The hot, late, one - with bonus supermoon

Avid followers of this blog, who've probably been sighing 'it cometh not' like Tennyson's Marianna mooning around mossy flowerpots, will have noted a week's delay in this bulletin. This is because last week's planned highlight, Folksy Theatre's Much Ado About Nothing on Frome's ECOS last Sunday, was sadly cancelled due to a vehicle crash, and the blog felt a bit thin without dramatic focus. So instead here's a bumper sunshine special with a music focus.  

As the warm dry evenings continue, the Thursday sessions of Open Mic at the Gugg in Stalbridge are increasingly popular. With fresh-made pizza on site and 3 hours of live performance free (though donations to this community project are encouraged) it's not surprising every seat in the courtyard is filled. The last two sessions provided the usual wide-ranging variety of sets and some stella performers. Here's Nick Coleman last week, powerfully recreating 60's songs Simon & Garfunkel's Mrs Robinson and Del Shannon's Runnaway. And here, from this week, is Frome's Carl Sutterby who wowed the crowd with hi-energy classic punk ( Babylon's Burning specially smashing) played on ukulele. 

Among other highlights for me in this latest event were the Beagles playing Lindisfarne's Mr Dreamseller, and I still believe from 'Twitch'.

In Frome, despite the annual exodus to Boomtown & other festivals, the pubs have been throbbing with music. Last Sunday saw a Jazz Jam at the Cornerhouse, a session of fearsome talent and unrehearsed splendour.  This is a totally inclusive night, with musicians from local funk bands playing alongside trad jazz aficionados, and numbers ranging from Miles Davis to Herbie Hancock. 

A different musical mood, though still just as hot, on Saturday when Unit 4 fulfilled their pledge to make it funky  at The Sun, 

and on Sunday we enjoyed the return to Bar Lotte of mega-popular Rosco Shakes with their 'jump jazz' versions of blues classics.

  

There's some great visual art around, too: Bath's Victoria Gallery has an exhibition of work by Mary Feddon, showing until mid-October.  'Simple Pleasures' is a celebration of the work of this artist originally from Bristol who painted still life and flowers with a delightful quirky style until her death in 2012. The show is beautifully curated, and includes some work from her husband, fellow-artist Julian Trevelyan.

Frome's Black Swan Arts gallery is still buzzing with interest in the Arts Open Exhibition, where 185 selected submissions now fill the Long Gallery, the Round Tower, and the shop too - all for sale, though quite a few have now been taken. Sadly I missed the judges' talk on criteria & judging process, but 'Writers at the Black Swan', our regular ekphrastic poetry group, enjoyed exploring the works in thoughts & words on Monday. Thanks Jane Hughes tor this snap of us waxing lyrical.

The first Sunday in the month always brings the Frome Independent, a wonderful chance to wander through stalls in the car-free streets, enjoying the market atmosphere & street food, especially under the azure skies we've had for several weeks now. I did a bit of onstreet-sales myself, outside Hunting Raven Books, inspired by some great reviews sent me about my new novel Blow-Ins. You can hear more about the book, and how it came to be written, in this week's Variations on a Theme, the regular mixed-bag-culture show of Eleanor Talbot which you can listen to online as broadcast on Frome FM. My interview starts at 1.23.50, but the eclectic music on Eleanor's shows is always great!

Final footnote goes to the weather: love it (I do) or worry about it (as we all probably do, for -literally- existential reasons) this fortnight has brought solid sunshine and cloudless azure skies to Frome. Our grassy meadows are turning to straw and our river is become drying sludge in many places, so to end here's a typical image from my walks this week: Whatcombe fields, on the edge of town.  Rain, apparently, is due soon....

 

Art thrice, poetry twice, and some witchery.

The Whittox Gallery opened five years ago, after this old chapel was converted to a thriving eatery plus an art gallery in the balcony area: RISE has already hosted fourteen stunning exhibitions, and on Friday their celebratory 'Retrospective' exhibition opened in party style. The variety of previous shows created an impressive diversity of pieces, from the 'playful Renaissance devotional imagery' of Leslie Glenn Damhus (R) to the We Feed The World exhibition from the Gaia foundation. As always, great hospitality from Ed and Sarah, and the wonderful backdrop of the massive organ in its starry alcove.

