Meopham

After a lunchtime walk up Windmill Hill, I head to Meopham to meet Liz, an artist I met online at the Gravesham Arts Salon. Liz has lived in Meopham since she was 9 and on our walk around the village I’m shown all the different places she’s called home – where she grew up and where her mum still lives, the Oddfellows cottage that was a first home and where she raised her young family. 

Liz currently lives in an amazing old house, it’s been a 15 year labour of love to restore it. As for many in the arts, the last year has been devastating. Liz is a body painting artist, she’s run Follies as a successful business for her whole career. This work has taken her all over the world, through glamorous locations and working on exciting and meaningful projects. She’s also set up and hosted the UK body painting festival. As the country closed Liz saw all of her work disappear. The financial dread, the empty days, the lack of contact and creative outlet was utterly disorientating. Liz quickly started making – I think it’s in her DNA. In order to be a happy human she needs to be making – painting glasses, developing her Batik art, training as a yoga teacher and teaching online. Liz has adapted but is clearly itching to get back to the craft she loves and the business she’s spent a lifetime building. The pandemic has bought new opportunities, new connections to the cultural infrastructure. She’s applied for Arts Council England funding for the first time, has the time to connect in with local issues more and realised how much of her work would fit a social enterprise model. She’s also just relentlessly positive, with her husband also out of work they’ve had to adapt – renting their home out on Air BnB last summer when it was allowed, they’re planning to do the same again this summer.

Meopham is the longest village in Kent, spread out a long a busy road. We mooch around the church minutes from Liz’s house, also built with flint, I notice anchors on gravestones through the ages. Although inland the maritime history is still here. We walk up to the village green and Meopham Cricket Club  - where the first cricket was played in the UK. It’s a picture perfect village green, complete with two pubs and a windmill. Liz’s dad was very active in the cricket club, coaching the juniors for years, his front door almost opening onto the pitch. 

                                            

We wander across the green, there’s a war memorial adorned with poppy painted stones – a small community act of tribute. There’s a water fountain here too – I think back to Northfleet’s water fountain. About the things that we feel are important for communities and communal use. 

We pay the windmill a visit. Windmills were once scattered across this whole landscape, part of the agricultural infrastructure of this corner of the garden of England. The windmill is usually open to visitors a couple of times a year, it would be lovely to come back and explore it. The parish office is attached to the base of the windmill, I mean it no disrespect when I say it’s a shed. I imagine inside it smells of wood and gets very cold in the winter, it would be a lovely place to support the community from. It’s not open at present, there’s a number to call a few mornings a week. All these layers that exist to knit communities together – cricket clubs and parish councils. 

Liz and talk a lot about family – she has a son and a brother in New Zealand, I have a father in law. We wonder when we will see them again. Liz loves travel but doesn’t imagine she’ll go very far at all this year. We wonder back through Meopham, it just feels so normal. A walk with a dog talking about life – I notice how precious this is. I forgot to mention that the delightfully fluffy and energetic Reggie the dog accompanied us, his presence somehow adds to the glorious everyday-ness of this ramble. 

Meopham is lovely. I imagine it’s quite affluent, certainly in comparison to Northfleet. I wonder what the impact of its geography has on the communities here. Does being so spread out enable connection?

Liz offers me a cup of tea on a garden bench but I have to head back, I have some caring responsibilities and I’m worried about getting stuck in traffic. Maybe this is a premonition as on the drive home the Dart crossing is totally snarled with traffic and I manage to just sneak back along the A2 and avoid getting wedged in traffic for hours. I wish I’d asked Liz what being a Meopham girl, as she described herself, means to her. I realise how tired I am by meeting two new people in the same day, how in before times this would have been nothing.

I have an urge to walk to Gravesham from my home in Bethnal Green – it’s probably not possible because of the pandemic, I’m not sure if it’s useful or relevant somehow. I suppose I’m interested in connections, and I find walking a good time to think. I’ll mull it over some more.

Chair spotting - apparently this had been next to the bus stop for a while.