Words and music - and more cake than usual

As this week's bulletin is mostly on a writerly theme, let's start with a blast of music: Saturday evening saw the much-anticipated return of Frome's hugely popular quartet, The Raggedy Men, playing at The Sun to an enthusiastic audience. The songs are all punk classics, but the skill and polish of the presentation isn't '70s-rough: these are all seriously good musicians and terrific  entertainers. The Guns of Brixton is still my favourite, but Andy, Bugsy, Pat & Carl make every song special.   

Now buckle up for a lot about writing. It's been five years since Frome Writers' Collective launched 'Silver Crow', a quality-control system to support self-publishing authors, so Friday night saw a birthday party at the Masonic Hall, with all FWC members invited.  This was a chance for authors to mingle, with a complementary drink, and show off their books, perhaps selling copies too. The sitting-down part began with a few words of encouragement from Mayor Andy, before Alison Clink, well-known in Frome for leading writing groups & classes in Frome, spoke of their benefits for writers.   

There are currently 18 books boasting the Silver Crow logo, and Nikki Coppleston, who launched her 'Jeff Lincoln' detective series in 2016 this way, talked about her experiences and her new novel The Promise of Salvation. Gill Harry shared the story and images of her engaging new book for children with an interest in history: Zoe and the Ancient Egypt Adventure - superbly self-illustrated. Here's Alison, soon to be published by John Chandler of Hobnob Press (on R) who has added several  Frome writers to his list, including poet David Thompson (on L). There are more pictures of this event on the FWC facebook website.

Writing continued the theme of my week on Saturday: Following my talk on writing short stories at the Library to a small but delightfully enthusiastic group, I headed for the upper rooms of the Black Swan, where The Write Place was hosting a tea-party, partly for self-promotion and partly for fun and mince pies with mulled wine. This popular project was the inspiration of Frome writer Kate McEwan, and has a big following now among writers who like to write in a quiet place but with a sense of surrounding support - sounds like the perfect combo. There are monthly one-day writing retreats which include a starter-session, too. The 'Chat Room' was full and very friendly - here's Kate (on the right) at the end of the event. Kate started her literary success in 1983 with an illustrated history of the south-west suburbs of London, and she reminisces entertainingly about initial struggles,  until Ealing Walkabout sold out its first print-run of 3500 and rushed to reprint 5000 more.

Proof Pudding Club night at River House nicely rounded off this wordy week: this group's role, devised by Tina the ever-inventive custodian of Hunting Raven Books, involves appraising the promotional proof copies of new titles, and eating cake. In the final roundup, Ai Weiwei's tale of 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows emerged as an absolute must-read - this isn't surprising: I still have disturbing memories of his exhibition in London six years ago filled with courageous criticisms of the Chinese government, highlighting their callous treatment of their people. The odd, jelly-baby, look of the book jacket almost, but not quite, evokes the collections of little faces released by campaigners attempting to stop human traffic of hundreds of thousands of children in China...  One to read, if you can.   

And while we're still on the subject of books...this was the week that should have seen a high profile party launch for Struck Off at the Silk Mill - another Hobnob title -but, sadly though wisely, author-host John Killah decided to cancel rather than cause Frome the anxiety of a large group gathering from other areas. His novel now has its own private window-party in Hunting Raven, ready to delight fiction readers who may wonder what goes on in the world of a successful trial lawyers... think insider knowledge plus satirical humour, this tale may do for the legal world what David Lodge did for academic life in the '80s.

So this week's verbosity ends with an apology to Walking Festival, and the '6x6' Art exhibition at the Silk Mill, both of which sadly were squeezed off my to-do list, and with a picture of dawn over the Cooperage estate.

 

Spectrums and celebrations as we move into winter

A spectrum in terms of colour perception, 'blue-orange’ is also a psychological term for a kind of amorality most often found in alien fictions. Such characters are not exactly immoral, but their actions are random and not codified in socially normal ways.  A new production of Blue/Orange by Joe Penhall at Bath's Ustinov Studio revisits the dilemma facing two psychiatrists as they argue over a patient who may be one of these: Chris (Michael Balogun) claims to be a son of Idi Amin, and his main carer Bruce (Ralph Davis) thinks he should remain in psychiatric care, but Bruce's superior, Robert (Giles Terera) insists his detention was based on ethnic prejudice - the topic of his upcoming book, for which he needs another case study. Who is right?  The drama swings painfully between the arguments, and so does Chris. The only thing he seems sure of is that the inside of an orange is blue. Is he mad, or is the playwright evoking the surrealist perception of Paul Eluard that the world est bleue comme un orange?  

