Dear Friend,
Thank you! Thank you! In fact, thank you 240 times. Yes, that’s the number of people who have already booked for the Watermill’s 2019 creative courses. And it’s only March! Our previous record number bookings for the whole year was 232, so we are already well ahead. Since our total capacity is probably not much more than 250 or so, now is the time to get your booking in and grab one of those last few places.
If you’d like to join us, please have a look at the availability details on all our courses below. If there is a course you particularly want to come on and it’s already full, please let us know anyway. There are often cancellations and will put you on a waiting list and tell you immediately if a space comes up.
In this month’s newsletter there are stories on:
- Six reasons to choose a Watermill painting course
- Pretend you are Audrey Hepburn on a vintage Vespa
- Holiday paintings from famous artists
- Better headlights to guide you through the creative writing fog
- Why an Italian bottle became a theatrical disaster
- Latest availability on all our creative courses for 2019
Happy reading...
The picture top left is a Berthe Morisot’s painting of her husband, Eugene Manet, on holiday in the Isle of Wight, while top right is Lara Breckon at the handlebars of Flavio Terenzoni’s vintage Vespa, with Dad as a happy passenger. At bottom left, a guest on a writing course finds a quiet corner to contemplate, while at bottom right is an illustration for Sarah Hazell’s new mini-project on her knitting course this May, inspired by the Watermill’s gardens.
‘What you think Ross?’ ‘Great idea, Rachel.’
Bring a partner: there’s plenty for them to do
Why not bring your friend or partner? They don’t have to participate in the course, but they will be able to enjoy the wonderful hospitality of the mill and, whenever they want, to come out with you to our beautiful locations. We also offer a range of Alternative activities for partners on all our courses, as well as a generous £GBP 250 discount if they share a room with you.
Six reasons to come on a Watermill painting course
Are you tempted to come on one of our sun-filled, fun-filled, inspiring painting courses this year, grabbing one of those last available places? Here’s a handy check-list of five compelling reasons why you should join us:
- You love painting and want to improve your skills with experienced, sympathetic changes in a relaxed environment.
- You want to know you’ll be looked after from the moment you arrive in Pisa Italy until the moment you drop back there week later.
- No need to worry about speaking a foreign language.
- You want to meet like-minded people and make lasting friendships.
- You want to enjoy delicious food, spectacular scenery and warm hospitality.
- You want to know everything is included in the cost of the holiday and that there are no hidden extras.
Oh... and did we mention the trips to local restaurants and stunning painting locations... and the aperitivi under the vines... and the riverside and millstream walks... 
and rides on a vintage Vespa (see below)... and the church bells marking the hours... and starry nights and fireflies in the season...
Bringing your partner or friend will double your pleasure, and there’s plenty for them to do while you are enjoying your painting, creative writing, knitting or Italian language course. We offer a range of Alternative activities for partners, and as well as a generous £250 discount if they share a room with you.
Take your own ‘Roman Holiday’ in Posara!
We don’t very often produce paintings of motorcycles during our week-long courses in the rural calm and stunning scenery of Lunigiana, the unspoiled part of Tuscany, Italy, in which the Watermill is located. So, I was intrigued to see this painting by our lovely new watercolour tutor Jude Scott of her family’s Royal Enfield Rajasthan bike, clearly their pride and joy.
You’re not going to get a ride on it in Posara, because it’s half a world away at Jude’s home in Australia, but we can offer you the fun of riding pillion on one of our gardener FlavioTerenzoni’s vintage motor scooters. You can hop on the back of his Vespa and pretend you’re Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday! There she is (below left) with Gregory Peck. And next to them you can see me and my daughter Lara in the Watermill courtyard.
Actually, in these days of ‘elf and safety’, we will make sure you’re wearing one of our spare crash helmets. Our picture above was fantasy: Lara and Bill didn’t go anywhere (surprise, surprise), but here’s the reality, with the skilled Flavio (below left) in charge and a safely helmeted guest ready for a spin. Standing beside them is Watermill tutor Terry Jarvis, holding up a drawing of the Vespa, which he made as a gift for Flavio.
