Marshwood+ March 2021

Smiley’s Dorset connections Page 26

Two great loves at once Page 45

Behind the Masks Page 38

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Magazine

Marshwood THE

© Bunty Powell Photograph by Robin Mills

The best from West Dorset, South Somerset and East Devon

No. 264 March 2021

COVER STORY Robin Mills met Bunty Powell at Cerne Abbas

© Bunty Powell Photograph by Robin Mills

’I

was born in Epsom, Surrey in 1935, one of four children. My older sister June became a staff nurse at Kings College Hospital and married a doctor there, Dr John Jackson, who went on to set up a practice in Blandford, until his death about 10 years ago.

Brother John took up farming, though he’s now retired, and my younger brother Timothy lives in Australia.

When I was 15 I was taken very ill with a burst appendix, and developed pneumonia. My parents were called at 3am one night to be told that my chances of lasting the night were slim. I couldn’t understand why they’d come to see me in the middle of the night; it didn’t occur to me things were that serious. However, as one can see, I survived, although I was off school for a year resulting in my leaving at the age of 16.

My father managed to get me a job as private secretary with two authors in Fleet Street. I found it a wonderful experience because it gave me both a taste for organising things, and eventually led me towards a singing career. One of the authors was a Lt Col Reginald Lester, who carried out all the publicity for The King George’s Fund for Sailors. In 1952 he put on two films at Tel. 01308 423031 The Marshwood Vale Magazine March 2021 3

The Odeon, Leicester Square on their behalf: The Cruel Sea, and Above Us the Waves which I helped him with. Col Lester went on to write a book called In Search of the Hereafter, an exploration of “life in the hereafter”, which was my job to type.

He also set up The Churches Fellowship for Psychical Study, which boasted membership of MP’s and other dignitaries with its inaugural meeting staged at Caxton Hall in London.

After working for Col Lester for several years I wanted more companionship and went to work at TP Bennett and Son, a firm of London architects. There I met my future husband, Peter Powell, who had just passed his Finals as an Architect, and was moving elsewhere to work. We married in 1957 and the next year I gave birth to twin girls. They were undiagnosed—after the first arrived, the nurse said “would you be surprised to know there’s another on the way?” From the way I felt, I said, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were three more. These days, one daughter, Jane, lives in Frimley, Surrey and the other Susan, lives in Charminster. I have four great grandchildren now who chat to me online and are great fun and all keep in touch during this ghastly lockdown.

When we moved to Kingston on Thames, I joined the Kingston Operatic Society. They gave me the part of Rosalinda in Die Fledermaus, the result of which was my husband’s affectionate nickname for me, “the old bat”. I also joined the Concert Artists Association; the first concert I did with them was at Wandsworth Prison, with an audience of lifers. I had to be chaperoned everywhere, and the hall was surrounded by guards.

I remember singing Summertime, and noticing a young man in the front row, aged no more than 20, with tears streaming down his face. I wondered how he could be in that place for murder, looking as they all did, so normal. I later performed as a soloist with a Welsh male voice choir in Salute to the Prince of Wales at the Albert Hall, and sang in the Evening Standard’s Award night at Lyons Corner House, with Ted Ray the comedian as the evening’s big attraction. We left Kingston after 5 years and moved to Lower Sunbury on Thames, remaining there for 35 years.

Ann Howard, the English Opera singer, suggested I continue singing lessons with her tutor Madame Rudolpho Llombino, which I did. I also joined a small group of professional singers called Court 4 The Marshwood Vale Magazine March 2021 Tel. 01308 423031

Bunty Powell

© Bunty Powell Photograph by Robin Mills

Opera at Hampton Court, which in the early ‘70s put on concerts in large houses throughout the country. At my suggestion we started staging mostly Mozart operas, and we would invite a chorus to join us. I took over running the group when Leslie Woolf, the previous organiser, sadly died.

My singing career was not earning enough to live on, so it was fortunate to be asked to become Trust Organiser of the Thames Heritage Trust. We put on a huge event on the Brocas, a beautiful meadow just across the Thames from Windsor Castle, which belongs to Eton College.

The event was called “The History of the Thames in Music, Drama and Lights” with Celia Johnson and Robert Hardy doing voice overs. We seated 4,000 people every night on tiered seating with Windsor Castle floodlit in the background. In the audience on the last night was Horace Cutler, then leader of the London County Council at County Hall, and Sir Bernard Delfont. I was introduced to them and Bernard Delfont asked me what else I did. I told him about the opera group I sang with and said we were looking for a London venue to perform in. Horace Cutler suggested I go and see him at his office, with an idea to put to me. This was to stage opera at Holland Park, a beautiful old venue near St James’ Palace.

We put on Don Giovanni first, in the open air, which was a packed out. I had to do everything, front of house, production, directing, and publicising etc, and I have no idea where I found the energy. In the third year, I did two productions, but the weather that summer was dreadful, and the last night became a disaster. Of course, when it starts raining the orchestra just pack up and go home. Fortunately, the

site was later taken over by Kensington and Chelsea council, who erected a large canopy, and took over everything except the productions; they invited us to continue, and I stayed there for another 15 years, as a producer and director only.

I always found the production side of things very exciting, as it gradually took over from my singing career, even though it was often financially risky. Holland Park is now acknowledged as the number three opera venue in London.

After leaving the Thames Heritage Trust, I became National Organiser for Help the Aged, and organised fund-raising productions at the Barbican, Lambeth Palace and St David’s Hall, Cardiff. In 1995, my husband decided he’d like to retire, so we moved to Dorchester, taking over a house in Durngate Street where his mother, Gwen Powell, had lived. She had been awarded Freedom of Dorchester in 1992, in recognition of her work for the town. When we moved in, she was in a care home with Parkinsons, but Peter and I brought her back to her old house to live with us for the last few years of her life. Peter and I also decided to continue staging events in Dorset, putting on three years of productions at Lulworth Castle, at Shuttleworth in Bedfordshire, and Hatfield House where I introduced Leslie Garrett and Charlotte Church, plus Jazz with Humphrey Lyttelton and Acker Bilk, to name but a few. My last productions took place at Kingston Maurward, called Lakeside Magic. When I first saw the place I knew it would be fantastic for a show. Having introduced myself to the management at the Dorchester Show, I started by putting on opera productions, but that didn’t pull in the audiences in the same way as Holland Park. But we also put on tribute bands, which were very successful. Lakeside Magic lasted until 2008 but I also put on an operatic show at the Old Courtroom in Dorchester to raise funds for the MRI Scanner appeal at Dorset County Hospital.

We moved to Cerne Abbas 10 years ago.

Peter clearly wasn’t well, so we needed to be in a bungalow, and I looked after him until his death two years ago. I’m enjoying life in the village, and am thoroughly absorbed in art, having joined art classes under the direction of Sasha Constable which these days are online only. Despite that, it’s great, it’s very sociable and we chat and show our work to one another, all of course on Zoom.

’

UP FRONT Alerted by a friend who had sent a message to an old email address that I haven’t used for some time, I logged into the account to see if anyone else had done the same. There were over 1700 emails there and after scanning through about the first 500, I found they were mostly from Google, Facebook and other digital businesses asking me to react to their observations. Thankfully there were only one or two from people I knew, and they had been there for so long that it was far too late to apologise for not responding. The sheer volume of alerts from digital media and their attempts to catch my attention reminded me of the book that Sophy Roberts writes about this month on page 43. Published in 2019, How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell is a book that Sophy describes as a plan of action to wrest ourselves away from the attention economy—our phones and computers, ‘to reposition ourselves in a present, physical realm’. The need to step back from digital control is a long-debated point and some will say that it’s too late to unshackle vast swathes of society from what Odell describes as, ‘the invasive logic of commercial social media and its financial incentive to keep us in a profitable state of anxiety, envy and distraction.’ Obviously, that’s not something that John Hanning Speke would have had to deal with when searching for the source of the Nile—a story that Seth Dellow enjoyed looking back over on page 22. Nor might it have bothered Jill Dudley when she was travelling in Greece to research her book Behind the Masks—more about that on page 38. And would the power of algorithms have bothered the lacemakers that Margery Hookings talks about on page 18?—probably not. There is much to read in this issue that is as far away from digital distraction as one can get. So switch off the phone and sit down with a magazine. As Sophy Roberts says of how we may live after months of largely digital interaction: ‘maybe when things start to return to normal, we can try to become less obsessed with constant distraction, and live instead by a more empowering hashtag: #NOSMO (the Necessity of Sometimes Missing Out).’

Fergus Byrne

Published Monthly and distributed by Marshwood Vale Ltd Lower Atrim, Bridport Dorset DT6 5PX For all Enquiries Tel: 01308 423031 info@marshwoodvale. com

THIS MONTH

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Cover Story By Robin Mills Event News and Courses News & Views Laterally Speaking By Humphrey Walwyn The Songs of the Lacemakers By Margery Hookings Pig Snout and Slack-ma-Girdle by Alex Bardwell A Somerset Connection By Seth Dellow Marking Boundaries John Le Carré By Cecil Amor

28 28 30 32

House & Garden Vegetables in March By Ashley Wheeler March in the Garden By Russell Jordan Property Round Up By Helen Fisher

33 34 36 37

Food & Dining Cauliflower & Chilli By Lesley Waters Sea Bream and Fisherman’s Potatoes By Mark Hix Spider Crabs By Nick Fisher

38 38 40 43 44 45

Arts & Entertainment Behind the Masks By Fergus Byrne Galleries The Lit Fix By Sophy Roberts Young Lit Fix By Antonia Squire Screen Time By Nic Jeune

46 48

Health & Beauty Services & Classified “The earth is like a tiny grain of sand, only much, much heavier.”

