The MUD Room

The MUD Room

A narrow room at the back of the shop, with a bench along one wall, coats on pegs above it and a rack of boots under that, every one of them muddy. The back door has a window in it, and through the window is a great deal of sky. Everybody who goes out onto the Slake comes back in through here, which is the whole reason it is called a mud room.

If you sit down. You sit on the bench by the boots for a while. Nobody asks you where you are going.

• a pair of yellow wellies. A pair of yellow wellington boots, your size, whatever your size is. You can wear them out onto the mud, or go barefoot. The Slake is fine with either.
• the coat pegs. A row of coat pegs with coats and hats on them, and one empty peg at the end, for whoever comes next.
• the noticeboard. A card pinned up by the back door, in capitals: NOBODY TO FIGHT. NOTHING IS COUNTED. THE TIDE TURNS WHEN YOU WAIT FOR IT, AND NOT BEFORE. SAY HOME AND YOU ARE HOME.
• the bench. A bench for sitting on to take your boots off, or to put them on, or neither.

Ways on: South, out the back door, up onto the sea wall

Out the front door, back to the street

The Sea Wall

At low tide. You are up on the sea wall, a long grassed bank with a path along the top. Behind you is the back of the shop. In front of you the Slake opens out below: marsh, then mud, then channels of water lying in the mud and holding the sky, all the way out to a small island with a striped mark standing on it. The tide is out.

At high tide. You are up on the sea wall, a long grassed bank with a path along the top. Behind you is the back of the shop. In front of you the marsh runs down to a sheet of pale water where the mud was, and the small island with the striped mark on it is properly an island now. The tide is in.

• the view. At low tide. Marsh first, green and cut up by little creeks, then a great flat of shining mud, then the island with its striped beacon. To the left, the reeds and a hut with a slot in it. To the right, a white mill and a tall shed by the creek. Nothing out there is in a hurry.At high tide. Marsh first, then a sheet of pale water all the way to the island, with the tops of the causeway posts standing out of it in a line. To the right the creek is brim full, and there is a rowing boat out on it.

Ways on: North, in at the back door · West, along the wall to the hide · East, along the wall to the tea hut · South, down the steps onto the marsh

The Hide

A wooden hut at the west end of the wall with one long slot of a window facing the marsh, a bench under the slot, and two people on the bench, watching. Nobody speaks above a murmur in a hide, and nobody has to speak at all.

If you sit down. You sit on the end of the bench and look out through the slot. Wren and Tam do not look round, and that is a welcome.

• the slot of a window. Through the slot: the marsh, the creeks, a line of mud beyond, and birds getting on with things because nobody is bothering them. The slot is exactly as wide as it needs to be and not an inch wider.
• the logbook. A logbook on a string, with a pencil on another string, for writing down what you saw. Its pages are empty, because the Slake writes nothing down. Whoever else is out here, you meet them where they are, not in a book.

• Wren and Tam. Wren and Tam are on the bench, watching the marsh. Wren glances round, smiles, and goes back to watching. Tam shifts along the bench to make room for you. That is the whole conversation, and it is a good one. Sitting side by side with nothing to say and no need to say it has a name. Our glossary calls it Parallel Play: being alone together, in the same place, where just being there with each other counts.

Ways on: East, back along the wall · South, down the boardwalk into the reeds

The Reedbed

A boardwalk runs into reeds taller than you are, and the whole world goes to pale stems and a strip of sky. They hiss when the wind moves them. You cannot see far in here, which is what some people come in here for.

• the reeds. Every reed in here is joined to others under the mud. Once a reedbed has taken hold it spreads by stems that run along underground and put up new shoots, so a bed that looks like thousands of plants may be only a few. Our glossary has an entry for the same shape in people: the Autistic Rhizome.

Ways on: North, back up the boardwalk to the hide · East, out of the reeds onto the marsh

The Saltmarsh

Low ground under the wall, cropped short and cut through with little creeks, with samphire standing up out of the wettest patches like small green fingers. The sea only comes over it at the highest tides, and then only for a while.

• the samphire. Short, jointed, fleshy green stems with no leaves to speak of, standing up out of the wettest mud on the marsh. It grows where hardly anything else will, out at the very edge of the land, and it is the first thing to grow there.
• the survey stake. A wooden stake with a tag on it, marking one square metre of marsh that Juno comes back to look at, season after season, to see what has changed.

