Sensational is the simplest way to describe my week at Cortijo Romero in Southern Spain leading the 'self expression through creative writing' group . A synaesthesia of senses, in fact: silken pool water, velvet hills, and rustling palms. This area, in foothills of the Sierra Nevada, was tamed and irrigated by the Moors but given its tri-zonal climate by nature: flora is extraordinary and clear skies reveal breathtaking layers of stars. Our days quickly develop a delicious pattern: early morning yoga, then after a brief meeting the mornings are dedicated to word-work and word-play, with afternoons free to sunbathe around the pool. After supper, which like all meals is delicious & al fresco, there's optional activities like chanting, dancing, spanish song, or further immersion in conversation, or submersion in the pool...
Here's my 'recipe for Cortijo Romero':
Take white walls and terracotta tiles, and meld into habitation, flattening the roof so it forms a terrace under the stars. Decorate the traditional way with archways, courtyards, and a cat. Soak in sunshine for a long time while the pool is prepared. This must be surrounded by palm trees and blossom – hibiscus is ideal. Turn out under a firm blue sky onto a setting with views of mountains and acres of ancient tranquillity. Fill your finished cortijo with people who love it, with good food, with learning and laughter. Glaze with delight and sprinkle lightly with the scent of jasmine. Your guests will come back for another helping again and again.
Personal highlights, in a week that was up there with the eagles of the Sierra Nevada, were the strenuous clamber upriver to swim under the ice-melt waterfall, and the gentler cascade of wonderful words from my very wonderful group in the last-night cabaret.

So I wasn't looking forward to ten hours in Malaga on the final day, but actually it was brilliant - thanks, Louise, my intrepid and ever-delighted companion, for an unforgettable day of exploration and fiesta, finding ourselves suddenly in the heart of a very Spanish celebration. A great way to leave and take home the musical vibrance of Andalucia.



England was kind to my reluctant return, having the grace to offer sunshine today. I'm hoping it hangs around till next Sunday, for the 'Cascade of Words and Music' in Bath's Prior Park.

Not so much a blog entry, more of a twitter really: arriving in Spain to discover Cortijo Romero has extensive gardens with a pool and palm trees, ripe grapes around the archways, an elegant & cool study where the writing group will meet, fabulous food and steady sunshine, but no internet connection. So there will now be a short intermission.

Around 150 people, some resolutely picnicking beneath umbrellas, sat stoically for nearly three hours through monsoon conditions in Frome’s Ecos Amphitheatre to watch Illyria recreate the heroic exploits of D’Artagnan and his Three Musketeers, a folies-de-Bergerac frolic of intrigue, amour, frenetic swordplay and improbable moustaches. Six actors and a flurry of costume changes combined to create a plethora of friends, foes, landlords, servants, nuns and horses. Sex was skimpy and the plot too complex for most of the young in the audience but nobody seemed to mind as fun was fast, and furious fighting frequent: with swords, knives, saucepans, fists, pistols, poison, axes, and a chicken, imaginatively choreographed and involving everyone - wicked Lady de Winter (Annie Lees Jones) was deservedly cheered for her courageous cat-fight to the death. The four men all acquitted themselves superbly, with William Finkenrath particularly striking as Duke of Buckingham who must be secret twin to Blackadder's Lord Flashheart.

Two shows in swift succession in Bath, and both find me paddling against the current of decided opinion: at the Ustinov there's the world premiere of Another Door Closed, a new play by Peter Gill. Applause was enthusiastic but it left me cold, literally, as air-conditioning was set on let-the-fuckers-freeze. Imagine an early draft of a Pinter play - before he decided that less is more effective to create the essence of relationships- cut into strips and restuck randomly, Dada-style, recited by two portly elderly ladies and that louche black-marketeer from Dad's Army.
I'll think up something else to say for publication, of course, but it won't be 'theatrical gem'.

