Sounds, words, art - all you need to start the month.

Listen - A summer of sound is the concept of composer Helen Ottaway, fusing sensual appreciation to include not only music but sounds found in nature, in speech, and in our lives generally - the 'strange and lovely' sounds of the world around us. Black Swan Arts has embraced the idea and from July 20th till 1st September there will be a range of sound-related events to experience. Last Thursday was the launch of a crowdfunder to raise funds to commission more aural events to 'feed the voracious appetite of Frome's creative community', with Helen's sample soundtrack, taken from the streets of Sri Lanka, installed in the corridor. Here's Mel Day from the programming committee with Helen.
This initiative also includes Poetry in Motion - local walks with readings of poems related to the terrain, organised by John Payne and Martin Bax - and thus ties in nicely with the Frome Writers Collective current focus on poetry. The FWC regular programme on Frome FM Writers on Radio (broadcast May 3rd, online link here) featured interviews with three local writers with an interest in writing poetry: I was one, along with Robert Hull and Rosie Jackson, whose collaborative collection with Graham Burchell on the art of Stanley Spencer and his wife Hilda, Two Girls and a Beehive, will be published next April by Two Rivers Press. Suzy Howlett, here with co-presenter Lisa Kenright, spoke of the benefits of learning poems by heart in childhood which triggered all our favourites: personally I can't walk over any bridge in London without declaiming Wordsworth, and will chunter chunks of Keats, Coleridge and Wilfred Owen mercilessly at the least provocation. The programme was immaculately hosted by Sara Scholefield.

From poetry to prose: really great to have my tale of Mrs Rosoman's Dilemma picked for  Story Friday, Clare Reddaway's popular short-prose reading event in Bath's delightful performance venue Burdalls Yard, an invitingly cavernous venue on this occasion authentically decked for the current theme of 'The Garden'- and with real cucumber sandwiches. Six of our submissions were lucky enough to join Clare in reading, and our horticultural imaginations varied from animals' nocturnal exploits to jam mining and Eve's take on what Eden was really like, with some thought-provoking as well as entertaining tales. There's a link here so you can listen to all or any of our tales!

And still with the words, Nevertheless Pub Theatre's festival production, Where the Fault Lies, is being steadily buffed up by our four dedicated actors. I dropped in on the rehearsal for Under the Duvet - a bit of a twisty mystery with a sinister streak - and found them suitably moody... If you're in the Frome area during festival week, do get a ticket & come along to The Cornerhouse on 10th July- with four talented and energetic actors, we're confident this will be a great show. There's a link here, so you can listen to any or all of the stories.

Time for music, and masses of it, to take all our minds off the fudges and follies that climaxed on May 2nd, though they weren't far from our minds when Seize the Day featured at a TUC organised event in Bath last Saturday. Theo Simon and Shannon Smy lead this inspirational protest band which has a big following for its rousing performances as well as political commitment.  The Bell Inn garden's 'back bar' provided a perfect venue for a great afternoon. Here's a quite old version of one of their anthems No-one's Slave and No-one's Master - it sounds as good, and as relevant, today.
Back in Frome, the May weekend had an even-more-fantastic-than-usual range (do I say this every week? It sometimes seems that way.., ) of brilliant bands: The Peaky Blinders Family Friendly Music Event at 23 Bath Street gave us a long afternoon of superb performers: Rodney Branigan set the bar high with Radiohead's Creep played on two guitars simultaneously, followed by the Screaming Harlots, then Frome's new hottest band the HooDoos - they give St James Infirmary Blues the resurrection treatment - and sultry Bonne Nouvelle - then another talented composite group, JAMD.

Here's the Hoodoos (with apologies to two more talented members missing from the shot), lovely Coralie from Bonne Nouvelle, and the party atmosphere that greeted JAMD.

Then a dance night at The Cornerhouse with high-energy ska/punk band the wonderful One Tones to end the day, so what more could anyone want from a bank holiday Saturday? 

There's Sunday too, of course, and as it's the first of the month the Frome Independent market took over the town with stalls and its usual Mayday theme of fresh floral headbands. I was outside Hunting Raven Books for most of this time, promoting Frome Unzipped, (thanks Tom for the snap)
but I did catch the HooDoos' excellent set on the busking stage - though sadly missing Straight Fits, an up-and-coming young band of whom you will hear more.

