Brilliant report in today's NW Evening Mail. It's very pleasing to see the area's premier paper covering our project in such detail. Big thanks to Natalie for the story and Leanne for the pictures. The publicity generated by our launch event has already yielded one very unexpected but welcome result as the former BBC Radio Carlisle and Radio Cumbria presenter Nigel Holmes has given us detailed information about a cache of Nicholson audio recordings held in the BBC archive. Needless to say, we are following that up. 

It was a beautiful day in Millom yesterday. Blue skies, bright sunshine, and wonderfully clear air which seemed to portray everything in a sharper light than usual. Scafell Pike and the Old Man were covered in snow and Black Combe was at his grizzled best, streaks of thinning snow scraped across his forehead as if his flat cap had just been blown off. Inside St George's Church it was warm and welcoming, as we launched our project to an audience of individual members of the public, Society members, and representatives of Millom Council, Copeland Council, the NW Evening Mail and Cumbria Libraries. We also had two published poets in attendance - Martyn Halsall, former Poet in residence at Carlisle Cathedral (and once a trainee reporter on the same weekly paper as your blogger), and Philip Houghton, one of our project's patrons. Phil made a wonderful contribution by reading his own poem 'Echoes' which neatly turns on its head Nicholson's famous poem 'Scafell Pike', looking back from Scafell to Millom instead of the other way about, neatly rearranging Nicholson's own imagery and phraseology. The object of the exercise was to get out the word about our ambitions for the house and our progress thus far. I think we did that, while at the same time we made some useful contacts for the future. Away from the church, we had terrific coverage on BBC Radio Cumbria on the breakfast show, news bulletins and social media, plus news coverage on The Bay so our project team is very happy with how the event worked out. 

It's been a busy day, getting things ready for our launch in Millom tomorrow and also liaising with BBC Radio Cumbria over their coverage tomorrow. It's wonderful to feel the enthusiasm that they have for this story and it looks like we are going to be featured twice in the Breakfast show, have a presence in their social media posts, and have another live interview on Sunday! In the meantime The Bay radio station has given us a great spread on their own website and they've also promised to give our launch some coverage in news bulletins tomorrow. 

It's been a busy few days, making arrangements for the public launch of our project next Thursday, and sending out press releases etc. Very pleased to see the enthusiastic response of the NW Evening Mail who very quickly ran the story prominently - if you didn't catch it at the time, it's here. We've also just received the detailed quote and documentation from our chosen architect Mike Darwell of John Coward Architects, Cartmel, and that was another exciting moment - it makes everything that bit more real, and to have someone with the expertise and the contacts of Mike on board is a major plus.

A very useful day yesterday. I went to Mytholmroyd in W Yorkshire to meet Sheila Wild, chair of the Elmet Trust, which runs the Ted Hughes house. It was so valuable to tap into another society's experience. Many of the issues which the Elmet Trust face struck a chord, but there are also a number of differences, not least that the Hughes house (where the poet was born and lived for seven years) is owned by Calderdale Council and leased to the Trust. It operates a B&B business so you can book a stay via the Trust's agents, Cottages4You.

Not only did the programme present a reading of 'Sea to the West,' Roger McGough mentioned our plan to buy the house and wished us luck! Great to hear that!

Today feels like an important day because I've been in touch with the Rev Clive Shaw and he's very kindly given permission for us to hold the public launch of our campaign in St George's Church in Millom on March 23rd at 12 noon. So that's settled and I've told my colleagues within the Society, so the die is cast! That's the day when we'll go public with the plans which we've been workng on for many months now. And to get everything ready for our big launch, we need to have plenty of information about the Norman Nicholson House campaign on this website, so that's what I'm working on right now - one idea being this blog which will give me the chance to keep everyone up to date through the ups and downs which will lie ahead.