Extravaganza: a spectacular entertainment or production.

Other towns do Switching-on-the-Christmas-Lights. Frome has an Extravaganza. On a cold but fine night literally thousands lined the main road cheering as Jenson scorched up and down in his Formula 1 car doing donuts, and also more sedately in the Santander open-top, waving and sometimes dismounting to give a hug or an autograph. Oh, and he switched on some lights too ~ not that we cared, most of them were on already but we'd saved him a tree: a suitable pagan emblem for a demigod. "Frome is just a dot on the map but he's shown you can go out and conquer the world" declaimed the emotional compère introducing our most illustrious export, as the Youth Town Band played. I didn't get a close-up so nicked one from the BBC (who also made a great video for Points West) showing the switching-on moment with the Frome Mayor on the left, because I really like mentioning that Dicken is the youngest, tallest, Mayor in the country. Warm-up acts included bands, choirs, Muriel Lavender in a viridian corset, and the three sweet little winners of the Christmas card competition.

 In fact having a street party was such fun we did it all again next day, though without Jenson, but with street music and an amazing Food Fair at the Silk Mill where the yard was filled with stalls of amazing scoff ~ lush fish soup from La Paimpolaise ~ with a noon-till-late all-age party with blues & reggae disco. Frome Library edged in on the festivities discreetly by ensuring their evening talk on historical fiction had a focus on Christmas celebrations through the ages, with four local writers on the panel (Jenny Barden, David Lassman, Kylie Fitzpatrick and Tricia Wastvedt) all entertaining as well as interestingly informative. Eras ranged from Elizabethan 'Lords of Misrule' to Nazi suppression, and saw the first emergence of media-message impact: the picture of Prince Albert's decorated tree that changed England's festive focus from burning yule log to dressed pine forever...

And then we did it again, the street celebrations thing I mean not the library talk, as Sunday was Frome Super Market day with roads closed to traffic and open to stalls selling everything you could imagine to wear, give, eat, drink, or put on your bike. Mayor Dicken was out in a different role hawking ties ~ yes, if you're inspired by tales of the independent state of Frome, you can buy the tie: colours still available are bright blue, bright red, bright green & bright orange... bright yellow has sold out. Lots of tastings of local products, and the busking stage extra good this month with Tell-Tale Signs poguing out Fairy Tales of New York and world songs from massed voices of Jackdaws choir. And as the disco lights in the Silk Mill go out and the glittering street lights in town come on, we settle down on facebook with greenie grumblings about Buttonmania versus consumerism....
So to end this Frome-obsessive posting: photo-journalist Edward Johnson has created A Story of Frome on his gallery website. It's told entirely in portraits of locals who work creatively here, and I'm delighted to be included (penultimate picture) and to see some good friends there. I can think of several more who deserve a place, so hopefully there'll be a second gallery soon.

Hi, November...

I've been avid to see Philomena since I first read about the true story that inspired it ~ the lost little boy and his mother's journey of atonement ~ so the first showing at the Westway on release day saw me seated in style in one of the much-coveted half-circle 'boxes' at the back (I mention this because Frome's wonderful independent cinema deserves a plug at every opportunity.) I've not read Martin Sixsmith's book, but Stephen Frears' film superbly told this moving personal tale. Judy Dench and Steve Coogan are both utterly brilliant ~ Martin Sixsmith writes he hopes his 'snootiness and self-absorbtion' are both exaggerated in the portrayal, but both the mother and the journalist are shown with sympathy not sentimentality, and their relationship is moving but never mawkish.  Rotten Tomatoes is succulent with critical acclaim ~ I specially like the Financial Times verdict: "This is a doleful, radiant, understated comedy of hope and faith. That's almost a definition of good British cinema". Tears and laughter is the general verdict, though one squashed tomato was chucked on grounds of anti-catholicism, which seems strange for a film that despite the harrowing, angry-making, truth about Church practice in the past is delicately assertive that things have improved... and so they bloody well should, since this was a baby-farm business model run on cruelty and hypocrisy (not my summary, the Guardian's.) Only occasionally does the journalist fail to swallow his atheism ~ as when exasperated by Philomena's unshakeable insistence on her 'sin' he demands "Why did God bestow on us a sexual desire that he wants us to resist - was it just to alleviate the extreme boredom of omnipotence?"

