Even if we're just dancing in the dark ... S O R R E L D R Y D E N ' S W R I T I N G P O R T F O L I O

Bruce Springsteen once sang, "This gun's for hire" ... well, on this occasion if we replace gun with 'writer' that sums up where I'm at - available for work. To give you an insight into my copywriting style, please take a look at a few published examples of my work below. Available for copywriting, copy editing, proofreading, social media management, and anything that involves words and writing. Drop me a line at - sorreldryden@gmail.com and we can take it from there.

SOUTH WEST FARMERS DIVERSIFYING THEIR BUSINESS WITH SUCCESS AND SANDWICHES

Where muddy boots pose no problem, and dirty fries are to die for, welcome to a delicious corner of the South Hams, and the new business venture for Harriet Watts and Jim Winzer - The Ring Feeder Café.

Does the idea of ‘dirty fries’, or a bacon, blue cheese, and mushroom sourdough toasty get your taste buds tingling?  Perhaps a Full English aka Big British breakfast or dippy eggs with soldiers is more to your liking? Or you could sit down to homemade tomato and handpicked basil soup, a selection of homemade cakes, or a Devonshire cream tea (cream on first, you’re in Devon now!)  Essentially anything that seems ‘bad’ for you (but is, oh so good) are the things that people can’t get enough of at the Ring Feeder Café, near California Cross, Modbury, which opened in May. Health food kick – what’s that?

Whichever item off the ever-changing menu, rustled up by chef and owner, Harriet, takes your fancy, you can pull in, park up in a field with delicious views all of its own, take a deep breath, and then a big bite.

Tucked behind a hedge on the B3196, the main route from the A38 to the seaside, (follow the hand painted signs from Marridge or California Cross) you will find The Ring Feeder Café, a 10’ x 5’ café on wheels, operating out of a totally ‘rusticated’ trailer, with corrugated iron sheets nailed to it, alongside the bunting blowing in the breeze.  There is plenty of attention to detail, whether it be the enamelled bowls, the handwritten blackboards, the quirky name tags (Dung Heap, Water Trough, Cattle Shed) or the handpicked flowers on the counter that are regularly visited by bees.

The perfect pit-stop for the locals as well as passing trade, including tractor- driving farmers, builders on their way to work, holidaymakers, and city dwellers out for a day in the countryside, The Ring Feeder is the ideal place to drop in and fill up.

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You know how you feel when you manage to get away for a weekend break, or even a longer holiday, particularly in the U.K.? You breathe deeper; you enjoy taking in the fresh air. Perhaps you also experience the ozone freshness of sea air. And then, when you return to your bed at the end of the day, you often find it a whole lot easier to get to sleep. Down in Devon, we’re used to hearing visitors tell us how ‘it must be all that fresh air’ that makes them drowsy (or it could be the pasties, or the cream teas of course.) At the Healthy Minds Nourishing Retreat we hope to offer you a little more to help you rest. There’s no TV for starters, and whilst you’re welcome to bring your laptop, we’d urge you to try and resist the lure of checking your emails, watching an episode of something, or tapping into social media. Well, resist as much as you can anyway – we’re not monsters.

Sometimes we just need to do very little and reduce the stimuli of the modern world. And that’s hard. We get it.

How can rest help? We don’t need to tell you that less ‘white light’, plus less checking the news/social media feed of your choice, and more stimulating conversation with people around you, along with more activity - filling your senses from more natural stimuli from your immediate environment - are going to be great for your wellbeing and for your soul.

We aim to flood your senses with some happy hormones when you’re with us, intentionally dosing up on dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins - and to do this we like to embrace the three principles of positivity at our retreats, which are these –

·       Positive thought

·       Positive action

·       Positive interaction

Doing this we’ll improve our overall mental wellbeing and enhance our mental resilience and performance. 

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THE MEWSTONE CANDLE COMPANY

The story behind the candlelight

This is all Carys’s Mum’s fault …

The Mewstone Candle Company came about thanks to a gift from Carys’s beloved, and sadly departed, Mum, Sian. She bought Carys a candle making kit one Christmas. Carys duly tossed it in the loft at the family home in Noss Mayo, South Devon, for safekeeping as one of those ‘rainy day/stormy night’ projects for ‘some time, one day’.

In the year 2000, for the next fourteen years, Carys was living and working (at a car dealership) in Sussex with her partner (now wife), Debs – who ran her own dog-walking business.

