It's that time of year again - believe it or not....

As November ends, Frome town traditionally gears itself up for the festive season ahead with a Festival of Lights... usually a parade of lanterns through the streets cheered on by crowds enjoying a party atmosphere (though one year for a change we had Jenson Button scorching up and down the main street in a McClaren)  - Mel Day and Aliss Vaas run free workshops, sponsored by the town council, to ensure a plethora of stars, moons, angels and bells waving in the night air for the grand switch-on of twinkly lights on Christmas tree, with carols and bands and.. oh, you probably remember it well. Which is good, as this year's festivities will be rich mainly in memories as the lanterns this year will be only window decorations apart from this magnificent swan, created by Mel and Aliss for the courtyard of the Black Swan where Black Swan Arts is currently preparing for a re-opening the café and festive craft shops next week to sell 'small & affordable' art - donations welcome!

Frome On-Air Book Group with Sheila Hedges and Karen Stewart continues to broadcast monthly on Frome FM, and invited me to join Tina Gaisford-Waller, legendary manager of Hunting Raven Books, in offering ideas for christmas gifts. During these non-meeting times this is a zoom session recorded & edited by Helen Ottoway with smooth professionalism (& a promise to edit out my faffy bits). Tina offered her suggestions from her car as the bookshop is currently awash with deliveries, and I also talked a bit about how The Price of Bread emerged from the first lockdown after gestating for 25 years - you can hear all this on Friday 4th December on 96.6FM.

These are difficult days for a local/Arts blog to remain apolitical. With no live theatre or live music, or live groups of any kind even in a cinema auditorium, my off-line entertainment is mostly walking through trees. There's plenty of stimulus online, of course, but after seven months you probably know your own interests there. And with that self-deprecating & somewhat grumpy intro, here's a few things you may or may not know about already, as Frome town is currently as besieged as Macbeth when Burnham Wood began shuffling its deadly way to Dunsinane. Easthill Field is the latest green space to be noted by developers, to the dismay of many who value this species-rich habitat - this is an ancient lime tree, one of the last remaining from the avenue that once led up to Easthill House. The land is earmarked for social housing but protesters insist they are not just NIMBYs as the location, tucked behind a cemetery at a busy junction outside the town centre, isn't suitable for this, and with influential support & careful research they have secured a delay on the decision. Do join the Friends of Easthill Field if you want to follow their progress or feel you can help.

Meanwhile nearer the centre of town, a community-minded group of neighbours decided to get together to transform the scrubble at the end of their gardens back into an allotment, and formed the Broadway Allotments and Community Garden Association. With much hard work already, this abandoned area is slowly returning to its previous function but it hasn't evaded the eye of developers. Frome Town Council is backing the allotment group and has presented a case to Mendip, so let's hope this last small green lung remains in our town's ever more dense housing estates. 

The largest looming threat in Frome's struggle with The Developers, as this amorphous & invasive enemy is commonly termed, is the one hanging over the southern fields, where 1700 new houses are planned to infill from the Mount to the by-pass.  Just, houses - no amenities or services: no medical facilities, Secondary schools, transport links, or parks.  Stop Selwood Garden Community is the protest organisation opposing this euphemistically termed project - and yes, I do realise housing is needed but this project is a cynical money-spinner: no social housing, no chance for Frome's young people stay in their own community continuing the tradition of local companies. To put it in another context, UK Government data this September showed there are 600,000 empty houses across the country, double their annual national building target in fact. Property is a good investment for the monied: rent continues to arrive and repairs are tax-deductible. And once the last of Selwood Forest is eroded, we've lost more than we can ever regain.  

Here endeth the diatribe, but please consider joining one or all of these protest groups.

Moving from nature's effortless artistry to crafted arts: mega-creative Frome poet Liv Torc is taking her sensationally successful Haiflu concept into the off-line world and now wants haikus about life currently in the form of a visible public installation. My first effort is a lamentation for lost seasonal celebrations. Do have a go, and add #haiflu2020 to your art (I forgot) to as Liv has plans for them!

I'll leave you with an image of Frome centre on Saturday night, its tree defiantly glittering with blue and golden starry lights. 

Wild Goose Dreams, lantern lights and frost-fired music

Starting this week at Ustinov, Theatre Royal Bath's never-disappointing studio production space.

