Humans of Frome-Keren Hayden- by Ciara Nolan

Frome is a friendly town with an ever-expanding population.  No matter how friendly you are, nor how hard you might try,  you can’t know everyone here.

I recognise so many faces when I’m out and about, some from the school run, some from my shop ‘Poot Emporium’, others just from wandering about the shops etc and others from the wonderful world of social media.  Frome folks are super active on social media.  The Frome facebook page is just one example of a great space where people can ask for recommendations for all sorts of goods and services, God knows how we managed without it in the old days. You hear more and more stories of people meeting online these days, it’s just the new way.

I got to know Keren Hayden online through the amazing ‘Nunney Acoustic Cafe’ which she has been running along with her husband Francis for nearly 11 years.  Her name was one of those that just kept popping up on my facebook feed and always on such  a positive note, recommended for her catering finesse, celebrated for her caring personality and admired for the kind of get up and go that enables someone to power through such a hectic work schedule and still have a smile and a laugh to offer up at the end of it all.   

We finally visited the ‘Nunney Acoustic Cafe’ last weekend with our budding musician son, Archie.   It happens at Nunney Village Hall every second Sunday of the month, the programme runs from 2pm-6pm and is a mixture of booked bands and open mic slots.   The packed schedule offered up an incredible variety, the stage and sound were excellent (hats off to a top notch sound engineer), a good crowd gathered in a warm and friendly environment many eating roast dinners, imbibing the well-chosen beers and ciders and treating themselves to Keren’s fabulous cakes.  We hadn’t expected that.   

“There was a lot of heart in that room and we instantly felt as though we were happening across a happy tribe of talented and creative folks.   You can’t buy that kind of atmosphere, it only comes with time, energy, passion and a lot of hard work.  As we left we talked about how amazing it is that someone has been doing something of this scale in Nunney for all these years, I’m sure they have given voice to many musicians in that time.

Having seen Keren in her natural habitat at the weekend, both in the kitchen and onstage as one quarter of her band ‘Sloe Jam’ (reunited after 9 years) I decided it was time to find out what makes her tick.

Born in Essex, Keren wasn’t a particularly academic child, she much preferred playing out with her (not so keen) big brothers and her school friend, who, she would entice into staging musical performances for anyone who would watch.   School was not a great experience for the creative Keren, there was no music or arts programme, so she just had to fit in as best as she could.

At the age of 14 she was beaten up by a group of schoolgirls, an attack that left her with head injuries that required hospital treatment and a determination to never be in that situation again.  As she explains herself, this was a life-defining time; she could have chosen two very different routes out of that dark place – curl up and hide or to come out fighting.    She chose the latter option, one very much advocated by her super positive father, she took up a martial art.   It set her in good stead and she survived the school years, at least to A-Level which is when she jumped ship.  A visit to the school careers office led to an unexpected job in a publishing house.   She describes the painstaking task of cutting tiny asterisks out of bromide sheets and placing them by hand into the typeset pages of a computer manual.   A romantic liaison gone wrong with a co-worker forced her to leave that workplace.

She went to work with her father, a precision engineer who had worked on prototypes of components for Concorde and lighting for The London Eye.   

Her old workplace lured her back with the offer of a pay increase and a management position and with her ex now long left, she jumped at the chance.   In her time there she received training on the new Mac computers and headed up the busy production office, but she had ambitions which rested further afield.  She saw an advert in the Evening Standard calling for someone to head up a department at a management consultancy in central London, they preferably wanted a graduate, but Keren knew she was the right woman for the job.   She was.  Skip ahead a few years and Keren was the proud mother of two young children, trying to hold down a part-time job and full-time parenting.   Her then husband took up a job in the USA for six months.  This ultimately broke their relationship, but it was time for change in more ways than one.

Francis, Keren’s new husband stepped onto the scene.  One foot in the management consultancy business in London and the other firmly placed in Frome’s Willow Vale.   The couple would visit regularly and when faced with a chance of moving permanently to Essex or Somerset, they chose Frome.    In 2003, the family upped sticks and moved to Frome and then to the village where the Haydens hail from.  In those early days Francis commuted to London until redundancy made his final decision for him.   Those days were tough; Keren tells me that everything came at once, her grandmother and Francis’ mother died within a month of each other and then the final redundancy blow, she explains that at one point they looked like they would lose their house.   You’ve got to admire their determination to make things work, Keren worked in a few pubs and Francis went back to teaching (he’s head of science in Salisbury) all the time continuing to build ‘The Nunney Acoustic Cafe’ .  A chance conversation led Keren to where she is today.

Sometimes you just need someone on the outside looking in to tell you what is the perfectly obvious thing to do.   Keren, a keen cook started to put her not too shabby skills to good use.  Today she caters events from private events to the John Peel back stage area at Glastonbury Festival.   She says that Glastonbury was one of those moments where she could step back (after the frantic few days) and say ‘Yes, this is what I  am meant to be doing’ and where she could be truly proud of herself and her amazing team.   Guiding a team through something as intense as a festival event like this would send most people into cold sweats but Keren seems to have a natural ability with people, and from what I can see, people genuinely really love being around her and working with her.

I guess that moment back in her youth where she chose to not take life lying down really did define how she continued to overcome difficult times in her life. People love a fighter, there’s something magnetic about someone who can power through even at the toughest times, someone who can smile and share happiness even when they feel like their world is falling apart.  Keren seemed genuinely surprised by the fact that I thought she was so well-liked, but she did say how much she likes people, and how she surrounds herself with people she likes a lot.  She finished remembering a quote about the importance of smiling.  It went a little like this.

‘If you see a friend without a smile; give them one of yours.’

For more information on Keren and her work please check out…www.events horizonofficial.com