Time traveller who dwells in the playground of words and pictures.
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Geraldine Evans and Angela Bailey - The Barge - S1 E15 (podcast)
I was fortunate enough to find Geraldine Evans on social media when I was researching for my book, Lost Basildon. What a lady! With some really amazing stories about The Barge and Vange's history. Her family had ran the pub which has also been known as The Old Barge Inn for seventy years! It all started when her paternal aunt wanted to escape London to the then countryside of Vange and on the 20th May 1937 she paid £2,643.06 for the lease of the pub and its surrounding land. I contributed four pages to The Barge and also a couple of pages to Geraldine as the Pitsea and Vange Carnival Queen of 1967 in the entertainment section. She also let me have a copy of a picture of Doughy Saunders on horseback heading up the Vange Carnival procession dressed as John Bull.
After meeting Geraldine with her treasure of stories I knew that there was more that could be done so as I was on a writing course for The Writers Bureau and I needed to write an article I just knew that people would be keen to read more of the story of The Barge when it was ran by her family. You can actually read the article here. The article had pride of place in the EssexLife magazine.
When Geraldine's husband died suddenly she told me that her daughter and son stepped up as licensees as Geraldine couldn't do this as she was also a Justice of the Peace. Angela gave up her job and joined her mother to run the pub. I hope you enjoy listening to the podcast where I talk to the pair of them and I also have them on video too.
I spoke to Angela about her Lockdown book and her new book that is going to be published soon, you can find out more about these here.
The Old Barge Inn and Saunders & Son, the bakers close by.
Geraldine with bar staff Sharon Hayward, Jackie Stock-Baker, Shirley Ansell, Betty Barker, Margaret Price, Sharmon Szewczyk and Barbara Smith
A newspaper cutting of celebrations after the war in 1945 at the pub organised by Geraldine's dad, Ted.
Bas-Arts-Index is, as they say on their website, a home for Basildon's creatives to connect and collaborate. Having been a member for some time I decided to ask them some questions, with the aim in mind to expose to the general public and anyone who is interested in the local arts, all the good that the Index do and how they help give exposure to their members, amongst other things. They are Basildon's first interdisciplinary, artist-led directory/network. With the mission to provide an online space for Basildon's creative individuals, groups and organisations who are either born, living, working in or making work about the Basildon Borough. Their hope is to connect local creatives which in turn will generate activity, collaboration and to help support a cohesive arts ecology. There are currently six Bas-Arts-Index members in the working party. This consists of Ben Stewart, Anthony Marriage, Laura Whiting, Aaron Shrimpton, Maxine Newell and Shaun Badham. The members w
I interviewed Rose Cleary on 30th March 2021 in what was still the lockdown periods. I chose to do podcasts at the time to widen my narrowing world. Rose Cleary has her debut novel out now called How to be a French Girl . Rose Cleary, born 1990, is an author and writer from Essex. Her writing has been previously published in the New Socialist, The Southend's Twilight Worlds, Hyperallergic and TOMA. She has exhibited her art internationally at galleries including Nahmad Projects and The Vaults in London, and Backlit Gallery in Nottingham. How to be a French Girl is her debut novel. You can follow her on Instagram and visit her website http://rosecleary.com/ 3:AM Magazine has printed an extract from the book here . Read a post by Rose on the London Review Book Shop where she talks about the process of writing the book here . https://www.lisajhorner.com/
This may be of interest to people living quite local to Galleywood too. https://www.essexsounds.org.uk/content/benches/galleywood https://www.lisajhorner.com/
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