MY friend from Chile was impressed. With the glorious hills of the Holme Valley and with the buzz of Holmfirth. Even in the rain.
We spent a weekend in the Pennine town last summer where the skies might have been grumpy and grey but the hills were definitely ringing with sound and the streets were positively popping with colour.
Holmfirth had that giddy feeling of something exciting and vibrant going on even when the weather was sulky and determined to rain on the promise of a party.
It was the pianos that probably started it. Where else but a Yorkshire town, said my friend, would people be crazy enough to put such a thing on a street corner and invite passers-by to play. And would they?
She knew the answer really.
A Huddersfield girl to her bones despite having lived in South America for 40 years, Susan Siddeley knows all about the local character, the hardiness and resolve but also the sense of fun and zest for life, the sheer creativity flowing through its veins. She’s pretty much like that herself. So of course the pianos would be heard.
And they were. People loved them. Each piano had a customised paint job, some standing outside a shop, others on a street corner or next to a car park. Wherever you went during that weekend, you could hear notes tripping through the air. Some, it has to be said, were played more expertly than others.
We sat through an enthralling video at the church, wandered round more exhibitions than she thought possible in a small town and even when we stopped for a much needed cuppa, could admire cafe walls packed with art work.
“Is it always like this?” she asked. Pretty much, I mused.
And actually I think I’m right. Though it’s not just the Holme Valley that’s stuffed with creativity. It seems to me that Huddersfield is bursting at the seams with ideas and with creative entrepreneurs.
The roots have always been there but my how it’s changed.
Having grown up in the Holme Valley I’m used to wall to wall singers, musicians, actors and artists.
As a child it was a given.
Sunday school propelled you into singing and in my case into pantos, concert parties and the church choir.
And once I’d outgrown (quite literally) Aladdin and co I was nudged in the direction of amateur operatics and more serious choirs.
I sang at the scariest audition, the knocking knees probably sounding more tuneful than me, and got into my local operatic society only for it to fold before the next production. Count yourself lucky, good people of the valley.
Amateur dramatics beckoned. I couldn’t miss them really. They were on the doorstep and I’d known half the company from childhood.
I helped with sets, sourced props, fetched, carried, painted and prompted. But I resolutely refused to set foot back on stage.
Childhood traumas with a fairy wand, when the star fell off midway through my solo song, probably did for my stage career.
Our lives marched to the music of bands and choirs, we celebrated milestones with festivals of everything from flowers and angels to music and drama.
Now festivals have become an almost year round celebration of the talent and creativity in our towns and villages. In my neck of the woods, Holmfirth Art Week and Holmfirth Music Festival are essential parts of the calendar and all diaries would be lost without its folk music and brass extravaganzas.
In more recent years, add to those Holmfirth does Hollywood in its very own Film Festival and Holmfirth Arts Festival plus the explosion of fringe venues which have grown like Topsy around the town’s much loved Art Week. This year there are 28 venues in addition to the civic hall so book the days off now.
I’ve been trying to sort out timings to fit the complicated scheduled of my visitor from Chile. She bobs across continents without blinking so keeping up with her schedule when she hits the runway at Manchester is not for the feint-hearted. So yes, my family friend Susan, a prize-winning word wizard who runs writers’ workshops in Santiago, is home again. And by that I mean her other home.
Though long settled with husband Gordon and family in South America, she shuttles back and forth to Canada to keep up with children and grandchildren and still has huge affection for Huddersfield.
She’s about to launch her latest book, this time a deeply personal memoir about family, and where could she launch it but back on home ground in Huddersfield.
On a flying visit several years ago, she gave me a copy of an anthology of short stories all with a Chilean flavour which she had written with two others. I was then a new member of her wider family and shared her passion for words. We probably bored everyone witless talking about writing.
The book, Friday’s Fare was just what it said. Tales which had emerged from Friday get-togethers of a writing group which met for the first time in Dunkin’ Donuts in Providencia and as Susan puts it: “Against a background of clamorous traffic, clattering trays and Chilean voices.”
She’s also written poetry collections but now her thoughts have been very much with family and her early years in Huddersfield.
We’ve talked endlessly from our opposite ends of the world about her new book, Home First: A Memoir In Voices. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it and had hoped to see it last summer when we trudged Holmfirth in the rain.
Though saddened that the proof copy had had to go back to the printers and she’d arrived in England empty-handed, that trip to Holmfirth saw Susan buzzing with new images and ideas.
Her latest writing has taken her much further into the past. It is about the journeys she and her family have made across continents and generations.
It is about roots, about the experiences and people who shape and colour our lives and it sings off the pages.
Here is a memoir full of character and longing, vivid, bold and yet at times, aching with sadness.
Copies of the book have preceded her across continents and I’m brimming with admiration and lots of questions. Some will doubtless be answered when I catch up with her, with family and friends at the launch of Home First in Huddersfield in a couple of weeks time.
Then I need to see if we can juggle dates. There are festivals waiting in Holmfirth and I’ve already pencilled in a few possibles. For though Susan has travelled thousands of miles in her journey through life and across the globe, she seldom ventured from her childhood home in Huddersfield out into the lush green countryside of the Holme Valley.
And when she did she found a whole new creative world. And loved it.
