words & music, words & art, words & lions

Moving around in the outside world after my prolonged demi-incarceration is wonderful, like having a house-arrest sentence lifted. I'm still cautious, replacing wild dancing at the Silk Milk with the newly-discovered joy of Strictly Come Dancing ~ don't judge me till you've slouched a mile in my slippers ~ but daytime activities are back on the menu. So on Saturday afternoon I was down at Crocker & Woods coffee shop in Catherine Hill to hear Pete Gage playing fabulous 12-bar blues, and on Sunday went along to a superb poetry workshop led by George Szirtes at the Holburne Museum in Bath. Interestingly, George's guidance resonated closely with Seamus Moran's words on Friday about the artist's entire life coming out in his work: The shape of a poem, George suggests, is "haunted" by the stuff around it - "all the stuff of our life which we bring to it." He used the analogy of a perfectly placed goal shot being described as sheer poetry and focussed on the 'playful' element of writing. "Don't be be burdened down ~ there's this impulse to be significant, to seek for admirable poetic qualities. Be playful!"
So we did - and I took this notion to my Words at the Black Swan workshop at Seamus' exhibition that evening. Nine imaginative writers shared responses to the imagery and 'played' with the notion of creating 'moulded' patterns in words, with some stunning responses which will all be posted on our facebook site and displayed in the Gallery while the exhibition lasts, so do take a look next time you're at the market or in Divas.

Luke Wright brought his latest show Essex Lion to Bristol last night: it had glow-stick reviews (I nicked that image from Anna Freeman, good one eh?) in Edinburgh but this Blahblahblah performance Luke reckoned as his best night yet.  Luke's lion is lifted from last year's news item about a spurious siting, and he takes as link theme to a diversity of character stories ~ hilariously satiric, angrily political, or unexpectedly compassionate ~ "the things we see because we want to see them." As well as rapid-fire rhyming, striking imagery, and sublime turns of phrase, Luke's observational comedy is never far from self-deprecating and it's this quality that makes his flamboyant style work so well. Whether he's pretending to strut in Cuban heels, parodying his penchant for posh plumbers or recalling teenage delusions, he reminds us that we all share the same conviction as the Essex lion spotter: how can a thing that makes you feel / be anything but fucking REAL?

Final footnote: congratulations & big virtual bouquet to my co-participant at the Holburne workshop Daisy Behagg who has won the Bridport Prize for best poem, viz: praise from judge Wendy Cope and a cheque for £5000. Wow.

Two openings and a wine tasting

Séamus Moran, currently exhibiting at Black Swan Arts, says most of his work is about capturing a non-representational presence, which is interesting as much of it is cast from wood-knots and some uses natural elements like feathers, and even an apple. It's the artistic process that shifts his imagery into fantasy ~ a word Séamus agrees resonates for him: “Fantasy is what's in your head ~ all the things that go into your life come out eventually.” So these constructions, each unrepeatable, created by mouldings from hundreds of casts, are distorted into patterns that evoke gothic armour, rituals from medieval religion, myths and fairytales. There's a feathered piece that looks like a charred Icarus, and ~ my favourite, pictured here ~ a tangled pattern that could be the thorn forest Sleeping Beauty's prince strode through on his rescue quest... it looks very like the Arthur Rackham illustrations in my 1920 copy, anyway.  This one's called Decade, because "it took ages ~ it started from a drawing and when I'd got all the mouldings in I put the brambles through it because I wanted that scribblyness back."

Then on to Rook Lane Chapel, where artist David Chandler is showing I came, I saw, i-Pad, a delightful collection of atmospheric images from wine-growing regions of France sponsored by Yapps. David's website has some thoughts about creativity as useful to the writer as to the visual artist: Art is not a hobby, it is a life skill... the artist ...works with the treasures that the rest of humanity discards; reaches to the heart of the world and cherishes the experience of living.

