fiction

I WAS A WATFORD GIRL AND THAT WAS IT, INNIT

| sophiekemsley

I remember standing in the kitchen of our family home in Swiss Avenue, Watford, in late 2008 and announcing to my family:

“I just want to stay like this forever now. Buy one of those new flats on the Beechen Grove roundabout, like x’s sister did, and just spend my life working in temp-ing jobs I don’t really have to think about in order to pay the bills and go on nights out.”

Watford wasn’t where all my favourite people at that point in life lived. But it was the place that had the largest number of my favourite people living in it, and that was the anchor.

In 2008, I saw a future that involved weekly nights out at Oceana followed by a short walk home where I could stuff my face into a kebab. Work that involved clicking branded pens at an array of different melamine faced chipboard desks amidst smells of franking ink. Stuffing envelopes without a care in the world. Going home to a flat in a building where the communal hallways permanently smelt of mincemeat-based meals, like the accommodation at Uni. I would like that as it would be a reminder that people are around…(because it’s definitely not me cooking mincemeat).

And I wanted that future. I was a Watford girl and that was it, innit.

But things took a turn. I realised the new workplace I was in was a bit toxic. There were some really lovely people there, but also a lot of bad vibes and nastiness between colleagues. I grew unhappy, and suddenly that future I’d envisioned seemed like something to avoid rather than dream about. I would look out over those flats at Beechen Grove at 2am during those waits at the taxi rank after awkward work nights out, and feel relieved that I lived a whole car ride away.

“It was awful again today!!!” I cried, barbecue sauce round my lips, as an old school friend, L, came over one Monday evening to play on the Wii Fit and eat curly fries and wings from Hot Stuff washed down with wine.

I can clearly remember the look of concern on her face, even though we’d only recently been laughing at our instability on the Balance Board: “Please just leave it.”

L was a few squares ahead on life’s game board than me. She hadn’t taken a gap year, so had more experience in the world of work than I had… more time to see and do things I hadn’t yet seen or done… and so her words had a real impact. Pinot Grigio or no Pinot Grigio. I hadn’t ever really thought about the fact I could just leave. That’s not something we have the luxury of for most of our careers, but I didn’t have a mortgage at that point and was fortunate enough to be able to live at home.

Foreign travel from 2009 – instigated by the unhappiness at work – taught me the possibility of feeling content – excited even – elsewhere. The energy of experiencing cultures different to what I was used to. Meeting new people, hearing their stories, and appreciating the value of alternative perspectives. Seeing colours I’d never seen within Watford’s palette.

“If you come from a place that’s yellow and go to a place that’s blue, when you return, you’ll only ever be able to see it as green.” – the only five seconds of words spoken at a workshop I attended following my volunteering that I remember from the whole day.

It was travel, but in truth it could have been anything that represented difference and perspective. A new hobby. New house. New friend. New favourite song.

This was the point I realised that not all of life’s circumstances needed to be permanent. That things could be different, but only if you had the desire, the means, and the courage to change them. We don’t always have the means, so when we do, we must use them wisely.

And so when my parents told me they’d be moving to Kent in 2010, I didn’t fret as much as I did when they’d first motioned the idea in 2007. I decided to join them instead, even if only temporarily, until I could afford my own place elsewhere.

“Well Kent is a bit too posh for me innit but…  Canterbury… I do like it down there. There’s that river with the pretty flowers where I sit and listen to music on our annual visits. It seems like a creative place. I can become a writer there.”

I wound down the remaining time in Watford working in another temping job where bullying and hostility were central characteristics of the office environment. Although I wasn’t ever directly targeted this time, and the job itself was actually quite fun, it still wasn’t not the most inspiring place to spend 40 hours a week. A soulless industrial estate in Hemel Hempstead where the daily highlight was buying a chicken sandwich from the shop down the road. A workplace that regularly culled colleagues for what they perceived was inadequate performance. Just as soon as they’d start transitioning from colleagues into friends, they’d send you a text:

“I got the email.”

It was a place in which I knew I could never really cast my anchor.

I eventually handed in my notice and we moved down to Kent in April 2011.

Suddenly the surroundings were a lot more beautiful. Greenery, beaches, wild flowers, history, cosmopolitism. The sun seemed to shine more in Kent.

And there were no more 6am bus rides in the dark to Hemel Hempstead.

Freedom. Endless time to wander the pretty streets of Canterbury and explore the countryside on my bike until I was employed again. I started going to yoga classes, like the stereotypical 20+ year old that had volunteered in South East Asia, and started writing this very blog. I was terrible at both – the tutor was permanently correcting my leg positioning and some of the earliest posts on this blog make my eyes bleed – but I still appreciated all the time I had to be creative.

But it had come at a cost. Quite a significant one.

No money and no friends. 8 months of trying to find paid work only to be batted away each time for lack of experience. Fortnightly signing on at the Job Centre. Rejection after rejection after rejection. The days where I clung on to the hope that my application to become a part time window cleaner had been successful (it hadn’t).

Foolishly trying to use online dating as a way to try and make friends because it felt like the only way without work or study. Using £15 of my Job Seekers Allowance to try and get the coach up to London every couple of months to at least see friends for dinners I couldn’t really afford. Wondering if I’d made the right choice, or if I should have just stayed in Watford. Where people were.

I cried more frequently than I had ever cried before. Daily. Even my parents were getting worried about me. Exploring my new surroundings was no longer fun. All I could think about was my ever-depleting purse and lack of social connection.

