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To @15QueenStreet! …on Thursday evening for a teetotal approach towards print and pastoral musical charm. The monthly Creative in Colchester evening was themed around the long lost - and once again found and fashionable - art of printmaking. The music celebrated the North Essex charm with a showcase set from Snippet, a lovely chap who is quite simply in love with the North Essex Riviera.

Aren’t we all?

This was a sobering experience, in more ways than one. The 15 Queen Street bar helped to discover hidden creative talents that some folk never knew existed. My ongoing Ibuprofen fixation found me satisfied in sobriety, and safely out of the wall-to-wall vomiting danger zone, come the time to contribute to the discussion about the finer art of font styling.

The first speakers for the evening were the Essex Print Club. I loved the big balls upfront approach of speaking for your whole county, yet operating out of a humble base at Brightlingsea.

Blimey.

It is exactly this ambitious approach that has seen the loose collective of print lovers make such a success of the pop up space down at the Waterside Gallery at Brightlingsea over the summer months. Presented with the opportunity of a rent free let, the Essex Print Club - essentially a couple of hightly resourceful students at the Colchester Institute - somehow managed to blag a residency down at the Brightlingsea front.

It seems that there is an underbelly of print based artists operating out of the North Essex area. Interest spread quickly, and within a week the Essex Print Club was exhibiting and trading. James Dodds, the celebrated print maker supreme, offered his support and attended the opening. Over £2,000 was taken during the two-month residency, 10% of which went towards the RNLI.

There’s more to this font farce that splashing out some Comic Sans in SIZE 32 I thought, just as Justin Knopp set up his presentation, talking all about his growing Typoretum traditional print business.

Based in Coggeshall, Justin has developed a childhood passion for print into a burgeoning local business. It is the old Victorian printing presses that hold the fascination - an expensive hobby that needed a business plan to keep the craft alive.

You can whack out a print run of a thousand flyers straight from your MacBook in under a minute, but the attention to detail and authenticity of a rolling press still captures something of a magical charm.

Justin explained how he has managed to salvage many of the old printing presses, and then install these in his Coggeshall workshop. The order books are busy, from the staple wedding invites, through to more experimental work and the exploration of new fonts that holds the interest. This is a craft that Justin is passionate about keeping alive, and hopeful of passing on to future generations of printers.

But it wasn’t all about the printing blocks on Thursday evening. Sometimes you just need a laid back, genuinely lovely chap with a softly, softly-spoken voice and a dandy style approach to tailoring to cheer you up. I never could resist a man who wears a splendid pair of loafers.

Snippet - or Johnno Casson as the postman knows him - is a Colchester based singer-songwriter that is simply in love with the area. If I had persued my clumsy fudge finger bashing out of three Billy Bragg chords back in the day, I could quite easily see the hyperlocal happy happy tunes of Snippet as something that I would like to aspire to.

Having moved out of London some seven years ago to find a better life in Sunny Colch [um, spot the theme...?] Snippet has found the ideal base in which to write and record. It is very much a cottage industry - or even shed industry - with the back of the garden set up offering up a makeshift recording studio and even mini video production unit.

Three songs were sung by Snippet on Thursday evening, all featured on his current Slowly Slowly Catchee Monkey album. This is Essex stripped back with a series of simple love songs for the County. It was the perfect riposte for the mainstream media twaddle that now thinks that it is incredibly witty to introduce any Essex themed piece with a The Only Way Is… lazy approach to journalism.

Working with Cool Publicity, Snippet has a series of pop up shows in local shops and spaces currently being arranged around Colchester. He has also worked with Ady Johnson down the back of the garden.

Mighty fine though the orange juice @15QueenStreet was, a train out of St Botolph’s and being back in bed in time for Question Time beckoned. My mind was still buzzing with all the print possibilities and serenades to the Clacton sunset.

I downed half a bottle of JD, designed my own font and wrote a rock opera all about Frinton, long before the first Question Time SHOUT AT THE TV moment.

Creative, inspiring, economical with the truth..