Bob Ogley's Hurricane of Information....

Went along to the Tonbridge Civic Society Christmas talk yesterday evening to enjoy a mince pie (or two) and a glass of mulled wine (or three) followed by a talk by guest speaker, Bob Ogley. As he informed us Bob has been a writer since 1987 when his first book, In the Wake of the Hurricane, found immediate success nationally following the storms of that year which had such a devastating effect on Kent. Most of Bob's other books have not, by his own admission, found anything like the same sales success as his first but he's managed to produce over 20 books related to the county including famous ones like Biggin on the Bump, Ghosts of Biggin Hill and Kent A Chronicle of the Century. The last of these is chocca full of facts about Kent, its history and its people. Facts are Bob's stock in trade, if last night's talk was anything to go by, as a great blast of them came blowing over his audience. Indeed it was almost as if a great hurricane of information was hurling towards us. We were informed, and entertained, at gale force speed, about how Dickens had almost died on the railway track between Ashford and Tonbridge, how poet laureates had lived and worked nearby, how Van Gogh had lived, studied and worked on the Kent coast and how inmates of the infamous prison hulks were treated and how the only one who ever escaped from one alive was the fictitious character, Magwich, from Dickens' Great Expectations. The great author himself of course was from nearby Rochester. You get the idea. Ogley is clearly a man with huge passion and enthusiasm for Kent facts and history and an infectious desire to inform everyone about them. Indeed I and most of the rest of the evening's audience were swept up in Mr Ogley's tornado of information (that's enough wind metaphors now, Ed.) He wouldn't win any modern prizes for delivery and use of interactive aids to reinforce his lecture, but I very much enjoyed hearing him. And the mince pies and mulled wine went down a treat as well....