Debbie Caulfield, The Atrees

We’re doing a folklore project. I love Saddlescombe, Devil’s Dyke, Poynings, Fulking, all of that area. I can get out there and it’s just on top of the world. You know, I just love the environment. I love the trees. If you go down, you walk from the Dyke down to around that area. There’s lots of trees. And I love trees and the birds nature in general. I love nature, and I like the idea that if I go through Saddlescombe, I love the idea that it’s a medieval farm, and that inspired me in a way, partially to write this story, because I like the medieval set out. And I thought, I’ll write something about Devil’s Dyke. It’s about the devil digging the dyke, about the community because they’re becoming Christian. And then the lady with a candle, she lit a candle on the sill to knock a rooster awake like to trick the devil’ it was dawn. And cos the devil thought it was dawn, he ran away. So I thought, I’ll make a fictional story out of that and also put some characters in it. And I thought, well, I might, instead of making it Christian, I’ll make it a family and I’ll use the name Atree, because Atree is a very Sussex name. And so I thought, well, I’ll call the village the Atree community, and they’re going to be this walker’s ancestors. So I call her Helen Atree. I use the name Helen because it’s heroic. In the ancient times it stemmed from there. And then I thought I’ll add a black dog in it and call it Bell because I love dogs. And then I thought, well, I’ll turn the devil from a bad guy into a good guy. Rehabilitate him. So, he turned into a virtuous man, and he becomes part of the community as a person. The actual process of doing it, what I was doing is I was wrote, I wrote it down on paper, and then I typed it out on my iPad. And then I did some Adobe Procreate drawings and paintings, I’ve done some pictures of it. Well I’ve been an artist since 1981. Oil, acrylics, watercolor painting and pastel and all of that. So I went to art college and I just carried on, since just doing all sorts of art and all sorts of things, and I wanted to learn the iPad and I wanted to learn Adobe Procreate. So I thought, I’ll do this story I think I’ll do the pictures on Adobe Procreate. So get me using it, learning it, get me learning something. And I think it’s very good at 67 years old, 66, 67 to be learning new things.