Superficiality

During the week I was talking to my sister about the project. My brother-in-law had mentioned Pevsner’s history of Kent buildings.

“I can’t read that,” I said, “My project has to be superficial. I don’t have time to go into much depth.”

I explained that this identification of 100 local buildings is really just the first stage of a project which will also involve working in care homes, eliciting memories from some of the older members of the community. I have to crack on.

To me the most important thing is to get representation from as many areas of the borough as possible. I don’t want to find myself confronted by a 90-year old from Rolvenden, for example, who feels that there’s nothing for him in my project.

If I really stopped to think about any of the communities that I’ve been working on, I would get horribly bogged down. Tenterden alone has nearly 200 listed buildings. Wye and Charing have over 150 each. And there are more listed buildings in the borough of Ashford than any other borough in Kent.

So I’m going with superficial…

I’ve been driving about like a mad thing sometimes accompanied by my wife or son or daughter. Together we’ve now visited most far-flung corners and have taken photographs of about 250 buildings.

I am bracing myself for the pushback… ‘why haven’t you included such-and-such? Such-and-such is one of the most vital buildings in Ashford…?’

The answer will be that I was driving too fast.