Still with art: having found that the new Frome Gallery opened by Ray Jones had a twin (or possibly elder sibling) in Woolverton, it seemed a good idea to take a look there too. Most of the paintings in this excellent collection show the same love of vivid colour and story-telling, like this landscape by Moira Hazel.  Here too, in contrast, is a tree-painting from Frome artist Alexandra Howell, "I’m quietly obsessed by light and shadow, colour and texture and constantly inspired by the natural world," the artist says. (These impressive pieces aren't scrunched together like this in the Gallery btw, but this blog's formatting won't let me show two images together any other way... tips gratefully accepted)

And Alexandra's tree painting segues nicely to these two new works from Frome artist Clive Walley. Rewinding to last October, the Somerset Open Studios had included Clive's atmospheric paintings which evoked for me the arborial foliage along the path beside the river walk. I sent him a copy of my photo, and Clive has now created two versions of this view, intriguingly seen behind an imagined netting between the viewer and the foliage, which not only adds slim lights to the shadows but also evokes an emotional connection with feelings about stolen land, as evoked in books like Trespass, and Who Owns England? Here's Clive with both these beautiful, powerful, paintings. 

 

Poetry now, with poet & writer Julie Mullen who runs The Word Cafe on radio from Totnes and invited me to participate on Thursday. Among the excellent poets, main guest George Szirtes read from his new collection with Bloodaxe, Fresh Out of the Sky ,and talked about his work. My contribution (at 1:08) was a phone chat with Julie in anticipation of What's It Like For You? soon to be published by Caldew Press. This is a collaboration with poet Hazel Stewart which we developed on Zoom during lockdown, recreating our performance personae as Live & Lippy. You can hear the title piece of this collection near the end of this recording of the show - with apologies to Hazel for my terrible Scots accent when reading her lines. And big thanks to Julie!

Back in Frome, Monday's poetry workshop at Black Swan Arts, ably led by Wendy Perry, had a theme to suit the date, with valentine emblems as triggers for writing and some favourite love poems shared. You can see some of the outcomes on the Words at the Black Swan facebook page here. 

Still with words, as three Zoom options clashed this week & after a difficult choice, my pick was an online seminar on Witchcraft, Magic, and Society in C19th  Somerset by Professor Owen Davies, from the Regional History Centre &  Bristol M Shed.  Rural Somerset was apparently obsessed by fears of bad magic in times when farming was the main wealth: failures in dairy produce were attributed to spells, and people travelled miles to use the mysterious services of the 'cunning folk' to identify culprits. Here's Billy Brewer, 'Wizard of the West', the most renowned of such witch-detectors. According to Prof Davies most supposed 'curses' were just consequences of bad luck or malice; the 1736 Act repealed laws against witchcraft while ironically imposing imprisonment on the 'magical' folk who claimed to counter their power. A fascinating talk, perhaps with antecedents to the current 'blame' culture in the UK... who knows.

And with stormy winds unabated, here's hoping you stay safe!

Fast dance, slow art, & Boxes - a week of permitted joys

We live in interesting times, don't we? This is allegedly a Chinese curse but 2022 is taking it literally. Parties and protests, operation Big Dog/ this is the background to January's blog, as Julie Andrews might not have trilled in 1965. However this is an arts blog, so ignoring protest marches & the bumper batch of bulletins about ludicrous misbehaviour in the corridors of power, let's go direct to Frome's Merlin Theatre for a double bill of talent and innovation on Saturday night. First aKa dance theatre presented a speechless solo show of brilliant parody, dance, mime, and mimicry all exquisitely synched to a clever topical soundtrack.  A Real Fiction (do check this link) had the circle of audience transfixed by stunning moves and surreal comedy, including an 'intermission' where we all got jellybabies and concluding with a short series of 'out-takes'.  Next, the fable of Pandora's box was given a new twist with puppetry and current context by Kerchief Theatre in their short performance Boxes - basically a simple piece of story-telling made enchanting by the rapport between the two women performers, Esme Patey-Ford and Maddy Herbert, emerge from boxes with different perspectives which are increasingly highlighted throughout their drama, ultimately resolved not by 'hope' as an  abstract injunction but by their playful Tiktok. There's more about this delightful production here.  