Nunney Acoustic Café on Sunday afternoon always provides great live music ~ with newspapers and scrummy food on the side ~ but this month was especially sensational, featuring among others David Waddington, Julian (Bugs) Hight, and the fabulous combo of Richard Kennedy and Pete Gage with a sumptuous & totally stunning blues set.   And rain doesn't stop outside play in Frome either: the streets were as crowded with witches, zombies, and vampires on Halloween as they were with shoppers for Sunday's lively stall-holders' Super Market. So I'll end this post with a Samhain scream and a morning rainbow.

From Athens to Frome, democracy in action!

This week I have mostly been negotiating with Aircraft Chest syndrome, that mysterious virus cultivated in the plane's air-conditioning which ensures however bronzed, fit, and relaxed you are when you set off, by the time friends at home are asking about your trip you'll cough pallidly and answer from a throat like sandpaper...  Lots of things have alleviated this annoyance, however.

One being a fantastic BBC4 programme about the origins of theatre: Ancient Greece, The Greatest Show On Earth is hosted by the delicious Dr Michael Scott, who interviews female experts looking like he's planning to lick them later and is passionate about Athenian dramatists and their impact on democracy. "To understand ourselves we have to understand the ancient Greeks" he says, "Athens invented democracy, and theatre was the oil that allowed it to function." It was here, in 6th century BC, that epic narrative stories were for the first time enacted, and stage drama was born. Dr Michael leaps endearingly through ruined sites finding carved dedications that show the key role in civic life of the amphitheatres. He explains, with (literal) animation, how the famous tragedies combined myth and politics in a way designed to promote debate, predict outcomes, and encourage reflection on the communal good.  They were also emotional toga-rippers.  All the big names ~ Sophocles, Oresteia, Aeschylus, and 'enfant terrible' Euripedes ~ would compete in a massive festival for Dionysus which was held in huge esteem by generals and rulers. Plays like The Persians and The Trojan Women had a public purpose: to engage Athenians in an understanding their own history, and to warn their leaders of the dangers of hubris by showing truly tragic consequences. We left Athens as it stood poised for decline after failing to heed the dramatists' warning... Can't wait for next week!

I've been positively chafing to see Steve Coogan's movie debut, and this week Alpha Papa arrived in local cinemas. On the big screen, Alan Partridge delivers everything you'd want from a top-class comedy: brilliantly nuanced characterisation, witty script, superb editing, excruciating humour, and cracking sound-track. Partridge is narcissistic, unreliable, and socially inept, but what keeps us rooting for him is that somewhere within he knows he's not the person he really wants to be, which is why (unlike David Brent, much as I enjoy The Office) he's up there with the best tragi-comic heros: insecure and often self-deluded, but somehow arousing our compassion...  perhaps, some might say, because we know we can be like that too. (Writers may be interested in this Ideas Tap interview with the scriptwriters.)

First Sunday of the month is now a regular date for Frome Super Market, already featured online by Texan photo-journo ("What do I love about England? My husband and a good Gin & Tonic") Selena in four postings about our town. It's a big thing. From the top Catherine Hill, down the cobbled street to the main road (closed to traffic for the occasion) and along the riverside to the old cattle market yard, hundreds of stalls offer just about everything you could put on or beside a stall: bottled, baked, woven, painted, kiln-fired, matured, stir-fried ~ all locally made or sourced by individual enterprises. The independent shops ~ which is most of them ~ are open too: POOT Emporium on the hill has reopened as a collective of contemporary and vintage designers, selling clothes, curios and collectables, now charmingly describing itself as a Department Store. And there's buskers, including classy duo Nicky & Griff, and pop-out cafés, and mask-making for children and the casually carnival kind of atmosphere Frome does so well. Happy September, y'all.