• Juno. Juno is kneeling at the survey stake with a notebook. Juno is looking at the same square metre of marsh they looked at last month, and the month before that, and writing down what has changed. They show you: a new shoot here, a little more mud there. The best way Juno knows to learn about a place is to keep coming back to the ground you are standing on and looking at it properly. Our glossary calls that Place-Based Education: learning that happens in the natural, cultural and built places around you.

Ways on: North, up the steps to the wall · West, into the reeds · East, along the edge of the marsh to the hut on stilts · South, down onto the foreshore (while the tide is out)

The Tea Hut

A hut on the wall with its front propped open, a kettle that is always nearly boiling, benches outside it and a sign that says NOTHING TO BUY. There are tin mugs on hooks and a biscuit tin that is somehow never empty.

If you sit down. You sit on a bench outside the hut with a mug going cold in your hands. Moss does not ask whether you want another one. They just bring it.

• the kettle. Nearly boiling, as it always is. The mugs are tin and chipped and there is always one free.
• the sign. NOTHING TO BUY, in white paint on a board. It has never said anything else.

• Moss. Moss is behind the counter, keeping the kettle nearly boiling. Moss pours you tea into a tin mug and does not ask for anything back, because there is nothing to ask for. The sign says so. The tea hut is not anybody's home and it is not anybody's work, and nobody has to buy anything to sit in it. That is what our glossary means by one of the Third Places: somewhere with regulars, a level floor and no price at the door.

Ways on: West, along the wall · East, along the wall to the mill · South, down the steps to the hut on stilts

The Tide Mill

At low tide. A white weatherboarded mill standing where the creek meets the wall, with a millpond behind it. The tide is out, and the pond is still full, because the gates shut on the water when the sea went down. Now the mill is letting that water out through the wheel, slowly, and the whole building is humming with it.

At high tide. A white weatherboarded mill standing where the creek meets the wall, with a millpond behind it. The tide is in, and the rising sea has pushed the gates open and is filling the pond. The wheel is still. The mill is waiting for the water to go down again, because that is the only time it can work.

• the tide gates. At low tide. The gates are shut against the pond. They are hung so that the falling tide leaves them closed and the water is kept in, and nobody has to work them.At high tide. The gates are standing open. They are hung so that the rising tide pushes them open on its own and fills the pond, and nobody has to work them.
• the wheel. At low tide. The pond water is going out through the wheel and the wheel is turning, slowly, and turning the stones upstairs.At high tide. The wheel is still. It will turn again when the tide has gone out far enough to let the pond water through it.

• Ottilie. Ottilie the miller is here, dusted with flour. Ottilie is watching the stones and does not hear you the first time. When they do, they blink, as if they had come back from a long way off. When the wheel is turning Ottilie loses track of the hours completely, and is glad to. Our glossary calls that Monotropic Time, in Helen Edgar's words: being so wholly inside something you love that ordinary time dissolves.

Ways on: West, along the wall to the tea hut · South, down the bank to the creek · Down, down the ladder into the wheel pit

The Wheel Pit

Without a light. Down the ladder, under the mill floor, it is completely dark. You can hear water close by and feel the damp coming off the stone. Your hand finds a wooden beam, worn smooth, with something cut into it that you cannot read by touch.

With a light. The lantern shows a stone pit under the mill with the great wheel standing in it, black with wet, and a wooden beam across the pit worn smooth by hands. Somebody cut a line of words into the beam a long time ago.

• the beam. Without a light. Your fingers find letters cut into the wood, but not what they say. It would take a light.With a light. Cut into the beam, in capitals worn soft at the edges: THE WHEEL TURNS WHEN THE WATER SAYS.

Ways on: Up, up the ladder into the mill

The Mudlarks’ Hut

A hut on stilts at the edge of the marsh with a long table down the middle, covered in things people have found on the foreshore: pipe stems, bits of plate, sea glass, buttons, all laid out in no order but the order they arrived in. Anybody can bring something to this table, and everybody at it is somebody who once did.

• the finds table. Pipe stems, sherds of plate, sea glass in three colours, buttons, a key with no lock, a marble. Nothing on it has a price or a label, only a scrap of paper under each thing saying where on the foreshore it came up. Anything you bring and show to Ada goes on the table with the rest.