From hi-energy drama to silent art, as Black Swan Arts has re-opened the Long Gallery after its long break for Slow Time, a fascinating exhibition of pin-hole camera photographs taken in Somerset on long settings - a week, a month, or longer. This project began as a creative response to lockdown, inspired initially by Steve Poole & Jannette Kerr who provided neighbours and friends with pin-hole cameras created in cans, and a brief to leave them in any situation for long enough to register the changes of light over time. With support from John Gammans of Somerset Arts Work, this project developed into a fascinating collection of images that in their distorted stillness seem to chime with the strange life-reorientations of our community during these times of stillness imposed by the pandemic. Here's Steve showing me a typical pinhole camera, and one of the images created by months beside an immobilised concrete works when the passing of daylight was its only illumination. (workshops available - check Black Swan site.)

Other than that, my week has had a focus on written word: two live writers' group meetings, now that we're allowed indoors, a meeting of Hunting Raven's Proof Pudding Book Club at River House on Sunday, plus a zoom discussion with Hazel Stewart on the progress of our twin-twin poetry collection (two writers, two reading routes) now that our commissioned cover imagery* has been delivered to our publisher. What's it like for you? and Dance for Those Who'd Rather Not are both pamphlet-length collections jointly devised, exploring & expressing our personal themes as well as our long friendship: we're both beyond thrilled that this Caldew Press, who recently published John Hegley's collection A Scarcity Of Biscuit, has now added us to his stable of quirky poets. *images available soon!

Patchy sun this week has allowed for some very pleasant local walking too, so to conclude this chat on disparate topics, here's Nunney Church looking particularly lovely as the snowdrops in the graveyard start to flower.

Decisions and revisions which a ruling will reverse...

Sadly but inevitably, Nunney Acoustic Café - a major music venue just outside Frome -  cancelled their Christmas party this weekend, planned as a 2-day event to celebrate the ending of those months of disappointing restrictions.  Luckily however, although Stalbridge is a bit further away - in fact, over the border in Dorset - in this delightful little village the Guggleton Farm Arts centre has an outdoor concert-hall (ie large yard) with a covered stage. Here on Friday night, eight brilliant acts played and sang under the stars to an appreciative audience, sustained by a bar and fresh-made pizzas, until nearly midnight. Performers included Frome favourites The MellowTones (pictured) and Nunney's Francis Hayden, as well as six other solo acts, a mix of covers and original compositions. 

Of the former, I especially enjoyed the set from Nick Coleman which included a fabulously evocative version of Radiohead's Creep... A really wonderful party-night event, despite the cold. We may need more outdoor events like this as the weeks crawl past on their relentless way.

Meanwhile, Rosco Shakes at Bar Elle on Wednesday will probably be the last indoor gig of the year for me -  a brilliant finale, though, as the lads never fail to deliver fantastic rhythm&bluesy jazz. 

Words now, with the Frome Writers on Radio festive edition now available online from Frome FM: the opening interview with Tina Gaysford-Waller (at 4.45) on her recommendations features local authors published by Hobnob, including poetry from Pete Gage and David Thompson - and her 'high recommendation' of Deja Lu as a 'fantastic collection, the attention to detail is fabulous' had me purring. There's also an excellent interview with John Killah, seen here signing copies of his wild-fire success Struck Off outside Hunting Raven Bookshop. image: John Chandler

On Monday the Black Swan Arts writing group met in the Long Gallery, and with no art (yet) about which to wax lyrical, our leader Sara Morris enterprisingly encouraged us all to write limericks. Here's one from David Thompson:  

The Tory top brass in South Ken

Don't live all that far from Big Ben.

If they want to get canned

While parties are banned,

They drop by refurbed Number 10.

The last Rainbow Fish Speakeasy of the year was on Thursday: these zoomed poetry performance nights hosted by Frome's Liv Tork are inclusive and friendly open mic sessions with a main guest - this time Matt Harvey with a marvellous poem about whales from the recent Hot Poets project - you can click here to hear Matt recreating his wonderful description of the opulent flocculent fecal plumes of whale poo... There was a very different but also thought-provoking contribution too from Frome's David Thompson also on the theme of global awareness and human domination of earth and its creatures.

Also this week, a reminiscence meeting for my first ever local writing group, now in its 20s: the Fromesbury Set had a wonderfully refreshing catchup over wine spritzers at the Archangel in Frome. Our official photographer, Debs, took this selfie snap. Thursday's ongoing weekly writing group involved much sharing & analysis and a fair bit of feasting too (cranberry mince-pies a feature!) with that tang of this-may-be-the-last-time which is in the ether everywhere now... 