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Editorial Director Fergus Byrne

Contributors

Deputy Editor

Cecil Amor Alex Bardswell Seth Dellow Helen Fisher Nick Fisher Richard Gahagan Margery Hookings Mark Hix

Victoria Byrne

Design

Fergus Byrne

Advertising

Fergus Byrne info@marshwoodvale.com

Nic Jeune Russell Jordan Robin Mills Sophy Roberts Antonia Squire Humphrey Walwyn Lesley Waters Ashley Wheeler

The views expressed in The Marshwood Vale Magazine and People Magazines are not necessarily those of the editorial team. Unless otherwise stated, Copyright of the entire magazine contents is strictly reserved on behalf of the Marshwood Vale Magazine and the authors.

Disclaimer: Whilst every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of dates, event information and advertisements, events may be cancelled or event dates may be subject to alteration. Neither Marshwood Vale Ltd nor People Magazines Ltd can accept any responsibility for the accuracy of any information or claims made by advertisers included within this publication.

NOTICE TO ADVERTISERS Trades descriptions act 1968. It is a criminal offence for anyone in the course of a trade or business to falsely describe goods they are offering. The Sale of Goods Act 1979 and the Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982. The legislation requires that items offered for sale by private vendors must be ‘as described’. Failure to observe this requirement may allow the purchaser to sue for damages.

Road Traffic Act. It is a criminal offence for anyone to sell a motor vehicle for use on the highway which is unroadworthy.

Julia Mear met Roy Beal in Seaton, Devon ‘I’m a sea kayaker, hiker and lover of the outdoors. I grew up on the River Dart in Totnes playing on boats and in kayaks with my younger brother. My parents always owned boats so it was inevitable that I would grow sea legs from a very early age. I even have a pirate ancestor, known as Captain Trapp, from the Shaldon area, so I suppose one could say the sea is in our blood, even though I neglected this until I moved near the sea.

I’ve always loved the water but somehow, I managed to spend 30 years of my life without a kayak or a boat, instead spending my spare time either playing the DJ at various rock venues or racing Superkarts; winning a couple of championships at an amateur level.

I’d been gradually making my way across Devon; living in Torbay, Newton Abbot and Exeter at various times, often due to my job as a car and van diagnostic technician, and eventually ending up in Seaton in 2011. Moving to a seaside town made me realise I’d finally found home. I’ve never married or had children but was always aware of a need to be searching for something and it was around my 40th birthday when I realised there was more to life than just working to live - an epiphany as it were. Follow your heart and gut instincts, something I’d been saying for years but not yet followed my own advice. Always having an affinity with nature, I started looking at how I could be closer to it and help it. I began to reduce my reliance of singleuse plastic and live in a more planet friendly way. I do my best to exist in a way which uses as little resources as possible, for example, my electricity now comes purely from the sun. I’ve never been one to worry about the latest fashion or trend, but I put a lot of effort into only buying things I need, rather than stuff I want. I started practising the healing art of Reiki, living with more thought to the environment, which eventually made me realise how kayaking and the environment went hand in hand.

This friendly town helped me rekindle a love for the outdoors, the sea in particular, and I started sea kayaking in early 2013. Since then with help from many friends and supporters, I’ve raised around £20,000 for good causes under my Kayaking for Charity banner with various adventures. The first one, paddling from Seaton to Land’s End in 2013, took eight days raising funds for Cancer Research UK, a charity chosen because I’d lost people very close to me. One being my mum; the feeling of helplessness as you watch somebody fade away from this awful disease is something nobody should have to experience and I felt compelled to do something about it. The problem with completing what was then the biggest and bravest thing I had ever done is the feeling of wanting more, so I followed it up in 2016 by kayaking from Tower Bridge, London to

© Roy Beal Photograph by Julia Mear

Seaton; a 360 mile trip which took 21 days, this time raising money for Cancer Research UK, the RNLI and a local hospice. A book about my adventures is close to being published, chronicling not only the emotions of fear and joy one goes through with such a challenge, but also telling a story about the areas visited along the way and the sights experienced from a kayaker’s perspective.

After spending over 30 years fixing cars full time, I made the decision to go part-time in 2019. I’ve since been involved with voluntary work for local conservation groups in my spare time. Not long after starting kayaking again, I noticed an increasing amount of plastics washing on to our World Heritage Site, the Jurassic Coast. I’ve also been aware of some visitors leaving their litter behind. I learnt from an early age why we should not litter and I struggle to see why others do not understand. My mum Wendy, was a massive influence on my littering views when, as a young boy, we were sat in a traffic jam and witnessed the occupants of the car in front throw their litter out of the window. Mum was straight out of our car, picked up their litter and bravely (this was the 70’s) threw it back in their car. Pointing at the driver she said, in the stern voice only a mother can pull off, “You do NOT litter in my County!”

A few years ago, I had an idea called Just Add Water, Not Plastic, named after my wooden kayak Just Add Water. I felt frustrated with collecting plastic from every beach I visited when I was out on the water, seeing the remains of seabirds entangled in fishing line and occasionally stumbling across dead seals and dolphins. I thought there must be a way to let others know just how bad things are. My timing was perfect—not long after this the country watched Blue Planet 2 with Sir David Attenborough. We watched in horror and sadness as Sir David showed us that this plastic problem was worldwide and far-reaching. It was upsetting in a way I’ve never experienced before, I’m sure I’m not alone, and I knew something

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had to be done, but how?

Since becoming an Ambassador for the Jurassic Coast Trust in late 2019, I changed the name from Just Add Water, Not Plastic to Clean Jurassic Coast after noticing that I felt alone whilst beach cleaning, “Why isn’t anyone helping me!”. It dawned on me that many others may have felt the same way and the original idea was to turn this into a network of beach cleaning and litter picking volunteers looking after the Jurassic Coast. I have been fortunate these last 12 months or so and met some wonderful people who are now my friends, but more than that they are part of Team Clean Jurassic Coast. Plus, with many other volunteers who kindly gave up their time to help us, we spent most of last year collecting plastic and other litter from the natural world.

All we want is a Clean Jurassic Coast.

With some successful fundraising last summer, we recently purchased a boat to help access secluded coastal areas and we’ve turned the group into a Community Interest Company, ‘Clean Jurassic Coast CIC’. We’ll be working to continue our mission to keep the coast free from plastic, as well as offer education to local schools, businesses and the general public. Last year we removed well over 2000kg of plastic from the environment and we are the proud winners of the Litter Free Coast and Sea “Litter Heroes 2020” award. We also work with the Ocean Recovery Project, part of Keep Britain Tidy. Plastics we find in the marine environment get shipped to their depot in Exeter. The plastics are then cleaned and shredded and end up with a new life as a picnic bench or a fence post. One of the great things about this project is the plastics being used wouldn’t normally be recycled. Maybe in the near future, this can be done for ALL plastics.

This summer, I will be undertaking another kayak challenge called Top Down. I’ll be setting off from John O’Groats at the end of May and paddling to Lands’ End to promote awareness of the issues with plastic and litter in the marine environment. This 900 mile trip is expected to take up to two months. I’ll be kayaking on the sea, inland waterways and the 23 mile long Loch Ness as I head along the Caledonian Canal. I’m hoping Nessie likes beach cleaners.

When the current lockdown restrictions ease, I can’t wait to start organising small beach cleans again. It’s great for the soul as well as meeting new, like-minded people. Coming to live in Seaton has certainly changed my life for the better, as well as helping the planet and all life living on it. The sea has become my playground, Mother Nature is my reason for being and, now I’ve at last found where I belong.

If you would like to know more or get in touch, please visit the website www. cleanjurassiccoast.uk’

Some of the stories you may have missed For a number of reasons, including lockdown restrictions, we took the decision to produce the February issue as an online issue only. For anyone that may have missed it, visit our website at www.marshwoodvale.com and have a look.

We have also printed the cover story on the page opposite.

The February issue inlcluded our regular features including Humphrey Walwyn, Margery Hookings, Cecil Amor, Philip Strange, Russel Jordan, Ashley Wheeler, Sophy Roberts, Nic Jeune, Antonia Squire, Mark Hix and Lesley Waters as well as special recipes from the Axminster and Lyme Cancer Support book Recipes with Love. This is a wonderful project that features delicious recipes from local people. Proceeds from sales of the book go to continue the work of Axminster and Lyme Cancer Support. The book is available now and can be purchased at the charity online shop: https://axminsterandlymecancersupport. co.uk/product-category/shop. It is also available to buy in store at: Archway Bookshop, Serendip Bookshop, Felicity’s Farm Shop, Millers Farm Shop and Dalwood Post Office. For more information visit https:// axminsterandlymecancersupport.co.uk/ The February issue also featured a story about the completion of a trilogy of books about three British battalions: the Devons, Hampshires and Dorsets in the invasion of Sicily in 1943. Roy’s Boys, the third in the trilogy Roy’s Boys, is nicknamed after Brigadier Roy Urquhart DSO, and draws on the testimony of scores of veterans.

We also had a preview of the exciting new exhibition that came to the Bridport Arts Centre in February.

Twenty-three years on from the 1998 Returning Natives exhibition which included drawings and writings from PJ Harvey, Bridport Arts Centre staged a bold new multi-disciplinary show to highlight and celebrate today’s emerging talent. It was an exciting programme that offered much to look forward to, not just for this event but for the work that could follow as these talented locals go forward with their careers.

To see all of these stories and more visit our website: www.marshwoodvale.com.

