A man is making scones

“Are you the owner of the Tower” asks my friend Jackie, on her first visit to the kitchen of the tower.

“No, I am the caretaker” Bill replies.

Is this true?
Is Zippy not the caretaker?
No, Zippy is much more important. He is the Keeper of the Keys.
Is anyone the actual owner of the tower?
No. No one really owns the tower. They just take care of it until it passes on to the next generation.

It has only been five minutes, and already the conversation has turned from scones to the concept of ownership, art and history.

Fortunately, Tracey is at hand with glasses of wine to steer things into calmer waters, and we haven’t even got to the correct pronunciation of Neu! Reekie!

[As a side note, seven years later I am still getting my pronunciation of this corrected, so apologies to those of you listening to the audio version of this.]

I had thought that the appearance of scones was part of a new franchise of the Penkiln Burn Tearooms, where visitors could have tea and a scone, as long as they only talked about the future.

No, this was not the case. The price of a scone involved being recorded reading from After Curfew, the new Penkiln Burn / Neu! Reekie! publication of works created by the writers who had been in the tower the preceding year.

We are then temporarily sidetracked to Johhny Joe’s pub before the evening’s bonfire and book readings begin. Other pubs are available. For such a small town, Cushendall has a plentiful supply of pubs. As the Heart of the Glens Festival is in full flow, they are all busy on Wednesday evening at 7pm.

Johnny Joe’s is appropriate as it features in the book to be launched at the bonfire. Salena Godden writes in the book:

I go to Johnny Joes
With music and the Guinness
And the laughter and the craic
And it is the proudest moment
When I'm handed a tambourine
I sing and play in a folk band jam
I am so happy here right now so I am

Even though we are also “happy here right now” , at 8pm we head back to the Curfew Tower for the second half of the arts events of the day.

This involves the chance to be randomly selected to be in the audience for Tam Dean Burn and his son Skye McDade-Burn’s play. This takes place in the cell of the tower, so it is limited to an audience of 19.

As darkness starts to fall, it is time for the readings by the gathered writers. Obviously, the flaw in this idea is that darkness has started to fall so the writers cannot read from the book, since it is in darkness.

Fortunately, Zippy is prepared. He takes on the role of a light stand, standing behind the performers, shining a light over their heads on to the page. Michael Pedersen and Hollie McNish read from the books to a crowd of about 40 people around the fire.

At the time I thought this seems like a good turn out for a poetry reading. The next time I would see them live they would be selling out the Mandela Hall in Belfast, which normally only happens with touring bands.

This is followed by more important conversations around the fire; for example, why do things with an exclamation mark sound dynamic and modern. The cult album Neu! Came out 48 years earlier and Reekie! is first mentioned in print 300 years earlier.

Fortunately there was no internet at the tower, so no one could look the many other books, records and plays that end in an exclamation mark!

More information about Neu! Reekie! can be found at:
https://neureekie.tumblr.com/
http://www.neureekie.com/

More information about myself and Ann can be found at https://artisann.org/pages/about-us

I am currently writing a history of the Curfew Tower (And Make Art: A History of the Artistic Residencies at the Curfew Tower, Penkiln Burn, Forthcoming). If you were part of the tower’s story, as an artist / contributor / visitor / family / friend, please get in touch [ mail@artisann.org ]

Ken Bartley