Byron Vincent had missed two nights' sleep when he took the mic at the Bath Hip Yak Shack but it suited him: his headline spot was the supernova in a starry night of terrific guest performers, and an excellent Slam rightfully won (in my view, but then I was one of the judges) by Robbie Vane.

Frome's performance writing team Stagewrite took over Merlin theatre stage tonight with monologues inspired by A Postcard from... Fourteen local writers took us around the world, from past to future: funny or sad, memory or fantasy, every story had authenticity and charm. Huge congratulations to Alan Overton, Linda Perry, Beverly Jones, Rosie Jackson, Frances Liardet, Des Harris, Niamh Ferguson and her reader Maddy Herbert, Howard Vause, Karl Bevis, Alison Clink, Brenda Bannister, Rosie Finngen, and Jill Miller - and extra thanks to Howard for fabulous visuals.

Another exciting event coming soon: Frome Poetry cafe is On the road again... on Wednesday April 11th - metaphorically speaking of course, we'll be at the Garden Cafe as usual - with Mo Robinson sharing his edgy lyrical ballads inspired by real life stories spanning Ireland in the Troubles to contemporary California. Plenty of poetry too, with Paul Tobin and the usual popular open mic session.
Still on things poetic, I've just heard that my poem Previously Loved was Commended in the Lumen/Camden poetry competition run by Ward Wood for the London Homeless Shelters project. The contest was judged by Carol Ann Duffy & raised over £2000 which is great for the homeless and gratifying for me as it means selection from more than 800 entries. The winner was Bob Cooper, who's a proper published poet and can even write a neat sonnet to wheelie bins - respect!

And finally: Alma Tavern spring programme now ready to publish, and how chuffed am I to see my play Mascara in the brochure... Rehearsals starting early May, can't wait.

Stina Harris wanted to create "something halfway between a brothel and a temple" for Frome's Women's Day celebrations and she has, sumptuously, sacred & sleazy mingling superbly in the Sun Street Chapel exhibition. Centrepiece among the artwork to 'rejoice and honour' femininity is the sensuous sofa littered with handmade roses, ideal for a reclining goddess to pose, as Stina does here in her Coat of Sin. There was a peace vigil the morning I dropped in, especially apt as we mourn the slaughter of Afghan families by the soldier who 'didn't want to go'...

Another celebration of the female this week, though a sad one: Friday was the funeral of beautiful Jo Lindsay, smart, creative and wickedly funny, and a treasured member of Frome writers' circle. She was a great cartoonist too, and my study wall is hung with her (personalised) interpretation of a story I'd told her of the frog urging a woman to kiss him on the grounds that he'll become a prince and marry her, and meeting the response "I think I'd prefer a talking frog"... Here's Jo when I first met her, in Tuscany in 1996, and the way I'll always remember her: with a dazzling sunflower and a big grin.

A Postcard From... is the theme of the new STAGEWRITE event onstage at The Merlin. We had our runthrough at Des's house this week, and I'm gratified & excited to report the standard is startlingly high. Sometimes funny, sometimes poignant, always authentic is my favourite review quote, and it's never been more true. If you're in striking distance of Frome & you haven't yet booked for next Thursday, do so now!

Back in the winter of 2009, Inua Ellams came to Frome with his deeply personal 14th Tale of the life of a Nigerian in England and I was privileged to be his curtain-raiser act. He's touring again, with Black T-Shirt Collection, which arrived at Bristol Old Vic this week. This extraordinary 80 minute monologue is such a tour-de-force of lyrical story-telling and metaphors for modern life it's hard to describe it. Imagine you’re a Christian child fostered by Muslims. Imagine your brother is gay and you live in Nigeria where retribution is terrifyingly violent. Imagine you went on the run together through alien lands, culture-shocked and missing family & friends, became successful entrepreneurs but belatedly realise the exploitative basis of your business. These are the challenges of Inua’s character Matthew, told on a stark, dark, stage with sparse graphic-novel style illustrations and minimal sound as he learns the political, economic, & social realities of life - and the limits of love. The pain is nearly unrelenting but the integrity of Inua's story-telling gives vitality to this unforgettable piece. It's coming to Frome's Merlin in May, please don't miss it.
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With spring fingering the Cotswold hills, Farncombe Manor is a great location for a creative writing course along with eight participants in search of their inner author. Not that we had time for more than a quick caper through the silver birch groves and banks of golden daffodils, we we were all too engrossed, over breakfast, through coffee breaks, and in the bar till nearly pumpkin-time, with writing and talking about writing. I don't know if it was the mix of personalities, the fluent interaction, the quality of writing, or all three, but this course was an absolute delight. So, many thanks Mike, Brian, Carolann, Diana, Amanda, Rosanna, Ian and David, for much mirth, many mmm moments, and a modicum of miscreancy. Missing you already...

