge and thought I must go. I had a fantastic evening when this talented group of musicians performed as part of the Crouch End Festival last year. Plus the venue is but a hop and a skip from where we live, so even if there's snow, I am confident we can make it!

Today, the event will also include a dance lesson, which I am sort of dreading, because I love dancing but find it incredibly difficult to follow a pre-designated set of steps…we'll see how it all goes!? Talk about dancing on edge...I will report back if I dare…

4 reasons why I'll never forget 2012

Another year is nearly over and after such an eventful 2012 in London (Olympics etc!), personally I too have had quite a remarkable year. Here are the four major reasons why.

1. In January '12 we finally took the plunge on the property market and moved into our own flat in Crouch End. I cannot describe to you how wonderful it was to set my roots down again. (A few mishaps like being shut out on the balcony not withstanding) In the last 11 months or so we have grown to really love this part of North London, from its pubs (The Maynard Arms and The Queens), to its award winning coffee shops (The Haberdashery and The Blue Legume) to its fishmongers (Walter Purkis and Sons). The End is truly a lovely place to live.

2. The year 2012 also saw the first ever Crouch End Festival, a feat of local arts in the form of music, literature, dance, performance, bunting displays around the Broadway and much, much more. The festival broke all records for both the supply of events and spectators, but to me it was a fantastic way to get to know the local arty folk. (It's reputed that over 40% of the people living in N8 are working in the creative industries - no wonder I feel so at home here). I cannot wait for the 2013 Festival which I'm lucky again to be involved in.

3. The year 2012 was also significant for me because I published my first ebook, The Englishman. As well as having wonderful support from many of my fellow bloggers, who reviewed the book and/or let me talk about The Englishman on their sites (thank you Tania, Karen, Expat Mum and Ruth), it got terrific reviews (4 and 5 stars!!!) on Amazon. It was also a choice of the month at Indy Writers and became an Awesome Indie. It also made the N10 Show locally, where for the first time I read out loud from the book. That was scary….What's more the sales of the book have completely outstripped my expectations. All is now set for the next two books to be published in 2013. My tale of displacement, Pappa's Girl, will be out in January closely followed by a gentle spy thriller, The Red King of Helsinki. All I now need to do is to finish the next one…

4. Last, but not least, this year I found a diet that works for me: the 5:2 fasting. I've talked about it  lot here, but the fact is that I lost a whopping 5 kilos in the first two months! Plus the fasting has completely changed my relationship with food, so much so, that even during this holiday season when I decided to give myself a break with the diet, I've not been overeating as I usually do either. This is truly unusual and revolutionary for me. I cannot wait for the New Year when I will be starting the regime anew. And roll on 10 January when Dr Mosley's book, The Fast Diet is out (where this blog gets a mention).

So those were my highlights of 2012 - what were yours?

The Crouch End Festival 2013

This morning I had a great breakfast meeting in the award winning Crouch End cafe, The Haberdashery, with James Bridgman and Vicci Parker about next year's Crouch End Festival.

The dates of the of the 2013 festival have now been set (7-16 June 2013), and the planning process is in full swing. There will be a bigger and better website, more exclusive news Tweets, much gossip on a new Facebook page, a tiered sponsorship scheme, and many new events and acts.

Last year's Crouch End Festival exceeded everyone's expectations with over 170 acts, and thousands of festival goes enjoying, for the most part, free events in venues across N8. (My blogs about last year are here.)

This year we want the festival to be even bigger and better.

I am also delighted to announce that I will be organising new and exciting literary events during the festival. I can't say much about it yet, but I am very very thrilled to be doing this and cannot wait to spill the beans on the whole thing!

If you have a real connection to the N8 area, and would like to take part, please go here for contact details. Or if you'd like to be a sponsor, see here. With as little as £50 you or your business can have a visible presence in this year's Crouch End Festival.

So, put the dates 7 to 16 June in your diary, and keep checking here and all over Crouch End for more news on the 2013 Crouch End Festival. It will be a corker!

Alys, Always by Harriet Lane

Harriet Lane's debut novel, Alys, Always, was recommended to me by my old bookseller friend, Danny, at West End Lane Books when I was looking for authors who write about North London for next year's Crouch End Festival (more about this later). I didn't really know what kind of book it was, but trusted that Danny knew exactly what I like. And I was right!

Alys, Always tells the story of Frances whose unhappy and dull life as a sub-editor of a literary magazine changes when, on a cold winter's night, she happens upon the aftermath of a car crash. What follows is a modern story of one woman's quest to better her situation, yet this is also a chillingly familiar - and depressingly common - tale.

The first person narrative adds a psychological thriller-like quality to Lane's writing; the readers is never quite sure what is going to happen next, nor whether the main protagonist is completely self-deluded or not. Francis is clearly unhappy, but is she also dangerously unhinged? It's this unpredictability of the main character's intentions, which drives the readers curiosity, and renders the book completely unputdownable. (I read it in a matter of days.)

As well as being a fast read, Alys, Always is also brilliantly written. The voice of the narrator is sharp and distinct. Here, Frances describes twenty-something daughter of the well-to-do family she befriends, 'Polly's very young, of course; and on top of that she has the performer's transparent and somehow rather tawdry desire for attention.'

I usually dislike the use of similes, but here they add a double-layered richness to the prose, exactly what they were invented for. When Frances describes a meal at her parents house, Lane gives an insight into the relationship between mother and daughter which is pure genius, 'She passes me the cheese plate with its fussy little knife, the knife that forks at the end like a serpent's tongue.'