Tel. 01308 423031 The Marshwood Vale Magazine March 2021 9

Discovery Centre success in Tourism Awards

T

he West Bay Discovery Centre has won a silver award at the Dorset Tourism Awards 2020 Finals in the Accessible and Inclusive Tourism category. The Accessibility and Inclusive category focusses on how well attractions and tourism providers respond to the needs of visitors with disabilities and other impairments.

Trustee at the Centre, John West said ‘We are delighted to have gained this prestigious award, We make every effort to cater for the needs of all our visitors. The Centre is designed to be visitor friendly for those with mobility problems and we have an accessibility guide and a large print guide will be introduced in the coming season to help visitors with sight impairments fully enjoy what the Centre has to offer. We are always working to improve further what we do and an audio guide is in development.

This award recognises the progress we have already made in this area. We were also delighted that the West Bay Play Area also won an award. The Play Area is a fantastic facility for all ages and we are within a few minutes walking distance of each other.

For the Discovery Centre, like other tourist and visitor attractions, 2020 was a challenging year and our success in opening the Centre for four months and winning this award is a massive achievement by our manager and volunteers.’

The award means that the Centre will also be automatically considered for the South West Tourism Excellence Awards. For more information visit www.westbaydiscoverycentre.org.uk

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Tel. 01308 423031 The Marshwood Vale Magazine March 2021 11

March

EVENT NEWS AND COURSES March 3, 10, 17, 24, 31

Scottish Country Dancing is cancelled at the moment. We normally meet every Wednesday evening from 7.30 to 9.30 , £3.00 per person at Hatch Beauchamp village hall TA3 6SG. If you would like to join us when classes resume please contact Anita on 01460 929383 or email anitaandjim22@gmail.com for more information. We look forward to welcoming you soon.

March 4

The South West in the Roman Period with Professor Stephen Rippon 7.30 pm. Professor Stephen Rippon is a Landscape Archaeologist at the University of Exeter. He will discuss the South West in the Roman period with a focus on the Blackdown and Quantock Hills. The South West Heritage Trust is running a ‘Lockdown Lecture Series’ for history fans to enjoy via Zoom. To find out more and book go to swheritage.org.uk/heritage-online

March 5

March 12

Bookbinding workshop10-12.45, online course, fold a Double Blizzard book with covers, £22 course only £28 with materials pack, further information/ booking nesta@leafwork.co.uk 07984 001830.

Lyme Regis Rotary Club are holding an On Line Silent Auction to be held between 12th and 28th March. Over 60 lots! https:// www.jumblebee.co.uk/lymeregisrotaryclubsilentauction and The Rotary Club website and Facebook page.

March 13

West Dorset Group of the Somerset and Dorset Family History Society, zoom meeting 2.00, meeting opens at 1.30. This month the talk is by society member, Ted Udall ‘Slavery to the Workhouse’. Ted will look at the the fine line our ancestors faced in the 1800s of surviving or ending up in the Workhouse. If you wish to join the meeting contact Jane on 01308 425710 or email: jferentzi@aol.com

March 17

Bookbinding workshop, 10-12.45, two session online course, A5 Notebook with rounded spine & cloth and paper covered boards, some experience required, £40 course only, £48 with materials pack, further information/booking nesta@leafwork.co.uk 07984 001830.

March 18

Bookbinding workshop, 10-12.45, online course, play with Concertina Fold structures, £22 course only £28 with materials pack, further information/ booking nesta@leafwork.co.uk 07984 001830.

March 9

Bridport History Society, zoom meeting 2.30, meeting opens at 2.00. This month the talk is ‘Elisabeth Frink - Life and Legacy’ Annette Ratusnaik and Sam Johnston, from the Dorset History Centre. The Frink archives are held at the Centre and several years ago a Heritage Lottery Grant enabled them to do in depth research into the archive and catalogue it. If you wish to join the session contact Jane on 01308 425710 or email: jferentzi@aol.com

March 11

Shute Festival: Laurence Anholt in conversation with Jason Webster on Festival of Death. 6-7 pm: Free to register online via www.shutefest.org.uk 12 The Marshwood Vale Magazine March 2021 Tel. 01308 423031

March 23

A Time Traveller’s Guide to Regency Britain with Dr Ian Mortimer 7.30 pm. Historian and author Dr Ian Mortimer offers a chance to engage with the sights, sounds, smells and experiences of Regency Britain. Dr Mortimer will explore his most recent book ‘The Time Traveller’s Guide to Regency Britain’ (2020). The South West Heritage Trust is running a ‘Lockdown Lecture Series’ for history fans to enjoy via Zoom. To find out more and book go to swheritage.org. uk/heritage-online

Bridport and District u3a presents a talk by Debbie Birtwhistle, about the work of the Dorset and Somerset Air Ambulance, online via Zoom. 2pm. Bridport and District u3a is an organisation for people who want to undertake learning for its own sake, with like minded people, in a social setting. There is no minimum age,

but you should be no longer in, or seeking, full time employment or raising a family. Since March 2020 most of our face-to-face activities have been moved online, and over 20 new online groups have also started. We continue to run our full programme of scheduled monthly talks, currently using Zoom. Please visit our website for specific details and contact information www. bridportu3a.org.uk, or email membership@bridportu3a.org.uk

March 24

Bookbinding workshop, 10-12.45, two session online course, A5 Notebook with rounded spine & cloth and paper covered boards, some experience required, £40 course only, £48 with materials pack, further information/booking nesta@leafwork.co.uk 07984 001830.

March 25

Shute Festival: Martin Hesp in conversation with Sam Knights on The Last Broomsquire. 6-7 pm: Free to register online via www.shutefest.org.uk

March 31

Bookbinding workshop,10-12.45, online course, create a cheerful Butterfly stitch notebook, £22 course only £28 with materials pack, further information/ booking nesta@leafwork. co.uk 07984 001830.

Artsreach

EVENTS IN APRIL Live or Online send your April event details to info@marshwoodvale.com by March 15th. volunteers in the community, to work with them in bringing events specifically for children and teenagers. To find out what they have on offer, go to their digital diary which is regularly updated. You can also sign up to receive regular emails from them. https://artsreach.co.uk/news/digital-diary

Beaminster Museum

Expansion work moves forward at Beaminster Museum Dr Murray Rose, Chairman of the Trustees says ‘The actual building phase of our Expansion Project, part-funded by the National Lottery, is now completed, with our contractors having left in early February. It went very well and ran to time despite the pandemic causing an additional dimension which hadn’t been anticipated before we started. We now move on to finishing the electrics and heating in the new extension, and joiners installing a staircase and gallery doors. This leaves the painting and some door hanging to be completed by ourselves, before carpets are finally laid. These tasks can be done alongside cleaning, painting, and re-instating displays in the “old” building. As soon as COVID restrictions are eased, volunteers are looking forward to being allowed back into the building to start on their work.’

Throughout this pandemic time, one group of people which has been hard hit is actors, comedians, singers, musicians and dancers. Our own Dorset charity, Artsreach, has been working very hard to try and find ways of bringing them to audiences in Covid-secure ways. In the short Summer interval when restrictions were relaxed a bit, there were a few events outside, or even in village halls with socially distanced audiences, and, more and more, they are supporting events online.

Interestingly, they are in the vanguard, identifying the need for more help for young people, and are hoping to get dedicated Tel. 01308 423031 The Marshwood Vale Magazine March 2021 13

Who’d want to be a ‘tosser’?

Continuing on from last month’s articles about keeping litter at bay, Martin Roundell Green shares his thoughts on what we can all do to make our environment better

I

f you’re worried about the amount of litter strewn along our roadside verges, so am I. And if you’re not, maybe you should be. It’s a growing problem. On some stretches, our roadsides are starting to look like those in the Third World.

My photo shows a drain on Kingston Hill near Ilminster.

It’s not just what the drain-grill caught that’s the problem.

It’s what got through it: the chocolate wrappers and snack packets, coffee-cup covers and Covid masks. They all get washed down into the River Parrett and then on out to the sea.

My wife and I have taken to picking up countryside litter on our daily exercise walks. Now is a good time to do this, in these first few months of the year. The council has cut the roadside hedges and verges back, last summer’s foliage has died away, and new spring growth hasn’t yet appeared.

So it’s much easier to spot our prey. Picking it up gives the countryside a fresh start. Not for long perhaps but, curiously, litter left lying seems to be a magnet for more litter.

What do you need to pick up litter? Well, first some tough gloves, for instance rubberised gardening gloves, are essential. Personally, we don’t use a litter-picking tool because we find the stooping and straightening good exercise, but many volunteer pickers do. You need a bag so I’ve dedicated a couple of supermarket bags-for-life to the task. And last, for your own safety, a light coat or even a ‘high-viz’ vest makes sense. If you live in Somerset, contact the countryside charity CPRE Somerset, and they can kit you out with a picker, gloves and hi-viz vest if you commit to a regular litterpick in your area. Details at www.cpresomerset.org.uk How much do you pick? That’s up to you of course, but I work by the bag-full: one bag per walk, or two if I’m feeling particularly virtuous (or cross with the tossers). On some stretches of road it’s surprising how quickly a bag fills up.

It’s extraordinary what motorists carelessly toss into our green and pleasant countryside. Sweet papers and snack packets, face masks and plastic bottles of course. You’ll find a colourful range of soft drinks cans too. More sobering are the large number of cider and beer cans, and the occasional

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pre-mixed gin and tonics. This week I also picked up two vodka, two whisky and a Napoleon brandy bottle. I imagine the drinkers were disposing of the evidence before getting home. Or to work. On a less sad note, I also found a baby’s dummy, a pair of reading spectacles, a half-full dispenser of anti-wrinkle lotion and a large black bra.