"May contain strong language and adult themes" advises the entry ticket for bOX oF fROgs. I'd expect nothing less at these excitedly-anticipated (by me anyway) Word of Mouth poetry performances in Bristol Old Vic basement. Amphibian line-up comprised local favourites Byron Vincent and Nathan Filer with two voices new to me: A F Harrold, who eats squirrels - he isn't my cup of tea but says he isn't his either - and hilarious surrealist Rob Auton who uses props like peppers & plastic toys & sycamore leaves, and has a complicated relationship with God ("mainly because I exist and he doesn't".) Byron's emceeing is always studded with gems, and Nathan was on exuberantly spiffing form with an amazing saga inspired by that octogenarian documentarian David Attenborough and a dramatic scene involving sponges, crills, and Stephen Fry. Brilliant stuff.

Red Light Winter by Adam Rapp is the first of director Laurence Boswell's American season at Bath's prestigious Ustinov studio theatre. Unrequited passion is a harsh subject in any era and place - here we are in loosely contemporary Amsterdam and New York - and this exploration of love and lust despite graphic scenes is more tragic than erotic. Putting aside the deconstruction of literature & its relationship to the American Dream, this story is a love triangle comprising two naive victims manipulated by one alleged charmer of TV-soap standard villainy. He lies, he betrays, and he buggers - in fact he does all three together while on the phone, in startling refutation of male difficulty in multi-tasking. Maybe the hooker's infatuation would have seemed more credible if he'd been less shouty and obnoxious, or maybe the point is that some people are inevitable victims. Whatever, the audience found much to laugh at (mostly the rude words actually, but this is Bath) in a busy script, the actors were impressive, and the set & lighting were superb.

Still on the subject of sex in the city, Bath Lit Fest offered an intimate look at the 'Frail Sisterhood' - 18th Century courtesy title for women who follow the oldest profession. Rosie & I joined historian Kirsten Elliott in her walk around the lewder & more lascivious streets, to hear tales of the beauties and bawds whose lives are a significant though hidden part of the history of Bath. From wealthy courtesans like Kitty Fisher, Joshua Reynolds' favourite model, to disorderlies who came to sticky ends, our 2-hour prowl around the staid pale Georgian buildings revealed scores of colourful stories. Kirsten's folder of quotes for every corner illustrated a timeless mix of lust and fear in male responses: 'panting breasts and soft music' to some, 'dissolute women and piano-playing so respectable people are ashamed to live here' to others. I especially liked Harris's List of whores, listing the qualities & even genitalia of each nymph rather as a garden catalogue might describe their floribunda. Among much intriguing data the overwhelming fact to emerge was that elegant Bath was once so notoriously licentious the very name of it set men salivating, though most of these women's stories were more of sadness and squalour than success... but who would expect anything different.

Another, and more specific, celebration of the 100th International Women's Day was held in St Michael's Church as a hundred women took turns to read a poem or prose extract by a woman. Six of Frome's writers - Rose Flint, Rosie Jackson, Rosie Finnegan, Alison Clink, Jill Miller, and me - contributed and as well as being fascinated to hear others' choices we felt immensely privileged to participate.

And I'm still in Bath as evening falls, for supper with my friend Diana, editor & broadcaster. Diana doesn't subscribe to the value of 'time-rich' living, preferring to be 'time-focussed', and takes the opportunity to interview me for her Glastonbury radio programme on 'love, loss, and therapy'. A fitting end to International Women's Day.