And my week concluded with a festive splash of theatre, as Bristol Old Vic has made their 2019 production of A Christmas Carol  free to view online for the rest of December - which, if you consider what other big theatres charge for their screenings, is a rather wonderful present to all their followers.

My blog review at the time enthused about every aspect of this immersive production which, despite the vast number of liberties taken with characters and dialogue, nevertheless stays powerfully true to the spirit of the story: the damage to community caused by money-hoarding and the indifference to others' suffering shown by the wealthy. John Hopkins in the central role of Scrooge is superb throughout, from rage to reconciliations, with a nice line in repartee during audience participation bits. 

Also delightful is the device to bring a child from the audience to remind Ebenezer of the vulnerable child he once was... here's a couple of screen shots to show the range of visuals. Recommended, click the link above!

So as this is my last bulletin before the traditional day of winter celebrations on our small island, I'll leave you with the wonderful musings of J Alfred Prufrock, by courtesy of TS Eliot: click here and enjoy the luxury of mere melancholy, which is something there's little place for in these times.

A cornucopia of a week: drama, bands, ramblings, art - & my new book now on sale!

This week's bulletin once again begins with a performance in Frome's Merlin amphitheatre: HMS Pinafore, Gilbert & Sullivan's comic opera of class pretensions, as interpreted and presented by another of the illustrious casts of Illyria Outdoor Theatre.  (There's also a childrens' show or two from this stable going round this summer, so hopefully this wonderful company will survive the dramatic hiatus caused by plague.)

There's a certain poignant irony in some of the parodic songs - in spite of all temptations, to belong to other nations, he remains an Englishman, for example - but a great set, tight direction, and the talented cast all combine to create an entertaining evening: "Pantomime for grownups!" as one delighted audience member summed up.

This week has been particularly rich in musical entertainment.  Nesta Yurt Camping, unknown to me until quite recently although it's only a 20 minute walk down the lanes from my house, for various reasons last week became almost a second home. The food here is amazing - vegan menu with delicacies like banana-blossom 'fish' and chips - there's a friendly, casual but well-equipped, tent site and visitors from town are welcomed at the undercover evening entertainment. On Wednesday the band stage featured Rosco Shakes, a fantastic funky local trio comprising Dom on guitar, Ned on drums & vocals, and Tim on crazy honky-tonking piano.

Music too in Frome's Victoria Park, where a sunny Saturday saw families & friends sprawled on rugs or - for the more organised - settled on garden chairs to listen to live music from the bandstand all afternoon.  Frome's fabulously funky quintet The Valley, joined by Colin on cajon, led off and other excellent local musicians followed, including brilliant bluesy duo Roger & Annie Davenport. Great sounds, brilliant atmosphere, reminding us all what summers can be like here...

This August hasn't been the kind of summer we longed for during the winter months, but there has been some sunshine and abatement in the downpours and blustering winds. Tuesday's respite gave me a chance to visit Rodden Nature Reserve - one of Frome's best kept secrets, largely because it's closed during the long breeding season for the many rare birds who find this a safe haven. Paths of desire are kept clear between wetland areas, and the entire wildlife park is brimming with autumnal flowers, bushes, reeds and trees - and dense with insect life plus tiny mammals & frogs. 

Art & Lit corner now: Frome Art Society opened its annual exhibition in the Round Tower of Black Swan Arts on Friday: an eclectic display with much to enjoy - though it isn't always easy to avoid window reflections on the glass of the paintings - and a chance for all visitors to vote for their favourite piece. This evocative view of the  river is by Kristen Vincent. 

And my personal big news is the arrival of copies for sale of my new book: Déjà  Lu is a collection of 37 short stories, most of which have been previously published in journals & anthologies or broadcast on BBC4, and now for the first time readable together in all their strange diversity. Suzy Howlett, author, thespian, and reviewer, has summed up delightfully: "This collection, stylishly presented with cover artwork by David Moss, is a delight in the same way that a selection box of hand-made chocolates is: you can select and taste the soft-centres, the nutty, the rich and dark, the hard-boiled, the sweet, the fruity and the plain gorgeous. They are all delicious!"  My first delivery is already all sold or committed, but please contact me if you'd like a copy from the second box, due next week! Thanks Patrick Dunn for the - genuinely spontaneous - picture! 

 Ending this week's bulletin with an image from the fields around Frome, where autumn is already arriving...

Drama's back! Controversy, murder, mirth... and more.

