by Admin | 26 Sep 2024 | activities, FRONT PAGE NEWS
This free taster workshop will be led by experienced Accredited Forest Bathing Guide, Elisabetta Murgia of Bluebells Forest Bathing.
Follow Elisabetta on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn.
Forest Bathing is an immersive and meditative experience in nature that improves our wellbeing. When taking groups to a forest, Elisabetta helps people to slow down, to stay silent, to connect to nature, to feel more of their sensations, more of their body and less of their racing thoughts. She uses breathing techniques and sensory exercises to slow down the nervous system and gain a sense of relaxation and peace. While connecting with nature, we can connect more with our inner self; this experience can arouse emotional and personal reflections along with creativity and heartfelt desires. Elisabetta works with nature to create a safe and supportive environment.
Meet at the library at 0900 on Saturday 23 November for introductory talk. The session will move to Gladstone Park around 1030. Please wear suitable warm clothing for the weather!
Head over to our Events page to reserve your free place.
by Library Admin | 5 Sep 2024 | Cricklereaders Juniors, FRONT PAGE NEWS
Happy to announce we’re restarting Cricklereaders Juniors, our FREE term time book group for 7-11 year olds.
Our talented and fun volunteers choose amazing books for your kids to get to know and love, and each week brings different activities to help bring the books to life and kindle a life-long love of books and reading. What better way to start the weekend than by coming along to Cricklereaders Juniors? Every term time Friday between 4 and 5pm.
Register your interest on our super-quick form.
by Library Admin | 11 Aug 2024 | Cricklereaders, Cricklereaders Read
In her first historical novel, Zadie Smith transports the reader to a Victorian England transfixed by the real-life trial of the Tichborne Claimant, in which a cockney butcher, recently returned from Australia, lays claim to the Tichborne baronetcy, with his former slave Andrew Bogle as star witness. Watching the proceedings, and with her own story to tell, is Eliza Touchet – cousin, housekeeper and perhaps more – to failing novelist William Harrison Ainsworth.
From literary London to the Jamaica’s sugar-cane plantations, Zadie Smith weaves an enthralling story linking the rich and the poor, the free and the enslaved, and the comic and the tragic.
Cricklereaders are always happy to have new members – join by applying here: Cricklereaders Book Group
by Admin | 22 Jul 2024 | Cricklereaders, Cricklereaders Read
In August the group is reading Before the Coffee Gets Cold, the million copy selling Japanese cult read.
Deftly written and nimbly translated, Kawaguchi’s life-affirming tale of café-based time travel and symbolic hot beverages has all the hallmarks of a beloved cult classic.
What would you change if you could go back in time?
In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a cafe which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.
In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the cafe’s time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by early onset Alzheimer’s, to see their sister one last time, and to meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.
But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the cafe, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold . . .
Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s beautiful, moving story – translated from Japanese by Geoffrey Trousselot – explores the age-old question: what would you change if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time?
Meet at 1030 in the library to discuss!
by Library Admin | 10 Jun 2024 | activities
We’re delighted to welcome The Sonora Quartet to the library. Formed in 2022, Sonora is composed of four second-year RCM instrumentalists, Maria Noskova, Emily St Clair, Maya de Souza and Alex Boyd-Bench. Very enthusiastic and dedicated to chamber music, they have had coaching sessions and masterclasses with members of the Sacconi, Marmen and Pavel Haas Quartets, as well as with Krysia Osotowicz and Susie Mezaros within RCM; in addition, they have received external coaching at MusicWorks Sundays with Ralph de Souza (from the Endellion Quartet) and Catherine Manson and Michael Gurevich (from the London Haydn Quartet). They have performed at the RCM, St Mary Abbots Church and the Austrian Cultural Forum, and have also been lucky enough to have premiered and performed works written for them by fellow RCM composers, including ‘November’ and ‘Away’ by Asher Joyce and ‘Quiberee Bay’ by Rieko Makita. The Sonora Quartet was amongst three RCM quartets selected to play Van Bree’s Allegro for Four Quartets in RCM’s Super String Sunday 2023 alongside the Alkyona Quartet, and is one of three RCM quartets currently on the RCM String Quartet Platform. Recent repertoire includes Haydn Op.17 No.4 in C minor, Mozart K.428 in Eb major, Brahms’ String Quartet No.2 in A minor and Haydn Seven Last Words.
Head over to our booking website to secure your seat.
by Library Admin | 10 Jun 2024 | activities, CrickleUkers, FRONT PAGE NEWS
Due to popular demand, we’re extending the timing of the monthly Ukulele jam, CrickleUkers, by 30 minutes. From Friday 5 July, the sessions will start at 1900, rather than 1930. This will hopefully give all the beginners enough time to get a few chords under their belt before joining the main group in the front of the library.
Also, a reminder that we have about 10 spare ukes to lend out, so no need to buy one before coming along to have a go.
It’s also fine to bring snacks and drinks to share on the night.
Looking forward to seeing more of you there soon.