The language of love

St James Vault in Bath was crowded on Monday night for Poetry & a Pint where Philip Gross read from his latest collections ~ with some gems on the open mic too, notably from Rose Flint, David Johnson and Stephen Payne. Philip's main theme was family routes, rather than roots, and his father's never-talked-of journey from Estonia to England and the poignancy of his father's final days deserted by all five languages he'd once known. The poems are about silence and absence, using extreme precision of language in so visceral a way that listening becomes more kinesthetic than aural. Philip's introductions are profound too, evoking his childhood realisation that 'silence is a language of its own, always quivering with something else like anger... my father passed on a silence the exact size and shape of what he was not saying.'  The passion in his quest to find words for what is unspoken evokes and then transcends the relationship he describes, reaching out to that universal sense of the tremendous / silent language we may some day speak /or be?

Still in Bath, the Ustinov new season features three plays from the Spanish Golden Age ~ the era of 'comedia nueva', a radical new form which allowed tragic & comic elements, kings & commoners, and varied verse forms all in the same play.  A Lady of Little Sense was written 400 years ago by Lope de Vega using this formula, and this dazzling new translation by David Johnston joyfully combines farce and social satire in a fast-paced romantic comedy as beautifully lit and dressed as if Velazquez had painted every scene. Imagine a version of The Taming of the Shrew in which both sisters need taming by suitors whose eyes are fixed solely on the dowry, with the added twist that while one is sour the other is totally bonkers. It's almost beyond belief that the power of love can transform an autistic simpleton into a woman of passionate eloquence and dignity, but this is the happy transformation that occurs during the interval ~ not that Finea gets any appreciation from her louche but luscious lover Laurencio, who panics that the suitor who previously spurned her may now reclaim her. "I was safe in your simplicity" he scolds her, "I am destroyed. Why on earth did you learn to speak?" The outrageously non-feminist attitudes of all the men would be  shocking if they weren't so absurd and frankly funny. A clever set, pageantry, duelling, dance and song all enhanced this brilliant production directed by Laurence Boswell: some of the clowning was a tad OTT but the high energy and superb acting of the entire cast made this antique comedy of manners a delight ~ and special praise to Frances McNamee so gorgeous as love-cured Finea it was almost possible to believe Laurencio's noble protestation:
Love makes us greater than we are.
What love touches, love transforms; 
where it plants desire its roots split stone. 
If we love well, then we live well. 
And once Finea begins to love,
love will begin to transform Finea. 

Out of the tunnel...

By Saturday night I was just about recovered enough from my epic malaise to manage Front-of-House duties at the Cornerhouse for the Stepping Out production of Diary of a Madman which Nevertheless Pub Theatre hosted for two nights. Gogol's account of paranoia and the treatment of madness remains a classic dark comedy piece, and Anthony Hoskins held a full house gripped. Feedback forms enthused: Great acting and writing, very moving, disturbing, real... Absolutely convincing and powerful descent into madness ~ and we had facebook accolades too: Great pub theatre again. Love those evenings.... So cool to have quality pub theatre here in Frome! 
After the hectic clash of weekend productions life has quietened, though feedback is still coming through for both ~ my favourite Muffin Man email verdict read: "funny, astute, truthful, witty, beautifully structured, and a lovely playfulness about it that had the audience beaming with joy." 

Creative life in Frome never quietens, of course. Sunday night at the Westway cinema celebrated some of the work of local independent film makers, including Greenspin, a clever video-poem by Helen Moore animated by Howard Vause which recently won an award at the Liberated Words festival at the Arnolfini. This event, musically hosted by Sara Coffield, also included the official screening of Tales of the Tunnels which was filmed during Frome Festival under the tunnels of the town while watched by an audience paddled in by the Canoe Club.  Andrew Shackleton, of Recondite Spaces site-specific production company, had the concept of a mythical version of a medieval morality play about man's disconnection with nature and the option of return to harmony, and asked Frome Scriptwriters to create the dialogue. The result was one of the sell-out successes of the summer: a combination of unique setting, great musicality and fantastic costumes all adding to the lyrical, sometimes comical, thought-provoking symbolism of the script, and the movie captures it all.