Guk Minsung is a 'wild goose father', a married South Korean who's sent his wife and children to America where he supports them while living alone.* Chuja Seo is a North Korean defector refugee, now making a new life alone while traumatised by the cultural differences she finds over the border.  Goosefather lives on his i-phone, she lives in her dreams: these unreal worlds fill the stage and provide the energy and the passion of Hansol Jung's drama Wild Goose Dreams as internet connections and emoticons shout and dance around him, while she is haunted by penguin soldiers with clipped wings and her interfering abandoned father.  These sequences, hilarious and tragic, are helped by a brilliant set designed by Jean Chan, and enhance a skeleton blind-date romance into an extraordinary story both provocative and informative.  Michael Boyd's direction and a strong cast ensure this drama resonates beyond the entertainment of media parody and even the gravitas of political data - go if you can, it's on till 21 December.
*Not-fun facts: 200,000 fathers are estimated to do this, to save their children from the gruelling South Korean 18-hour day schooling system. And recent studies show more than half of North Korean defectors suffer from PTSD and other psychological disorders. There's still a lot of laughs though...

This is the time when towns & cities all over the UK as darkness falls begin to glitter with the strings of lights, and the traditional fir tree (six million of which will go to landfill in January) twinkles through the gloom of every town centre. Frome does this a bit too, modestly as befits its eco-awareness, but the town's real celebratory greeting to the festive season is the awesome lantern parade on Light the Night.

The atmosphere at this town-council sponsored event is indescribable as thousands watch and follow the hundreds of home-made lanterns swaying down the hill, following the parade led by Jamma de Samba's fabulous drummers. There were a smattering of religious-birth relevant songs around the time of the actual switch-on moment, taken by the mayor, following a lively set from our local Rock Choir of karaoke classics like I'm Still Standing... Yeah yeah yeah indeed.

Art exhibitions now, a plethora of them, as local craftsfolk seize the chance to present their work as possible gifts, with Saturday featuring Frome Festive Art Fair, a one day spectacular of printmaking, painting, ceramics, sculpture, illustration and jewellery shared across two splendid venues, Silk Mill and Rook Lane Chapel. Every artist had fabulous work to offer so here's two general views:

Next day, Silk Mill did a quick turnaround for the studio artists' collective own exhibition: the Silk Mill Collective's Christmas Fair, an even busier event selling classy jewellery, ceramics, designer-clothing, paintings, sculptures, and glassware all created by the 14 artists and designer-makers who work there.
This was held on market day, while in the meantime a Christmas exhibition by artists of the Black Swan Guild has also launched. Small and Mighty includes a fascinating mix of personal themes and studies, and is on at the Round Tower until December 24th.



Turning to music, there's quite a tangle to sort out as both Friday's Light the Night event and Sunday's Independent Market were thick with music, so I'll start with the relative calm of Saturday: Here's Rebel Heroes Bowie tribute band at the Cornerhouse - with apologies to Boot Hill All Stars for missing their gig that day for Shelter at 23 Bath Street.

A time-jump back to Friday night  when, after the lantern parade arrived at the town centre, there was more street theatre to enjoy as popular Frome Street Bandits band took advantage of a fine night to transfer from the Grain Bar stage to the courtyard where there was plenty of room for their massive duelling trombones.

Then a dash to the Artisan, rewarded by an evening session from top-of-leaderboard Bare to the Bones team as Paul Kirtley's assorted medley of creative jammers were joined by Hello Hopeville. Both bands gained big applause and charity donations from punters who even made space in the crowded pub to dance.

Sunday afternoon saw another charity gig at 23 Bath Street from the Back Wood Redeemers Alternative Nativity, 'an irreverent Sunday Afternoon Knees-Up' welcoming all sinners with comforting classics like Give Him a Good Death and I'll do the Wrong Thing &  I'll do the Right Thing Wrong (and Eddie's sinister Chocolate Jesus for which I can't find a soundcloud link.)

This tasty afternoon irreverence was followed by Back of the Bus at the Griffin: 'post punk pop with attitude' and ukeleles, with a particularly vicious take on Psycho-killer. I love their sinister version of Nice Day For a White Wedding too.

Sunday evening was much calmer, with a pleasant Jazz Jam at the Cornerouse. Among a varied group of performers, here's a rare picture of Simon Sax who organises this event with Nicki Mascall. And still on the theme of Frome's fantastic range of music this week, although sadly no image was possible in the stygian gloom of 23 Bath Street, credit too to the talents of The Brackish plus Rivers of England in a lively fund-raiser gig for Frome Labour party.

All of which kerfuffle brings us in sparkling style to the frosty final month of this year, with the Frome Independent Market now taking a break until March. Word on the street assured me that this festive-shopping market was fantastically busy and successful, but my personal participation was limited to Hunting Raven Books on Cheap Street, where I sat with Julian (Bugsy) Hight signing & selling books . So I'll close with a top-tip for booky presents: If you've already bought everyone Frome Unzipped, or just because Julian's latest addition to his tree saga is beautifully illustrated as well as massively informative, then Britain's Ancient Forest is a the way to go.

