Many of you will know Helen Sadler as the producer/director of the immensely popular murder mystery plays performed yearly in the village. What you may not know is that as well as being a talented writer, Helen is also an accomplished artist. She has written a poem about her childhood and when her brother challenged her to illustrate it, the result is what you see below, enjoy.

by Helen Sadler

So - here’s the thing: the colours of the
coast, that blue and silver light, that waited smilingly
for us in the toll-free time with visitors
gone. Shedding shoes, we waded in,
kicking white and silver shards to soak our
current foe or leaping from dune’s edge to
land on grass greenly poking through gritty ochre sand.

Or sailing down Foxborough Hill, handlebars
bare of hands, tee-shirt speed blown against my
balanced form; don’t look down at the
spiteful grey road, don’t look back at the
gasping steep hill but speeding, sailing ever on,
glidingly pass mothers and neat daughters
who shrink from my bike’s brakeless rush and whoosh.

And tuneless Christmas bellows on the bay-ward
road, the lonely, chilly pebbles, deserted on this day of days,
reach lovingly to our five gold rings
and white swimming swans, while we ran, and ran,
and ran for joy, and love of life and family, wind
salty air, white breaking waves and crash of shingle
as we plunged and staggered laughing to the sand.