Bath Literary Festival launched its nine-day verbal jamboree on Friday with Voices in the City, a full day and evening of so many free events it was impossible to go to them all - I know, because I tried. My poetry-crawl began with Bath Poetry Cafe at the library, a day-long programme of excellent readings. This isn't pub verse, these are poems that make you go mmm... - deeply thoughtful pieces, inset with occasional phrases that startle you as they catch the light. From Liz Brownlee's true tales of Animal Magic - did you know the Madagascan robber moth sucks from the eyes of rainforest birds while they sleep? - to Sue Boyle's clear-eyed views of Rome, there were many appreciative mmms. Here even the open mic readers have previous publications to be taken into consideration: among them Frome's Rosie Jackson, and Claire Coleman who prefaced her colourful street theatre poem by scarf-juggling. Organiser Nikki Kenna kept timings tight, ensuring varied voices and quick breaks for a coffee or a dash to the sales table. During one of these I popped over the road to St Michaels Without to hear readings from David Copperfield, luckily catching the Barkis-is-Willing episode.
Next on my list was 'sensational spoken word from young performers' promised at the Egg but disappointingly the promised sizzle had fizzled out, so it was on to St Swithins Church where Wendy Cope was reading and talking about her poems. Wendy is renowned for her rotweiller attitude to copyright infringement, even as promotion from adulating fans, so I went predisposed to be annoyed by her and swiftly had to upwardly-adjust my opinion. She's droll, grumpy, sharp, and very funny and I found it impossible not to warm to her. Family Values was one theme, dipping into her latest collection of disconcertingly simple ditties, and Wendy also revisited that famous "Bloody men are like bloody buses" responsible for her 'national treasure' status and now in textbooks with analytic questions like - Wendy swears she didn't make this up - "What adjective would you use to describe the poet and the men she meets?"
Time now to dash to The Raven where ex-Bard of Bath Jenny Walter was opening the first of the night's five pub poetry events: Poems in Pubs also seemed to be going for the Guinness Book of Records for how many audience members can sit, squat, and stand in a bar listening to 15 fresh-faced young poets sharing their lifetime's learnings - mostly about other bars. This is on the other side of the lyrical galaxy from the elegant intoning of the library: self-revelatory, provocative, and loath to settle for any line without a laugh - it's slick and refreshingly entertaining. Laurie Bolger showed how to do it with a tour through Shoreditch (the bars, mostly) and was my highlight of the night.
No time to stay for more than a third of the team, sadly, as we were due at the Assembly Inn for Poetry and a Pint - yet another tribe of poets here, with hippy strumming and druid chanting in the stone-floor cellar bar. Among familiar faces was Kevan Manwaring, and Rosie Finnegan and I added our names to the performance list, just to be part of this day of voices.
So I'd call the whole event a big success and a credit to Bath, upending that common perception of slightly snobby staidness with a Spoken Word marathon that was varied, stimulating, entertaining... and exhausting.

How do you pass the time when house-arrested by a throat virus gone viral? Sounds like a good chance to catch up on reading but trying to follow a linear thread for more than 5 lines turns my mind to mud. Writing ditto. So this has been a week devoted to sudoku, online scrabble, and trawling FB for Briterati comments and witty clips, in between reluctantly cancelling plans and answering sympathetic enquiries with a determined 'Improving!'
And in a Descartian sense it must be so, because I made it to the finale of The Incubator day of plays in development as part of Shakespeare Unplugged at the Ustinov, to see David Lane's brilliant re-imagining of Coriolanus with the Young People's Theatre. I Am England evoked a near-future England at odds with the rest of Europe and teetering on the brink of war. The disruptive populace, represented in classic tradition by a chorus, are workless hungry and half-feral, and their iron-lady leader sets up conflicted young war-veteran Marc to rally them. Urged on by his belligerent mother to be a hero, warned by his girlfriend he'll be a martyr, Marc chooses finally to speak his own truth, but no-one in the yelling crowd listens: he's irrelevant now 'there’s a version of you out there that's bigger than you ever were.’ Huge energy and passion from the cast of 20 script-in-hand YPs and a strong script combining colloquial language with occasional lyrical grandeur made for a gripping production, which - according to those who know more about Coriolanus than I do - also illuminated the major themes in the original play.