Then Sian became poorly and was diagnosed with cancer, and without hesitation, Carys returned to Devon with Debs to live in 2014.  They bought a house in Modbury and Carys continued to work in Sussex for another 18 months, commuting weekly. When she finally moved from Tunbridge Wells, Carys joined Water Babies in Devon and worked for them for 18 months. During this time, Sian passed away, leaving Carys understandably devastated.

There followed a few jobs; Carys became head of franchising at Creation Station; six months later she joined the British Franchise Association. These positions weren’t proving fulfilling for Carys, and more than one of them were unsympathetic to her grief.

As a therapy, Carys dug out the candle making kit and started playing with it, making candles, and getting carried away with making logos and a business plan when she should have been focusing on her actual paid employment. She was in a very dark place mentally, so the candle making helped in more ways than one to light her way through these times. By now people were also starting to take an interest in the candles that she was making when she’d post things on her social media, along with the wine glasses that she’d make from old beer bottles.

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Throughout his life, Paul has painted. And how! He started at school, taking both ‘O’ and ‘A’ level art, and there doesn’t appear to be a medium he doesn’t like working with.  His studio, deep within his tranquil Devon Longhouse, has a fine array of oil paint, spray paint cans, acrylics, pastels, crayons, oil pastels, pencils, and charcoal spread out across his worktops. Using ordinary art paper, he likes to retreat here at least one night per week, and can lose himself for hours, listening to pop music, often curated by his friend, Will. His paintings are a heart-warming variety of ‘abstract landscapes’, with vibrant colours and often random shapes, but also more familiar scenes, such as seascapes, and village scenes. “I don’t like to try and be accurate”, chuckled Paul.

When he invited me along to interview him, I was worried that I wasn’t going to like his work, with art being so very subjective – but as soon as I walked into his living room and studio, my concern was short-lived, and I was soon beaming. He has an insane number of finished pieces, and whilst some of them are most definitely abstract (although he can tell you exactly what they are of and about), many more are very recognisably of countryside and seascapes. The colours are earthy and comforting, and you find you can breathe easily amongst them. Nothing is jarring to the senses. You can easily make out fields and trees, rivers and cottages, churchyards and hayfields, clouds, and waves. There is a definite ‘outsider art’ or ‘art brut*’ feel to Paul’s work and it is utterly charming. Completely unpretentious, and thoroughly engaging.  (*Art brut "Those works created from solitude and from pure and authentic creative impulses – where the worries of competition, acclaim and social promotion do not interfere.”) 

There is an underscore to much of Paul’s artwork; an anger about how much building is being done on our lovely countryside, and how much of it we’re losing to large scale housing developments. A deep frustration about how we’re losing a lot of the natural habitats for wildlife and the way perceived ‘progress’ is often anything but. Drawing from his love of the South Hams landscapes as well as his travels further afield, there is certainly an abundance of choice within his subjects for there to be something pleasing to everyone’s eyes.

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From humble beginnings, growing up in Wales, Jamie developed a love of cooking early on, encouraged by his grandma, ‘My favourite childhood dish was her corned beef and fried egg sandwiches with brown sauce. They were always delicious.’

Following a move to the South West at the tender age of twelve, he started his cheffing career at the Cricket Inn, Beesands, as a pot-washer and helping with preparing salads and plating desserts. This was also where he developed a love of fishing and formed his relationships with the skippers of the day boats, watching them bring in their catches each day. This is one of the reasons he can get his hands on the best shellfish and freshly caught fish for Twenty-Seven every day, which is a good job when you consider the amount of lobster this man can get through in a week.  Jamie says, ‘The produce here is world class. That is what sets South Devon apart. I have eaten seafood all over the world, and there is nowhere that offers fish and seafood as good as here!’

After a troubled start to life and a short-lived flirtation as a bit of a naughty boy (banned from driving three times whilst under-age) there followed a brief period in a youth offenders’ prison on the strength of it. Once he was released, he knew it was time to sort himself out, and realise his calling in the kitchens. A completely reformed character, from then on, he seized every opportunity he could to learn from some of the most respected chefs in the area. It’s fair to say he hasn’t looked back.

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If you’re already ‘sporty’ then Achieve will help you to maintain and strengthen what you need. Whether a runner, cyclist, climber, horse rider, rugby or footballer, or any other sport, you can take the classes to develop and improve strengths in all the muscle groups, and you would be advised to also take at least one of the three flex classes available on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday – as these will help you to achieve deeper stretches and gain additional strength.

