It’s been a busy week – Andrew and Gill’s wedding on Tuesday, a maternity and family shoot on Tuesday afternoon, Southwark Reading Festival on Wednesday and a guardsman shoot (complete with bearskin) and meeting with a potential wedding client yesterday. First, though, is the reading festival, which took place at Dulwich Picture Gallery all week. On Wednesday, the festival featured the comic Etherington Brothers running a workshop in creating your own monster with school children.
Their suggested method is to think of three unconnected things and mash them together in one scary, unlikely character. Their example involved a donut, a hedgehog and a windmill.

They then went on to create other creatures from student suggestions and how to create friends for their monsters and homes. It was a little like a cartoon version of improvised comedy show Whose Line is it Anyway? From comments left in the book outside the talk, it seemed to be a success.

After this workshop was author Marcus Sedgwick, who used the vampire background of one of his books to discuss everything and anything you could want to know about them. Before his talk, along with his coffee, he snuck an opportunity to add an appropriate drawing to the comments book …

The festival finishes today after a year of planning between organisers Lillie McCotter and Tamara Linke. Tamara owns bookshops Tales On Moon Lane, which sponsored the festival.