Beltane, bluebells, bits of history, and a band gig!

Remember the days when a sunny weekend meant bands playing outside pubs? Frome's Paul Kirtley and his amorphous group The Tribe never forgot, and the easing of lockdown rules plus Beltane weekend's sunshine saw a multi-talented assortment of musical friends outside the Prestleigh Inn playing for 3 hours on Sunday afternoon. Huge performance skills with an impressive array of instruments were delivered with table service and social spacing - big credit to the team, and a happy step forward for us all. Here's sound-man Steve, with David on guitar & mandolin, Monty on cajon, Carl on harp, Paul singing and strumming, Danny on bass, Ray on slide guitar, other guitars, and vocals: Jim Cook joined us with his magic double saxophone act, and Keith Horler provided the guest spot. A small event for us, a giant leap for hope for performances of all kinds returning.  

Still on the subject of music, Pete Burns (not that one, the folk musician) has completed his collection of 41 songs created for lock-down listening.  Pete came to Frome in the final year of the Grain Bar Roots Sessions, and shared a thought-provoking song about his hometown, Belfast: The Riches of America.  And here's the fabulous Swervy World buskers, on tour from Ipswich, enhancing Frome precinct on Saturday as the market bustled with shoppers in the chilly sunshine, buying everything from cakes and cheeses to garden gear and glittery gaudies. 

Poetry events organisers, unlike bands, having discovered the wider audience possibilities online are maintaining their profile online with Zoom performance sessions. The popular Poets Prattlers & Pandemonialists hosted their monthly Yes We Can't session on Sunday evening, with a cracking posse of open-mic voices and Frome's own Liv Torc as main guest - she is, of course, also Womad's Hip-Yak Liv, BBC's environmentalist Liv, HAIFLU's Liv, and even Fyffes-bananas' Liv, but Frome maintains its prime claim and - just to remind you - Liv will be guesting at the Festival Poetry Cafe on July 6th, on ECOS.

Moving Voices at the Art House in Southampton has also maintained their regular open mic session on zoom: held on the last Friday of each month, this session was a smaller group but the poetic voices were strong and the feelings shared went deep. B Harwood Parsons collated an enjoyable event with contributors from as far afield as The Withdrawn in New York, and a music spot from Winchester's local hero Stevie Simkin from the Railway Inn roots session.

Still with words, but the on-the-page kind,  Hunting Raven Books had another stunningly successful pop-up book-shop at the Silk Mill on Saturday, offering reductions on a big range of titles. So popular was this that the queue snaked all around the yard and into Saxonvale.  I've posted this pic from manager Tina Gaysford-Waller's page, just to show how superbly socially-distanced we all are: how strange these images and priorities will seem in years to come. We hope...

The Wylie Valley Art Trail is another happy example of first steps back into real space: the nearest hosting venue to Frome is St Algars Yard at West Woodlands, where seven artists are showing paintings, prints, ceramics, glassware, and metalwork during the first week of May. I'd intended to include a report in this bulletin, but had to postpone my planned Bank Holiday Monday visit due to winds of a ferocity that even King Lear howling on the heath might think were overdoing it a bit.  So here's a picture from the online catalogue to be going on with: a ceramic piece created by Hiro Takahashi who takes her inspiration from the wild animals and the ruins in the woods. 

And as May's arrival alternates blustering winds with sunshine, this image is from my best walk of last week: wandering through a trillion bluebells in Black Dog Woods (allegedly so called after a highwayman was hanged here leaving his dog continuing to roam), as pools of sunlight on the silver birches transformed the woodland into a set for A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Final funky footnote: my walk around Mells to reconnect with the grave of Siegfried Sassoon and the round barrow burial ground nearby, skirting the estate stolen by the Horners during Henry VIII's dissolution days, took me past the gateway to Mells Park House where the documents which released Nelson Mandela were signed in 1990, with apartheid laws amended and the ban on the ANC lifted. The original Mells Park House had burned down by then: the 1925 replacement looks a more like a private boarding school, but views aren't accessible from the public road anyway so here's a picture of the gatehouse. Walking in Mells is a potent reminder that we live, always, in historic times.

