I just had to have a coffee in this garden

We visited Firstsite in Colchester yesterday afternoon and afterwards wandered into The Minories, a historic old house with this amazing city centre garden. The team were poised to break down an origami exhibition that was closing in an hour, so we just had time to see it.

We looked to see what was on display upstairs and spotted a door that said East Anglian Folklore Centre. This too was being packed up ready for a move, but the conversation I had there quite made my day. ‘We have a lot of folklore books,’ I was told, ‘but now they’re packed up so I’m afraid you can’t see them.’ I mentioned my interest in the writer George Ewart Evans and that I’d written a book that built on his work.

‘Oh, you must be Robert Ashton,’ she said, ‘your book is marvelous; I’ve read it twice and we have a copy in our collection.’ Now this doesn’t happen to me every day, and yes a folklore centre is the kind of place I might find a fan of my book, but all the same, this chance meeting has the highpoint of my visit to Colchester.

My parents met while working in Colchester, and my dad’s family lived in the city from the 1860s so it’s a place full of memories for me, but this recognition made me feel even more at home there. It was also reassuring, and a reminder that writing books is now both my career and my vocation. Will I ever tire of being recognised by readers?