Medway... in activity book form!
Plus a new Medway single from Venbee, a review of Gurkha Fire in Chatham, our event guide, and lots more
Editor’s note: As noted previously, we’ve tweaked our publishing schedule, so this Friday edition is slightly different from how it used to be. Our main news briefing now goes out on Tuesdays, with this Friday edition being a little more balanced between news, culture, and lifestyle content. This new schedule means we can bring you any important news on both Tuesdays and Fridays instead of waiting up to a whole week while also allowing some slightly more freeform content we couldn’t usually fit in.
As such, today’s edition features a look at the wonderful Medway Activity Book that is about to be released, a roundup of quick news bits, a new Medway-adjacent music video, a review of the new Gurkha Fire restaurant, our weekly event listings, a preview of this Sunday’s interview with Rochester printmaker Heather Haythornthwaite, and lots more.
The Tuesday news briefing email is free to all subscribers, as is this one for now, but we’ll see how that goes as the format evolves. We try to keep as much of our work as possible available for free, and our paid supporters help us do that. If you value our work and want to help make a new way of delivering local journalism for Medway sustainable, please hit the orange button below to support us.
Medway... in activity book form!
“The idea is to tell the story of the whole of Medway from Rainham to the Peninsula and share interesting stories, illustrations, and fun little activities.”
Local designer Esther Johnson is excited to launch the Medway Activity Book, a 24-page book suitable for children and families.
Esther says the idea came from looking after her nephew once a week. He loves drawing and colouring. Esther would take him to places in Medway, and something that combined the places with something to draw, colour in and engage with could work.
This is the first time that Esther has been able to create something specifically for the younger generation. It comes with unique challenges, like wording and succinctly explaining the stories. The project has been three years in the making, being worked on between other paying jobs in her design business, for which she was recognised at the Kent Women in Business Awards as Young Businesswoman of the Year.
The idea grew, and over the last couple of years, she has worked with local companies and organisations, floating the idea with Fort Amherst and the Royal Engineers, after which the idea seemed to fly. The more people she spoke with, the more wanted to join up, and heritage sites wanted to have something affordable for their visitors and customers.
Esther had already worked with Fort Amherst on designing mascots, Henry Hicks and Dash the Dog, who appear in the book. Previous illustrations for the Royal Engineers can also be spotted.
“As much as I would have loved all the illustrations to be new, I think it's quite nice that my history and designs are in there. Chatham Dockyard was how I started my business so that was also a key place that I wanted to include in the book as well as it being a major tourist attraction.”
Esther learned a lot about Medway during the book's development. She recalls driving around the Will Adams roundabout on the A2 nearly every day but not knowing why it was named Will Adams or why there was Japanese writing on the street signs. This led to much enjoyable research, including meeting volunteers who wanted to share their locations’ history and share passion and enthusiasm for the area.
She previously knew of the architect George Edward Bond vaguely, but through researching the book, she found out about his impact on the development of Medway. As an example, Esther highlights the Brook Theatre as a beautiful building and loves that on the rooftop, there are four statues from when it was a town hall that represented the topics debated inside.
Putting the book together, Esther has tried to be conscious from early on to include as much of Medway as possible and not just specific parts of Rochester and Chatham that are perhaps higher profile. “I wanted to incorporate all the stories even if they're not as well known, they're all important”, she says.
Esther wanted to use a series of images and icons that you would either already recognise or go and find out and see as a family. The activities could be done a bit at a time rather than completing the whole book in five minutes. Encouraging families to go to these places is important to Esther, an opportunity to celebrate the stories in Medway and its history.
Of course, Thomas Waghorn features in the first activity created, with the opportunity to draw and colour him in. The middle of the book needed an activity that suited a double-page spread, which was ideal for a board game (dice and counters not included): a simple start-to-finish race along the river Medway, controversially starting somewhere in Sussex.
Her nephew has continued to be a good touchstone as the book developed. “He told me I drew the wrong digger”, she says. His name and Esther’s niece have a dedication in the back of the book, which they are delighted with.