"Fantastic theatre.." ~ twitter has spoken!

 I made it to the one-day intensive rehearsal of my 'cheeky Short Trip' as Venue, Tom Phillips, and Theatre West et al have been tweeting Muffin Man, playing before Tom's second week of 100 Miles From Timbuktu. Seeing a director working with the actors to lift your play off the page is a gold-dust experience for any writer: Alison Farina's approach is to focus on the interplay between public and private personas at the heart of my play, interrogating Meghan Leslie and Andrew Kingston to find the subtext "which is how you get to the emotional truth". Fascinating.
This is week 2 of extreme convalescence, and I'm still judiciously jettisoning a lot of activities... frustrating but Virusgate has made this essential. Not, obviously, jettisoning my first night! It was great to have family & friends joining me at the Alma Tavern Theatre to watch both my play and the main feature:  100 Miles North of Timbuktu.

Tom's play is based on an intriguing premise:If you could sit at your laptop and change the weather anywhere in the world, what would you do? Create a little light mist to beautify Lake Windermere for a poetry conference? Arrange for a shower to spoil school sports day, or sunshine to glamorise a wedding? Genius nerd Zac is inundated with such requests when the world discovers he can make it rain in the Sahara, but his partner Pete knows the lucrative way to go: “Offensive weather, the ultimate weapon of mass destruction!” It's an offer the MOD can’t refuse, but as ‘Whatsisface who split the atom’ also found, such forces once unleashed can go unstoppably beyond control… this is the darker side of Tom Phillips’ chaotic, clever, farce set in a seedy office in Chapel Street, with Marc Geoffrey as Zac, Piers Wehner as social-media manipulator Pete and Kirsty Cox as Clare their MOD chum. Directed by Hannah Drake with lots of witty visual detail, the story builds up to a frenetic climax reminiscent of Young Ones anarchy combined with quite a bit of Walmington-on-Sea ‘don’t panic’ mania… a uniquely original concept ingeniously developed in a sharp script which is thought-provoking as well as very funny.

Closer each day... to my 'short trip' play

Tom Phillips' play has opened Theatre West’s autumn season to great acclaim with Venue's reviewer giving four-&-a-half stars and declaring "The bar has been set cloud-high.'  So I'm thrilled that next week my Muffin Man will be the "short trip" before Tom's comedy 100 Miles North of Timbuktu.  Director Alison Farina has cast my couple: Andrew Kingston and Meghan Leslie, both members of the team who create Closer Each Day, Bristol's "Improvised Soap Opera".  Intensive rehearsals this Sunday!

And suddenly production involvements are coming not in single spies but in battalions, as Claudius might have put it. Salisbury Fringe next weekend is featuring our Nevertheless Pub Theatre production of When She Imagines, written by Frome Scriptwriters and directed by Rosie Finnegan, plus a Bootleg performance of Girl with the Blue Hair written by Rosie as well as her new monologue Sons of War, written especially for this festival. And before Muffin Man finishes it's week-long run,  Diary of a Madman in a new touring production from Stepping Out is coming to The Cornerhouse, our pub theatre here in Frome. Wow.

Meanwhile, my convalescence teeters on like a unicyclist on a slackwire, determined but unsteady. I've had to cancel loads ~ like seeing the excellent-sounding production of Sweeney Todd here in Frome, as well as joining Rosie for her triple-triumph in Salisbury, and missed all celebrations for National Poetry day.