Speaking of gaps in my Shakespearian comprehension, I'm really appreciative that Andrew Hilton, director of King Lear, took time to contact me to explain the costume concept I described a bit disparagingly in a previous post. He writes that change to modern dress towards the end was to express the central theme of a cyclical element in the growth, maturing and collapse of society. I've never not enjoyed a SATF production, and if one of the reasons is their ambitious adventurousness in expressive interpretation, then Lear in a string vest is a small price to pay.

Thanks to Katy Duke, indefatigable illustrator of town life on the Frome People site, for posting images of Frome Poetry Posse on the Westway Stage during the folk festival.
And there's a poem of mine currently featured on Mediterranean poetry, a deliciously cerulean site to browse on a wintry UK day. The link was sent to me by Roger Jinkinson who I met intially on Kythira as a participant on one of my writing courses. Roger, like his fellow course member Christine Coleman, has gone on to publish very successfully and remains a friend - in fact a visit to Chris in Birmingham was one of the plans cancelled by the virulent virus.

Coincidentally, I've had two other reminders of past courses in beautiful locations this week.
Richard Gould who writes graciously of receiving 'encouraging and inspirational tutoring' at The Grange has published his first novel The Engagement Party, and Teddy Goldstein spoke equally charmingly of 'excellent tutelage' at Gardoussel in Languedoc when he wrote to tell me his novel Toxic Distortions has been nominated for the Amazon First Novel award.
Flattery may not get you everywhere but it gets you a link on my blog, boys.

This weekend the town centre swarmed with stalls and Morris dancers for the first ever Frome Folk Festival. Not all folk organisers take the view that with 24 stonking music acts in three main venues and umpteen more in the pubs, what they really need is a spot of poetry - but Jan Ayres is a promoter with vision: which is why, on Sunday night, eight Poetry Cafe stalwarts were on the stage of the Westway billed as the Frome Poetry Posse offering some of our feistiest stanzas through the best mic I've ever used... True, we were offering to largely empty seats, as folk fans aren't all as visionary as Jan and we had major musical competition, but those who did see us were gratifyingly enthusiastic. So big thanks to Jo Butts, Rose Flint, Alison Clink, Rosie Finnegan, Muriel Lavender, Robbie Vane and Liv Torc for joining me to create an impromptu troupe which had no less than Tim Edey and Brendan Power telling us - before, during, and after, their set - "You poets rock - you blew us away". Tim and Brendan followed us with a totally fantastic set, showing how & why they're 2012 BBC Radio2 Folk Award winners, and until links for their amazing performance in Frome are available, this clip gives a taste of their extraordinary virtuosity.
Richard Kennedy at the Cornerhouse rounded off a day of delights, and now the last notes of guitar, mouth-organ, and button accordion have faded into memory I'm looking forward to the 2013 Frome Folk Festival - yes, tickets are now available.
I wonder if Morris minor, from Cam Valley, will be back dancing with his dad.

Bristol's Tobacco Factory is perfect for theatre in the round, and works brilliantly for Andrew Hilton's new production of King Lear - no set changes to slow the energetic dramatic pace, and audience visibility creating a sense of shared voyeurism which often becomes a frisson of conspiratorial intimacy, shockingly intensified when conniving Edmund invites our collusion by addressing his monologues directly to us.
This is a tragedy of extreme dimensions and a fine SATF team led by John Shrapnel brings immense passion to the emotions and powerful impact to the assaults. The bullying macho ethos at court is highlighted: Kent for example (strongly played by Simon Armstrong) is gratuitously brutal, exemplifying the behaviour of the ‘100 knights’ that become the focus of contention between Lear and his exasperated daughters, underlining the dangers all around in a kingdom where truth goes unheard and loyalty is part of the tangle of violence.