A stark, dark, set defined by strip lighting (designer Simon Kenny) holds the three volatile conflicting personalities, each fighting for acceptance of their own reality.  Previous productions have cast both carers as white so it's interesting that director James Dacre has gone another way, perhaps to encourage his audience to disconnect from any preconceptions - in which case, would it have been even more interesting to challenge perceptions even further by swapping roles after the interval? With or without such permutations, this 21-year-old 'best play' winner continues to raise questions about the use of incarceration in society, and whether labels are helpful, and who has the right to decide... much to ponder while waiting at Vino Vino for the last bus home. images: Marc Brenner 

Art now, and lots of it, starting with In Movement from Marian Bruce at the Gallery at the Station, where Thursday's opening was filled with fascinated viewers. Marian has long been widely respected for her representations of the plight of the oppressed and the dispossessed, but these vibrant images show a different aspect of her empathy: the passion and vigour of  Cuban dance, which she experienced while in Havana as the designer for Rooster, Chris Bruce's acclaimed production with Acosta Danza in 2018. The energy in these tiny figures and drawings is incredible - a highly recommended exhibition open Wednesday till Sunday until 27 November, late nights Friday and Saturday. 

The Whittox Gallery is hosting Somerset Printmakers in an exhibition which opened on Friday and has already proved popular: this group formed in 1998 to promote their passion and professionalism and showcase 'the best of printmaking' in the county. Using a range of techniques, eleven of the artists in this group are showing one-off unframed prints and cards for sale. Here's Gail Mason with one of her imagined landscapes, and the splendid gallery - a superb arena for art.

 

- and also in the in the list of don't-miss shows in Frome, the pandemic work of Frome Wessex photographers, Closing Down and Opening Up, first exhibited in Corsley (& reviewed by this blog in the October 24 posting) has now arrived at the Round Tower Gallery at Black Swan Arts. Intimate and moving, these images are really worth seeing.

Final exhibition piece for this posting is the Sinking House above the weir in Bath - a tourist attraction as well as a message to the leaders at COP26 and a warning to communities throughout the world.   

Words now, as another Frome author from the Hobnob Press stable prepares to launch their debut novel: John Killah, well known in Frome as an erstwhile 'legal bulldog', is now writing fiction and his first book is a biting tale about shenanigans in a lawyers office leading to a crazy chase to catch the culprits...  STRUCK OFF is a comic novel with many elements Frome inhabitants may feel they recognise in the setting, and a plot that is outrageous, clever, and totally gripping.                        

Here's me and John discussing his plans for an exciting launch on publication day - 9th November - now sadly struck off, so to speak, by the possibility of Covid closures, but you can read more about the story here.  Look out for the classy cover - you may see it in the posh paper reviews soon, too!

A musical fanfare to finish the week, as one of Frome's most popular bands took over the Cheese & Grain bar/cafe area on Saturday night. Back of the Bus is brilliant at creating a party atmosphere, and although the line-up was one short (condolences, Mary) their performance was hi-energy from start to finish, with costume melodrama for White Wedding and closing their set with the magnificent menace of Hazel O'Connor's Eighth Day...

And our first-Sunday-of-the-month Independent Market busking stage presented its usual range of talented performers: I'll leave you with Francis Hayden, plus Danny Shorten on bass, singing his brilliant though gruesome tale of The Carpenter Ant, with its ominous final line: "the one who runs the show may be the parasite..."  Horribly apt, as our chaotic year totters towards an infectious end.(You can find the full cordyceps history, and Frances' lyrics here.)

Drama, words, & spooky stuff - the Halloween edition

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Uncle Vanya was mid-production at the Harold Pinter Theatre when coronavirus interrupted them, but director Ian Rickson reconvened his team to make a film version. Frome's Merlin, ever  aware that 'use it or lose it' is this year's maxim for theatres, promptly booked it for a showing. The cast, with Toby Jones in the title role, are all excellent and Conor McPherson’s adaptation effectively highlights topical issues, possibly overmuch in the environmental-speak attributed to the forest-loving doctor.  Despite its length - it's 2½ hours - and the fact that you couldn't call this a feel-good story, it's really enjoyable... but, like all films-of-plays, frustratingly abandons the supreme advantage of stage: that we can see not just the speaker but listener/s too.  Chekhov was writing about the decline and decay of the Russian land-owning class and Uncle Vanya, like The Cherry Orchard, is poignant because everyone is affected: the best bits for me were when I could see all their responses, rather than just massive facial close-ups like on a game-show. 