The book will go on sale on March 21, available online, including our own Medwayish shop, and at all the places listed. Esther will hold a big launch event on March 20 to thank all the people who helped with the design and production of the book.
“I wanted to thank people who have given me time, coffee, expertise, and enthusiasm. This is a Medway book. It’s designed and printed in Medway, and it’s for the people of Medway.”
The Medway Activity Book is available to buy from our Medwayish shop.
In brief
🏥 Patients undergoing minor surgery at Medway Hospital are being offered VR headsets during procedures. Studies show doing so aids recovery, reduces anxiety and pain, and lowers blood pressure.
🕌🕍 Muslim and Jewish places of worship in Medway have spoken out on the increasing threat from Islamophobia and anti-semitism. It follows the announcement of new government funding to tackle hate crime in local communities.
🌹 Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper was in Medway yesterday (14 Mar) campaigning for Gillingham and Rainham candidate Naushabah Khan. While here, she visited the Sunlight Centre and the Medway Men in Sheds project.
🎙️ Former Medway Conservatives deputy leader Elizabeth Turpin has gone on the Kent Politics Podcast to explain why she suddenly left the party.
🎮 KMTV has been to visit students studying esports at MidKent College.
🍔 McDonald’s at Hempstead Valley has now opened. The new outlet marks a return to the shopping centre after an extended absence.
📻 Local historian Rob Flood has taken a walk along the old High Street area around Intra with BBC Radio Kent. This 10 minute recording takes in some of the history of the area.
If you enjoy Local Authority, please share it with your friends, family, associates, and even your enemies. We have no meaningful marketing budget, so rely on word of mouth from our readers to find new readers. You can even get some sweet rewards for sending new readers our way. Details here.
Venbee back in ME4
Around a year ago, we featured a video from successful Chatham drum and bass artist Venbee, which was entirely shot in locations around Medway.
It turns out that wasn’t the only Medway-based output in her, as she’s now released ME4, presumably named after the Chatham postcode, about growing up on a council estate.
I’ve spent too long looking at the video to try and figure out if it was also filmed in Medway, and honestly, I can’t tell. I’m leaning towards it being somewhere else, but it’s entirely possible it’s some part I’m unfamiliar with. As always, please drop into the comments if you can identify the locations, as I just need an answer now.
There’s also this shocking line, “We went to college in the ME4”, which we know is nonsense given the only college in Medway is in ME7. Honestly, these young people today…
Out to lunch: Gurkha Fire in Chatham
Steven Keevil assesses the lunch options available in our towns. This week, he’s been to the newly opened Gurkha Fire in Chatham…
This new restaurant has taken over from the former Fire Station Brasserie space and is a new venture from the team who have been delighting Medway’s tastebuds at Dylan’s in Intra. Spacious and stylish, I took the opportunity to take the sofa on offer. The walls are lined with nods to the Nepalese culture, from wood carvings to signs pointing towards Mount Everest basecamp. The staff are friendly and are keen for feedback to make sure their offer is what customers want.
They have a separate lunch menu from their dinner offering, and poppadoms were ordered to start. The poppadoms were fresh and served with an excellent mango chutney. Mains was a chicken ‘Frankie boat’, a delicious bread opened like a pocket and packed with chicken and salad. It is a taste sensation packing a little spice, but the flavours complement each other so well, and the bread works as a delivery tool for the chicken or eaten on its own. As a bonus, we got some mango lassi and recommend you do too.
Overall, it is great to see the former fire station being used and used so well. This is an excellent addition to Chatham’s eating options and I can’t recommend enough that you check it out, whether you are an existing fan of Dylan’s or new to Nepalese cuisine.
Events this week
🎛️ Music promoters Kicking Against Nothing are holding a ‘mini-KAN’ inside Analogue Music on Rochester High Street this Saturday (16 Mar). Billed as ‘Kent’s smallest ambient electronic music event’, the tiny record shop will see performances from Gagarin and New Haven. Tickets are free but must be booked due to the limited space, and donations are welcome.