The acting is superb and my only real reservation is the baffling costume design. Why, in a serious production, was Lear swaggering his moobs long before he went seriously loopy? And having established dress code as Elizabethanalia, why the random rummage through 20th century threads - still combined with antique weaponry - in the second act? Why did Edgar arrive for battle looking like a Tottenham rioter? Presumably this was all to hammer home the production comment that “At a time when autocratic regimes around the world are under unprecedented threat (the play) has acquired a new contemporary relevance.” But these distractions upstaged the actors, and I wished I'd been trusted to find Shakespeare's words enough to touch my heart and mind with the timelessness of human conflict, folly, and loss.
Photos Graham Burke
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Awesome evening at Frome Poetry Cafe on Monday for the Valentine special: Jon dashed in repeatedly with extra chairs as more and more poets piled into the Garden Café but we were still standing room only by the time Muriel Lavender led off in her inimitable rococo style. Three of the Bluegate poets from Swindon followed, then Carrie Etter from Bristol, then Stephen Boyce from Winchester... honestly the evening was beginning to sound like a roll-call for best in the southwest, all stunning stuff too. Add to this twelve more great local voices, including brilliant Liv Torc and Rosie Jackson back from India, and the evening was a stonking success. The random valentine prize of Chinese Erotic Poetry donated by Hunting Raven Books went to newly-Frome-dwelling Robbie Vine who noted there hadn't been much cynicism and helpfully remedied the deficit.
The Poetry Cafe will be back on April 11th but Frome Poetry Posse are strutting their stuff at the Folk Festival on Sunday from 5.45 till 6.30 at the Westway Cinema venue.


When you're out of the school loop, which I've been roughly since William Smith said 'I wonder what to do with my enormous collection of fossils, I think I'll invent geology', half-term holidays are events that leap on you like Tigger in the forest and similarly noisy. Bristol Old Vic with canny recognition of the need for parental respite, organised a week of HALF TERM HAVOC! offering 'noise, mess and chaos' as well as a couple of shows. Stan, aged 4, was my discerning companion at Stones & Bones by Squashbox Theatre, an hour of havoc coordinated by ebullient entertainer Craig Johnson who combines storytelling, puppetry, magic, music and mayhem with quite a bit of keystage 2 content. An excitable young audience shrieked happily through the geological data, which though interesting failed to grip them as much as the monster-sightings (sometimes I think I have the mentality of a 6-year-old). Craig met all the heckling with a few stern words but immense good humour, probably because he knew his vengeance would come in the volcano-dousing sequence, when he could run wild with the water pistol. Stan enjoyed it all immensely, especially the bit when the dinosaur-puppet attacks Craig repeatedly, Emu-style, with a carrot. My favourite bit too, maybe I need to adjust my mental age downwards by a couple of years...
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A magical night at The Rondo in Bath on Saturday as Angel Exit recreated Frances Hodgeson Burnett's hundred-year-old tale The Secret Garden.
I always feel trepidation when facing a favourite story interpreted anew, but this highly entertaining and very moving performance brought out both shade and light with equal energy, showing the traumas of loss as well the message of nature’s magical power to heal. If you haven't read the book, it's about a child's journey from angry isolation to the heart of a reunited family through her own determination and the rising sap of nature – kind-of Back To The Future reconceived by Lawence and the Brontes, darkly dramatic and timelessly satisfying. This version is written by Tamsin Fessey and Lynne Forbes (also playing good-angel Martha, the maid) and told by a fantastic cast of five fast-moving performers who can concoct anything from a train to a houseful of memories simply by clever movement and hypnotic imagination. All were great, especially Simon Carroll-Jones who is bizarrely convincing as both grim housekeeper and neurotic little boy, and Ashleigh Cheadle as Mary, looking like a sour Alice tumbled into a bleak Wonderland of terrible secrets.
Despite the inherent darkness there's a joyful message about resilience and recovery here, and this enchanting production delivers joy in wheelbarrowfuls. To be picky, I'd have preferred it if feisty Mary had been less swamped at the end by the males, if the animal puppets had looked less play-group made, and if there’d been less reliance on ragged strips of daubed sheeting to convey the miraculous secret garden - but the superb performances and imaginative exuberance of this fantastic group overcame any quibbles.
A garden of delights - and still touring this area & beyond till April. Do go see.

Black Swan Open Art exhibition and competition is currently showing some amazing works, ranging from exquisite to startling. Prizes have already been awarded but there the 'public vote' winner is still up for grabs. Here's Annemarie Blake's wintry landscape and one of the stuffed animals by Dorcas Casey who won the Town Council prize and sees her process as developing 'fleeting glimpses of the unconscious' into something tangible. Which is a good function for any artist.