The dramatic event of this week was for me was review tickets for a theatre show again, after nine months' abstinence. Theatre Royal Bath had proudly announced its 'Welcome Back' season after the first lockdown, only to be closed down again before the second of their trilogy could make the stage. Oleanna is the now showing and -fingers crossed- will continue until 6th January at the Ustinov studio, with exemplary safety & sanitation provisions. First produced in 1992, David Mamet’s controversial play is about a dedicated professor whose attempt to inspire confidence in a panicky student is maliciously reinterpreted by a posse of ferocious neo-fascist feminists - or possibly a play about a complacent professor whose attempt to dominate a vulnerable student is thwarted by female solidarity... 

Jonathan Slinger as the maverick professor is superb, totally credible whether prickling with frustration on the phone or calmly confident of his offbeat educative skills. As the ambivalent student, Rosie Sheehy has a baffled belligerence that might well  appeal as a challenge to a dedicated teacher. Directed by Lucy Bailey, with a set by Alex Eales which ironically evokes Educating Rita in its scholarly intimacy even as this becomes increasingly at variance with the action.  Oleanna was iniitally seen as an important breakthrough in acknowledging an elephant in the room of sexism: thirty years on there seem to be other questions: The tutor advocates challenging the system, but is avid for personal advancement within the status quo. He may not a sexual predator, but he's certainly a hypocrite. images Nobby Clark

And now to Frome's Merlin Theatre for a dramatic contrast: As part of the Signal Fires project to revive small theatre companies in these difficult times,  New Old Friends touring company 'producing engaging, accessible, shows that make people laugh' brought their current show Crimes Against Christmas to the amphitheatre stage on Thursday, and a resilient cast of three persisted in entertaining their entranced audience huddled- in a socially distanced manner - on the stones with mulled wine, by recounting a complex Agatha-Christie stylee saga, in complexity and unlikeliness of a multiple murders to coincide with the story of the twelve days of Christmas. As with all such sagas, it's the deftness, and deliberate undeftness, of the multi-tasking characters that provides the entertainment. 

And finally in this disparate trio, Wardrobe Theatre hosted 'the world's first interactive pantomime (possibly)' when Streaming Beauty zoomed out on Saturday night. As with all pantos, even the most salacious, the focus was flamboyant entertainment and the storyline was of scant interest. Technically, this was ambitious and amazingly successful, with Tinkerbell the technician creating subgroups in the audience to interact with the cast as Beauty struggled to sever her contract with evil Hymen Bowel. A cameo appearance by Blaise Castle to encourage us to co-create a dreamcatcher to break the spell gives some idea of the inventive absurdity. Zoomers from Bristol who know each other, and probably know the cast too, will have enjoyed it most but it's great to see innovative approaches to interactive drama in these drab days.

Also in a seasonally festive vein,  Black Swan Arts held a pop-up market of  collectables and giftables in the courtyard, cafe and Round Tower.  The 'Small and Affordable' display of delights included jewellery, ceramics, woodwork items, prints and original artworks, and more, including salted caramel brownies in the cafe.  Here's artist David Davis with one of his stunning local views.  

Still local-ish, Heart of the Tribe has an exhibition in Glastonbury, enterprisingly creating an online gallery tour, showing until January.

Ending with poetry, and a short video of six poets responding to a sculpture in Mid Wales Arts Centre. Steve Pottinger and Emma Purshouse were among this group and, as both poets have performed in Frome to great acclaim, even though they're based in the Black Country this film earns its link. Here's a couple of screen-saved snaps to show the quality of the film: this kind of project might appeal to local poets too - Millennium Green, maybe? 

 

Tyrants, storms, poetry, drama, bees and murmurations

There's been quite a lot of everything this week, weather included, so let's start with the fun side of drama: the Merlin One Act Play writing Competition Winners Evening when the six chosen scripts were performed on stage: costumed, with set & lighting, and fully rehearsed by director & senior judge Claudia Pepler-White, on the Merlin main stage - a prize to make any writer drool if they're serious about creating plays for stage. Sadly one of the winning writers, Jonathan Skinner, was defeated by the storm from coming to see the show, but Vivian Oldaker, Clare Reddaway, Alexandra Ricou and Alison Clink were all in the audience to enjoy the applause and the discussion & feedback in the bar. From Romeo's Juliet on Jeremy Kyle to a daughter confronting her jailed child-killer mother, from thought-provoking issues like a transplant causing personality change, and life-trading in a dystopian near-future, to a role-reversal comedy and a bizarre farce, the mood zig-zagged between each short play, creating a hugely varied evening of well-performed drama. You can see more about the plays and masses of pictures on the link above.

