Due to a terminally-slow train which ground to a halt before reaching Frome, Brian Madigan was quite late starting his session at the Garden Cafe on Wednesday night. The small but cheerful gathering agreed to wait, and were rewarded with two 40-minute sets of Brian's quirky mix of personal passions: songs about family, politics and society all performed with great acoustic skill. I especially like his anti-war fervour: fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity... is like bombing for liberty...

Friday Night at the Cornerhouse was Flaming Voices, a presentation of short scripts from Frome Scriptwriters, the group Rosie and I set up in January. Incredibly, since then no less than seven members each wrote & edited an excellent script, performed script-in-hand in a totally crammed 'pub theatre' room Upstairs at the Cornerhouse. Stepping Out Theatre from Bristol, which has for two years now supported our production company Nevertheless in bringing quality new writing to Frome at affordable prices, provided a cast of 5 superb actors ~ Gerard Cooke, Livi Dennis, Danann McAleer, Christine West and Simon Winker ~ and a wonderful director in Emel Yilmaz who steered the chaos with a light touch and huge good humour to a resoundingly successful outcome. Cosmic congratulations to all the team and especially to writers Tighe O'Connor, Morgan Rivers, Eddie Young, Simon Williams, Brenda Bannister, Paul Ralston, and Rosie Finnegan.