What’s to be done? How can the tossers be stopped, or at least discouraged? How can they be brought to realise that tossing litter into the countryside is simply unacceptable?

Easier said than done. But most people these days accept the need to queue, to let other drivers in, to say please and thank you, to clean up after their dogs, even to socially distance.

Civilisation is not an impossible dream.

First we should make clear that littering in the countryside is a serious offence. So the penalty for dropping litter needs to be serious too. The fixed-penalty charge for littering— even a sweet wrapper—should be raised from its present ‘up to £150’ to ‘up to £1,000’, and this new maximum penalty well publicised. I’d also like to see tossing litter out of a car made a motoring offence so that magistrates have the power to add penalty points to the driver’s licence and also sentence tossers to so many hours of unpaid community work Catching the tossers is hard. Drivers usually wait until they’re out of town before tossing their rubbish away.

One idea would be to require drive-through takeaways to use number-plate recognition software to print customers’ registration numbers automatically onto packaging. The customer who’d bought that coffee cup or burger box could then be easily identified. CCTV could be seen to be monitoring littering hotspots. Catching offenders will continue to be difficult, but the greater chance of being caught plus tougher penalties will help get the message across: ‘The countryside isn’t a dustbin. Take your litter home.’

I’d also like to see roadside campaigns, not permanent but periodic ones like the political ones we see at election: “KEEP BRITAIN TIDY. TAKE YOUR LITTER HOME”; or “FOR THE KIDS SAKE, KEEP OUR PLANET TIDY”; or maybe just, “LITTER CAMERAS OPERATING HERE. TAKE IT HOME. THANK YOU FOR NOT LITTERING/NOT BEING A TOSSER” Schools and colleges can help. A series of information films highlighting the damage that littering does to the environment should be part of the curriculum. They need to be interesting, well produced and regularly refreshed. Not old hat. If the message gets through to children, they’ll pass it on to the parents.

Finally, like the speed-awareness courses that speeding motorists can be asked to do, there should be similar litterawareness courses for motorists caught littering. Or a spell in the stocks being pelted with litter. That would learn them, wouldn’t it?

Tel. 01308 423031 The Marshwood Vale Magazine March 2021 15

News&Views

HONITON Marsh Award for THC

Thelma Hulbert Gallery (THG) has announced that Anna Aroussi, their Gallery Engagement Officer, has been awarded the prestigious Marsh Award for dedication and excellence in Gallery Education. The tenth annual Marsh Awards for Excellence in Gallery Education celebrated the hard work and dedication of colleagues working within the sector of gallery, museum, and visual arts education. The Awards are funded by the Marsh Christian Trust and run by Engage, the National Association for Gallery Education, whose mission is to give everyone the opportunity to learn and benefit from the arts. Anna intends to use the prize money for training opportunities.

AXMINSTER Axe Vale Show cancelled

Another victim of the pandemic the popular Axe Vale Show has been cancelled for 2021. Simon Hodges, show chairman explained that the committee does not have a high enough level of confidence to make the necessary preparations and commit to the financial investments required to run this year’s show.

‘As a non-profit making charity run entirely by volunteers’ he said ‘we would struggle to remain viable if we committed to a 2021 Show and later had to cancel or restrict numbers due to Covid 19 related guidance. The team voted unanimously to cancel the Show and to retain reserves to stage the next Axe Vale Show in June 2022.’

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BRIDPORT ‘Respect’ for Bees

Despite a limit on sporting fixtures Bridport Bees football club has been announced as Premier Division winner of The Toolstation Western League September to December 2020 Respect Award. A statement on the Toolstation website said: ‘In normal circumstances a presentation would take place before a home fixture, but with games suspended due to the COVID situation the club will receive their awards and vouchers in due course. The Respect Award started about 5 years ago as part of the FA Respect campaign. It was originally just for the First Division clubs but a change in the refereeing structure meant that the 2020/21 season included the Premier Division clubs.

YEOVIL New ranger roles at Ham Hill

Funding from the Culture Recovery Fund for Heritage has helped South Somerset District Council appoint three new rangers who will help keep Ham Hill Country Park and its heritage protected and in tip-top shape for wildlife to thrive and visitors to enjoy. The funding is a rescue package to safeguard cultural and heritage organisations across England from the economic impact of Covid-19.

DORSET Charity sets out own vision

The countryside charity CPRE joined forces with 17 other organisations to launch their ‘Vision for Planning’ calling on the government to rethink major elements of its White Paper planning proposals and work with stakeholders to deliver a planning system that puts people, climate and nature at its heart. The call comes from a broad and united coalition of housing, planning, transport, environmental, heritage and public health organisations that have worked together in response to the government’s Planning White Paper, published in August last year. The government is expected to make a further announcement in March about whether and how it will take forward the proposals in the White Paper.

New Language for Lockdown Laterally Speaking by Humphrey Walwyn

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t’s now been nearly a year and our ‘stay at home’ routine has changed all of our lives including the way we speak.

Here’s my lateral lock-down list of new words and phrases we can all use to describe life under the pandemic. Here are a few short ones to begin with…

Maskaraid: Stealing or borrowing someone else’s mask for your own use. So annoying, so inconsiderate...

Masking Meltdown: When you enter a shop and discover you haven’t got your mask—often a result of Maskaraid.

Quaranteen: A state of despair when forced to remain during lock down in the same house and domestic bubble as bored noisy teenagers or small children. Prolonged Quaranteening causes stress, panic attacks and indigestion.

Clock-Down: When it’s so boring that time appears to stand still during home isolation.

Serial Bingeing: When you are so obsessed with your favourite TV series on Netflix or BBC iPlayer that sleeping and eating take second place to watching. Following the storyline becomes an obsession that knows no bounds. Will they get away with it? Will he slip and fall off the mountain?

Will the holiday romance turn out to be a genuine affair or a passing whim? Will she ever get over her childhood obsession with Julio Iglesias and chocolate digestive biscuits?

You and I may not care, but to the serious TV serial fan these matters can be more important than life itself. They have to watch the next episode immediately the current one has finished and then stay glued to the screen for the one after that. Some serial bingers have been known to collapse into sleep-deadened oblivion with the TV remote still in their hand. Emergency services have even been called out to awaken neurotic addicts who remain glued to the telly even when the house is on fire or the bath has overflowed and flooded the kitchen.

Serial Nibbler: Normal people watch a film from the beginning right through to the end, but Serial Nibblers can’t do this. He/she is so impatient for something new that they never finish anything. Their eyes may be open but their brain is disengaged as they’re already planning what to watch next.

This means they can go through over 100 films in a single day when only watching five minutes of each. Their lives are consequently restless and shallow and their dreams remain constantly unfulfilled as they will never know how anything ends. Pitiful…

Serial Killer: Someone who has already seen the current film or series but cannot resist informing everyone else as to what’s about to happen. Avoid this individual. They are dangerous co-habitants under lock-down stress.

Delivery Anxiety: Since most of our food shopping is now online, the arrival of the regular delivery van from Morrisons or Waitrose is the most exciting thing to happen

Our house is so full of packaging, we could open an empty box shop!

in our narrow locked down lives. As the date of the next food arrival draws near, sufferers from Delivery Anxiety start to worry. Will those special sausages be ‘unavailable’? Will our favourite soup be ‘out of stock’ or worse still have been substituted for some inferior broth? Will the ‘Best Before’ dates be far enough ahead so we don’t have to consume everything within 24 hours?

Boxing: Not a domestic fist-fight as to who controls the TV remote, but the act of collapsing and folding the hundreds of empty cardboard boxes now littering the hallway. Since all our shopping is online, our house has now become Dorset’s main depository for cardboard boxes and packaging. I’ve got half a roomful of them—UPS, DHL and Amazon boxes which are so useful, I can’t possibly bring myself to throw any of them away. I ask myself: ‘at what point does a collection of empty boxes cease to become useful and become a toxic cardboard overload?’

Zooming Doom: It seems that nowadays every charity gathering, online business meeting and family get-together needs to be interactively zoomed so we can all see each other. But I don’t want to be seen all the time! In pre-zoom days, I used to be able to eat, scratch my nose, cook and read my emails dressed only in my underpants—all while speaking to someone on the phone which was a much more constructive use of my time. Now I have to be shaved, hair brushed and looking smart while we discuss anything from family gossip to pot holes in the road. And never forget it’s a two-way link! You may be able to view me and my new shirt in full technicolour, but I can also see the extraordinarily hideous orange sunset picture on the wall behind you and your bookshelf full of trashy novels by Barbara Cartland.

And I thought you were a smart intellectual? And isn’t that a copy of the New Kama Sutra next to the dirty coffee cups?

My oh my… How embarrassing! You had better tidy it all up before the Church Council zoom meeting this evening. And a short slightly rude one to end with….

Maskhole: An idiot and a complete jerk who refuses to wear their mask on principle.

Tel. 01308 423031 The Marshwood Vale Magazine March 2021 17

THE SONGS OF THE

Lacemakers Honiton is well-known for its major role as a centre for hand-made lace. Thousands of fingers worked painstakingly for many hours to create lace adornments for the clothing of the rich.

Margery Hookings talks to folk song collector Amanda Boyd about what she discovered as part of a project which brings together archive film and music for people with dementia.

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ccording to the Allhallows Museum of Lace and Local Antiquities at Honiton, one square centimetre of lace could take up to five hours to produce. Large pieces like collars or handkerchiefs could take up to 1,000 hours.