Lots of innocent fun was had by all! And yes, we’d be delighted if you could join us. We are afraid Gregory Peck is not an optional extra. There are more details of all our creative holidays, and the current availability, below.
Holiday pictures from famous artists – your turn next!
As the spring begins to, um, well, spring, we are beginning to think of the sunny months ahead and we thought would like to share with you some Summer holiday pictures made by famous artists, to get in the mood for painting on warm leisurely days. Below left is a painting by Berthe Morisot, perhaps the most famous of female French Impressionists, of her husband Eugene Manet, on holiday in the Isle of Wight in 1875.
And on the right is a holiday picture made in 1875, too, by Eugene’s brother Édouard Manet, called Blue Venice. And finally, a seaside picture made by another hero of mine, Henri Matisse, painted in 1925 and called Roses at the Window.
Well, I hope that brightened your day -- and it gives me the opportunity to suggest that you, too, could be painting some wonderful holiday pictures, if you came one of our world-famous painting holidays at the Watermill.
Our enticing 2019 painting holidays
As you will see below, we still have spaces on many of our inspiring painting courses next year. Some of our tutors, however, are already fully booked. If you would particularly like to come on one of those courses, please let us know and we will put you on the waiting list. There are often cancellations. On the other hand, to be sure of a place on a Watermill painting course, why not choose one of our other inspiring tutors where there are still places?
Paul Talbot-Greaves
27 April to 4 May 2019 - fully booked, waiting list open
Watercolours
To learn more about Paul and his course at the mill, please visit his 2019 Profile Page.
Keiko Tanabe
18 - 25 May 2019 - fully booked, waiting list open
Watercolours
To learn more about Keiko and her course at the mill, please visit her 2019 Profile Page.
Sandra Strohschein
1 - 8 June 2019 - one or two places left
8 - 15 June 2019 - fully booked, waiting list open
Watercolours
To learn more about Sandra and her course at the mill, please visit her 2019 Profile Page.
Vicki Norman
22 - 29 June 2019 - fully booked, waiting list open
Oils en plein air
To learn more about Vicki and her course at the mill, please see our 2019 Courses Preview page.
Mike Willdridge
29 June - 6 July 2019 - still one or two places
Watercolours and drawing (also gouache and acrylics with an emphasis on sketching and drawing on location)
To learn more about Mike and his course at the mill, please visit his 2019 Profile Page.
Sue Ford
13 - 20 July 2019 - still two or three places
Watercolours, pastels, collage and mixed media plus acrylics
To learn more about Sue and her course at the mill, please visit her 2019 Profile Page.
Jude Scott
17 - 24 August 2019 - still two or three places
24 - 31 August 2019 - still one place
Watercolours (plus acrylics and oils)
To learn more about Jude and her course at the mill, please visit her 2019 Profile Page.
Varvara Neiman
31 August - 7 September 2019 - still one or two places
Water-based oils, acrylics and watercolours
To learn more about Varvara and her course at the mill, please visit her 2019 Profile Page.
Claire Warner
14 - 21 September 2019 - fully booked, waiting list open
Watercolours, oils and acrylics
To learn more about Claire and her course at the mill, please visit her 2019 Profile Page.
Maggie Renner Hellmann
21 - 28 September 2019 - still one or two places
Courageous Color Workshop' in oils, acrylics, pastels and watercolors
To learn more about Maggie and her course at the mill, please visit her 2019 Profile Page.
Charles Sluga
28 September - 5 October 2019 - still one or two places
Watercolours, acrylics and oils
To learn more about Charles and his course at the mill, please visit his 2019 Profile Page.
Tim Wilmot
5 - 12 October 2019 - fully booked, waiting list open
Watercolours
To learn more about Tim and his course at the mill, please visit his 2019 Profile Page.
