The festival began with a Norwegian poetry celebration event. It allowed me to collaborate with Norwegian renaissance singer, researcher and performer, Sean Bell. I hired a costume that was (I was told) 100% historically accurate for Samuel Pepys, who was a local to the venue - St Olave church in the City of London and mentioned it often in his diary, attending as a parishioner. I read Claire Tomalin’s book about his life, and his diaries, and then researched the accent most common in London of the 1660s, which was similar to contemporary Devonian. Then Sean and I met on the day, he brought some prepared songs that were of the time too, and we slotted things together, and pretty much improvised. It ended up as something wonderfully strange and atmospheric. I resisted a neatness, shall we say, so it was a little awkward for the audience, but all the better. Sean is incredible too, as talented as he is amicable.