This bobbin lace, with its scrollwork and designs from nature, made a name for the town in the 17th century.

It was a cottage industry, with the majority of lace being made in the homes of the workers, who were often the wives of poorly paid labourers and fishermen. Often these people were controlled by shop owners, who employed teams of workers to produce the lace for sale in London and other markets.

It’s made by hand in a miniature weaving process, the ‘loom’ made from pins placed through a pattern on a straw pillow. Very fine threads held on bobbins are woven back and forth to build up the pattern. Variations are created by the use of different stitches within the pattern.

But by 1800, handmade Honiton Lace was becoming obsolete with the invention of machine-made net, which was much cheaper to produce. In 1840, however, the fortunes of this skilful craft took an upturn when Queen Victoria married Prince Albert in 1840 in a dress trimmed extensively with Honiton Lace. It proved an important

boost to lace making in East Devon.

Looking through the Windrose Rural Media Trust archive, Somerset folk singer Amanda Boyd came across a silent film of a lacemaker in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, from the 1960s.

She wanted to find out what the woman was doing and find the appropriate song to accompany the film for her series of YouTube songbooks, in which she combines song and archive film to great effect for people with dementia.

Ordinarily, she would be visiting memory cafes but, since the coronavirus pandemic, she has been working via Zoom.

Amanda’s presentations are now available to the public on YouTube.

‘The lady was sitting outside her house and was filmed whilst she worked with her bobbins, pillow, and thread,’ Amanda explains. ‘I was intrigued by this little film.

Knowing nothing about lacemaking, I wondered what the lady was doing.

‘So I contacted Honiton Museum who then put me in contact with an experienced lacemaker who gave me a running commentary when we watched the film together on Zoom.’

Amanda realised that, just like the shanty singers at Portland Quarry and the farmers in the field, women and

The Chard Lace Riots

Amanda Boyd

LACE making became a major industry in Chard from the 1820s. The town was one of the places where factories were set up following riots and unrest in traditional lacemaking towns like Nottingham.

But in 1842, the workers at Chard’s lace factories had also had enough. It was a hard life. Faced with harsh working conditions and cuts to pay, many were nearing starvation. In August of that year, they gathered together to voice their desperation.

When the Militia was called to break up the gathering the protest escalated into a riot.

In 2005, the townspeople of Chard wrote and acted in a radio play which you can hear as an audio tour on the Chard Museum website. It gives a fascinating insight into the social pressures behind the riots.

The play was made with the technical help of the Windrose Rural Media Trust (formerly Trilith), directed by Holyrood School’s head of drama, Dave Walsham, and funded by Chard Town Council.

The audio takes the form of a walk around the town where the events took place. It’s worth setting aside a couple of hours to enjoy the piece—and time is something many of us have at the moment.

You can hear it via this link - https://www. chardmuseum.co.uk/chard-lace-riots-augio-tour

Lace making outdoor, photo©Windrose Rural Media Trust

children sang as they worked on the lace, creating a rhythm to make the job easier.

Guided by the curator at Honiton Museum, she found a song known as a lacemaker’s ‘tell’ in the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library’s online archive, which had been printed in the Bedfordshire Times and Independent in February 1904.

‘My story was coming together,’ said Amanda. ‘Now I had a film, a description of a lacemaking process, and a song. But I wanted to know if anyone had completed research about the songs themselves.’

So she turned to the internet where, through the ‘By the Poor, For the Rich: Lace in Context’ website, she found David Hopkin, Professor of European Social History at the University of Oxford. He is a social and cultural historian of modern Western Europe and his research includes women workers, especially servants and lacemakers.

Says Amanda: ‘We watched the film together on Zoom and chatted about lacemaker songs. The children’s lacemaking stories were particularly evocative. This raised several questions— would children sing? Would they sing quietly to themselves? Would they use the songs to disclose things in their lives, communicate a shared experience with

the other children? Perhaps they were told to sing to speed up production. Was there any ever fun in the lacemaking classroom?’

She discovered that many lacemakers learned their craft at lacemaking school where songs were used as part of the creative process. Many ‘tells’ refer to domestic violence, from husbands and the ‘lace mistress’ who supervised the students.

Following the Bedfordshire leads, she then found The Higgins Bedford Museum. ‘The Keeper of Social History’ Lydia Saul shared several photos of lacemakers, which Amanda has used alongside David’s narration.

Says Amanda: ‘According to The Heritage Craft Association lace making is on the viable crafts list and long may that continue!’

Amanda’s digital presentation weaves together her research and can be found on Windrose Rural Trust’s close encounters website.

‘I’m very grateful to Honiton Museum, Chard Museum, Professor Hopkin and the Higgins Bedford Museum for all their help.’

You can find out about Amanda’s search for more information in this YouTube presentation https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=MnXE7mkk_yA

Tel. 01308 423031 The Marshwood Vale Magazine March 2021 19

Pig Snout and Slack-ma-Girdle Cider apples have played an important role in West Country history, as, no doubt, has the golden liquid they produce. When it was still possible to attend a tasting, Alex Bardswell sampled some Dorset varieties.

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ver the last hundred or so years Dorset has not been considered one of the cider counties like Devon, Somerset and Hereford, but there is a legend that it was the first county to start cider making before the Norman conquest when French monks brought the apples and technique to Loders, close to Bridport. The Dorset soil isn’t all suitable for fruit growing, so orchards tended to be small local enterprises; despite that, it became a cider county for centuries and is becoming so again with at least twenty cider makers. There are no national cider brands in Dorset as in Somerset and Herefordshire, but Taunton Cider planted large orchards near Bridport run by Rupert Best.

In 2007 one of the mainstays, Nick Poole, started on a mission to find as many lost Dorset apples that he could, and teamed up with expert Liz Copas, former Long Ashton Research Station scientist, and pomology advisor to the National Cider Makers Association. Before the war, P.T.H Pickford was the Cider Orcharding Advisor at Long Ashton and wrote an article on the Dorset cider industry in 1938, so Nick and Liz researched Pickford’s article on the orchards’ whereabouts at the time, as well as reading some Thomas Hardy books showing there were many orchards in the Blackmore Vale. They also perused Dorchester’s History Centre maps indicating almost every village that had orchards around it. Sadly, most of these were lost in the 60s due to grants for building on ‘surplus’ land, therefore destroying many old apple trees, leaving only road names like tombstones such as Old Orchard Way and Apple Tree Close.

The travels turned up a few Dorset apples in the first year, mostly sharp or bittersharp, such as Warrior and Ironside, pointing to the old Dorset taste buds preferring more acidic thin cider. Some varieties found south and west in the county were Golden Ball, Golden Bittersweet and Cadbury, all yellow, but with distinctive and less bitter flavours. Plus a bittersweet called Loders—possibly one of the first apples? All the apples found were sent for DNA testing and most of them were pure Dorset varieties, meaning there are at least thirty eight unique Dorset cider apples.

A fantastic number when you consider that most large cider makers usually use about four varieties!

Nick and Liz also took parts from any worthy trees

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for propagating, the ‘fruits’ of which are distributed throughout the county to small orchards and enthusiasts.

Nick and Liz chose twenty two apples which they considered the best for single variety ciders. Nick spent some months collecting the apples and making them into small batches of cider, which were ready to taste by spring 2020.

I was delighted to be asked to join the cider elite at the tasting. Of course, the first date had to be cancelled due to Covid restrictions, but another was arranged at the end of September. Around twenty people, ranging from Liz to local cider makers to writers, to purveyors of cider, and myself, gathered in a barn in Rupert Best’s orchards which also contain many old Dorset trees. We sat at big tables, on which were pens and comment sheets, plus six glasses of cider, with a sign saying ‘Do not drink’! I took my book by Alan Stone In search of Cider which covers local cider makers in the southwest, and had pieces on the makers who came to the tasting, as well as many of the varieties Nick and Liz found. When we were allowed to drink the ciders we were asked to score them out of ten, and I was surprised how good these single varieties tasted, many lost for years in forgotten orchards. We were told the apple names and the village or area where they had been found: such as Hains Late sweet from Marnhull, Gollyknapp from Puncknowle, Golden Ball from Netherbury, Maiden’s Blush appropriately from Maiden Newton, and Marlpit Late which Nick grows at West Milton. Many varieties have lovely evocative names like Fillbarrel, Cap of Liberty, Pig Snout and Slack-ma-Girdle.

We were very impressed by the ciders, many of which are light and fruity and not too high in tannins, which is the sort of taste and flavour that drinkers prefer these days. The general consensus from our scores was that Winter Stubbard from around Nettlecombe and Tom Legg from Marnhull were the most flavoursome. Winter Stubbard is a late fruiter as the name implies and is a very old apple found on West Country farms. Tom Legg is a mid-season sweet apple with the attached comment ‘could be a useful variety’.

After a ploughman’s, a few of us tried other ciders from the end of the barn and found them to be nearly as good, apart perhaps from Rough and Ready! The local cider makers were keen to grow some Dorset trees; as they are young they should see the trees produce enough crop for some cider, and could mix them with other apples. Most ciders are made of a mixture of apples, although some such as Kingston Black and Dabinett are often single variety drinks.

It was a fascinating afternoon and good to see the enthusiastic locals wanting to rejuvenate Dorset cider apples. That and the update of her booklet on lost Dorset cider apples that Liz is writing leads Nick and all concerned to hope that Dorset will become a great cider county again.