• Ada. Ada is at the finds table, with a lens. Ada looks up from a sherd of plate and starts telling you all about it before you have said hello: where it came up, how the tide turned it over, the other half of the pattern that somebody found three winters ago. Nobody has ever asked Ada to stop. Nobody is in charge of this table. Somebody who found their first pipe stem this morning sits beside somebody who has been coming for forty years, and they learn from each other. Our glossary calls a place like that, built around a shared passion rather than around who you are, an Affinity Space.

Ways on: North, up the steps to the tea hut · West, along the edge of the marsh · East, across to the creek · South, down the ladder onto the mud (while the tide is out)

The Creek

At low tide. A channel through the mud with steep, shining banks and a thread of water running along the bottom of it. A heron is standing in the thread, perfectly still. Boats lie over on their sides on the mud, waiting to be floated.

At high tide. The creek is full to the top of its banks and the boats are floating upright on their moorings. The heron has gone somewhere shallower.

• the boats. At low tide. Small wooden boats lying over on the mud, each tied to a stake on a long rope, waiting for the water to stand them up.At high tide. Small wooden boats floating upright on their long ropes, turned all the same way by the tide.
• the heron. Only while the tide is out. It was standing in exactly that spot before you came and it will be standing there after you go. A heron fishes by standing still for longer than a fish can.

Ways on: North, up the bank to the mill · West, across to the hut on stilts · East, along the bank to the boathouse · South, down the bank to the ferry steps

The Boathouse

A tall shed open at the creek end, smelling of wood shavings and tar, with a small boat half built on trestles in the middle. Its ribs are up and about half of its planks are on. The tools hang on the wall, each one inside its own painted outline, so you can see where it goes back.

• the half-built boat. A keel, a row of ribs, and about half of its planks, each one lapped over the one below it. It has been half built for as long as anybody on the Slake can remember, and Ines likes it that way.
• the tools on the wall. Planes, clamps, a mallet, a bevel and a spokeshave, each one hung inside its own painted outline. You can tell at a glance what is out being used and where it goes back.
• a storm lantern. A storm lantern, already lit, the sort that does not blow out. It is for anybody who needs to see somewhere dark.

• Ines. Ines is fitting a plank to the boat. Ines hands you the other end of the plank without asking whether you know how. You hold it while they fix it. Now you know a little of how. Ines never learned boats out of a book. They learned by building one, and then another. Our glossary calls that Constructionism: people learn most when they are making something that matters to them. If you join in. You hold a plank steady while Ines fixes it to the one below. If you join in. You pass Ines the nails one at a time, which is a job, and a real one. If you join in. You sweep the shavings into a pile, which is also boatbuilding.

Ways on: West, out along the bank to the creek

The Foreshore

The strip of mud and shingle along the foot of the marsh that the tide uncovers and covers again. It is where the Slake gives things back. You have to look down to see them, and once you start looking down, you see them everywhere.

In wellies. Your wellies sink an inch at every step and come out again with a noise.

Barefoot. Barefoot, the mud is cold and soft and comes up between your toes.

• a clay pipe stem. A little white tube of fired clay about as long as your finger, with a hole down the middle. Somebody smoked out of it once. If you show it to Ada. Ada says the foreshore is littered with pipe stems, because clay pipes were cheap and broke easily and nobody minded. They keep a jar of them, and a great many people's first find is one.
• a sherd of blue-and-white plate. A piece of plate about the size of a coin, white with a blue pattern on it: part of a bridge, part of a tree. If you show it to Ada. Ada turns it over and tells you the rest of the pattern, the willow and the bridge and the two birds, and whose whole dinner service it probably was, most of which is still out there. They have found this pattern more times than they could say and are glad every time.
• a piece of sea glass. A piece of green glass as smooth as soap, with all its edges rounded off and its shine gone to frost. If you show it to Ada. Ada holds it up to the window. This was a bottle once, and the tide has been sanding it ever since, for years and years. Ada likes to think about all that time it was lying out there being turned over.
• a button. A small metal button, dull green, with four holes in it. If you show it to Ada. Ada has a jar just for buttons. They say nobody on the Slake has ever found the same button twice, which is exactly the kind of fact Ada collects as well.