🥕 Rochester Farmers’ Market is back this Sunday (17 Mar), selling various fresh food and drink from around twenty stallholders. Find them in the Blue Boar Lane car park next to the Casino Rooms between 9am and 1pm.
🎹 Improvised sound event Minimus is taking place at Rams Micropub 12 Degrees this Sunday (17 Mar). Anyone is welcome to come along and contribute via acoustic, electric, electronic, or vocal means to ‘an evolving ambient whirlpool’. 5pm-7pm, free entry, 18+.
👊 Odeon is holding a 25th-anniversary screening of David Fincher’s Fight Club on Tuesday (19 Mar). A searing study of toxic masculinity or a misogynist nihilistic male fantasy? Possibly both. It’s a hypnotic watch regardless and doesn’t appear in cinemas very often.
🎤 Big Trouble is a poetry open mic held at Rams Micropub 12 Degrees, and the next edition is this Thursday (21 Mar). On top of open mic performances, the event also features performances from Zack Davies and Mark Holihan. Tickets £7.
More Authority
Our paid supporters receive extra editions of Local Authority every week, including our in-depth interviews with local figures. This Sunday, we’ll publish an interview with Heather Haythornthwaite, an experienced printmaker, exhibiting artist, and art teacher from Rochester.
An excerpt from the interview is below, and paid supporters will receive the full thing on Sunday.
On your website, you talk about ‘Stories that exist within the evolving urban environments.’
There's always a bit of gossip and there's always a bit of something going on that causes people to turn over ideas and possibilities, and those can become prints. My prints are never simply what you see. If they were I would take photographs. There’s always something more that keeps you interested. If you're going to buy a print, you're going to put it on the wall, you've got to like looking at it more than once. They've all got a bit of something. The one of Luton Arches, there's a man with two small dogs. I took the title from a book I enjoyed: ‘Started Early’. Where is he going and what is he up to? That sort of thing, I delight in it. You look through that arch, and you know, Chatham is beautiful. There's this curve in the road. There's a slope. There's a gentleness to it that you don't normally see, that's what I like to find. The same with the one called Magpie Hall, but it's actually Litmus Road. It's a lovely open space, there is a tree there which hasn't been killed, to my knowledge. It's a gentle place and at dawn, you know, it's beautiful around there and it's quiet and it's lovely and it's in this very densely housed area and yet it's a bit open. It's great, it's full of birds, it's lovely. Those little things are just cool.
What is ‘Ban the Mindreader’ why did you put it on a tea towel?
(laughs) When I came to the Medway towns first, I noticed at the flea market there were these crazy words along the wall. I couldn't quite read them and then I noticed when I walked on the Lines the same words were there and that freaked me right out. Then I found the same words were being removed from Upnor, the wall that surrounded some bit of the navy over there, and that really surprised me. I learned a bit more about it and it turned out the general thing I've heard is that there were old sailors who elected to do some psychotic drug testing and they had these clips put on their heads, went to a machine that recorded their responses, and they were injected with stuff. It seems that one guy attributed all the trouble to the computer that he was wired up to. And he went around writing about the mind reader, the murdering computer, when in fact, it was probably the medication he was taking on top of whatever post-traumatic situation he was in, and he probably didn't have all of his health anyway because he was the age he was and all that.
Footnotes
Thanks for reading! This is a quick reminder that our publishing schedule has now changed, in case you think this edition was a little news-lite. The main weekly news briefing now comes out on Tuesdays, alongside this new Friday edition that edges more toward culture and lifestyle to set you up for the weekend. We’re still finalising the formats of both editions, so please stick with us while we do.
Music that soundtracked the creation of this edition: Growing in Strange Places by Thank You, I’m Sorry, Can’t Make Any Promises by Radiator Hospital, and Young and Cool by Woahnows.
Medway College of Technology at Horsted was in ME4, I believe.