As a positive footnote: research reported in The Guardian suggests a healthy interest in plays among younger people, who are far more likely to go to the theatre than 45-55 year olds. (87% compared to 63%)  Ticketmaster, who carried out the survey, noticed a trend "towards a younger and less affluent customer base", and found that last year more people went to the theatre than to a music concert or a sporting events. Nevertheless Pub Theatre is proud to play its part in keeping ticket prices down and quality up, so if you're anywhere near Frome October 11th & 12th, come and see Gogol's "surreal, heartbreaking, hilarious" masterpiece at The Cornerhouse. Less than the cost of a couple of drinks... phone to save a seat or just turn up for 8pm.

That was the week that wasn't.

Rose Flint and Graham Hartill are an awesome combo and Frome's Poetry Cafe was privileged to welcome both as guests at our Equinox session. They've both published collections to critical acclaim and both work on the Creative Writing for Therapy course in Bristol. Graham has worked extensively in prisons too, and believes 'poetry pops up like mushrooms in unexpected places.'
As well as two strong sets each from our guests, we had nine great readings, from popular local poets like Helen Moore, Rick Rycroft and Linda Perry as well as some fine debut performers.

Since that night I have been histrionically ill all week ~ not me being histrionic, the virus has been histrionic, it's a Demon Diva. The call-out doctor (what an amazing service! big thumbs up to NHS) diagnosed a triple whammy of causes each one of which would have been quite enough thankyou and maybe not left me shivering and sweating simultaneously, muzzy-headed and fumbling around like a geriatric zombie.I knew it was just a virus but it felt more like I'd had a mini-stroke or a mega-accident with brain injury - I couldn’t seem to find a way to get back into me... So, in short, my week was simply cancelled.

I'll leave you with this nice quote from Philip Pullman in the Journal of the Society of Authors: 
"Politicians talk about 'the basics', by which they mean the ability to spell correctly and write grammatically. But that's not basic at all. You can correct that sort of thing at the last minute. What is truly basic is the attitude to language from the way you're brought into it. .... Picture books do more than anything else to help this happen - if we let them."

Art and Life

The Holburne Museum in Bath has been showing a special exhibition of works by Rembrandt and his Contemporaries which, though it could have been more honestly titled Some 17th Century Dutch Artists, was rich with social interest and included several fabulous paintings. Most stunning of these was Rembrandt's portrait of his mother, painted when he was only 23, of which the Indie review said simply This one is worth the price of admission alone. You could take a folding chair and just gaze at this picture all morning, just absorbing its humanity. 

This was a fascinating era for painters: the first generation of artists who painted for a market rather than for wealthy patrons and the Church, and subject matter was less about individual portraiture and more about society, with something of a moralistic tinge to many of the domestic scenes.  Several have narrative strands redolent of a dread of indolence and what it may lead to, while some of the landscapes show social changes with the emergence of the new bourgeoisie.  And after this enthralling immersion, there's a toy theatre of painterly characters and props to rearrange and make your very own Dutch interior... hoe zit dat!

Also in Bath, The Persistence of Memory, written by Alison Farina and directed by Nancy Medina, transferred to the Rondo after a highly successful run in Bristol. The play deals with contemporary issues ~ dementia and family breakup ~ in a classic context as Mneme, the muse of memory, arrives to oversee Dante DeLucca's decline and to use her goddess powers to console him and his daughter as his life fades away. With so moving a theme sensitively treated by the script, and such excellent lead actors, it's not surprising this piece garnered 5-star reviews: there's subtle humour from the start with Mneme's C-list-celeb self-introduction, but by the end I wasn't the only one damp-eyed as her terrible pact with Duncan Bonner's Dante is finally concluded. 

And now back to Frome, where our annual Carnival on Saturday filled the streets with pirates, music and circus skills and processions for children throughout the day, and in the evening roads throughout the town closed for an eclectic parade of Carnival Competition entries which range from elaborate floats with illuminations that would shame Sirius, to blokes with a penchant for girly underwear, including plenty of whirling twirling majorettes of all ages and sizes. It's excellent street theatre, and the best place to be a groundling is at Cornerhouse corner, where after the 2-hour road-show is over, the awesome Pete Gage Band plays fantastic blues rock that gets us all dancing.