Rik Mayall is unwell so press night for Balmoral at Bath Theatre Royal was cancelled, though we're allowed to view and review at our own expense - a cunning but unsuccessful plan to deter local reports that the play is now an unsalvageable flop. I thought the performance lost nothing from stand-in Steve McNeil's underplaying of the potential mania of his role, but I'm probably alone in that view. Michael Frayn's fantasy is based on the appealing conceit that the 1917 revolution was not in Russia but in England, resulting in redeployment of Balmoral as a writers' retreat. Not just any old writers, but Godfrey Winn, Hugh Walpole, Warwick Deeping and Enid Blyton - who is an erotic poet until the farcical and whisky-fuelled events of the play inspire her to create the Secret Seven and become a children's author. Lots of opportunities, among the silliness and corpses in the cabin trunk, for droll comments on literature, class, and cultural stereotypes - though you'd have to be as old as the Secret Seven are now to recognise most of the references. Apart from the drunk belligerent Scot, of course. He's not going anywhere.

In the queue for the queue for Banksy on Sunday, buskers & an icecream van combined with brilliant sun and the cameraderie of the sidelined to create a carnival atmosphere. Cheers and party poppers as we secondary queuers reached the point of the hand-stamp which allowed us to join the legitimate queuers. We became entitled to privileges: the BANKSY versus BRISTOL MUSEUM flyer, giving precious little away about the location of tour highlights like the Easyjet version of the Flight to Egypt but providing a useful summary: A unique collaboration between the city's foremost cultural institution and one of the region's most overrated artists. No lectures, no illegality, just delightful wordplay and wonderfully inventive images. Then back at the dockside for chilled wine, and at sunset watching scores of balloons float slowly across the city skyscape.
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Unexpectedly at short notice, the chance of a weekend in Dublin, staying with my friend Jenny Sweeney, author of Encounter Ireland. Jenny and I were college flatmates, so catching up is easy as falling off a bicycle. She takes me walking on the heathery hills of Howth, teaches me the knack of the Irish Times crossword; we search for cowries beside the taffeta sea of Dublin Bay, and for late orchids in the dunes of Dollymount, and the decades melt away.

And any visitor to the city has to see what's on at the Gate: “Everything gels perfectly” enthused the online write-up of the Noel Coward revival Present Laughter, so I had hopes of entertainment with an edge, and was half lucky. This production was indulgent on the eye in terms of set and costume, but a little too easy on the intellect by underplaying the psychological connections between this extensive cast. The result was slick wit but no emotional credibility, erotic energy, or real humanity. Stephen Brennan as Garry Essendine, the aging matinee idol, held the entire confection together compellingly, aided by Fiona Bell as his spiky secretary, and the laughter was indeed present. But the promised gel was missing in this series of tableau sequences, some of them voluptuous, some satiric, but never cohering enough for me to care by the end who went to bed with whom - or what happened to the hedonistic hero or anyone else in his ouroborotic coterie.
“All you ever do is pose in dressing-gowns,” Garry is challenged by Roland Maule (John Kavanagh, mangling the irony with buffoonery in this wasted role) “- you could be making people feel and think.” But why bother, when as the reviews all note: “The audience loved it!”

Stop Press News Frome writer Rosie Finnegan has heard from Bristol-based Writers' Block that her Sarah Siddons monologue has been accepted for production next Spring. Rosie says she was inspired by the '7 Ages of Shoes' monologue writing workshop and "You can quote me saying a big than you to you and Niamh!" which is jolly nice of her. She also says she's over the moon about it. So you should be, Rosie, it's a brilliant outcome for your first dramatic monologue.
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Words@ Frome Festival goes into recess for the rest of the summer once the bunting is down for another year. Mega congratulations to all involved in the hugely successful literary events - you can see the reviews, compiled by Wendy, on the festival website. The debrief meeting is traditionally a bit of a knees-up too and this year Alison, who hosted, created a unique Plinth Cake: that's me on the top, complete with icing-sugar mic. Ahhh...

