work evasions and play enthusings

It's been quite a week for schedule suspension and magical moments...
I'm going to come back to this image of the new fountain in Frome promptly hijacked by the Frome-illuminati for human sacrifice, because the excitement disrupting my working week began last Friday when a busload from Frome, driven by daring Dave, headed to Bristol's Thunderbolt to hear fabulous Captain Cactus band and his amazing and gorgeous Screaming Harlots. Good support too - awesome steel guitar from Luke Philbrick and a great atmosphere at the venue.
Next night was David Goodman's party at the 23 Bath Street, which has become such a terrific venue since Lark and Toby have taken in over. Lovely to see so very many friends and the Raggedy Men punk set was a memorable highlight... I think their version of No More Heroes - with what seemed like a hundred of the partygoers joining in - is likely to be the defining moment of this year for me...

Nunney Acoustic Cafe on Sunday afternoon always has a great range of performers: this time featured band Sloe Jam and others including a wonderful gypsy duo, the superb Splat the Rat from Swindon and some talented younger musicians like Maia Fry and ever-impressive Archie Ttwheam. (Sorry Archie, I see you are Otto Wilde now but as that comes up on google as a steak grill manufacturer, I'm sticking to the name I first knew...)

Tuesday was the Frome Writers Collective social evening, this time with an engrossing talk from Lisa Kenrick who runs Mr Rook's Speak Easy story-telling sessions in Frome. Lisa demonstrated how to grip an audience with a vivid and visceral version of the tale Frome's medieval rake Edward Leversage, and then gave advice on constructing and telling such tales, and also how to find inspiration and where to go for further guidance.

And then with no Roots session this week I really really should have dedicated the rest of my time to the project.... about which you patient blog readers have heard so much & seen so little. Instead I was lured by the witchery & wizardry of Rare Species to follow them around Frome on a tour of secret signs of the Fecund Coming...

Starting at the spring below the church steps and prowling the area nearby, Virginia Faggus and Gerald Terd held forth on much historical detail we might not know - how the young blades used the well to spread fecundity, how merchants sailed back and forth along the leat, and the fact that the Three Swans name came from the Leda legend in a little-known love-triangle version... at the church door Virginia expounded an alternative-and-weirdly-true-sounding tale of Vicar Bennett's activities in Frome, invited here by the Fromenati to create a hotbed of hedonism. It was at this point Virginia began to show somewhat alarming symptoms of some kind of demonic invasion. Gerald ploughed on, taking us up Poldark's Passage ('Aiden would suckle on my unctuous paps' Virginia reminisced, a bit of a non sequitor as Gerald was talking about unsolved murders at the time.)
We headed across Bath Street as the running commentaries continued, with Gerald now on the look-out for tell-tale evidence of the secret society of the Fromenati. He found a tunnel opening they may have used to burrow to their base in Babblington (the smaller ones, anyway) and a SIX-SIX-6 sign and it wasn't till we reached Catherine Hill that things went totally bonkers.  'The epicentre' shouted Geraldine and strode on ahead waving a car away so effectively the driver actually reversed all the way down the hill as she advanced chanting 'Juicy and Divine'.  Meanwhile something had gone wrong with Gerald's divining rod. By the time he had staggered and we had straggled to the bottom of the hill, Geraldine had turned into a one-eyed demon. She lassoed Gerald and made me hold him (I tried to resist honest but she had manic power) and made us all...

I can recount no more of the shameful night I joined the illuminati-Fromenati and poor Gerald ended up on Boyle's Cross, only say: Eat your heart out Hot Fuzz, you may have exorcised Wells but the wild energy loosed by Bennett’s burrowings below the pagan spring will empower the Fromenati forever! It was indeed the Fecund Coming.

Another Frome medley

Storytellers can seem like Morris dancers of the spoken word scene, so I was unsure what to expect from Tongues of Flame at Rook Lane but after seeing Miracle Theatre's take on Dr Livingstone's struggle to find the source of the Nile and knowing nothing of maverick explorer Richard Francis Burton who was equally avidly engaged on this quest, I went along to listen & learn from Giles Abbott at Mr Rook's Speakeasy on Thursday. Definitely a good decision.

Giles is a charismatic storyteller, and his extraordinary 90-minute performance created the man and his era in a range of ways: satiric, sensuous, and tragic, as we edged nearer and nearer to a man who shocked the establishment and remained always an outsider but was acknowledged the finest swordsman in Europe,  a man who "took to languages like other men take to drink", whose disguise as a Hakim was so effective he was allowed into the harem, whose observations of Somali female circumcision were censored by his horrified publisher, whose lifetime's notebooks of irreplaceable research into 19th century cultures and communities in India & Araby & Africa were burned on his death by his more conventional wife...  and he never found the source of the Nile.  But what a man! And what a performance. Marvellous.

Still on the subject of one-man shows, Pip Utton brought another driven personality to Frome on Saturday with his speech-from-beyond-the-grave by Maggie Thatcher. As our local paper said, "Frome's Merlin Theatre audiences have grown used to the theatre's associate artist Pip Utton's multiple personalities. Writer and performer Pip regularly metamorphoses into characters from history and the arts, ranging from Hitler to Churchill, from Chaplin to Dickens and more." Playing Maggie, Pip establishes himself as an ambivalent actor rather than his usual impersonation: his male Maggie, in Spitting Image style wig and pearls, is unrepentant but her alter-ego was a child of one of the mining communities she destroyed. "The Britain you wanted is the Britain we've got" is his starting summary to the lady who believed as Creon did in Antigone, 'there has to be someone to take the helm.' A thought that will divide, as the Iron Lady did in life and death.

Among other local news, Captain Cactus & the Screaming Harlots rocked the Grain Bar Roots Session, the cafe then reassembling itself by Saturday's craft market with an exhibition of paintings by Caroline Walsh-Waring, and I discovered a new literary group meeting  on the last Friday of each month 1.30-3.00 at Frome library. It's open to all so go along if you fancy a bit of reading & discussion ~ we were looking at some of Seamus Heaney's poems, one of which revealed he saw himself as a "wood-kerne", a lovely word which means an ancient Irish soldier, a hunted bandit, firing darts at the English through the forest.

And finally this week, thanks to Chapter & Verse host John Walton at Frome FM for inviting me to talk about performance poetry in general and the marvellous Rob Gee's upcoming visit to the Merlin Theatre (March 27th if you haven't booked yet!) in particular..  Rob came on the show in a phone interview to tell us more about his comedic take on the UK psychiatric system from his experience in the wards as a (reformed)(!) nurse. FRUITCAKE is still booking, so if you want to see why it slayed audiences in the States as a serial award-winner with a galaxy of 5-star reviews, come along. Did I say March 27th at the Merlin? thought so. 7.45, just £5 or a bit more if you book a supper too.