This week's tenuous footnote: any scriptwriter wondering how to move an audience to tears with exquisite non-expositional narrative should check out the final moments of Coronation Street on Friday, as Roy Cropper watches his beloved, terminally-ill, Hayley (the first transexual soap heroine) gaily singing When Will I See You Again? with Fizz and Sean at his birthday karaoke.... which just shows, you should never disparage 'Continuing Drama' series simply because they're popular: the best have strong characters, gripping storylines, and actors like David Neilson and Julie Hesmondhalgh to ensure superb pop-up theatre on a small screen near you now!

Back in the southwest: viewings, writings, and readings

Encounters Short Film & Animation festival took over Bristol dockland screens last week. I went along to the South West Showcase and enjoyed a fantastic programme of 15 bite-size movies ranging from 90 seconds to 13 minutes, some dramatic, many comic. One of the more intriguing shorts used verbatim speech to tell a behind-the-scenes story of train journeys from the cleaners' perspective, but overall my favourite was The Best Medicine, for reasons summed-up by another viewer on their FB page: Seriously the best film I've seen all year... can't believe I went from crying to laughing to crying to laughing so quickly... It touched me... I want everyone to see it! its so life affirming... I want more awesome people like Jon in my life... THANK YOU.
I couldn't put it better.

Meanwhile in Bath, a rather different celebration with the annual Jane Austen Festival, bringing all things sprigged and genteel to the Georgian streets and tea-rooms. From a cosy talk on Rummaging through the Reticule to a city walk termed The Unsavoury Tour!, Janeites can gavotte, nibble, trim turbans, learn etiquette, and generally immerse themselves in Jacobean fashion from sun-up till candlelit evening ~ including a daily dose of Pride and Prejudice at the Podium library. Reading the entire novel takes four hours a day throughout the week using relays of readers: Rosie and I were recruited for a stint in Thursday's installments, the ones when Lizzie has seen the house of which she would have been mistress and begun to regret her strident rejection of its owner, and deciding his renewed addresses stirred an impression of a sort to be encouraged as by no means unpleasing.... Great fun, and a reminder of the author's mastery of irony and clever eye for social mores.

Frome's riverside gallery Black Swan Arts has a new exhibition for autumn: a collection of very diverse images by Rachel Anne Grigor with the intriguing title where the earth meets the sky. Words at the Black Swan writing group met as usual on the first Sunday after the opening to consider this visual art from a verbal perspective. Rachel uses a process involving etching ~ and an element of random outcome ~ for most of these pieces, while achieving apparent precision and touching detail.  This was the day after I got back from Spain and probably my head was still full of Picasso's injunctions so I may have plunged depths unintended, but I was reminded of Auden's wonderful poem about Brueghel's Fall of Icarus, how "everything turns away / quite leisurely from the disaster... " My responses, and those of the other workshop participants, will be posted in the FB archive of Words at the Black Swan.

Final note: another local overview from  Martin Dimery blogs Frome, a recognisable summary in my experience. Like Martin I'm an ancient incomer: I arrived in 1987 from an area of London where litter didn't flutter only because it was solid with the debris of glue-sniffers, so I found the town quaintly respectable at first. I grew quickly to realise it was stubbornly egalitarian and anarchicly quirky, had the wildness of Glastonbury without the dreadlock self-theming and the otherworldliness of Totnes without the cliquey snobbery. I suppose I'll always be an incomer, but unlike those more western counties with their scorn of 'grockles' and 'emmets', locals in Frome always seemed to me to welcome new energy pragmatically. As Martin says, Ever since Frome weavers resisted the lure of industrialisation... Frome has engendered a sense of anti- establishment independence, attracting the like- minded to move in. Frome likes its artizans, writers and artists. Which is why Frome, with arts funding hardly worth bending to pick up if it fell in the Cheap Street leat, nevertheless thrives.