Somerset lacks focus in terms of cities, learning institutions, and cultural centres. Discuss.
The theatre practitioners' meeting at The Academy Theatre in Shepton Mallet did just that, with varied opinions as to whether decentralisation is a weakness or a strength. Either way Take Art, who convened the meeting, is doing a grand job to thread our isolated pearls onto some sort of circlet of reciprocal awareness. Coffee, cakes, and networking opportunities supplemented the discussion, concluding with a flurry of post-it notes & hopes for continued contact.

Writer/performer Rob Benson brought Borderline, billed as 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest for the ecstasy generation', to Bristol, giving Alma Tavern audiences a chance to see why this one-man show collected rave reviews at the Edinburgh festival.
His character is a Stone Roses fan who pops pills like Pringles ("once you start, you can't stop") until he lands in Mental Health Ward 206, off his head now on medicinal instead of recreational stuff. It's not just drugs to blame, he says. He's borderline schizophrenic, borderline victim, borderline recovered. Maybe his life will always ricochet in and out of paranoia, even though he longs for the normality of 'Ikea and Dixons' - and love.
Black comedy, physicality, raw emotionalism, and Streets-style poetry, all disturbingly enhanced by the extreme lighting design of director Jennifer Lunn, took this piece beyond era case-study to essential integrity. Next stop New York, but Rob will be back in the spring with a new play developed for the Ustinov's 'Script Factory'.
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Back on planet normal, and the final event for the Words@ Frome Festival team: prize-giving night for Writers in Residence, at the Garden Cafe. "An amazing achievement", judge Lindsay Clarke says of these stories scribbled in cafes and shops and bravely read aloud by their writers for his verdict: Gordon Graft and Tim O'Connor commended for two highly entertaining stories, and Tracy Wall taking top prize for her millinery- inspired poem.
Lindsay is 'not one of nature's judges' he says, but he's unfailingly eloquent on the subject of writing. Among his salient gems: "A good sentence is a breath taking shape, so it can’t carry too much in the way of excess baggage." "Qualifiers are not intensifiers, they weaken. Find the verb that dramatises."

What is the collective name for drama enthusiasts & practitioners? An OST-group would be Tuesday's answer. Open Space Technology, if you're not familiar with the concept (I wasn't), was devised in the 1980s which accounts for the slightly last-century jargon of ("We did vision that work but it's hard to progress in this funding landscape though we're making bridges") and Theatre Bristol's To You To Me session attracted over 100 writers, performers, directors, and fans to Bristol Old Vic to contemplate the creative future. OST has few rules and they all have a cosily indulgent flavour - the 'Law of Mobility' encourages participants to buzz off when bored - which was further enhanced by bowls of cherries and maltesers, and a scrummy greek supper after the debates were all done. A relaxed non-cliquey atmosphere is a great way to network, and Niamh and came back enthused, informed, and entertained, and very pleased to have found this bridge into the Theatre Bristol landscape.

Miracle Theatre is touring their adaptation of Tartuffe, Molière's once-scandalous parody of the hypocrisy of the Church and gullibility of the bourgeoisie, in an open-air season. They arrived in Frome on Thursday and were instantly diverted by torrential showers to the Merlin stage. Bill Scott’s version of the text plumps for one-liner wit rather than scrupulous translation or conventional rhyming couplet, and the overall effect of marionette-show–cum–farce is clearly designed for the picnic season theatre-goer, but it’s a wonderful high-energy romp nonetheless, with Ben Dyson as villain-hero Tartuffe effortlessly stealing every scene. For this preposterous drollery Molière was apparently dubbed 'a demon dressed in flesh' but it's still the most performed play in the French language, and has that strange vicar-in-the-wardrobe kind of innocence of a bygone era.
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24 hours on and I'm still high as Nelson's hat after my plinthathon in Trafalgar Square yesterday. I asked for messages and poem requests and they came by email, text, and facebook, from across the world. Great fun theming the hoard but even though I timed my 'script' l still didn't get through it all before they came to take me away...
Huge thanks to the 31 contributors whose words I used, hopefully not too gabbled or garbled, and apologies to the 5 who got squeezed out... you were there in spirit, prittsticked into my lagoon blue book.