Alys, Always is an excellent read. At one level it examines modern life, ambition, celebrity and the morality of networking. At another it's just a good old-fashioned rollocking read. I highly recommend it.

Alys, Always
by Harriet Lane
Orion Books
£12.99

First day of the Crouch End Festival

In pictures:

Festival beer and scotch eggs at The Maynard Arms

Guerilla Bunting gang had been at A Special Interest, one of the Barboot locations.

Sold!

Me with Wendy Saunders whose wonderful paintingsN adorned the walls of Oddbins.

Barboot at The Haberdashery 

It's all in the detail: the light switch at Haberdashery Cafe loos

The nibbles kept the Englishman happy.

Live music

Next stop: Down for the Count at The Music Palace

This group of revellers showed us you're never too old to party. These OAP's (aged from 67 to 71!!!) treated us all to several professional sets of swing dancing. 

From left: Keith Madden, Anthony (who was recovering from a hip and back operation) and Linda Dalton and Marilyn Madden. 

Towards eleven o'clock the dance floor became crowded.

I am so tired from last night and suffering a little from my bad shoulder, so it's a mainly visual post today. Enough to say I thoroughly enjoyed the first night of the festival and cannot wait to see and do more over the weekend. With most events being free (The Music Palace charged us £4 each which was the only entrance fee we paid last night), this is truly recession busting fun.

Details of all Crouch End Festival events online here.

Bank Holiday Weekend and The Crouch End Festival

Today is the first day of the festival and I can hardly contain my excitement! In a few hours time I will wander over to Oddbins on Crouch Hill, London N8, to view Wendy Saunders' paintings while sipping on something lovely and refreshing, but before I do that I thought I'd let you have my highlights for the rest of the Festival Weekend.

Maud

Tomorrow, Saturday 5th May the whole of Crouch End Broadway will be filled with music. The official opening ceremony will take place at 2.45 pm on the main stage outside the Town Hall, but all day several different bands will be playing. One of these, which I am particularly looking forward to hearing, is London-based band Maud, who will be celebrating the launch of their EP, Navigation, at the Crouch End Festival.

Just knock on the door or call for a recital...

The Guerrilla Bunting parties will be stringing up their unique decorations, a Craft Trail with over 20 stalls will spring up all around Crouch End Broadway, including in Budgens, Oddbins, Monkey Nuts and Nest. There will be poets in phone boxes, an open day at Rock Around The Clock, Burlesque at The Music Palace, food, fun and garden activities at the Food from the Sky on the roof of Budgens, vocal Tai Chi by Jenny Roditi at the Hornsey Town Hall Square and comedy jazz by cellist Kate Short at the Coffee Circus. 

 

Sunday the 6th of May will see Hansel and Gretel being performed by The Crouch End Players in the Philosopher’s Garden in Priory Park, there's Sunday School at the Music Palace with talent on show from local schools, as well as a secret cinema with a Goth theme, and a live recording of short comedy sketches by Tin Pod Cast at Kiss the Sky on Park Road.

Invented Crouch End Histories

Bank Holiday Monday the 7th of May will bring you Kat’s Whiskers theatre for the young, Invented Histories by the Crouch End Clock Tower, 3 Games for May folk music festival in Queen’s Wood Cafe, May Day In The Park, as well as gigs and concerts plus Salsa Cellar at The King’s Head and a tribute to the legendary jazz musician, Chet Baker, at The Hornsey Parish Church.

I'm out of breath after writing all that, yet this is just a fraction of what's going on during 4th - 13th May in Crouch End. There are now over 150 acts involved - so get yourself down to North London to enjoy some music, literature, art or just come over to soak in the creative atmosphere!

Check out all the events on www.crouchendfestival.org.

See you there!

More about the Crouch End Festival in London

Here is a video all about the festival - hot off the press!

Crouch End Festival 4 - 13 May 2012

Visit the festival site here for more info. 

At the end of last year, when I told my London friends we'd finally found a flat to buy, and were moving to Crouch End, several of them said, 'You'll love it there - it's a very creative place'. At first I was flattered because this meant they thought I was creative too (several years working as accountant hadn't corrupted me after all), but then I worried that this term 'creative place' was English code for 'run down' or 'not as expensive as NW3' (which is where we were living at the time). Over the years I've got to know that the English very rarely say what they mean...

I also pondered over this statement because I couldn't quite understand how exactly a place shows itself as 'being creative'.

But after last night I know all these friends were right, because I attended a hugely energetic and creative meeting of The Crouch End Festival organisers.

This first ever Crouch End Festival is a brainchild of several people in a group called Crouch End Creatives, and it will take place all around Crouch End, N8, on 4 to 13 May 2012. There will be near to 100 acts, ranging from belly dancing to poetry readings and they will be performing in local coffee shops, galleries and schools. There will be burlesque shows, concerts in parks, knitting workshops, children's theatre performances, arts and crafts workshops and fine art exhibitions. The whole programme will be announced around mid-April, and I will do a post about my favourite creative events and recommendations nearer the time. One thing is for sure - after meeting many of the creative people involved last night, I can safely say there will be something for everyone at The Crouch End Festival.

I leave you with a wonderful clip of one of the acts, Rosy Summerbell. She'll be performing during the festival and I cannot wait to see her in action.