Lights, action, camera - it's festivity time

As November ended, Frome officially began its seasonal celebrations. We had the traditional tree-light-switch-on with traditional carols on Friday - after a stunningly beautiful lantern procession led by a less-traditional samba band. Hundreds of exquisite paper lanterns, created in free workshops led by talented Mel Day and Aliss Vaas, glimmered their way down to the town centre to Light the Night - another of those wonderful Frome-style creative events that engage every age.

Once the lantern spectacular had dispersed, the evening festivities continued at Three Swans with the second of Paul Kirtley's Bare to the Bones charity gigs, this one at Three Swans, - excellent entertainment from fabulous local musicians. Here's the amazing Original Barn Finds band, and me doing a spot of morally dubious poetry - thanks Mike Grenville for the snap!

Saturday night resounded with clashing bands, metaphorically speaking, as the All Stars Christmas Charity Doo opened with phenomenally fabulous new band Back of the Bus, while the Cornerhouse featured popular dance-generators Purple Fish. And another party benefit gig at 23 Bath Street completed the weekend with the fabulously fearsome (I'm running out of adjectives here) Back Wood Redeemers ripping up Sunday afternoon with a version of This Train Is Bound For Glory to terrify the angels as well as the sinners.

Sunday being the first one of December, it was of course our glittery Frome Independent market day with all the usual goodies in the star-spangled streets and carol singers. Magpie Market in the Cheese and Grain was crammed with present-buying opportunities - including the usual Frome Writers Collective stall, delightfully decorated and here also festooned by me - thanks Dizzy Greenfield for the promo. The new exhibition at Black Swan Arts is also full of buyables and collectibles: Extremely Textiles is the showcase of 9 very different local artists, all continuing Frome's traditional textile craft though mainly in non-traditional ways. Words at the Black Swan met for a poetry workshop led by Louise Green, our group of nine focusing on different pieces - interestingly, four writers chose this amazing portrait of a couple on the tube, created by Julie Heaton on dissolvable fabric so the entire image is created by the stitching threads.

There is no doubt that The Model Apartment at Bath’s Ustinov Studio, directed by Laurence Boswell, is superbly acted. Whether or not you like the play will be a more individual matter. The theme - the elephant in the spotlight you might say - is the Jewish experience of WW2 and playwright Donald Margullies uses dramatic format to explore inheritance of trauma as represented by the three central characters: Lola and Max who believed they can escape their demons in a new life in Florida, and their their daughter Debby, the demon they cannot escape.  Neil, the fourth character and a Brooklyn street-orphan, might have become sidelined within this treatise on Nazi-related suffering so big credit to Enyi Okoronkwo who was impressive in this role.
The story is saturated with symbolism: the apartment itself is temporary while the older couple await their real destination, and is also fake: the entertainments systems are empty and the fridge has no plug - their escape, in short, has no reality. Max (Ian Gelder) copes by blanking out in sleep, Lola (Diana Quick) resorts to repeating anecdotes in which she was best friend and mentor to Ann Frank. So how does their daughter Debby (Emily Bruni) cope? That’s the most scarily unsuccessful struggle of all. The story seems a reproach as well as a reminder - but November is month for Remembrance.  Image Simon Annand

Final thought for the week: As readers of Frome Unzipped will know, 'dissent' in all its social aspects emerged, from my research into the town's history, as a strong thread in my book, so when I heard of the special exhibition at the British Museum on that topic, I definitely had to go. I Object is curated by media's pet imp Ian Hislop, who pledged to 'investigate what the downtrodden, the forgotten, the protestors' had to say about history, so it seemed reasonable to expect caustic comment at least but this meagre collection is captioned by puerile speech bubbles and padded by images of Mr Hislop walking about, presumably wishing he could find something more relevant than well-known political cartoons and the odd bit of graffiti - and as for the protest-badge tee-shirt display, I've got more myself. There was one note of real dissent: a hand-printed card at the exit that read BRITISH MUSEUM RETURN YOUR STOLEN LOOT BACK WHERE IT BELONGS - so here's a picture of  one of the Elgin Marbles, now renamed The Parthenon Sculptures. Despite being hacked into chunks for transport and then further damaged by the museum's inappropriate cleaning attempts, they still look pretty impressive. They'd look even better in Athens. I Object is on till January. If you're in the area with time to spare, go instead to Camellia's, the lovely rococo teashop over the road, and sit among flowers under the chandelier. It will be cheaper and you'll enjoy it more.