Watching my hour on the webcam I squirmed at the fluffed words and faffy bits, but I think it shows I'm happy to be there... and there's pix on the plinth watch (page 2) that are close-up and hi-res enough to challenge my poetic claim to relish my wrinkles as tidemarks of mortality...


Best bits for me:
Smatterings of applause that showed I wasn't entirely inaudible, despite fire-engines, praying Christians, cheering open-top busses and general Londonny hubbub. Ecstatic reception of the gay wedding bus! Seeing my friends at the foot of the plinth. And, overwhelmingly, the extraordinariness of being there, high above the crowds and the fountains, allowed - no, REQUIRED - to blow my own trumpet to the world.

I first saw West Side Story in the original London production with George Chakiris in 1958 - I'd like to say I was wheeled in as a prem. baby but you wouldn't believe me - which is perhaps why it's always been my favourite musical. The community college production at Frome's Merlin Theatre was a wonderful way to revisit and rediscover the energy and passion as well as the songs of this classic Romeo & Juliet re-enaction.
Claudia Pepler-Berry's production rightly, and creatively, emphasises the youthfulness of these protagonists – the first rumble is like a playground scrap, and When you’re a Jet not so much macho aggression as a chant for a tribe of Lost Boys: “Without a gang you’re an orphan" says Riff, their charismatic leader.
The two key ensemble pieces were simply brilliant, the girls bringing the feisty exuberance of a hen-night romp to I like to be in America, and an inventive wittiness as well as high energy in the boys’ show-piece Officer Krupke.
And then there's the young lovers, whose duets created such a sense of quintessential romance I could hear sobs all around me: Ben Macfadyen as Tony looking like a young James Dean and singing with charm and confidence. Kara Horler as Anita was outstanding too, and I loved the cameo role of Howard Vause the cowardly lion, now in glasses & tanktop working as a youth club leader in downtown Manhattan.
(Thanks Mike for the images)



And here's that ONE AND OTHER link for Saturday 4-5, to see whether I need my brolly and bin-bags for my Trafalgar Square plinthathon: all about words, mine and maybe yours...

The view from my room in Finca el Cerrillo says it all really: luxurient gardens, blue pool, olives and vines on the ochre hills, and the mountain tops of the Sierra Almijara beyond.
That's my room, beyond the white jasmine (believe me I'm not gloating, just... smiling.)

My writing group is small but perfectly formed; we have all morning together in the cool studio as a 'master-class', then meet again before supper for what's become known as the 'aperitif session'.
Although this course has a fiction focus, the gorgeous gardens, rural architecture, and distant mountains all inspire lyricism, and our evening readbacks are filled with poetry as well as stories, so thanks Elaine, Collette, & Helen for a wonderful week of word-exploration.

In the afternoons... well, there's the pool to laze beside & within, there's cushions beneath the big carob tree.... and there's the meals for which this place is famed, along with the wonderfully relaxed hospitality of our hosts Sue and Gordon Kind.



And now I'm leaving all this & heading back to the Real World, where it's not 32 degrees every blue-skied, blue-pooled day, - and where there's a plinth in Trafalgar Square I'll be standing on next Saturday, and where like Christopher Robin and his bear, the web-link is forever playing.

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And as the heatwave continues, Winchester Writers Conference events are hotting up too. Here's my delightful and very talented group, taking a break from a long and intense day with a focus on dialogue in fiction - thanks guys for wonderfully entertaining readings and fascinating discussions. Lovely too to stay overnight with conference inspiration-cum-fairy-godmother, the gracious and generous Barbara Large, who coordinates delegates' every need, even including lifts to the station and gypsy creams at tea-break.

