Follow the brown signs

The house of Rudyard Kipling

Today I went to Batemans in Burwash, East Sussex – the National Trust owned property where Rudyard Kipling once lived. I went with an old family friend who I hadn’t seen for some time and before we did anything we headed for the tea room to have a catch up. I told her all about my progress on the brown sign project and also about the trials and tribulations that go with it sometimes. I’ve got a lot going on at the moment and it was nice to just be enjoying doing what I like most; sitting having a quiet cup of tea with the thought of a brown signed attraction visit ahead of me.

After lunch we pootled around Kipling’s house, saw his beloved motor car, smelt the roses in the seriously gorgeous gardens and I hung for ages in his study where he wrote his books, short stories and poetry.

The National Trust had set up every room how it would have been when Kipling and his family lived there (they never fail on attention to detail these guys), and in the book lined study was the waste paper bin complete with discarded writing drafts. My old family friend pointed at it, squeezed my arm and said “He was probably writing a piece for The Guardian too” and winked at me.

It made me smile and restored my faith that we don’t all get everywhere we want to easily or first time round, far from it. That’s not even the point, the point is just to keep going – through all the discarded writing and crapness sometimes when you don’t feel like you’re getting it right – keeping going  through all that is how you get there in the end. Keep going 🙂