Moving closer to home now, in fact to Home in Frome, the community group formed eleven years ago to ensure the town's history in terms of work and social life was not lost and forgotten as trades died out. Stories recalled by older community members have already been published and now Working Memories has its own web-page here - a remarkable achievement and a fascinating collection of interviews. A wonderful addition to the public history of Frome.  

Still with words: A West Country Homecoming is the title of Frome author John Payne's new book, which - he says - 'explores the possibilities of writing history backwards from the present into the past.'  It's part memoir, part family history, part social history, and illustrated with over 100 photographs from family albums and other sources. This is another from quirky Hobnob Press, run by John Chandler who seems to have become the go-to publisher for Frome writers.  

Also from the Hobnob stable (or possibly kitchen), my book The Price of Bread now has it's own Facebook page,  inspired by a staggeringly good review which actually suggests it could be a Booker contender... pick yourself off the floor and read it here. "Rarely have I read a book that casts such an accurate looks at the 60s - an era of free love impossible to imagine nowadays - in the context of hostile social forces." was the encouraging verdict of author & editor Dana Rufolo.

Liv Torc, despite having a tough summer, has again managed to spin Covid straw into words of gold with her latest publication: a collection of poems produced by Siren Poets: What if we can't save the Earth - But if the Earth could save us? Liv guided a group of sixty participants on a 'creative quest to uncover the lessons the Earth sends us, by uncovering sigs and metaphors in nature. This is a stunning little booklet, full of lucent imagery and creative surprises, and it's good to see words from several poets well-known in Frome Poetry Cafe - here's a short sample from Jo Butts, our current Festival Poet Laureate (a title it currently looks as though she will hold forever...) - an actual news story transformed into a thought-provoking haiku:  A young polar bear / devours a sleeping camper / His hunger? Our fault. 

Time for a tree: this oak is just outside Frome, at East Woodland. Sadly, Frome's southern fields are currently threatened with massive development of 1,700 houses, extending from the Mount to the bypass, not only obliterating a breathing space for the town but compounding pressure on basic services like schools, transport, and medical facilities. Not surprisingly there's opposition - not from NIMBYs, from the many in Frome who believe this is actually about planetary survival. If you live in the area, and would like to support the protest, stopsgc is the site.

And this post falls at Samhein, with a full moon as well as halloween, and the Frome Window Wanderland too... this brilliant illuminated trail of home-made imagery goes right across the town, with inventive narratives and striking scenarios as well as ghoulish figures.  Witches were quite a theme this year - and black cats too.

Ironically, my second week of self-isolation ends just as another lockdown is about to begin.  Actually, after travelling remote stretches of Spain for a month and catapulting back into busy Frome, much as I wanted to connect with friends, the compulsory tranquility was a chance to absorb the experiences of the journey.  In Africa, apparently, the guides hired by European explorers would stop every few days to wait for their spirits to catch up with them. Another month without live arts will be a stretch, though... but one of the compensations of winter evenings is rediscovering telly, and programmes like Portrait Artist of the Year on Sky Arts.  I leave you with Stephen Mangan... you lucky people. 

 

Dreams dramatically dashed - words, spoken & writ - it's another lockdown medley

Small Island, the National Theatre production staged last year, is an especially timely offering for streamed viewing, not just as a shaming reminder of recent treatment of families of those 'Sons of the Empire' lured to post-war Britain, but also with the current spate of retrospective sensitivity about historical terminology: as the producers put it "Please note that, as part of depicting the experience of Jamaican immigrants to Britain after the Second World War, some characters in the play use racially offensive terms."  Andrea Levy based her 2004 novel on her own experience of growing up in London as the child of Jamaican immigrants: it won several major book prizes and was picked by The Guardian in 2009 as one of the defining books of the decade As in the book, the action of the play moves across two continents, and the minimal set changes plus effective lighting effectively convey Hortense's culture-shock as she relocates from a sunny small island where she could consider herself both British and middle-class to a chilly, damp, small-minded island bereft of respect for her qualities and seeing only her skin. Online till 25th June, well worth watching.