Plinth update: a photo-call for the frock. Closest we can find to a plinth is this stone by the Merlin Theatre. (Thanks Somerset Standard for the pic.) I'm hoping to take to Trafalgar Square, as well as my stuff, a fistful of words from others - not just poems but quotes, quips, messages, greetings... anything. So I'm sending out a call - any fave limericks, haiku, maxims... anyone's birthday coming up around 18th July? Here's your chance to hear your words on Sky.... actually it's all too scary to contemplate, so I'm going to forget about it for a week...

...because I'm heading off to Spain tonight, to run a workshop in the foothills of the Sierra Almijara in Andalucia, a place I've never been before which is all the more exciting. So there won't be any Frome Festival bulletins from me this year: for those, click here.
And have a great time.

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“Could we get any more British?” asks Duke Theseus, emerging as the umbrellas go up in Ashton Court Manor Gardens just before the start of A Midsummer Night's Dream on Sunday.
Open-air theatre is not like theatre and I don’t just mean the drizzle; it brings out the territorial imperative in the cultural classes as they impose their own auditoriums on the lawn rather like Libyan forces invading Chad. Nearly all the grass was covered with predatory blankets laid out by a stentorian-voiced man urging his party to “maintain the line”. Children trail soft toys, parents eat paella from plastic plates, pies from wrappers, salads from Tuppaware, crisps, cakes, scotch eggs… waiting for curtain up is one long munch-fest. Corks pop, babies cry, mobile link-ups are arranged: “you’ll see us at the front, it’s not Glastonbury!”
Shakespeare's Globe on Tour has responded to the challenge by doing the whole play as a flapper-era end-of-pier show, with something for all the family: teddy-bears & percussion for the kiddies, Puck dressed as a pole-dancer for the Dads, and for us girls there was Chris McGill as Lysander/Quince/Moth, somehow managing to be equally irresistible whether a bold lover, rude mechanic, or gigolo elf.
The 8 actors in Raz Shaw's production play every part, morphing deftly from aristocrats to clowns to fairies, so there’s plenty of opportunity for inventive displays of versatility though less for costume change: adding aprons worked well for status downsizing but tailcoats and cigarette-holders for Peaseblossom’s posse didn’t do it for me. The production worked best when it stuck to the stage, creating a magic box that had everyone, even passersby peering over the railings, wide-eyed; the de-rigueur racing around the grass seemed like a slightly desperate, and unnecessary, crowd-pleasing tactic.
It’s a long play, made all the longer by William Mannering’s extemporising Bottom - I can see why the bard fell out with Will Kempe who first took the role – but at the end, despite the weather, numb bums, and no interval refreshments, the enthusiastic applause was rightly raucous. The Tour continues till 31st August: Fiona Moorhead's photo courtesy of the Globe.

Plinth preparations continue: declaiming practice on Cley Hill, and lovely Mandie Stone from Love Arts is kitting me out in retro prom frock with custom-made headdress (purple red & green) for my hour at Trafalgar Square on July 18th. I'm almost starting to look forward to it...

Two nights after Moonshadow, I'm back in Bristol at the Tobacco factory for another play on social repression based on a true life incident, showing that just because you're not sectioned doesn't mean you're not trapped.
In 1928 Ruth Snyder was executed in New York for the murder of her wealthy husband. Journalist Sophie Treadwell followed the trial & wrote a play based on the case. Machinal was on stage within a year and still has impact today as a feminist statement. Helen, intelligently interpreted by Polly Barsby as naïve and mentally frail, is caught relentlessly in a loveless machine, unable to relate to her mother, husband, or even daughter. Her emotional dysfunction is triggered by - and powerfully expresses - the materialistic society and social expectations that combine to entrap her. Mechanist patterns are vividly created in both soundtrack and visuals, with a series of memorably brilliant Hopper-inspired tableaux at the speakeasy bar where Helen meets Dirk and her first taste of freedom. Director Sue Wilson wanted to show the skills of the graduating students from Old Vic Theatre School- 'not just actors but designers too ' and this provocative play showcased an impressively talented ensemble. I can't find any images from the show so here's a Hopper which evokes something of the sense of loneliness & oppression created by the set, lighting, and tonal range - oppressive monochrome, with seductive slashes of scarlet and elusive glimpses of purple night air. Credit to all the cast too, especially Piers Wehner as Helen's lover and John McGrellis as her victim husband.

