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.

It starts earlier each year... a blogful of festive goodies...

Even in a week crammed with sparkly-season specials, Wednesday evening at Bar Lotte is always a highlight: this week the fabulous Rosco Shakes gave us jazzy blues with great bass from Josh, Ned's amazing drum/vocals combo, Tim sensational on keyboard and Steve on 'sax that gets you eating your knuckles', to quote my companion... unsurprisingly there was dancing before the evening was over. 

And live music ushered in a weekend of festive art markets - here's The Decades at Black Swan Arts' brilliant Makers Market on Friday night, with masses of brilliant craft stalls & a late night cafe too. 

How nice to have a funky festive market crammed with works by local artists, you may think - but this is Frome: in the same weekend we also enjoyed an amazing art fair at the Silk Mill, Midwinter Joyant in Keyford, a Christmas Gift Market at the Cheese & Grain, and a Makers Market in Lower Keyford with mulled wine under tiny glittering lights... and then it was Sunday, time for our nationally acclaimed Frome Independent - market, that is - selling absolutely everything edible, drinkable, wearable, displayable, and above all giveable... if you didn't solve all your present problems there then either you weren't trying or you found too much you wanted to keep yourself.

As there were far too many intriguing & beautiful items to decide which images to include here, this pic is from outside Hunting Raven Books, where Julian Hight was selling his fantastic books of trees around the world.  Which also leads me nicely on to the most unusual book launch I've ever attended: Frome legend Tony Bennett (we have a lot of local legends, you may have noticed) selling his illustrated life story at the Sun Inn, with queues extending outside the door to grab a signed copy of life as fully lived by this truly iconic Fromie - notorious as an award-winning florist as well as for leaping from a blazing bedroom after a bedtime cigarette set his house on fire. Here's Tony signing my copy of He Can When He Will - and he remembered my name. Now that IS fame.

And speaking of Frome's quirky creatives, we also have our own festive Dismaland-alike: Santa's Grotty, the inspired creation of artist and political satirist Kate Talbot, a grim experience of phoney good cheer amid dangling covid microbes, which is entered via Kate's notorious shop Hung Drawn Quoted.  Here's a glimpse of one of the exhibits, though sadly I'm not allowed to give away any of the outrageous lifesize caricatures...  The £5 entry price goes to Fair Frome.

Still with a festive focus, but more cheery and moving out of town now:   

I've been a devotee (which is the posh word for besotted fan) of Stephen Mangan since Episodes, in my view one of the cleverest TV comedy series ever - and he's now taking the lead role in A Christmas Carol at the Old Vic so, since the window for safe travel before winter may soon narrow, this week seemed a good opportunity to scoot up to London and see it.  I haven't visited this venue since leaving London in my late teens - previously I went regularly with my father, dramatic critic HG Matthews, or else on my own, paying 2/- 'on spec' at the door for any seat still available - so it wasn't surprising to find the theatre much changed. Matthew Warchus, the current artistic director, has aimed for an atmosphere audiences will find "accessible, inclusive, and informal", which turns out to mean with friendly attentive staff, lots of loos, and - for this production anyway - a free mincepie on arrival. 

The performance area of my memory,  where I watched a young Judy Dench throwing a tantrum in Franco Zefferelli's unforgettable production of Romeo & Juliet, is now part of the auditorium, and actors used a kind of central corridor between the aisles to perform their high-energy, immersive version of Charles Dickens' tale of a skinflint visited by 'ghosts' that bring remorse and radical life change. 

A Christmas Carol has become as deeply identified with seasonal celebrations as carols themselves - there are 12 in this show - and this is the fifth winter that the Vic has featured this production.  Programme notes identify 'rage, determination and a fiery compassion' as Dickens' motivations, and these would have been inspired in part by his own painful childhood. This Scrooge is never too afraid of the ghosts to argue, but he is moved to tears by his memories. The nightmare aspects of the tale are vivid, but it's a feel-good show too, with a running thread of love and the possibility of new hope, enhanced by the hundreds of tiny lanterns dangling above the storytelling, and the visual surprises.

Ending with exciting news - for me, anyway, and for my erstwhile 'Live & Lippy' performance-poetry partner Hazel Stewart, now living in Cumbria. We revived our lyrical connection during lockdown via zoom, and put together a package of old & new pieces which, to our delight, has now been taken by Caldew Press - here's editor Phil Hewitson zoom-chatting about options, and showing us his upcoming publication of John Hegley's poems about Keats.  So, in this illustrious company, our double-album-on-page of performance poetry pieces What's it Like for You? and Dance for Those Who'd Rather Not will be out early next year!