Ways on: North, up onto the marsh · East, out onto the open mud (while the tide is out)

The Mudflat

Open mud as far as you can see, shining where it is wettest, so that the sky is under your feet as well as over your head. Little coiled casts are everywhere, where something lives underneath. A curlew walks past, putting its long curved bill into the mud right up to its face.

In wellies. Your wellies make a sucking sound every time you lift one.

Barefoot. Barefoot, you leave clear prints behind you, and the mud fills them in.

• the casts. Coils of mud like squeezed-out toothpaste, all over the flat. Something that lives down in the mud makes them, and the curlews know exactly what.
• the curlew. It walks and probes, walks and probes, feeling for things deep in the mud with a very long bill that curves down at the end. It is not bothered by you in the slightest.
• the slide. A place where the mud slopes down into a channel, slid down so many times that it is polished. You can go down it if you like: say slide. Our glossary's entry on Play opens with a line from the Human Restoration Project: there is nothing more human than play.

Ways on: North, up the ladder to the hut on stilts · West, across to the foreshore (while the tide is out) · East, across the mud to the ferry steps · South, onto the causeway (while the tide is out)

The Ferry Steps

At low tide. Stone steps going down the creek bank to a landing stage, with a rowing boat lying on the mud at the bottom of them and a bell on a post at the top. The ferry only runs when there is water to row on, and just now there is not.

At high tide. Stone steps going down the creek bank to a landing stage, with the water right up to it and a rowing boat bobbing at the bottom. There is a bell on a post at the top. The ferry is running.

• the bell. At low tide. A brass bell on a post. At low tide you can ring it all you like and the boat stays on the mud, which is also fine.At high tide. A brass bell on a post, for ringing when you want the ferry. The ferry is already at the steps.

• Bex. Bex, who rows the ferry, is sitting on the steps. Bex asks you what you saw out on the mud today, listens to the whole of the answer, and asks you another question about it. Bex has rowed this ferry longer than anybody and still learns something from nearly everybody they row across. There is no teacher in this boat and no student, only two people who each know something. Our glossary calls that Omni-directional Learning.

Ways on: North, up the bank to the creek · West, out onto the mud (while the tide is out) · Across, across on the ferry to the island (while the tide is in)

The Causeway

A raised path of stones and gravel across the mud to the island, with tall posts standing along it every few steps so that nobody loses the way. It is only a path while the tide is out, and it says so on a board at each end.

In wellies. The stones are firm under your wellies, and the mud either side of them is not.

Barefoot. The stones are hard under bare feet after the mud, and warm where the sun has been on them.

• the posts. Tall wooden posts every few steps, so you can see the way even when the mud is shining so hard it hurts to look at.
• the board. A board at each end of the causeway: THIS IS A PATH WHILE THE TIDE IS OUT. WHEN IT IS IN, THE FERRY RUNS.

Ways on: North, back onto the mudflat (while the tide is out) · South, along the causeway to the island (while the tide is out)

The Holm

At low tide. A little grassy island with a well on it, a bench, and a tall striped beacon standing at its highest point. The causeway runs back across the mud to the north.

At high tide. A little grassy island with a well on it, a bench, and a tall striped beacon standing at its highest point. The tide is in all round, the causeway has gone under it, and the ferry is tied up at the landing on the east side.

If you sit down. You sit on the bench, which faces back the way you came, and look at the shop from out here. It looks small, and it looks lit.

• the well. A stone well with a wooden lid and a bucket on a chain. The water in it is fresh, which on a little island in the sea is a small wonder.
• the bench. A bench facing back towards the shop, for looking at where you came from.
• the beacon. A tower of black and white stripes, taller than a house, with no lamp in it anywhere. It is a day beacon: the stripes are its daymark, the part made to be seen in daylight. There is a ladder inside, and up is the only way in.

Ways on: North, back along the causeway (while the tide is out) · Across, back on the ferry to the steps (while the tide is in) · Up, up the ladder inside the beacon

The Top of the Beacon

A ladder inside the striped tower brings you out onto a small platform at the top. There is no lamp up here and there never was: it is a mark for daylight, striped so it can be seen from a long way off, and it does its whole job by standing still. From up here you can see all of the Slake at once, laid out below you like a map, and every place on it is somewhere you could walk to.

Ways on: Down, down the ladder to the island