Day 10/10 Fossil hunting, rock drawing and drawing drawing

I'm going to walk from Sheerness to Minster to find some fossils. I would go to Warden Point but it's Sunday and there's no buses. I would cycle but I couldn't bring my bike because there's rail replacement buses between Sittingbourne and Sheerness. Here goes! I won't be defeated. 

My check out time is 12pm and it's a 45 minute-1 hour walk. I sleep in because I was gripped in the middle of the night by the thought that this is my last day in Sheppey. The wind outside the caravan is howling. The weather seems to change quickly here. Up on the sea wall, the wind is GAIL FORCE. Flipping heck, it's making my trousers flap. I packed these trousers on purpose because I read that you're supposed to kneel down when you're hunting for fossils. 

Even though (in my mind at least) it's too windy to be out, there are people walking dogs, walking grandparents, saying hello. The view ahead of me is verging on the Christmassy. I think about Sheppey out of season. I've only been here at weekends in the summer. I wonder how different my experience would have been if it had been in the winter months on weekdays. Imagine what it would've been like to be here before Covid. I wish I could have been here for a whole month non stop. I wonder what kind of rhythm I'd have got into. Would I have swum everyday (OBVS NOT TODAY!) Okay, well would I have taken a photo of the sea everyday? 

Some bright shapes in the distance snap me out of my introspection. It's windsurfers and para gliders(?). Ah. I thought today was inhospitable. And yet here's a group of people who think the opposite. I think back to my conversation with Laurie about what artists need to thrive. It seems to be a common misconception that creativity can thrive in inhospitable circumstances. Pretty much every residency I've ever been on has had an element of inhospitabl-ility: crap accommodation, isolation, institutional politics,  language barriers, misaligned expectations, basically a lack of support which hampers the ability to be creative. 

I'm walking as fast as I can but I run out of time before I get to the cliffs in Minster, which is probably a good thing because pretty much everyone I speak to about fossil hunting reminds me of the various ways of dying whilst doing it: rapidly rising tides, clay cliffs slumping, wellies getting stuck in mud. I give up striving for a destination that might kill me and make do with paddling in the shallows instead. Who knows I might find a pottery shard or something. 

I jump down, pull on my wellies and get walking. It's so nice! So soft! The opposite of walking on pebbles. It's perfect! Because the tide is so low, I can walk out so far that I get to look back at the shoreline and have the same feeling as if I'm swimming. That feeling of a bit of distance from the land-world and allying with the water instead. There's lots of shells stuck together with other shells and some seaweed coming off them – like they've built their own support system, clinging together and picking up others who need them. 

There's wood. Drift wood? Most of it natural with branchy-bits, the outer bark stripped by the lapping waves. There's a bit painted blue though, from a boat? It floats so nicely. I need Laurie and Belinda's estuary classes to teach me about all this. The gulls start freaking out and this pink thing limps into view, it's disgusting like a giant grub. Is it a baby seal that's been skinned alive? Oh my god that is so sad. Oh phew no, it's the remains of a birthday balloon. 

The water is coming in again now. And as it does it froths. The foam is light brown and reminds me of the feeling and look of the gypsy tart I ate yesterday. It's like I'm eating it again. I can almost feel it in my mouth, feel it on my tongue. I used to wonder what it would be like to stand on a cloud – I know Gypsy tart is from Kent, maybe they wondered what it would be like to eat this bit? Visceral recollection to a texture from the visual is really weird AND GIVES ME AN IDEA!

Then I see it! A pottery shard! Practically a museum piece! I was going for a shark's tooth. But I'll take it. Typical that I find something human. My time in Sheppey has been very human-centric. I'll have to come back for a proper fossilling weekend sesh. It's not easy with the TIDE TIMES! They should really schedule the buses to the tides so that fossil hunters can get to where they need to be at the right time. If the whole island adopted Tide Time, this could be another one of Sheppey's USPs! Peel Port would abandon the docks, citing detrimental economics, and the old dockyard could be reclaimed and historical re-enactors could move in. 

I get back in time to check out. I go to sit with all my luggage in the crescent at the clock tower. I want to leave a rock for Sheppey Rock-ers to find and keep or rehide. I remember Carol saying to either pick the rock to fit the shape of the thing you want to paint or let yourself be inspired by the rock. It's a bit of both. I really like this clock tower, it's nice to spend some proper time appreciating it. According to Kent Online, “Swale council is giving it a face-lift with a new coat of paint, LED floodlights and repairs to its plinth and crown...Initially, money for the revamp is coming from the £100,000 of Section 106 'developer' money which Swale council was given to spend on Sheerness when Neats Court retail park was opened in Queenborough” https://www.kentonline.co.uk/sheerness/news/time-for-change-in-town-centre-241485/ 

I start drawing and realise how marvellously reality-bending what I'm drawing is compared to what the clocktower actually looks like. It's totally wrong but I don't care, you can tell what it is. How though? Some of the shapes are the same, one of the colours is the same, but apart from that most of it is different. I've seen this clock tower so many times and yet clearly have no idea how to piece it together. To be fair a combination of thick sharpies and a pebble doesn't help but I like this slippage between reality and depiction. Once I've finished my stone I write the instructions for any finders and place it in a SECRET LOCATION (very near the clocktower so anyone who picks it up at least gets the reference).

It would be a nice project IN THEORY to ask people walking past the clock tower to turn their backs and draw it on a piece of paper and then collect all the drawings to put in a book or blow them up and have them around town. People would hate it though as it taps into one of the most frustrating insecurities we seem to have developed (thinking we can't draw...)

Speaking of drawing, Nicole Mollet made this great drawing book for people to use around Sheerness. You can pick up a copy at Rose Street Cottage. It's a really cool way to interact with the town and has helped me to see things I'd otherwise have missed, like the ceramic face tiles on the side of a shop I'd passed by like 10 times not noticing at all. 

I'd forgotten how nice it is drawing in public – how your eyes going up to the thing you're drawing and down to your paper over and over again makes it clear to any passerby what you're up to. Even when you're deep in an imaginary world and you're not looking up at all there must be something about the way your pen moves to show that some creative production is afoot. I get the feeling that these seats around the clocktower empty and fill according to who's there and what they're up to. Lots of people are sitting down around me and I decide that this is the positive effect of drawing in the street. The public act of creation, with its repetitive movements and its extended duration can be a nice, soothing, thing to be around. 

I'm finding myself thinking about what's next quite a lot today. I'm excited that Jo and I are going to be having a meeting with Lucy from Quiet Down There to talk about what possibilities she dreamt of when she set up the residency. I get the rail replacement bus from Sheerness to Sittingbourne. It's a double decker which means I get to enjoy a new view of Blue Town and Queenborough from my elevated position. I like that this is the end of my time on the island and I'm still having new experiences.