And there was another dream of midsummer magic at the Globe this week, with a 2013 production directed by Dominic Dromgool three years before the Emma Rice extravaganza reported in my last post: a more traditional version of Shakespeare's drama with the fairies a darkly ominous presence in a world where mortals, both noble and lower class do all be fools in their desires and their passions.
Renaissance costumes and more traditional staging both work well for this interpretation,  the adolescent immaturity of the lovers explaining their passionate tempers, and the merging  between the mortal and fairy overlords also fits this interpretation of the drama. Matthew Tennyson plays Puck as a wayward and dysfunctional teenager - he won an award as 'best newcomer' - and the mechanicals adlib, mess about, and shove the chaos of their 'Pyramus and Thisbe' play to the limits of absurdity.  The audience clearly loved it all. These streamed shows have definitely made me avid to book live tickets for Globe's pit as soon as it's permissible.

Poetry corner again features Liv Torc, this time as hostess of the Take Art supported Rainbow Fish Speakeasy sessions - the next one in September will presumably be back in Yeovil, so this has been another zoom benefit for me.
Crammed with great contributions, this featured a totally brilliant headline set from Bristol rapper Dizraeli who introduced us to city characters like John the Baptist and Ben who sleeps under the railway bridge. Other poems ranged from powerful reflections on current issues to Mary Dickens' list poem 'I am returning this item...' compiling suggestions she felt more useful than the usual options, and the event ended with an audience-inspired poem entitled The cake of human kindness - congratulations deserved by all.

And my personal congratulations to John Chandler of Hobnob Press for lightning-fast turnaround of my error-strewn pdf into a proper-looking proof copy of The Price of Bread - already in his listings and pictured here in my hands, in John's very smart cover design featuring art work by Frome's marvellous Mutartis Boswell. If you dipped into this blog at the end of May you will have seen the image already, rather more clearly, and if all goes well for me, it will probably feature here again...





In the meantime, back from 1970s Belfast to 2020's Somerset summer glory: walks through fields of ripening corn and along river banks where bees and butterflies this year are abundant - one of pleasanter outcomes of lockdown.

Stay well, y'all.

Sun, thunder, art and life

The Chemistry of Bronze as an art concept to be honest didn't attract me much until first glimpse of the amazing exhibition which opened last Friday at Black Swan Arts. Bronze is all about weaponry and statues of warmakers isn't it? Well, no. Superbly curated by Hans Borgonjon, the casting foundry Art of a Fine Nature showed a diversity of creations from glowing guitar-fronts to random Rorschach-style seahorses and porpoises retrieved from the drips bucket and presented facetiously for inspection as the works of Sandra Pail. Here's one that might, or might not, be a witch with her incubus lover... There will be a casting demo on July 7 at 3pm - postponed from Saturday because of That thunderstorm.

Masses and masses of music this week - every pub in Frome seemed to be bursting out with bands like blossom on the Judas tree in Victoria park. (Irrelevant digression: the name apparently wasn't from the biblical betrayer but a derivation of the French name, Arbre de Judée, referring to the hills of Judea many of these gorgeous trees grew. Just an interesting fact, for fact collectors.)
Anyway though I missed most of this being out of action for 5 days (another digression, more relevant this time, the NHS service despite all attacks is at point of need utterly fantastic), I was back on the circuit to hear some great young musicians at the Frome Sofar- here's Josh, and Wedlock, sorry I don't know much more about them than their names but both were excellent.
And Sunday's Frome Jazz Club had sax player Jon Lloyd as John Law's guest - an extraordinary rapport apparent between these two - and Billy Weir on drums.







The big thing for me this week, and the reason why this blog has gone all garrulous, is that my book has finally, belatedly, been delivered to the wonderful Hobnob Press and is now under the editorial red correcting pen - I say that as though it wields its own authority but it is of course steered by my endlessly patient & supportive editor. Various people in Frome have been wondering what happened to this project, because I've interviewed many of them, saying breezily back in November that I expected to finish by end of February... yeah, that's right, a history of Frome in four months. I can't imagine why I thought 120 days might wrap it up - it's not as if it's only a bit of Frome either, like a history of 17th century button-hooks and bodkins.  The title I negotiated is FROME UNZIPPED - from Prehistory to Post-Punk, beginning at the ice-age and ending with the call for Frexit in the last Frome Times. It's a bit of a parkour ride, with masses jumped over, but you can get all that from sensible historians. This is more of a street-theatre story - there's a narrative arc, and characters, and everyone I talked to has a voice in the book because I wanted it to be genuinely egalitarian. Nearly a hundred people generously gave me their time and when I'd transcribed all their interviews, along with notes from the sensible historians, with a month to go, I found I had the equivalent of a 5000-piece jigsaw to assemble with no box. Anyway, it's off now, and I've learned so much about this extraordinary town where I came to live back in 1987... what's next? After the prosecco, of course.. (thanks David)