Late sunshine in Spain

I broke my camera on arrival at Cortijo Romero, ~perhaps overawed by the superb suite plus secluded garden with palms and pool allocated for my stay~ and using my mobile meant I took fewer photos than usual. I did grab some highlights, like our day trek high in the mountains foraging fruit and messing about with mulberries, and the trip into Orgiva on market day, but the real highlight was actually the group itself - both groups in fact, yogis and writers mingling indistinguishably at meals and free times. And I totally loved the sessions with my 'Self Expression through Writing' group, who were all supportive, responsive, exploring creatively and finding superb responses to share.

As Ted Hughes said: The progress of any writer is marked by those moments when he manages to outwit his own inner police system ~ and there was much successful outwitting this week. Oonagh Corrigan summed up beautifully in a last-day haiku, quoted here with permission:
No blame intended
when I speak of one who stood 
most in my way: Me.

Add into the mix the constants of Cortijo Romero ~ friendly staff and great meals, jasmine and starlight, dancing and song, those mesmeric mountains with contours shifting subtly as sun slowly fades from the dazzling sky... ~ and you can see why so many visitors return.

A change of pace at the end of the week: a small posse of our group found our late flights back from Malaga offered a chance to scamper into the old town to visit the Roman amphitheatre and the Picasso Museum, so I'll end with a quote from that Spanish genius which is as true for theatre as for art:
You have to wake people up. You've got to create images they won't accept. Force them to understand they're living in a very strange world - a world that is not soothing, a world that is not as they think.
... A painting - any painting - should bristle with razor blades. 

Suppression. For one week only.

I wasn't going to post again so soon, but there's an exhibition on at Rook Lane that will be over when I come back from Spain and really deserves recommendation. Multi-media artist Mark Carr fills the coolly austere gallery space with colour & discord: big acrylics, challenging woodcuts, disturbing videos ~ and music & poetry. At last night's opening Mark was ready to talk about his theme of 'suppression' as well as his techniques. The self-portraits came from an experience of wrongful arrest: there's a video that evokes the confusion of captivity, which led to exploration of the integral aspects ~ anxiety, wariness, and a kind of defiance. This was the image that led Mark to think about his capacity, and the capacity of all of us, to be a 'suppressor' to others.
All the visual work here in some way exposes what is suppressed or hidden. A series of brightly-coloured prints of jolly characters, looking almost like Canterbury pilgrims, is unambiguously titled with actual identities: cardinal, chief executive, child killer... The video in the main room, Hand of God (2) is about the Pope's visit: note the haunted cherubs in the corners. The big woodcuts use a Hogarth/comic-book crude energy to evoke political anger. But don't go without reading some of the poems in the display copies of "13": they show a different side to the artist, reflective and even rhapsodic, as he walks in the countryside appreciating moments like a "peach river showing sunset clouds."

Come September

Come September, come the new season launches... I'm delighted my new short play Muffin Man is on in Theatre West autumn season at Alma Tavern Theatre October 8th-12th as curtain raiser to 100 Miles North of Timbuktu by talented Bristol writer Tom Phillips. And delighted too that Alison Farina of Butterfly Psyche will be directing!
I discovered this last night at Bath's tasty little Rondo Theatre where director Ian McGlynn had the best launch idea yet: a party, with entertainment from the Music is Life team whose new show Pencoweth has its première at the end of the month, and a taster from Living Spit's marvellous show The Six Wives of Henry VIII which you can, and should, see in full in October.
Rondo has a policy of dovetailing professional touring shows with community theatre, and  encouraging new writing too. "We punch above our weight for a 150-seater," says Ian, "people come because they love the place, the welcome, and the view." I'm not quite sure about the view is, but it looks good tonight: here's Rosie Finnegan with Stu McLoughlin and Howard Coggins, attempting to net Living Spit for next summer's festival, me with Shane and Ian, and with Annette Chown, Alison Farina and Laura Jane Faultley.