Theatre Ad Infinitum brought Translunar Paradise to Bristol on its sell-out tour since their award-winning run at Edinburgh last year. Two delightful performers charmed the audience with a tender & poignant story... sorry if this sounds like Peoples' Friend writers' guidelines, but production values aside this is very much what it is like. The masks are cleverly expressive, the accordion soundtrack by Kim Heron is movingly evocative, and the two young actors are skillful and endearing. It's just that the storyline seems to forget another important magazine-writers' guideline: avoid being totally predictable. This tale of bereavement, while affecting in small moments and undeniably beautifully performed, is a memory-rummage through all the usual suspects - first date, worst row, miscarriage, returning from war shellshocked... Simple storylines are often the best, but I found myself becoming increasingly emotionally resistant as I mentally ticked off the events. "It is a little old-fashioned, a mite obvious in the life events that it covers" the Guardian noted tactfully, but a full house in the Old Vic Studio theatre clearly loved it, and delighting the audience is one of the functions of theatre. Another, of course, is to disturb, and to connect with what is difficult. As Jez (Jerusalem) Butterworth says, theatres are "places where you come along, and you evoke anxieties - and you deal with them together. That's what they're for"

"I danced with queens - I danced with five of them" boasts Jane Parker in the closing moments of Henry VIII and the Royal Wedding Planner, and she did: she counted them in & she counted them out, and she counted herself lucky to be a lady-in-waiting at court - on & off - for 21 years, from the age of 15 until her execution for treason. Jane was a real player in the hot-house scene of the Tudor king's matrimonial scandals, you can check her dates & fate in Wiki, though her motivations are disputed and will never now be known. In this 70-minute monologue, superbly performed by Julia Gwynne and directed by Andy Burden, we watch her grow from gushing naivety through increasingly devious ambition to deluded obsession. Both extremes are the wobbliest bits but overall this is brilliantly executed, with multiple voices adding variety and absurdity to this stylish, provocative, tragi-comedy. More than a witty historical drama, a successful piece of theatre on the Butterworth scale: we left the Merlin buzzing, and musing on the innate tyranny of monarchy and its trail of personal tragedies.

Media Arts Facilitator & animator Howard Vause was speaker on Wednesday when Frome Creative Network had one of their innovative 'brown bag' (ie bring your own) lunchtime talks. With an image for every point - here's how to dip your toe into visual media - his presentation was informative, reassuring, and hugely practical, fulfilling his own criteria of using media for 'fun, creativity, and truth.' Top tip: "Techi-stuff is just a tool - if you don't know, find someone who does and can explain."

A lyrical footnote to this posting: Next Frome Poetry Cafe on Monday 13th is the Lurve one, with some cracking guests expected: Muriel Lavender, Liv Tork, Bluegate poets from Swindon, Stephen Boyce from Winchester, and maybe more... with open-mic too!
And our angels-in-art poems are still being added to the Rook Lane website - mine is here: Jacob meets the Angel

Oddsocks, famous for seizing the sails of Shakespeare’s best-loved plays & ripping them down the middle, have turned their mischievous minds to The Merry Wives of Windsor, which arrived at Bristol QEH on Saturday. In the persona of a 1950s television theatre company - with onstage studio screen monitoring the action – they perform a contemporary version complete with snatches of skiffle and interruptions from their sponsor, Mrs Quickly’s household remedies. Elli Mackenzie and Andrew McGillan shone in a quintet of jolly performers, delivering the ever-popular high-level of audience interaction, and some memorably funny moments: Mistress Page shuddering with orgasmic glee as the Bendix where Falstaff is hiding goes into full spin, the inept ‘product placements’, and a marvellous final woodland scene as the lascivious knight meets his come-uppance from romping night-sprites and Anne Page flees with her lover, fortuituously called Fenton – giving the best gag of the night as her father dashes off roaring ‘Fenton! Fenton! Fenton’ and Falstaff takes off his antlers to quip that many a dog runs after deer… (the youtube clip made national news in November – what a gift!)