Tel. 01308 423031 The Marshwood Vale Magazine March 2021 21

A Somerset Connection

TO THE SOURCE OF THE NILE Despite a level of ambivalence toward his discovery of the source of the river Nile, John Hanning Speke enjoyed a moment of celebrity until ‘cut off in full manhood and in the zenith of his fame’. Seth Dellow tells the story of a remarkable individual.

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n the 1st October 1864, the Somerset County Gazette published the events of a funeral that took place only weeks earlier at the Church of St. Andrews in Dowlish Wake, near Ilminster. As the muffled bells rang out across the rural landscape, it was declared that ‘All was in mourning and grief for him who had been cut off in full manhood and in the zenith of his fame’. Attended by over 1,500 people, the residents of Victorian Somerset shared a collective sorrow for the loss of a ground-breaking imperial explorer. John Hanning Speke died a sudden death on the 15th September 1864, the result of a shooting accident in Wiltshire, whilst in the company of his cousin, George Fuller. At just 37 years of age, Speke’s untimely end curtailed his many enterprising adventures.

In attendance on that sombre morning were two admired and prolific fellow explorers, both connected by one desire.

Dr David Livingstone was a well-known Scottish Christian missionary who explored the African interior in search of the source of River Nile. James Grant was the other, whom Speke had met whilst serving in the Second Sikh War of 1848. Grant became Speke’s loyal companion during his search for the Nile’s source. The mystery of the Nile typified Victorian exploration at its height. Competition was rife between individuals who wished to venture deep into the African continent, with eternal glory and fame the reward. Speke’s ornate memorial within the Church honours his lasting legacy with the inscription ‘E NILO PRAECLARUS’ (From the Nile renowned).

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Joining the notorious East India Company’s army in 1844 at just seventeen, Speke was involved in a selection of Eastern campaigns for ten years. However, his disinterest in military endeavours soon drew him to Tibet for years of trophy hunting and specimen collecting. The majority of Speke’s work is now exhibited at the Museum of Somerset in Taunton, in an elaborate room reminiscent of the Natural History Museum. His longing for further adventurous travel took him, in 1854, to the African continent. Within the Church, below the gazing bust of Speke is a semi-circular decorative accompaniment adorned with equatorial animals, including crocodiles and hippopotami. For the increasingly industrialised European powers, Africa remained an enigma. Barely penetrated by outsiders, it represented a fruitful economic and strategic objective, later to be subjected to much imperial might during the infamous ‘Scramble for Africa’.

But for Speke, Africa was the location for a very personal journey, which he wished to explore alone. Yet his first expedition, in 1855, involved the leadership of Sir Richard Burton, a contrasting figure whose miscalculations in hostile Somaliland resulted in being captured by the indigenous Har Owel tribe. Burton, perhaps better known for translating Arabian Nights, was undeniably knowledgeable about the East African interior. Therefore, any further expedition into the hostile, primitive lands would require both Speke and Burton, a duo characterised by suspicion. Amid the Crimean War, a new African opportunity emerged with Burton. The Royal Geographical

Society, founded in 1830, with the proposals of what historian Roy Bridges termed ‘armchair geographers’, the existence of a large lake which could potentially be the source of the River Nile.

Departing in June 1857 from Zanzibar, the sponsored team reached Lake Tanganyika in February 1858. This second expedition was hardly free of complications though.

Malaria, desertions, arguments and hostile natives provided many setbacks, travelling at the average pace of only six miles a day. Furthermore, Burton was suffering from tremendous illness and he was forced to return to the coast for supplies. Speke did not follow. Instead, accompanied by a freed slave, Seedy Mubarak Bombay, he continued north in the firm belief of the existence of another large body of water. By August 1858, Speke arrived at an expansive lake that covered 23,000 square miles, reached five countries and was to be ‘his’ source of the River Nile. This was named, in honour of the monarch, Lake Victoria.

Meanwhile, Speke and Burton’s relationship had ended with bitter disagreement. Burton was side-lined as the Royal Geographical Society sponsored Speke in 1860 to return to Africa for a third expedition, this time to verify his headwater claims. Endorsed by Prince Albert, a more robust expedition occurred, partly sponsored by the government who gave £2,500, and the people, who donated an extra £1,200 for supplies. Accompanied by loyal friend James Grant, Speke left with 176 men and armed with previous experience, they pushed further north than before. It was at Karagwe (a Tanzanian district)

while Speke was waiting for the expeditionary force to reconvene, that he received an unlikely correspondence.

The uncommunicative Kingdom of Buganda heard of Speke’s quest, and its King, Kabaka Mutesa, invited Speke to visit. For his cultural respect, the Bugandans viewed him with prestige. Years after his death, in 1962 following Ugandan independence, his memorial was complemented with a Union Jack flag that had long fluttered in the city of Jinja, on the shores of the lake.

Upon returning to England in June 1863, Speke and Grant were nothing short of celebrities. The Victorian people turned out in their thousands to celebrate the explorers’ achievements. At the Royal Geographical Society’s headquarters in London, several windows were shattered with excitement. In Taunton, a less exuberant ceremony occurred with the ringing out of church bells.

The saga of the Nile was not to end here, however.

Speke’s publication The Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile, released in December 1863, aroused much ambivalence. The exploratory field became crowded with alternative hypotheses and thus required a public debate.

The Royal Geographical Society organised the event in Bath, between Speke and his nemesis, Richard Burton, to be held on the 16th September 1864. Regrettably, Speke’s unfortunate death the day before cancelled the anticipated exchange. Speke’s source of the Nile was only verified years later in 1876, but the memorial where he rests in a serpentine marble sarcophagus is a fitting tribute to a remarkable individual.

Tel. 01308 423031 The Marshwood Vale Magazine March 2021 23

Marking Boundaries

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n each parish boundary along the Dorset coast path from Ware, on the Dorset/Devon boundary, all the way to Abbotsbury can now be found a parish boundary marker letting the walker know when they have passed from one parish to the next.

Tara Hansford, Countryside Access Improvement Officer, Dorset Council explain how the project came about: “The inspiration for this project stems from growing up in the heart of West Dorset. As a child I often accompanied my grandad, a local builder, in his little blue truck as he’d visit villages to price up work. He would often point out to me various features in the landscape— obviously hand crafted—where my Grandad could often “read” their unique style and could therefore tell me who had made them. Each provided clues about the history of the people and landscape that have created this wonderful part of the world in which we are so lucky to live. It was fascinating. Collectively these artefacts provided details creating a rich cultural patina of local interest and character. However sadly and increasingly today, many are overlooked, obscured, no longer practiced and therefore often lost in understanding and memory. One such feature is the Parish Boundary marker. Also, today, due to economics—hand crafted—locally unique—features are often replaced by mass produced monotonous, unremarkable ones. Combining experience in both the arts and countryside access this project provided the opportunity to reintroduce more of the “local” and “distinctive” interest back into our surroundings.

The Dorset Coast Path Parish Boundary project has brought people together to create artefacts to celebrate special locations. It’s a collaboration between local people, landowners, local artists and craftspeople in response to their local landscape and its rich cultural history. These artefacts are not interpretation or information panels— they are practical, hand crafted “signposts” informing the

Photographs from top left: Pucknowle to Abbotsbury – Artist Andrew Whittle.

Devon into Dorset, Ware – Artists Alex Brooks and Emma Molony.

Symondsbury to Bridport – Artist Alice Blogg.

Chideock to Symondsbury – Artist Delphine Jones.

Opposite page: Bridport to Burton Bradstock – Artist Brendon Murless.

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walker when they pass from one parish to another as they travel along the coast path.”

Each artist was provided with a brief—information about the parishes to inspire the theme of the piece and, as a parish boundary marker, that each piece had to be made from materials robust and in keeping with its location, state the name of each parish, the number in its sequence along the coast path (from Dorset/Devon border) and the year of the project.

“So, each piece has an air of mystery about it— alluding to its local context—to wet the walkers appetite encouraging them to investigate more into what it might mean and unearth for themselves a bit of local history!

For many people walking along the coast path the focus is often on the seascape—looking out onto that amazing mass of ocean and the beautiful narrow strip of coastal headland. This project hopes to also encourage the walker to look inland and gain a better awareness about the landscape they are walking through and curiosity to explore and learn more about the Dorset parishes along the coast path” Tara Hansford, Countryside Access Development Officer This team behind this project are: Local landowners (Lyme Regis Golf Course, The Loosemore family, The Cook family, The Extons of Downhouse Farm, The Yeates family, Tamarisk Farm and National Trust), local artists and craftspeople—Alex Brooks, Ed Brooks, Emma Molony, Greta Berlin, Tara Hansford, Isla Chaney, Delphine Jones, Brendon Murless, Alice Blogg, Sarah Hough & Andrew Whilttle. Dorset Council: Tara Hansford, Countryside Access Improvements Officer, Bran Acres, Coastal Ranger and Cleo Evans, Arts & Environment Lead from the Arts Development Company.

For any more information please contact Tara Hansford, Countryside Access Development Officer, Dorset Council tara.hansford@dorsetcouncil.com.uk

Tel. 01308 423031 The Marshwood Vale Magazine March 2021 25

John le Carré

By Cecil Amor

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ohn le Carré, the well-known writer died on the 12th of December 2020, at Truro, Cornwall, just before Christmas. But he had been born at Poole, in Dorset in 1931 and baptised David John Moore Cornwell. Later he studied at Sherborne School, so he started in this county. His uncle, Alec Glassey, had been Liberal MP for East Dorset from 1929 to 1931. John le Carre wrote of his father, Ronnie, in his book The Pigeon Tunnel that ‘when I was young his voice was still Dorset, with his “r”s and long “a”s. Later he became almost, but never quite, well spoken’.