Nevertheless Pub Theatre is looking forward to autumn, too: Rosie and I are bringing the Stepping Out production of Gogol's Diary of A Madman to The Cornerhouse next month, so put October 11th & 12th in your diary if you live anywhere near Frome and fancy quality professional theatre for less than the cost of a couple of drinks.  More on this later...
... in the meantime, Poetry Cafe night on Monday September 23rd at Frome's Garden Café should be amazing, with Rose Flint and Graham Hartill guests as well as open-mic.  Autumn Equinox feels like a time between times, summer behind us and Samhain approaching, a great time for poets to reflect on Life, Death and In Between...

In the meantime too, I'm off for a final week of sunshine ~ leading my writing course in lovely Cortijo Romero in Andalucia.

From Athens to Frome, democracy in action!

This week I have mostly been negotiating with Aircraft Chest syndrome, that mysterious virus cultivated in the plane's air-conditioning which ensures however bronzed, fit, and relaxed you are when you set off, by the time friends at home are asking about your trip you'll cough pallidly and answer from a throat like sandpaper...  Lots of things have alleviated this annoyance, however.

One being a fantastic BBC4 programme about the origins of theatre: Ancient Greece, The Greatest Show On Earth is hosted by the delicious Dr Michael Scott, who interviews female experts looking like he's planning to lick them later and is passionate about Athenian dramatists and their impact on democracy. "To understand ourselves we have to understand the ancient Greeks" he says, "Athens invented democracy, and theatre was the oil that allowed it to function." It was here, in 6th century BC, that epic narrative stories were for the first time enacted, and stage drama was born. Dr Michael leaps endearingly through ruined sites finding carved dedications that show the key role in civic life of the amphitheatres. He explains, with (literal) animation, how the famous tragedies combined myth and politics in a way designed to promote debate, predict outcomes, and encourage reflection on the communal good.  They were also emotional toga-rippers.  All the big names ~ Sophocles, Oresteia, Aeschylus, and 'enfant terrible' Euripedes ~ would compete in a massive festival for Dionysus which was held in huge esteem by generals and rulers. Plays like The Persians and The Trojan Women had a public purpose: to engage Athenians in an understanding their own history, and to warn their leaders of the dangers of hubris by showing truly tragic consequences. We left Athens as it stood poised for decline after failing to heed the dramatists' warning... Can't wait for next week!

I've been positively chafing to see Steve Coogan's movie debut, and this week Alpha Papa arrived in local cinemas. On the big screen, Alan Partridge delivers everything you'd want from a top-class comedy: brilliantly nuanced characterisation, witty script, superb editing, excruciating humour, and cracking sound-track. Partridge is narcissistic, unreliable, and socially inept, but what keeps us rooting for him is that somewhere within he knows he's not the person he really wants to be, which is why (unlike David Brent, much as I enjoy The Office) he's up there with the best tragi-comic heros: insecure and often self-deluded, but somehow arousing our compassion...  perhaps, some might say, because we know we can be like that too. (Writers may be interested in this Ideas Tap interview with the scriptwriters.)

First Sunday of the month is now a regular date for Frome Super Market, already featured online by Texan photo-journo ("What do I love about England? My husband and a good Gin & Tonic") Selena in four postings about our town. It's a big thing. From the top Catherine Hill, down the cobbled street to the main road (closed to traffic for the occasion) and along the riverside to the old cattle market yard, hundreds of stalls offer just about everything you could put on or beside a stall: bottled, baked, woven, painted, kiln-fired, matured, stir-fried ~ all locally made or sourced by individual enterprises. The independent shops ~ which is most of them ~ are open too: POOT Emporium on the hill has reopened as a collective of contemporary and vintage designers, selling clothes, curios and collectables, now charmingly describing itself as a Department Store. And there's buskers, including classy duo Nicky & Griff, and pop-out cafés, and mask-making for children and the casually carnival kind of atmosphere Frome does so well. Happy September, y'all.