Music, poetry and more, as September comes...

Kicking off this bulletin with live music, doubly precious in this short window before the changing season will halt outdoor sessions again. Paul Kirtley's We Don't Scare Easy Tribe returned to The Mill at Rode on Saturday afternoon and treated visitors in the garden area & balcony to a high-energy medley of old favourites like Bob Marley, Stevie Wonder and Gerry Rafferty with a good splash of Oasis, Greenday, Crowded House, Police, Stones, and perfectly hitting with vibe Joni Mitchell: We are stardust, we are golden, and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden...  All in all such a stonkingly great session that optional donations in the bucket for Fair Frome reached nearly £180. Big credit to (L-R) Jim, Chris, Joseph, Colin, Paul, Alex, David - and to sound-man Steve.  Here's the idyllic location:

Sunday's session at Prestleigh Inn, near Evercreech, rather more laid-back, proved a delightful way to pass a sunny Sunday afternoon in friendly company with live music - and this too had a fabulous location, with views over the Royal Bath & West Showground fields which are readily accessible for roaming from the pub garden. Hospitable landlord Gary made everyone welcome in this perfect spot for a sunny afternoon, enjoying a quirky take on Beatles and more by Jakey Zee with Sherrie Nutty followed by a strong solo performance, enhanced by loop, from Jorden Lindsay.

No live drama this week but physical theatre Kneehigh offered a free online experimental show: 'a love story with a bitter twist, a modern fairytale for grown-ups and brave youngsters.'  The Neon Shadow is a short two-hander exploring isolation and desire based on a Hans Anderson tale enhanced by animated effects. It's an interesting take on a difficult theme and is still viewable on the link, as there are plans to develop this work into a live performance, so take a look and comment if you feel intrigued.

Highlight of the week for me came on Friday with the Frome Poetry Cafe on Merlin Theatre's ECOS amphitheatre, an open-mic event which was weather-precarious right up until 7pm when we launched into - in the words of participating poets, an event with 'lovely atmosphere, very high standard of contributions, and a real uplifit in these weird times' - 'a gorgeous evening of words and moonlight!' Fourteen performers & readers from as far afield as Bath and Box shared a range of themes & styles from witty ditties and black humour  to poignant memories. Huge appreciation to all especially to Liv Torc for treating us to the premiere of her new poem commissioned by Siren Poets There's Something About Mary, and mega thanks to sound-&-lighting man Steve, and to Merlin's open-minded director Claudia & team for trusting our posse of bards to behave ourselves as well as having a fabulous time.

Still in Frome: it was great catching up with Eleanor Talbot to talk about her weekly online show Variations on a Theme. Eleanor's life took her from Dublin to Canada via the Scottish Highlands, so she brings a wide cultural interest to this quirky show broadcasts from downtown Frome. taking a different themes for each episode: love, revolution, guilty pleasures... even punctuation, with a retrospective look at the interrobang, a punctuation symbol that apparently enjoyed a brief heyday in the 1960s when writers identified a need to denote the 'excitable query' and combined exclamation with question marks in a single symbol: He said what‽  Was this the serpent's-apple forerunner of all emoticons, emojis and gifs, now released by this first sin!

Ending this week's bulletin with a puff for The Price of Bread: a short interview with Suzy Howlett on the Frome FM 'Writers on Radio' show hosted by Frome Writers Collective here: it's starts a7 minutes in and lasts around ten, then ends with Wonderwall as I think my messily-creative, dreamily romantic, central character Lee would have loved Oasis.  It was great fun chatting with Suzy and I realised, as I listened in, that she's an extremely astute interviewer....   

And as a happy footnote, this novel has now crossed the Atlantic to Canada and America, and has now provided a discussion topic for at least two book groups! I still have a few copies, and Hunting Raven does too. I'm delighted with the reader reviews, too.