Plinth update: by post, a large, card-reinforced, envelope containing an A5 booklet with 24 pages of information for us plinthers including a map of Trafalgar Square and helpful tips like "Before you leave home do take a look out of the window or consult the weather forecast. This is Britain after all!" and "London is well connected to the rest of the UK - you can get there by plane, train, bus or car." There's a whole section on how to avoid sinking into debt over travel costs too: "Hold a car boot sale - you'll be amazed what people will buy!... do odd jobs in return for small sums. You could wash cars, walk dogs, baby-sit, mow lawns, or deliver leaflets... or bake some cakes, and ask for donations when it's time for tea-break!"
So, be thrifty, dress warm, and bring an umbrella if it looks like rain. Who ever said Arts Funding pays people to sit around devising patronising twaddle?

Despite the delights of Frome, I do sometimes find myself yearning for the busy, fizzy, Bristol buzz. Totterdown was busy, fizzy, & frankly sozzledy, on Sunday with a mini-festival at the Shakespeare, where I was one of the performing poets. The Plastic Rocket also featured popular Bristolian Rosemary Dunn, who often makes passes at men who wears glasses...

Ten years ago the big topic of the summer was how to get down to Cornwall for August 11th. Rumours were rife: roads would be jammed, trains crammed… my solution was to cycle from Frome with my son Sam as companion, tent-bearer, and map-reader. I watched the milky silence of that strange defining moment of solar eclipse from a games field temporarily converted into a campsite by its enterprising fooball club.
A decade on, Steve Hennessy’s play Moonshadow is being revived at The White Bear in Kennington, and is still – disturbingly – relevant in its potent critique of psychiatric practices.
John wants to see the eclipse and feel the touch of the moon’s shadow but in the Catch-22 craziness of his sectioned existence, the more he wants to go, the more he’s seen as proving he can’t be allowed. Dr Brown diagnoses paranoid psychotic delusions and refuses leave, so the only way John will see the eclipse is by astral projection. A minimalist set enhanced the impact of celestial lighting effects as John sails over Taunton, defying his dead, but still monstrous, stepfather to swallow the sun. “If you’re ever going to come out into the light you need to go into the darkness.”
As with most of Steve Hennessy’s plays, the central theme is that psychiatry dehumanises, and creates a system in which the only differences between carers and cared-for are the labels and the salaries. Four lonely people wrestle with the pain of living and the damage of their pasts, but only John has the astral motorbike. He may be prone and drooling, but when the ECT has worn off, he’ll be riding high…
Brilliant performances by Michael Dylan and Annabel Bates as the endearing patients and Oliver Hume and Beverley Longhurst as their equally ‘sexually disinhibited’ but better paid (and without files & labels) authority figures. Insightful direction by Chris Loveless brings out the bleak realism as well as highlighting moments of wry humour in this powerful play.

Theme for this solstice week was sunshine, and about time too. While up in London I took the opportunity to check out the Fourth Plinth, since I'll be up there next month. My co-plinthers in the other corners are King George IV, a Major, and a General... there's the Admiral too, but he's about a mile high. Here's my plinth, under the scaffolding, and here's me wondering what to do if I don't get a portable PA. Hurrah for Patrick Dunn and Nick Waterhouse, who stepped in to supply the goods!
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