Poetry Reading at Camden, Lumen Venue

Our hotel was only a few minutes away from the church, we made a dash for it in pelting rain,
got my umbrella tangled in another, the man in the tangle kept running, somehow I escaped.
Ann Pilling was waiting in the church foyer with her husband, she recognised me which was nice,
Ann had organised the reading through Ronnie at Indigo Dreams Publishing, she is a widely
published author. Angela (Lock) was already inside the reading room and it was an honour
to meet up with these two amazing ladies. We met Ruth O'Callaghan and her team with only
a few minutes to decide on the reading order for the three Indigo Dreams poets and who
was going to introduce who. The audience was lovely, as were the open-mic readings. There
was an aura of being in familiar surroundings with friends as it often is with fellow poets.
The evening was over in a flash and after a brief chat with poet Janice Windall
and Irish poet Donall Dempsey, everyone disappeared into the dark night.

The Church Venue

Next morning, the views from our hotel were amazing, opening the patio doors brought
multiple aromas,curries, exotic spices,from many open market stalls of many nationalities.
The sounds merged into a buzz of mixed music, voices and weirdly - blackbird song which
carried across canals and bridges. We ventured out to the vast market in the old stables
from the Victorian era. Scarves, t-shirts, hats, leather bound notebooks, candles,
nothing tempted me to buy anything perhaps there was just too much choice! Back on the
main street hawkers plugged handbags, a darth vader lured people into a shop, tattoo artists
encouraged people inside, massive queues at the tube station and people gathering around
buskers which consisted off: an opera singer; a girl playing an electric violin; a
drummer in a road island.

We saw several homeless people and it was humbling to have read at the Lumen, from which
the proceeds go towards the cold weather shelters for the homeless.