Life has been very full here at Bonehill, as we recently welcomed our first guests, three months sooner than we had initially planned! But following a flurry of clearing, cleaning and emergency crockery and cutlery buying, we were just about ready to welcome the West Country School of Myth and Story for a weekend workshop led by award winning storyteller Martin Shaw. Martin describes the Myth School as ‘a monastery run by pirates’ and Bonehill was certainly stuffed to the gunwales as 18 of us settled in for a rich feast of traditional Irish stories by the fireside and under the stars. Champion organiser Sue Charman from Embercombe co- ordinated delicious, organic food and everyone contributed songs, stories, prayers and helped to ‘feed the stories’. As our weekend coincided with the Hindu festival of Divali, a real highlight for me was Maggie Squire’s beautiful contemporary Rangoli pattern, which she created by the door with coloured rice flour, to welcome Lakshmi, the goddess of good fortune and wealth. Altogether it felt like a wonderful start to our new venture as an interfaith retreat centre.