St Leonards to Starry Mart, spring '24 – Part 1, Anna Blewett

1 St Leonards is a phantom church. Here but not. The cool interior lives in my memory of a boiling hot day last summer, when volunteers sold squash and cake.

2 It's here because of a river, also gone but also not. Congregations were lost with the ships and pubs and trains and industry. Geoff worked on a job down here. Oh, YEARS ago. And Terry...I can't remember what they said.

3 They can monument amnesia these days. Celebrate blankness.

4 Not a bus stop, not a bench. A place for broken glass and blown litter to collect itself.

5 It's not *not* busy. Cars relentlessly slingshot the roundabout without changing down from 3rd gear.

6 And I've seen clay pots drying out in the sun on this doorstep. I think it was here...There aren't any today.

7 Looking left there's 'Matthews Golden'...something. Lettering on brick won't be here to help us much longer. I loved when it was a reclamation yard; airy lofts for browsing doors and shelving pulled from extinct homes. Next door is the shell of the night watchman's cottage. "If the tide was at 3am someone had to be here" says the bloke inside.