David Cornwell went on to study German literature at Bern and then modern languages at Lincoln College, Oxford. Cornwell apparently completed his National Service in the Intelligence Corps in Germany and then taught at Eton for two years from 1956. Then he joined the Foreign Service as a Secretary at the British Embassy at Bonn and went on to become a Consul in Hamburg. He married twice, the first to Alison in 1954 and they had three children, before a divorce in 1971. The second marriage, to Valerie in 1972 produced another child.

He wrote his first novel, Call for the Dead which he described as ‘sheer fiction’ in Hamburg in 1961 and produced his nom de plume “John le Carré”, as a necessity as he was a member of MI6. He went on to write nearly thirty books, including The Spy Who Came in from the Cold in 1963. Kim Philby, one of our double agents, was thought to have disclosed le Carré’s identity to the Russians and so he left MI6. Many people will remember Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy from 1974. This was televised by the BBC and we were all glued to our TV sets until the end and we had learned another meaning to “mole” and “The Circus” as the code name for the British Secret Intelligence Service. The characters George Smiley, Bill Haydon, Karla, Peter Guillam, Percy Alleline and Jim Prideaux were all so well portrayed and still remembered. Sir Alec Guinness played George Smiley and was exceptional. Smiley’s People was transmitted two or three years later. John le Carré had Smiley taken aback, but kept his cool when Karla showed his knowledge of Smiley’s marriage and his wife’s affairs with other members of the Circus and even having a watch inscribed from his wife.

I received some anonymous presents at Christmas, including a book by Max Hastings, The Secret War, about spies, codes, etc., and some biscuits, all of which were much appreciated. When I started to consider le Carré, I went to the index in the book and was surprised

to find no entries. Then I realised that Hastings was writing about the 1939 to 1945 war against Germany, whereas le Carré’s stories reflect the later Cold War when Russia became our adversary.

Several writers were also inspired by the Cold War, including Ian Fleming with his character James Bond in Casino Royale, Dr No and many others, which were portrayed on the cinema screen and became very popular. However, these stories were very different from le Carré’s. James Bond is a skilled fighter and sexy character, whereas le Carré’s Smiley is most cerebral.

About that time we learned a little about the reallife of some people from the Eastern Block when Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian, died after being shot by a poisoned dart on Waterloo Bridge in London and died in hospital. He had been broadcasting for the BBC Overseas Service. It has been suggested that the Bulgarians had been advised by the KGB. He was buried in Whitchurch Cannonicorum in September 1978, where he had a home.

I have not been to Russia and the only contact I had with its people was briefly in about 1984, which you may find amusing. The Institution of Electrical Engineers, of which I was a member, held regular meetings. I was appointed to a committee and organised several afternoon sessions, finding speakers, etc. I was seconded to a group organising an international meeting of one or two days. The Secretariat had decided that the speakers and organisers should get together in the evening before the first day’s meetings, with a trip on a boat on the Thames and we duly boarded from outside the Institution, next to the Savoy Hotel. As the organisers were all volunteers and not employed by the IEE, our wives were invited for the evening. The boat trip went up to the recently completed Thames Barrier and back, with dinner served on board. It was a fine evening and very pleasant.

We were seated at two tables, one for the speakers to meet, and the other for the organisers and wives and two organising secretaries. After some time, we commented that the speakers, who were probably unknown to each other, were becoming very merry.

One secretary was worried, she said she had ordered the same quantity of wine for both tables and we all appeared quite sober, so why were they so lively?

I cannot now recall anything about most other nationalities except that two speakers were Russian, although four had attended.

The following morning I had drawn the short straw

and had to introduce the first speaker. I think he was English. I handed him a small pointing device, which projected an arrow on the screen where his illustrations were to be displayed. He soon exclaimed that he was having difficulty in holding the pointer still. The next speaker was one of the Russians and he said “I also am having difficulty in holding the pointer still”. This was obviously the result of the hilarity of the evening before, which was explained later off stage, by an English contributor, who told us that the Russians had produced flasks of Vodka and laced each glass liberally!

The speakers all sat in the front rows of the auditorium, to give easy access to the stage and the audience was seated behind. Another organiser said to me, ‘Look at the four Russians sitting together. Can you tell which are the two speakers, and which are their minders?’. At this period it was frequently said that Russian visitors might abscond to the West and so minders were sent with all visitors. John le Carré had introduced this in some of his stories. However, our meeting progressed satisfactorily and our visitors left safely. Overall a success.

More recently, in 2018 we all had a shock when a situation of poisoning arose as close as at Salisbury.

Sergei Skripel, a former Russian officer and a double agent and his daughter, Yulia, visiting from Moscow, were poisoned with Novichok. Shortly after two unconnected people picked up what appeared to be a bottle of perfume, but was in fact discarded poison.

John le Carré wrote most of his books from the aspect of the Cold War and from the inside of the secret services, on both sides. Of course, he was so successful that perhaps he did not need to write a lot in other fields. His writing will introduce people to these arcane areas for many years to come and maintain their interest. Le Carré wrote several more novels with different themes, including The Night Manager in 1993 about the illegal arms trade which later became a successful BBC TV series.

N.B. The IEE has been renamed as the Institution of Engineering and Technology, IET. Bridport History Society has a Zoom meeting on Tuesday 9th March at 2 for 2.30 pm about “Elizabeth Frink - Life and Legacy” by the Frink Archive, Dorset History Centre. For details contact Jane FerentziSheppard on jferentzi@AOL.com or 01308-425710.

Cecil Amor, Hon President, Bridport History Society.

House&Garden

Vegetables in March

By Ashley Wheeler

I

am writing this during the cold snap in February—though it looks like it is just about to turn, as the winds change from North Easterly back to the usual South Westerlies.

These North Easterlies brought with them a very drying cold wind, which helped to dry out the soggy market garden.

We were able to get the tractor out and move some compost around and mulch beds that needed it. We also mowed down some of the green manures that we had sown in September to cover the soil over winter. This was covering some of the beds that we need for planting early crops, so we mowed and then covered with black plastic to kill off the green manures before planting the beds up later this month with some of the early salads, turnips, radish, early kale, beetroot, peas and broad beans.

Although we start seed sowing in February, this is to advance the crops by just a week or two so that we can fill up the veg bags with our own produce as soon as possible. Seed sowing starts in earnest this month, with all of the tunnel summer crops being sown if they haven’t already (tomatoes, peppers, chillies, aubergines, cucumbers), and lots of the hardy outdoor produce such as beetroot, perpetual spinach, chard, peas, broad beans, salads etc (see below for more).

We sow most of our crops in trays and start them off on heat benches to try and get consistent germination. We then grow them on off the heat to acclimatise them more to the conditions that they will face once they are planted. We then cover them with fleece after planting to keep the wind off and keep them frost-free.

It will start to get much busier soon, now that we are in March, so we will try and finish off most of the winter projects—which are often to do with improving infrastructure to allow us to work in a more efficient and flowing way. It is so much more appealing working when tools have a place and you know where things are, and the workflow makes sense. One of the projects that we are doing is making a new outdoor propagation space, which will allow us to achieve more consistent germination through the summer months when it is too hot to propagate in the tunnel. Some crops don’t like it to be too warm to germinate, for example, lettuce, endive, chicory and spring onions, so it is useful to have a space outside to be able to propagate, where you can easily set up some shade netting to help keep temperatures down.

WHAT TO SOW THIS MONTH: turnips, chard, spinach, salad leaves—chervil, buckshorn plantain, lettuce, burnet, peashoots, anise hyssop, kales, mustards, agretti, sorell, summer purslane & goosefoot (end of month).

Radish, fennel, courgettes (end of month), spring onions, cucumbers, dill coriander, peas and mangetout. We sow all

28 The Marshwood Vale Magazine March 2021 Tel. 01308 423031

Once we sow into trays, we soak them from underneath to ensure that all of the cells are consistently moist.

of these into trays in the propagating tunnel to be planted out in April mostly. Also all of the indoor solanaceae such as tomatoes, peppers, chillies and aubergines can be sown now.

WHAT TO PLANT THIS MONTH: OUTSIDE: salads—mustards, rockets etc., lettuce, peas, broad beans, potatoes, early kale.

INSIDE: If you sowed any early salad crops for a polytunnel or glasshouse they can go in at the beginning of March. Also, successions of peas and spring onions will continue to be planted, and any early sown chard, spinach and beets.

OTHER IMPORTANT TASKS THIS MONTH: If the weather dries, continue preparing beds for the spring by mulching with compost. Keep on top of the seed sowing, but don’t sow too much of anything—think about sowing successionally rather than doing one big sowing in early Spring. Things that are perfectly suited to successions include all salad leaves, spring onions, peas, beans, beetroot, chard, kale, carrots, fennel, radish and annual herbs.

Don’t forget, if you don’t have space to grow your own vegetables we deliver in and around Axminster, Kilmington, Lyme, Charmouth and Seaton. Check https://www. trillfarmgarden.co.uk/boxscheme.html for more details.

Tel. 01308 423031 The Marshwood Vale Magazine March 2021 29

March in the Garden

By Russell Jordan

H

aving a decent spell of sub-zero temperatures, before winter is over, always makes me feel that some of the overwintering pests may have been wiped out. It calls a temporary halt to such activities as planting bare-root plants but we’ve still got a few weeks left to get on with those tasks that need to be completed before spring is into full swing.

I tend to leave the herbaceous plants in the semi-wild areas of the garden untouched until now because a certain degree of untidiness is good from a wildlife point of view.

Also, it’s better than large expanses of bare soil which would require a thick mulch of organic matter to keep weed free which is an expense I can do without in areas which are designed to be ground cover rather than high status flower borders.