And if you’re not sporty at all?  Then this is the perfect place to come for a gentle easing into a gym environment. There are no ‘beginner’ or ‘advanced’ classes here. Everyone comes together, newbies and regulars, with plenty of encouragement and additional tips and advice thrown in. You will begin at the lower end of the scale, with the aim of moving up it in a gradual progression. You’ll surprise yourself at how quickly some skills will come and be heartened to learn that some things will simply take time. You may not achieve a press-up for a couple of years, but there are plenty of scaled versions that you will be able to do from day one.

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With the most beautiful aura - one of sparkling optimism - paired with the loveliest smile and attitude despite all of life’s traumas, when she finds a few hours spare, Ellie creates delightful ink and watercolour drawings of all kinds of animals – from UK shores to African and North American continents, and underwater creatures too.

Once described as ‘the perfect woman’, by Noel Fitzpatrick of ‘Supervet’ fame, Ellie has arrived at this point in life via the usual circuitous route that happens to many of us.

Born in Swindon in 1985, Ellie moved to Devon with her parents and brother and sister when she was a year old. Her father, originally an art teacher, turned his hand to property development.  Coming from this artistic background, when asked whether there was easy access to art materials, Ellie remembers, ‘we always had it in the house. There were always big bags of clay, a potter’s wheel, acrylics, oil paints, and charcoal … I especially remember the charcoal’, she recalls fondly, and living in a ‘building site’ she and her siblings were encouraged to experiment and do whatever they liked, wherever they chose, with the materials.  Their father, who’d trained at Exeter University, studying fine art, never taught them - he was too busy building the house - and they were simply given glorious opportunities to explore their creativity. Ellie’s brother went to Goldsmiths and trained in fine art and the history of art, and her sister went on to do jewellery design in Buckinghamshire. ‘I was never trained’, Ellie says, without a trace of wistfulness. Their lovely mother, Susan, is the glue that holds them all together.

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Keen to make his mark early and win over the ladies of Ivybridge, Tam will be specialising in women’s hairdressing and admits to being passionate about it.

If you book a consultation and subsequent cut and/or colour/treatment with Tam, you will get the full ASCF experience, as well as having an appointment where Tam looks after you from start to finish. Not only will he wash your hair, condition it, massage your scalp, he will lead you through the whole process – cutting, colouring, blow-drying, until he’s helping you into your coat and seeing you out the door, as a satisfied customer. No time is wasted waiting between stages, and you will be attended to throughout.

As you might expect from a Graduate stylist, Tam’s price list is more affordable than the more senior staff members (there are nine stylists to choose from at ASCF), which is good to know when we’re all feeling the pinch. You can expect a fresh new style that won’t break the bank (and is probably less expensive than you might think.) A cut and blow dry are just £20, with a wet cut at £15. It’s a snip!

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Before Barbury we’d been to Chepstow competing with five horses, all of which performed pretty well considering we hadn’t run them for a month.  We’ve been kept busy attending many of the international competitions and needed to get lots of the novice horses out to give them some experience.  To come home with rosettes - when we certainly didn’t plan to - was awesome.  Shannondale Mari did her first Novice Regional Final and finished a very respectable 6th. The newest addition to the yard, Hamilton, a lovely scopey horse at just seven years old, is understandably inexperienced and did quite a spooky, nervous dressage test, followed by a good XC, then had an unlucky rail down and still finished 3rd – he shows much promise with plenty to work with for his future.

After his great performance at Tattersall’s (3rd place), Zagreb went on to get another podium spot with a 3rd at Luhmuhlen; we lightly rubbed a rail in the show jumping and were unlucky, with luck favouring Tim Price on the day. In a similar scenario at the ERM at Jardy last year, Zagreb and I hit Fence 3 quite hard, and it stayed, yet fortune smiled down then with us winning the event. At the time of writing we’ve had a quick turnaround following some team training at Aston-Le-Walls and are just off the ferry and back at Jardy, so fingers crossed for our adventures there this weekend.

We had great fun at Luhmuhlen, with the usual excellent banter with Team Price.  Tim and I are good friends – you may have seen some of the photos of us parked up next to each other in the lorry park where we did plenty of joking around and psyching each other out.

It was also lovely as Zagreb’s owners, Jack and Sally Ellicott, were at Luhmuhlen to experience things first hand.  I think, like any owners, they experienced both relief and excitement when we came home safely. It’s so easy to have a slight mistake on the day, but thankfully we were clear XC. There was obviously the additional element of disappointment when we were so close to winning but then didn’t, but we had no idea on the Monday how well we would do – the aim was to get a top 5 placing, so to get a podium spot was great.