Gradually things got much better. The perfect job offer for the time, and how it made me appreciate all the previous rejections that had ensured I was available to accept it. The friends, who started as strangers and random people, but who then gradually became extensions of family. The anchor deepening further into the seabed with every heart and wine-driven conversation under every dim lightbulb in every bar with every person who offered me new perspectives on things.

15 years on, it’s very hard to imagine my life without what Kent has given me in the way of people, opportunities and adventures. The people that I would never have met. The memories that could have otherwise never been made.

It’s not always been easy – life isn’t – but I’m glad I stuck it out.

And above all else, I’m grateful for the unhappiness I felt in 2009. Thank goodness that happened.

Because sometimes the best presents aren’t wrapped in pretty paper.

This isn’t really a post about me moving from Watford to Kent.

It’s really about how life doesn’t always go to plan. How sometimes we find ourselves grabbing a hastily drawn Plan B (not the American contraceptive) from the drawer…

…but how that doesn’t always have to be a bad thing. 

My anchor is firmly lodged somewhere off the coast of Kent (fairly sure bits of my boat fell off at Seasalter during my failed sailing attempts). I don’t know if I’ll ever feel a need to dig it back up – maybe I will, maybe I won’t – but if I do…

…I’ll think back to the kitchen at Swiss Avenue, 2008.

THE FEMALE INFLUENCER OF SNOWDONIA

| sophiekemsley

As part of my ongoing love-affair with Snowdonia, I used some of the Christmas break to read a couple of books that were set there. The first was Thomas Firbank’s “I Bought A Mountain”, which is a true story about the author’s experience giving up the corporate world in the 1930’s, moving to North Wales, and turning to a life of farming. Although it sounds idyllic (and actually, not too far removed from some of my own daydreams minus the 1930’s part) the success of the book lies in the rawness of the narrative, an honest account of a complex patchwork including both loss and prosperity, love and tragedy, ignorance and learning and most of all, hard work. As well as all that, there’s a lot of salivating descriptions of gorgeous scenery that effortlessly transports the reader to the subject area.


It was an enjoyable read, but I was much more engaged by the second book, a biography of Esme Kirby, Firbank’s first wife who played a key role in supporting her husband to manage Dyffryn Farm. Among her achievements during this time was setting a new women’s record for conquering the Welsh 3000s, an extremely tough physical challenge which involves reaching all fifteen peaks of over 3000 feet in Wales within 24 hours. Kirby completed it in nine and a half, in 1938, long before the days of protein bars and fancy hiking boots that can assist us with such challenge today.

Incredible as this is, the most inspiring part of her story starts when Firbank sets off to fight in the second world war and decides not to return to Dyffryn, or to Esme, leaving her to choose between a potentially easier, economically stable life away from the likes of sheep shearing and pig selling, or continuing to manage all 3000 acres alone. She chose the latter, and she made it work. To keep financially afloat she rented out the farm and instead lived in a caravan within the grounds. She brushed her teeth and washed her hair in the river, but every now and then would dress herself up for cosy evenings with friends in local hostelries. Her life satisfied her, even if it could be tough to make ends meet.

Kirby was also an ardent conservationist who was extremely passionate about protecting the local landscape from development, and decades of effort in doing so eventually earned her the touching moniker of “Guardian of Snowdonia”. She founded the Snowdonia National Park Society in 1967 after successfully campaigning against the construction of a youth hostel on the Glyder mountains by Dyffryn. The Snowdonia Society, as it is now known, has remained active ever since, and has had a crucial influence on the pleasing visuals we see today, keeping the rivers free of litter and enabling responsible tourism through improved footpath access to mountain ranges, among lots of other things.


Kirby was a very well respected pillar of the local community, but she wasn’t liked by everybody, and some of her decisions were not as popular as others. During her time as Chairperson for the Society she was known to occasionally neglect any notion of consultation when sated by her own staunch beliefs and opinions. She took a hard line against a few development proposals that had the potential to bring greater economic prosperity and job opportunities to the area. In her view, the mountains needed to be left well alone and unspoilt by unnecessary constructions and eyesores. 

Kirby passed away in 1999, some fourteen years before the first Zip World attraction opened creating a new use for the Penrhyn slate quarry, and that’s probably for the best. I don’t think she would have liked it very much, despite the eye-watering £121 million it has pumped into the local economy from people gliding along ziplines in boilersuits, bouncing around on underground trampolines, and meandering through the forest on toboggans.

She may not have got everything quite right – because nobody does – and her leadership skills may have sometimes been lacking, but I am full of admiration for her sense of conviction and devotion to protecting the natural magic of the area she so loved. On top of this, she succeeded in a difficult industry dominated by men (even more so back then). There is something quite ironic about the fact I only came to know of her by reading her first husband’s book, despite being aware of the Snowdonia Society from having pored through one of their fabulous bi-annual magazines one morning last August whilst eating the most syruppy (not a bad thing) French Toast in the legendary Cafe Siabod.

The international, best-selling success of “I Moved A Mountain” should not be apportioned wholly to the author Firbank. For me, it’s Esme who’s the real star of this story, and in an era where the term ‘female influencer’ might be more often attributed to the likes of Kim Kardashian or a random on TikTok who regularly explains the best way to apply lipliner, more people need to know about this one.

Song of the Day: JACK – Try to Arrive Alive

Another gem recommended to me by Spotify! I don’t know too much about this artist but the lyrics are incredibly motivating and at a time where there is so much challenge in the world everyone should listen to it. Cool video too.