David Taylor
12 - 19 October 2019 - still two or three places
Watercolours
To learn more about David and his course at the mill, please visit his 2019 Profile Page.
Our Summer painter in residence,
Sandra Strohschein
Come and join us and enjoy the magic at the mill!
*** Why not bring your non-painting partner as well?
There’s a generous £250 discount for him/her if they share a room with you - and there’s plenty for them to do. Have a look at our Partner’s Activities Page for suggestions.
Use the 2019 painting programme link below to view the list of our inspiring 2019 painting tutors.
Sarah’s new mini-project is inspired by the Watermill’s flowers
We’ve recently received a charming note from our enthusiastic knitting tutor Sarah Hazell, who tells us: “Knitting forward to our holiday in May!”
With spring on the way, Sarah has been thinking about her course here and she says: “We may have been lulled into a false sense of an early Spring here in the UK, but it has set me thinking about the warmer weather and the fabulous gardens at The Watermill. With this in mind, I thought I would add a little extra tiny project to our itinerary.
“Our main focus will be on the Phoebe poncho and learning how to make adjustments to a written pattern to suit your own body shape. These skills will give you the confidence to alter all kinds of projects in the future.
“However, I thought that one afternoon we might like to take some inspiration from the beautiful gardens and the flower stalls up in Fivizzano and create a knitted or crocheted corsage (above right). I will bring some interesting and colourful yarns and beads to get our creative juices flowing and by the end of the session you will have made a unique embellishment for your poncho!”
What fun! We already have eight people booked in for Sarah’s knitting week, so we have room for three or four more. We’d be delighted if you could join us. Here’s what one guest on Sarah’s week last year had to say: “Thanks for such a wonderful week! It had everything: fun, knowledge, good food and drink. Like a week out of time!”
Our exciting knitting holidays: the 2019 line-up
Sarah Hazell
4 - 11 May 2019 - still two or three places
Knitting and La Dolce Vita
To learn more about Sarah and her knitting week at the mill, please visit her 2019 Profile Page.
Debbie Abrahams
25 May - 1 June 2019 - still two or three places
Knitting and La Dolce Vita
To learn more about Debbie and her knitting week at the mill, please visit her 2019 Profile Page.
Marie Wallin
6 - 13 July 2019 - fully booked, waiting list open
Knitting and La Dolce Vita
To learn more about Marie and her knitting week at the mill, please visit her 2019 Profile Page.
Don't forget your partner!
And don’t forget that your friend or partner doesn’t need to participate in the creative course, whether it’s painting, language, writing or yoga.
We offer them a range of Alternative activities for partners on all our 2019 courses, as well as a generous £GBP 250 discount if they share a room with you.
Better headlights to see through the creative writing fog
We love this quote by EL Doctorow: “Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but can you make the whole trip that way.”
Of course you can -- and perhaps the greatest attribute for any writer is perseverance. But we would like to help you better to see your way through the fog of creative writing with our unique scriptwriting course at the Watermill, which will undoubtedly help to illuminate your progress.
The week-long, all-inclusive, residential course will be run by two scriptwriting greats Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran, and we think this is going to be one of the great creative courses at the Watermill this year. If you too aspire to scriptwriting success, now is the time to bag your place on Laurence and Maurice’s course.
We can offer you an extraordinary week, ‘away from it all’, so you can concentrate on learning how to write scripts for TV, films and theatre, and at the same time enjoy beautiful scenery, first-class accommodation, wonderful food and good conversation with like-minded people.That’s what we call illuminating!
Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran are famous for such TV hits as Birds of a Feather, Goodnight Sweetheart, The New Statesman and Shine on Harvey Moon. And in a new incarnation, they’ve written hit stage musicals, such as Dreamboats and Petticoats and Save the Last Dance for Me, as well as film scripts and award-winning stage, TV and radio plays. It’s not just comedy: Marks and Gran are producing serious dramatic works as well.
