Moving and Rottingdean

I've been preoccupied of late as we are hoping to be able to move to a new house. We've been squeezed into our very sweet one-bedroom flat, but with Cassy almost two years old, it's feeling tighter and tighter. So I was thrilled to find out that a three-bedroom flintstone cottage built in 1902, practically next door, is going up for rent. We'll have to rent out our flat, and go through the application process with the new one. But if all goes well, we'll be moving at the end of May (just in time for Cassy and my birthdays).

All of which gets me thinking about place. We live in Rottingdean, a village that is much sweeter than its name. We're in the south coast of England, a few miles away from Brighton. So we get a duck pond and the sea, with access to a bigger city with arts, movies, and all that jazz. Rottingdean has its own children's book and literary connections. Enid Bagnold lived here and the butchers that still stands on the high street was the inspiration for the book National Velvet. Nick Tucker gave a talk a few years ago at the Brighton Children's Book Festival, and described how the other villagers were scandalized when she walked from her house down to the sea in her bathing costume. Shocking!

It turns out the butchers didn't much like her representation of them, and so refused to have/sell the book in their shop. I read the book years ago in a class taught by Nick Tucker (British Children's Literature 1900-1960 as part of the MA at Roehampton University). And I thought it was quite an affection family portrait, but could see how it might seem condescending, especially in class terms.

Rottingdean also has a connection with Rudyard Kipling. He moved here after visiting his uncle, Edward Byrne-Jones, the Pre-Raphaelite artist. The Elms, where the Kiplings lived, is still there. And we also have the Kipling Gardens, which were going to be bought by a developer but were saved by the venerable Rottingdean Preservation Society. They passed it to the council, and it is a wonderful public park space with rose gardens, a croquet field, a herb garden (pronounced with a hard 'h' - thank you very much!), and an enclosed grassy area. Kipling got fed-up with his fame when in the village, paying a boy to fend off autograph seekers when fishing on the raised pier (no longer there), and getting annoyed by horse-drawn tour buses trying to peek in his office window. He also lost his daughter when in New York through an accident, and the village reminded him of her. So they moved to Bateman's in Burwash, which is now a National Trust site that is worth a visit.

Kipling brings up all sorts of strong reactions. Scholar Peter Hunt feels that Puck of Pook's Hill is the best children's book written in this century. I'm afraid to say all I've read my Kipling so far is The Just So Stories, so can't comment on that. There are all the racist and empire-building associations. But I've heard of two authors, Farrukh Dhondy and Jamila Gavin, who cite Kipling as a love and influence on their own work. Dhondy spoke at the British IBBY/NCRCL MA conference several years back, when the theme was East Meets West in Children's Literature. He said the thought Kipling's Kim and Twain's Huckleberry Finn were the two best multicultural books ever written. He described a scene in Kim on a train, where people speak to each other in a variety of Indian dialects, and how he thought Kipling's use of English conveyed that variation better than anything else he'd seen.

Complicated stuff, race, literature, storytelling. Class as well, with the uppercrust Bagnold inhabiting, and perhaps maybe not fully inhabiting, life in Rottingdean. Which brings me back to our village now, and how happy I am to (hopefully) be able to put down even more roots here. In addition to the children's book history, we've got a fantastic range of children's book folks in the local area - Rottingdean, Brighton, Sussex. Here's just a short taste: Jill Hucklesby, Emily Gravett, Polly Dunbar, Chris Riddell, John Lord, Raymond Briggs, Cliff Wright, Nicky Singer, Miriam Moss, William Nicholson, Marcus Sedgwick, John Agard, Grace Nichols...

All topped off by Rottingdean Kite Day, taking place on Sunday, 26th April. You can go inside the old windmill which I've heard is the logo for Heinemann Publishing. And to quote the family in Mary Poppins (which I've been enjoying of late with Cassy) - 'Let's go fly a kite!'



Oh, but wait, one more wonderful things about Rottingdean. They built the most ridiculous railway during the Victorian period (I think) - a train on stilts that ran through the ocean. At high tide it went just over the top of the water, and during low tide it ran way above. I think it was destroyed by storms, twice. And then they gave up. But you gotta' love them for trying!