'To Lyme they were to go..'

Like Captain Wentworth's party of pals in Persuasion, Rosie and I were 'wild to see Lyme' on our writing trip last weekend, and Lyme was wild to see us, too. We arrived as storm Imogen was dancing like a tiger along the Cobb, rattling the pebbles and slapping the sand into a new beach. We watched entranced from our sea-front window, then I set off to get provisions from the shop at the top of the hill, agreeing with Jane Austen that 'A very strange stranger it must be, who does not see charms in the immediate environs of Lyme, to make him wish to know it better.'  That was when the sky join the sea in a combined assault. Rain instantly made the road a waterfall, indeed rain was making the air a waterfall, soaking me literally to the skin in moments, my boots transformed into rain-barrells. It was wildly exciting though red wine & chocolate were required for full recovery.
Next morning all was calm in blue-skied sunshine. The Cobb looked distinctly hungover but must have yielded great beach-combing for the fossilists - as Lyme's superb museum calls its collectors. Fossils are to Lyme Regis as books are to Hay-on-Wye, I discovered, and as much a feature as its Jane Austen and French Lieutenant's Woman connections. The museum has everything you could want to know about all these aspects of the town's story, plus other artistic connections like Beatrix Potter and the painter Whistler, and a fascinating chronicle of the town's rebellious history. One of the few anti-royalist southern towns in the Civil War, they resisted Prince Maurice's contemptuous boast that taking Lyme would be 'a breakfast time job' and survived their long siege successfully ~ with women playing a significant role in all the action.
And as we were there to research Lyme Regis now, as well as then, a visit to the gorgeous Alexandra Hotel gardens for coffee in the conservatory was essential. So now we've found the settings and the inspiration all we have to do is create the play! Simples...

Back in Frome, it's been another great week for music. Grain Bar Roots Session featured the The Spoonful, 'from toe-tappin' rootsy blues to mellow' - I loved their creamy name-song - and on Saturday the marvellous Captain Cactus and the Screaming Harlots played a superb session in the Artisan. No pig-head this time but still charmingly random and highly energetic, with audience participation of yogic chants and dancing...


And on sunny, chilly, Sunday it was great to walk to Nunney for the monthly Acoustic Cafe ~ this one featuring the awesome talent of Darren Hodge. Darren was just 15 when he gigged with the legendary Tommy Emmanuel, and four years on he still looks 15, but his self-taught skill on the guitar is phenomenal: take a listen to Cannonball Rag which he played in his set today.

Black Swan Arts had two new exhibitions this week so I should be reminding writers about Words at the Black Swan on the first Sunday of the month, but sadly the Independent Market on March 6th is cancelled which means the gallery won't be open either for the poetry workshop.  Hopefully we'll be running again in April, and in the meantime there's the Poetry Cafe Love Night at the Garden Cafe and Maggie Sawkins at the Merlin with  Zones of Avoidance which won the Ted Hughes Award for new work in poetry. Yup, Frome still rocks.

Flaming June: suddenly it's summer... again

Exeter-based comedy troupe Le Navet Bete returned to the Merlin with their new show Dick Tracy.

The square-jawed, hard-hitting, fast-shooting detective arrived in comic book form in the 1930s. In this version, clever Dick foils the baddies but has no intention of apprehending them as that would stop the crime wave ~ and Dick loves crime as much as his girlfriend loves Dick... As well as their trademark heroic parody, there's the ever-reliable flamboyant display of circus-skills including mime, songs, absurd masks & props, and general buffoonery. A talented performing quartet, supported by their inventive props man, contrive to create an extensive cast by supplementing  lightning role-changes with a mannequin and some cardboard cut-outs. You could almost see the plot-line of evil BigBoy Caprice's social manipulation as a metaphor for American society, but then again maybe it was all just an excuse for the DIY wrecking ball & throwing masses of sliced bread at the audience.  Hilarious, and full of unexpected moments of marvellous mayhem. Lovely to see the ECOS amphitheatres stones illuminated in the warm night too.

 And on the subject of theatre, a small self-trumpet here: it's always nice to know my review is appreciated by the company, especially when - as with the current production of School for Scandal - it's quoted alongside a soundbite from The Guardian as the show's online promo:
“Brilliant directing from Andrew Hilton is supported by terrific acting from all the cast…SATTF has become a must-see company for many theatre­-goers in the southwest and beyond”  - Plays International on Arcadia 

Celebrations till late on Saturday as The Artisan opened its doors with a great dance band - The Sparks -  giving Frome another music venue. Unlike the Wheatsheaves, now thriving but still 'Name TBC', the old Olive Tree has been transformed as well as renamed. Sunday's Jazz Jam at the Cornerhouse with Vicki Burke was another goodie.. 
A new month means another Sunday Independent market filling the town with stalls, entertainment, crowds, and that feeling of universal benignity & bliss that sunshine brings. My visiting friends from Wiltshire were overawed with the range and splendour of the event and left after four hours of happy browsing with bags of artisan items, garden seeds, organic cheese and scotch eggs. The Words at the Black Swan group met too: you can see some of our previous art/writing collaborations in this archive gallery collected by Kim Woods.

Fascinating footnote this week of celebrating sunshine came from a trip to Wilton House, which I discovered has an extraordinary history and an art collection more superb than most city galleries, dripping with paintings by Rubens, Tintoretto, Raphael, Hogarth, Van Dyke, Frans Hals... a place where a Gibson neoclassical marble sculpture can be rediscovered abandoned in the grounds and a massive Murano glass chandelier found abandoned in the attic... it really is worth a visit, in other words.  Shakespeare apparently stayed there, but there's a more fascinating connection with the bard: Mary Sydney now recognised as the most important literary woman of her generation. She not only led the way for other women writers but may have written, or at least contributed to, some of the plays currently attributed to 'the Man From Stratford.'   
So to end a week of fabulous summeryness here's a quote from another determined & pioneering woman, Gertrude Jekyll: What is one to say about June, the time of perfect young summer, the fulfillment of the promise of the earlier months, and with as yet no sign to remind one that its fresh young beauty will ever fade.