Laurence and Maurice’s course will show you how to craft your work from your original idea through structure, character, plot and finally, script.They will lead you slowly through what makes classic television comedy, using one-to-one tutorials, team writing sessions, and most enlightening of all, studying films and TV series that have become ‘classics’. They cannot guarantee success, of course, but they promise that you will leave the Watermill a considerably better scriptwriter than when you arrived.
Our enriching 2019 Writing courses
Jo Parfitt
15 – 22 June 2019 - fully booked, waiting list open
Write Your Life Stories
To learn more about Jo and her course at the mill, please visit her 2019 Profile Page.
Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran
7 - 14 September 2019 - still plenty of places
To learn more about Laurence and Maurice and to register an interest in their course at the mill, please visit their 2019 Profile Page.
How an Italian bottle became a theatrical disaster
Have you ever wondered why in English, a fiasco means a dismal failure, but in Italian, un fiasco is simply a bottle or flask?
(Left) A triumph or a disaster? (Right) Chianti flask
How did one become the other? There are lots of theories. One suggests that Murano glassblowers, famous for their artistic creations, would only use the best materials and would set aside any glass with imperfections to make humble flasks. Or maybe it’s simply that those old bottles, hand-blown and with rounded bottoms, were very unstable and easily upset – and spilt wine is certainly a fiasco.
I did some research for a blog sometime back and found that the word seems to have come into English via the French theatre, where to faire fiasco is to have a disastrous performance. This in turn seems to have come from the Italian stage, where far fiasco was to suffer a flop. (Writing to his mother, Rossini used to draw flasks of various sizes in his letters, reflecting the reaction to performances of his operas.) But why is ‘to make a bottle’ linked with theatrical catastrophe?
Enter Stage Left a celebrated Florentine Harlequin called Biancolelli, a stand-up comic who improvised jokes on everyday objects. One night he came on with a bottle, but his jokes failed to raise a laugh. Exasperated, he threw it behind him, and it smashed to smithereens. From then on when a performer flopped, they recalled il fiasco di Biancolelli. Rossini’s name will live forever more.
Enjoying an Italian lunch at a trattoria
during an Italian language week.
Not a drop was spilled!
So just for today, let’s remember poor old Biancolelli. Gone, but not quite forgotten.
Our Italian Language course at the Watermill will certainly be no fiasco: it’s a wonderful way of learning the language in secluded, but stimulating, surroundings.
We have just had a cancellation for this year's Italian Language course. Please do contact us if you would like to take up the place.
Our engaging 2019 language course
Langues Services and Francesca la Sala
11 - 18 May 2019 - still one or two places
Italian language
To learn more about Francesca and her course at the mill, please click here.
Everything's included in your watermill painting holiday, creative writing holiday, knitting week or Italian Language course
Don’t forget that everything is included in the cost of a painting holiday, knitting, or language holiday: tuition, accommodation (including all linen and towels), pre-dinner aperitifs, all meals and local transportation (including transfers to Pisa airport; an excursion by train to visit the ancient walled city of Lucca or the stunning seaside villages of the Cinque Terre).
All you have to do is to get to Pisa airport and we do the rest.
Whether you're travelling alone or with a partner you can be sure of a warm welcome, and that you'll be well looked after. We have built our reputation on the comfort of the mill and the care we provide.
Become a Friend of The Watermill at Posara
Visit our Friends Website (Link below). Just follow the instructions to Register as a Friend and then Log In to enjoy special privileges. If you become a ‘Friend’ (it will cost you nothing) you’ll enjoy many exclusive benefits, including dozens of practical and inspiring tips from our international painting and creative writing tutors and recipes from the watermill’s mouth-watering menus. And there will be exclusive offers for Friends to make our courses and holidays even more attractive.
We very much look forward to welcoming you to the mill and, for those of you who have already tasted the many delights at The Watermill at Posara, we look forward to welcoming you back.
With very best wishes a tutti
Lois and Bill Breckon