Introduction

On Friday October 13th 2006, myself (Dave Wood) and Kurt Bosworth travelled to Cushendall, Northern Ireland to begin a project at the Curfew Tower in the centre of the town. It was creative, it was my birthday and it was Ireland. A damn fine combination of ingredients. And then there’s Kurt of course – great bloke who has made lots of donkeys fall over backwards with his narratives.
The two of us promised ourselves and the Hearth Project to produce a giant, double-sided jigsaw based on the locality – its people, its culture and its ambience (not ambulance). To gather some of these gleanings, we even had to force ourselves into pubs and crow bar ourselves out again (only kidding about the first bit).
What follows is a basic ‘what we did on our busman’s holiday’ from Kurt. We had a great time, little sleep and cold feet in the morning. The local youth were rowdy as promised (the current catchphrase ‘bothered?’ being hurled across the night air in rampant abandon) and the scenery and welcome were second to none. On return, it took a long time to finally pull the jigsaw together. It was a sad day to wave it off to its rightful place in the Tower. We hope who-ever uses it; enjoys it and doesn’t lose the box. That’s got the picture (and the poem) on…