Now to Bath, where Sophocles' Antigone, the ruler whose tyranical abuse of power destroyed everything he valued and drove those around him to despise him, is a good choice currently for dramatic production, and the Bath Theatre Academy students at The Egg last week created a strong sense of the issues and the inevitable ending of the conflict. Antigone's challenge to the tyrant about her right to bury her brother enhances the relevance, as she is responding to a more powerful law than the cruel king can comprehend.  There's not much scope for a wide range of mood in a narrative trajectory from deadlock to mass self-slaughter but Issie Sallows found dark humour in her role of the soldier. All this young team had commendable stage presence, and director/facilitator Kate Pasco encouraged them to reinvent the ancient roles and 'breathe new life' into the characters. Impressive.

And still with words: Frome Writers Collective monthly meeting on Monday featured a short talk on the Golden Egg Academy given by Abigail Kohlhoff and Nicki Marshall, both of whom contribute to the mentoring programme for children's authors, with advice relevant advice also to writers in any genre looking for professional publication. A quirky addition to the event, held as always at the Three Swans, was provided by the formal presentation to landlady Lucy Cooper by FWC member John Walton of a Remington typewriter circa 1920, to join the medley of unusual memorabilia in the upper room where we meet.
There was a spate of public writing on Saturday as Extinction Rebellion Frome collected love-thoughts to nature from passers-by to create a message of positive praise for the earth which will be published in the upcoming issue of Frome Times. I was invited to help at the final stage, and with XR's Pippa Clarke had the delicious task of compiling these heart-shaped fragments into a cascade of word-imagery, creating a moving valentine poem to our planet.

A brief mention here for the Proof Pudding Club, where Tina Gaisford-Waller, Hunting Raven Books manager & initiator of this inform-then-indulge monthly meeting, was dispensing chocolate sponge and gathering our opinions.  Overall winner in our group was The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis by Christuana Figueres. Yuval Noah Harari - he wrote SAPIENS - calls it 'inspiring' so definitely one to go for when it's officially released on 25.2.20.

Bees now - Fifty of them, in fact, all realistically crafted from fabric by artist and textile worker Lydia Needle who became concerned at the loss of our butterflies and concluded that 'something is missing from our ecosystem' and that the bees could disappear too. Lydia, here talking to bee-keeper James Bartholomew, produced lifelike versions of each different type of bee - they have a surprising range of size and structure - and invited other artists to research and respond in their own medium. The result is FIFTY BEES, an unmissable exhibition at Black Swan Arts, which has created a real buzz (sorry) with each bee accompanied by the art work it had inspired - here's the Squat Furrow Bee, and wildlife artist Hazel Mountford's accompanying imagining of secret life in the field margins that are its habitat.

The related ekphrastic poetry group Words at the Black Swan drew 15 writers for an excellent session led Claire Crowther - some of the poems in response to the artwork will be on the group's page very soon, and the exhibition is showing in the Long Gallery until March 14th.

All of which brings us nicely back via words to performance, still on theme as Frome Poetry Cafe had invited thoughts of 'green shoots' as guests Deborah Harvey and Dominic Fisher are 'IsamBards' with an interest in poetry walks - this picture is from a piece in the Guardian about them. Deborah's visceral and visual imagination and Dominic's thoughtful, personal words proved a great combination, and 14 'open mic' readers treated us wonderful range of ideas.
There are images of all the readers here courtesy of David Goodman, who also took this pic of me enjoying listening to Jo Butts, Frome Festival Poet Laureate, on top form with her Valentine ditty.

Concluding this lively and varied week with music: Nunney Acoustic Cafe defied storm Ciara with a cram-full audience for an afternoon of classy bands, duos, and soloists. Main guests were The MellowTones, Jane Langley's new band playing songs composed by Jane herself. Also exciting, and new (to me), Quiet Man, wonderful Mountain Speaks Fire, the well-named Don't Scare Easy Tribe, Decades, and other combinations & soloists. Here's Jane's band and Mountain/Fire duo Vin Callen & Helen Robertson performing their encore, In the Pines, and a link for more pix here.


Ending with the magic of murmuration... This is the moment the swirling clouds of starlings abruptly began to drop into the reeds of Shapwick Heath wetland.