But there were bits that didn’t quite work so well: slapstick comedy that should be slicker, silly walks in lieu of characterisation, gratuitous bunion-munching & a pointless radio horserace sequence padding out the second act, and - most importantly - Shakespeare’s words. The play within the parody seemed to become almost an incumbence, scenes scoured for chances of mockery and speeches milked for ridicule. Yet it is possible (as Oddsox showed with Hamlet a couple of years ago) to show pathos even in farce, enhancing hilarity while engaging more intensely with the story. More could have been made of the difficulties women faced in a society controlled by men, and my particular disappointment was Falstaff’s ludicrous Tweedledum outfit: I wished he'd been shown in fat-Elvis glory to introduce the poignancy of misplaced aspirations. Without these elements it’s a tale that’s tediously one-dimensional.
But the audience laughed and clearly love this endearing troupe, which is what matters.

Frome Scriptwriters, a new group for local writers developing work for stage or radio, launched this week at the Cornerhouse. This is another initiative from Rosie Finnegan, enterprising entrepreneur who brought Nevertheless Theatre Company to Frome, and once again I'm chuffed to be on board to support this venture. We started small, but aim to grow. It's a cliché but true: there's much talent in this town - and, unlike other places I've been, much goodwill & mutual support. Meetings will be monthly, democratic, free, and open to all.

Interesting developments for all who hanker for an effective library service: the anti-closure protest has won its case against Somerset Libraries on grounds of European diversity legislation. Opening hours in 23 libraries have been reinstated and 11 are no longer headed for closure, but councillors remain defensive about their plan to 'pass the least-used libraries into community hands.'
"The world is changing and we need to change with it," said Cllr John Woodman, Conservative, citing pressure from a 'zero book budget' - a claim corrected online to £200,000. Another comment suggests: "Somerset library service has been one of the worst managed in the whole of England for many years... Now the council has a chance to rethink the whole future of its libraries the first item on the agenda is to dramatically improve the quality of the management. What (John Woodman) has said is such rubbish it hardly is worth the ink used to print it."

Frome Library, under the tireless and imaginative stewardship of Wendy Miller-Williams, has a high profile for community book-related events and is always at the heart of the summer Arts Festival. The coldest day of the year so far - we're talking minus 7 degrees - saw a posse of local bibliophiles and writers converge in the library foyer for tea, biscuits, and book sharing to celebrate National Libraries Day. Travel writer John Payne signed copies of his new book on Bath, which opens with another wintry scene, from a walk we did last year: The city is there, somewhere beneath us. Thick snow beneath our feet and a swirly misty frozen rain falling gently from grey skies stained with yellow... How very apt, on a day that began subzero and has now shrouded the town with snow.

Haunting accordion and a nightclub setting hung with glamorous costumes greeted us at the Rondo Theatre as Rogue Theatre presented their current touring show The Dancer and the Devil but even as glittering hostess Laverna welcomed us - with chocolates - the black&white photographs scattered around the auditorium like lost memorabilia were already stirring unease... allure and menace are twin themes of the show. Songs, dances and stories all blend beauty and erotica with terror. The shadow of the holocaust is there from the start but this is not a linear drama, more a dream sequence in which dark psychological insights from fairy tales, Sondheim-style, mingle with historical and contemporary cultural displacements. Abandonment, addiction and abuse surge through the sensuous cabaret set-pieces, and macabre violence repeatedly intrudes in the midnight world of the Lounge Limbo.

This series of gems is very nearly a fantastic show, except for the misjudged inclusion of a lengthy audience-participation 'quiz show' which snapped the mesmeric tension and undermined the compelling theatricality. Omitting this, and the interval, would have ensured an extraordinary emotional journey for everyone in the audience, but a spell like that once broken is hard to cast again. Nevertheless this immensely talented team sent us out into the winter night illuminated by gorgeous visuals and haunting score. All seven performers were superb, but musicians Julian Gaskell & Lauren Vandike deserve special mention.
And how refreshing it is to have Rondo Theatre in Bath as a friendly and delightfully atmospheric alternative to the big theatre in the city centre - check out their season for more excellent touring shows.

And as vivid images of Cambodia begin to fade in the where's-my-gloves-and-brolly?-ness of being back in England, with its very different rhythm of meetings and catch-ups, great to see Kate Edgley's sensitive and vividly evocative piece in The Guardian today. Kate, despite her proficiency already as an experienced travel writer, participated fully in the writing sessions and one of my top memories is the night in Siem Reap when three of us skipped supper to sit beside the pool as the sky darkened and strings of glittering lights turned the gardens into a night palace, writing and sharing.