Impossible to leave May bank holiday weekend without referencing the art, which burst around the town like the wild garlic and cow-parsley that have been grabbing every pathside space:

 The Round Tower is hosting Black Swan Guild's stunning exhibition of paintings, pottery,  jewellery and other craft: I was particularly impressed with Dan Morley's delicate, exact, paintings in the series of ephemeral fragments in the Sonnets series, but there's much to admire - it's on till 25 May.

And for two days only, May 4&5, Frome Art Fair took over the Long Gallery, the Silk Mill, and Rook Lane too with an extraordinarily high standard display of work by the artists and craftsfolk of Frome. Here's just one of the many striking pieces of work in each venue, by from Melanie Deegan, at Rook Lane. 

Attentive readers may note a bit of a blip time-wise in the middle of this bulletin: this is because your usually-dedicated chronicler grabbed a four-day sabbatical and celebrated Beltane in Dublin - in Howth, to be precise, a peninsular at the north end of the city entirely surrounded by seagulls.
Here I was hosted by my university-days-flatmate Jenny Sweeney (author of Encounter Ireland) so we talked of Irish poets and legends and walked the promenade, beach, cliff-tops and in the old Deer Park where Gráinne Mhaol the Pirate Queen put the garlic curse on the inhospitable St Lawrence family for closing the gates against her so even now their land is thick as snow with garlic flowers, and the Earl now always has a place laid ready in case she calls again...
and if you're ever in Howth and feeling peckish, do drop into The Bloody Stream, a fabulous fish restaurant named after the environmental consequence of a 12th century battle below its walls. It's underneath the railway station: five-star food and a centre for Irish music too. So this multi-coloured bulletin concludes here with the green headlands thick-rimmed with the molten gold of the gorse all around the bay.

It was touch and go till Saturday morning whether I’d make the trip to Dublin to convalesce with my long-time friend Jenny. I knew I couldn’t have a kinder carer, so took the chance: after all it’s only a short flight, what could go wrong....
Well for a start, the woman at Aer Lingus check-in decided my tiny bag was too big for carry-on, and I had to pay £17 fine despite the fact it was way too small for the hold, as obviously noted by the baggage handlers since it failed to emerge with the larger cases on the carousel at Dublin. Aer Lingus desk was deserted but there was a phone on which I became embroiled in a MontyPythonesque exchange with a voice which insisted I must be outside the Spa and at my plaintive insistence I was still in Arrivals, decided it had no idea where I was. It put me on musak-hold for a while, returning to announce I was in Terminal 1, as though of all the places the flight from Bristol might arrive who’d have thought it would choose that one! The voice then became efficient and took details, and eventually I bundled out of the airport, bagless, into the late afternoon sun and climbed into a taxi. I related my woes to the big Nigerian driver as we cruised towards Howth. ‘They will bring it to you.’ he told me in a very deep voice I found immensely reassuring.

And sure enough, after a lovely evening of catchup & supper with Jenny, I got a text to say my bag was being prepared for delivery.
Next morning as hours passed and the sunshine beckoned ever more insistently, I phoned Aer Lingus to query their optimism. ‘I’m only here for the weekend, we had plans for today,’ I said, coming over all plaintive again. ‘Ah sure, but you know what they’re like,’ said a soothing voice as if I were whining over the non-appearance of lions at nature reserve.
So what with Aer Lingus charging me £17.00 to lose my bag, not bothering to return it till over 12 hours after they found it, plus providing the unique flight experience when I struggled with a coughing fit of a stewardess solicitously asking if I’d prefer to pay €2.50 or £2.00 for a glass of water, and you can see why my overall impression of this airline is not good. Easyjet next time.

The bag arrived at last and off we went to Howth Demesne, where Deer Park Golf course replaces the classic landscaped gardens of the Gaisford-St Lawrence family. It’s a lovely view anyway, right down to Malahide, and out across Dublin Bay. We walked among the wild rhododendrons and saw the Neolithic portal tomb and the masses of wild garlic - the curse of Gráinne Ní Mháille, 16th Century Pirate Queen, who fell out with the Baron. When she called at his castle he ignored the ancient Brehon law of Ireland giving hungry travellers the right to claim sustenance and barred his castle against her. In retaliation she captured his little boy and held him hostage until the family agreed to set an extra plate at the supper table every night in case she would ever pass that way again. And the promise is honoured to this day. ‘God be with the old days’ says Jenny.

Then after broth and bread & cheese, we walk on Howth Head, thick with the egg-yolk yellow and coconut smell of the gorse, looking out over the sea to Ireland’s Eye. Lots of talking, good food, and sunshine: perfect recuperation.