Music, art, & sunshine plus a dash of technotrauma

So this week we're on a new MacBook, which is at present wary & wilful but hopefully will calm soon. Or perhaps that's me. Anyway, here goes with the update - music first:  Frome loves its punk: no need ever to ask Whatever happened to the heroes, all the Shakespearos - they're here, in the throbbing heartbeat of the town's music life, and specifically so on Thursday at Frome Cricket Club where band night turned into a massive dance party. Here's Du Kane (vocals) Steve Smith (bass) Nick Horton (drums) and Dave Maskrey on lead guitar, after a staunch opening set from Carl Sutterby, rocking the room with Teenage Kicks, Sex 'n Drugs 'n Rock 'n Roll, and other unforgettable classics.

On Wednesday evening Bar Lotte enjoyed Iain Ballamy's brilliant band line-up, with Henrik Jenson on double bass, Jem Stacey on drums and Denny Illett on guitar, with classic numbers ranging from the romance of The Street Where You Live to a funky version of Take Five. 

And zigzagging from punk via jazz to rock, on Saturday night Brakelight filled The Sun with their capering and classic anthems: Meatloaf, Stones, Queen, Beatles, Bowie... and more, all delivered hi-energy style to the enthusiastic audience in the bar.

Art openings featured this week, as Black Swan Arts is offering two impressive exhibitions at the moment: the Round Tower is featuring Artists for the Ukraine, a small but impressive collection of work donated by the makers to raise funds to send in support for Ukraine's refugees via our twin town Rabka-Zdój in Poland. Some, like this painting 'Sunflowers of Hope' by Annemarie Blake, have been created especially for this project - you can see all the art here.   

In the Long Gallery, another impressive diversity of artwork is on view at the Frome Art Society Spring Exhibition. This egalitarian group is fully supportive to artists of all abilities, and all submissions for the annual show are accepted, which makes the standard of work on show all the more impressive. Here's Stuart Weightman, standing below his portrait of 'Lee', which won second prize in the Vera Skinner awards and wouldn't have looked out of place on TV's Portrait Artist of the Year.

Big excitement in the town centre of Friday night, as new proprietors Francis and Keren Hayden (of Nunney Acoustic Cafe fame) celebrated their arrival at Home - a re-christening of the establishment previously known as Fat Radish. The theme here will be 'grazing' while chatting, rather than set courses, and Keren's focus is on fresh ingredients and desserts. There will also be regular performance events! The launch party was great fun, with much chat, free-flowing fizz, and sound-supremo Will Angeloro. Here's me & Keren with Tracey Rupp Rawlins.

Sunshine continued into the weekend for the market - also a 'Makers Market' in the main hall, for local craftsfolk of all kinds, offering edibles, wearables, cuddleables, and more: among the many intriguing artefacts, Little Spoons Ethical Jewellery was especially intriguing, as Lizzie buys antique silver spoons and remakes them into rings, retaining some of the patterning. Also beautiful & intriguing, Ginger Pink Yarns are created with dyes from foraged plants and plant-based food waste - onion skins, if you were wondering, create a luscious toffee-gold colour.

Meanwhile outside in the market yard, traders & buyers enjoyed the hottest day of the year so far, and the return of popular busker Mark Abis.  And La Strada's icecreams are back...

Concluding this week with a view of early evening across the lakes my way home from a walk to Marston Church: it's a lovely route, with flower-rimmed lanes and long views across the fields to Cley Hill - very precious now, as this land is all under threat of dubious development - and, after seeing Jacob Rees-Mogg's gushing tweet Christ is risen, He is risen indeed, Alleluia, Alleluia, my thinking was that there might be some kind of celebration in churches today. At Marston. I found a few sheep nibbling grass bin the graveyard but the door was locked.  A great walk, though.

Émile in suburbia, moral barbarism, & a woodland walk

The Good Life, that popular TV sitcom from 1975 which caught this nation's desire to sympathise with, though not actually address, the stress of competitive materialism, inevitably seems - after nearly fifty years of deepening concerns - to be more about suburban pretensions than environmental awareness. 

So in that sense this new onstage version at Theatre Royal Bath is successful. Tom and Barbara (Rufus Hound and Sally Tatum) are preoccupied with their pooing goat and sick piglet, Jerry and Margot (Dominic Rowan and Preeya Kalidas) are preoccupied with entertaining Sir and Mrs Sir (Nigel Betts and Tessa Churchard), lots of pea-pod wine is drunk and the wider issue of planetary destruction never clouds the dinner party conversation. The set (designed by Michael Taylor), however, is terrific, morphing shudderingly from one bourgeois living-room into the other while action is still in progress.  But this is a farce not a retrospective of the warnings of early eco-warriors, and Jeremy Sams' production will probably appeal to many who remember the TV series with affection.  Directed by the writer, the show will tour until the end of November when it features in the Chichester festival. Images Dan Tsantilis

This week should have featured two of Frome's top bands on Saturday night but sadly both cancelled so instead the music spot this week goes to the excellent Mark Abis, busking in the sunshine of the morning market.  

The other compensation for the loss of a great evening of music was that I didn't have to forgo tuning in to Wells Festival of Literature, having already booked online access to a talk by political journalist Peter Oborne on The Assault on Truth: Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and the Emergence of a New Moral Barbarism.   I've already bought the book, but the talk was an excellent summary and Peter's passion is plangent. His methodical research on the stream of lies emanating from Downing Street, unchecked by any of the mainstream media, is as impressive as it is shocking, and Peter seemed near to tears as he admitted "I really felt ashamed to be a political journalist."  Boris, he confirms, has no interest in the truth - he brought in 'a bunch of thugs' and the Johnson lie machine dominates totally, since any journalist who deviates is simply banned from contact. "It stinks. The BBC supports Boris' palpable nonsense... We inherited a system of truth. We've smashed it."  No editor will take Peter's articles now, but his books are going well. (my screenshot)

Art now: Frome Art Society has a prizewinners exhibition in Black Swan Arts lower gallery, on till 14th November, which demonstrates the extraordinary talent of many of this group's members - this is Alan Overton’s painting ‘Looking towards Willow Vale and the old telephone exchange, - evening light' and there's a truly splendid gallery of members' work  here.     Creativity-with-purpose was the theme of Tuesday's craft workshop at the Silk Mill, as participants at 'Wine and Parachutes' created wall-art to support the MayDay submission for a more sympathetic development of the Saxonvale site. Kate and Damon Moore have campaigned fervantly for this, so fingers crossed that the futures of Maddox (in the pic) - and all the others - land safely.  

And Portrait Artist of the Year is back on Sky Arts in a new series with wonderful Stephen Mangan and the arty team, the best hour of the TV week. Here's actor Jacob Fortune-Lloyd as painted by teen artist Kat Hughes who won the first heat. If you're a fan, there's an excellent blog about the show here. (If not, try watching it: Wednesdays, 8pm.)                                     

Ending the week with a long walk in dazzling sunshine through the trees of Roddenbury Hill fort, an amazing hill-top forest just outside Longleat. It's not a 'mast' year so there were few chestnuts, but masses of furtive fungi, pale against the red-gold carpet of the beech leaves.