Having said that, there comes a point where the old, withered, foliage needs to be removed in order that it does not detract from the new leaves which are beginning to emerge. It’s a juggling act between leaving the old leaves long enough that they protect the soil during the worst of the winter weather but not so long that chopping them off risks removing too much of the newly emerging leaves.

For me the kind of plants which I tend to use as extensive ground cover are knotweeds (Persicaria), Phlomis russeliana, Lady’s Mantle (Alchemilla mollis), Lysimachia and various perennial geraniums. To save time I often use hedge-trimmers, to cut them to the ground, rather than the

30 The Marshwood Vale Magazine March 2021 Tel. 01308 423031

secateurs deployed to tackle ‘finer’ herbaceous perennials in more formal plantings I have big stands of perennial grasses in the same areas, chiefly Miscanthus varieties, and these need to be cut down with petrol hedge-trimmers because they are too big and tough to be tackled with anything else. A bladed strimmer, ‘brush cutter’, can be used at a pinch but I find it struggles with cutting them low enough. In order to minimise the length of time that the big grasses are flattened, to nothing, I try to cut them down only once I can see signs of new growth beginning.

If herbaceous plants are beginning to emerge then you can bet your bottom dollar that weeds will already be one jump ahead. Tackling them now, wherever you see them germinating or sprouting from the ground, will save you a lot of grief later on in the season. Hand weeding is the only option where the weeds are nestled amongst ornamental perennials but a chemical weed-killer, if you are not an organic gardener, may prove more effective in areas such as hedge bottoms or under deciduous shrubs and trees.

Hopefully your garden is now coming alive with all the spring flowering bulbs that you planted last autumn and also the more established ones from previous plantings. A sprinkling of general purpose fertiliser, I’m still using ‘fish, blood and bone’, amongst these bulbs and forked in around the emerging border perennials, gives them a chance to grow strongly and replenish themselves. Mulching over bare

soil, after feeding, needs to be completed this month before new growth is too advanced.

It gets quite busy this month because, in addition to completing winter tasks, timely seed sowing, under cover, should be under way as well as gently waking up, with sparse watering, any tender perennials that you have been overwintering in the greenhouse or cold frames. If it gets particularly warm, towards the end of the month, it may be possible to sow some hardy annuals outside, directly into their eventual flowering positions, but be ready to throw a cover of horticultural fleece over them if a frosty night is forecast.

Lawns will be growing now whenever the temperature is above 6°C or so. If the weather is dry then mowing with the mower on a high cut will help to keep on top of things.

Letting it get really long before the first cut means that when you do get around to it the task will be more strenuous for you, the mower and the grass. If you have the type of mower that benefits from an annual service, and you didn’t get it done over the winter, then it’s worth getting it done now, even though garden machinery workshops will be at their busiest.

The ‘tyranny of the lawn’ will only be getting worse from this point on!

I’ll end with the usual reminder that the end of March is really the latest you want to be leaving winter pruning tasks, primarily roses, and all major cutting back procedures such as stooling shrubs like Cornus (dogwoods) and Salix (willows) - grown for their winter stem colour. Again, these will really benefit from a good feed and mulch after they’ve suffered such brutal treatment.

Tel. 01308 423031 The Marshwood Vale Magazine March 2021 31

PROPERTY ROUND-UP

March into a Modern Home

By Helen Fisher

EYPE £695,000

Superb modern home constructed in 2020 with eco-credentials as a priority. Underfloor heating and hot water heated with electricity generated via photovoltaic and solar panels. Chestnut wood panelled walls and doors, ceiling beams and kitchen. South facing established gardens, all just a short walk to the beach. Off road parking.

Stags Tel: 01308 428000

COLYTON £425,000

A well presented ‘tower bungalow’ built in the 1980’s. With two first floor bedrooms plus a further bedroom. Beautiful kitchen/ dining room and spacious reception with wood burning stove.

Enclosed garden with large patio plus double garage and parking.

Half the garage has been converted to a useful hobby room/ gym/home office.

Gordon and Rumsby Tel: 01297 553768

BRIDPORT £700,000

A wonderful 1930s detached home with 4 double bedrooms plus an additional two bedroom self-contained annex. Light and spacious throughout and presented to a very high standard. Modern family kitchen. Contemporary bathroom with freestanding bath. Extensive rear garden with two patio areas. Ample off road parking.

Parkers Tel: 01308 420111 32 The Marshwood Vale Magazine March 2021 Tel. 01308 423031

HINTON ST GEORGE £400,000

A yet-to-be completed, brand new home set within an small sort-after housing development. This end of terrace, 3 bedroom home is the last one remaining and benefits from a private carport. High quality homes with many attractive design details. Shaker style kitchen with separate utility room. Private garden plus fully landscaped common areas. Ample parking.

Jackson-Stops Tel: 01308 423133

WALDITCH £630,000

An attractive 1970’s 4 bedroom Purbeck Stone house. With wood block flooring, stone fireplace with wood burner and purpose built blinds to all windows. Large luxury kitchen and contemporary bathroom with heated toilet seat! Rear garden with terraces and mature planting plus a Japanese-style garden feature with fountain. Double garage and parking.

Kennedys Tel: 01308 427329

BRIDPORT £699,950

A stunning brand new 4 double bedroom detached home, part of a collection of 33 contemporary properties within walking distance to town. Large open plan kitchen/dining room. Gas fired central heating and uPVC glazing. Turfed gardens, garage with utility area and parking.

Symonds and Sampson Tel: 01308 422092

Food&Dining

Entry call for Devon Food and Drink Awards

E

ntries are now open for outstanding food and drink. I send the 2021 Food Drink my very best wishes to all who Devon Awards. Celebrating enter.’

Devon’s finest food and drink, The Food Drink Devon the awards recognise the county’s Awards continue to grow, with most respected, influential and 2020 recording a high number of passionate artisan producers and entries despite the year’s difficult establishments. The awards are open conditions. In order to ensure for entry until Friday 30th April Devon’s deserving producers 2021 and are open to both members and establishments didn’t go of Food Drink Devon and nonunrecognised for their tireless members. hard work, determination and Covering food production, dedication, 2020 saw Food Drink preparation, retailing, cooking Devon hold a virtual awards and service, the awards honour scheme and awards’ ceremony businesses demonstrating a hosted by well-known Devon food consistent commitment to quality, and drink champion, Kerry White sustainability, provenance, excellent and co-host, Thomas Chartrescustomer service and support for Moore. their local communities and other Each year judging for the local businesses. awards is carried out by a panel of Categories open for entry include independent and unbiased experts the ‘Producer Awards’ with Silver, including a number of celebrated Gold and Platinum awards available names from the region. All results alongside ‘Food Product of the and winners are verified by an Year’ and ‘Drink Product of the independent adjudicator, with Year’ awards. Recognising Devon’s Drink Product of the Year 2020, Powderkeg from East Devon. entrants receiving the opportunity best produce, Platinum awards are Photograph Matt Austin to benefit from invaluable product presented to tasted products given a feedback provided by the panel. perfect score of 100%, Gold awards to products achieving This year’s winners are due to be announced at an awards’ 90-99%, and Silver to those scoring 85-89%. The ‘Retail ceremony on Monday 4th October 2021.

Awards’ include ‘Best Retailer’ and ‘Best Online Retailer’, Food Drink Devon is committed to increasing the while the always highly sought-after hospitality section county’s profile, both nationally and internationally and of the awards cover ‘Best Fine Dining Restaurant’, ‘Best represents a membership of Devon’s leading food and Restaurant’, ‘Best Pub’, ‘Best Bar or Bistro’, ‘Best Café or drink producers, speciality retailers, hospitality and catering Tearoom’ and ‘Best Takeaway or Street Food’. businesses. Through working with like-minded businesses, Barbara King, chair of Food Drink Devon says: ‘Devon together they showcase Devon as a county where the use boasts so many dynamic and innovative local producers of fantastic quality, seasonal and local produce is standard. and purveyors. The Food Drink Devon Awards give us the The organisation and its members share a commitment opportunity to recognise their success and contributions to enjoy, inspire and discover more about food and drink. to the vibrant food and drink industry. We are proud Look out for their green heart logo which is carried by over to champion the county’s most esteemed and dedicated 250 producers and businesses across Devon. artisan producers and establishments and constantly For more information on Food Drink Devon visit www. impressed by the number and standard of entries.’ foodanddrinkdevon.co.uk. To enter the awards please Barbara continues: ‘The success of the Awards over contact Ali Neagle on 07789 666064 or email admin@ the last 10 years is a testament to the region’s passion for fooddrinkdevon.co.uk.

Local Food Group launches Food & Drink ‘Lockdown Hero’ Awards ORGANISERS of the Bridport Food Festival have launched an initiative to help highlight those businesses that have ‘risen to the challenges of the pandemic in order to continue to feed us and provide us with much needed treats.’ The aim of these awards is to recognise the local food & drink businesses such as cafes, restaurants, pubs, butchers, bakers, greengrocers, farm shops, market traders, etc etc., many of whom have re-worked what they offer and/or set up new services, to provide delivery and

collection to local people.

Readers can now nominate and vote for the local food and drink business they would like recognised. You have until midnight 31 March 2021 to cast your vote, and in doing so you will be helping local businesses to receive the support and recognition they deserve.

For a full list of categories and a nomination form visit the website: https://www.bridportfoodfestival.co.uk/2021/ awards/food-drink-lockdown-hero-awards/ Tel. 01308 423031 The Marshwood Vale Magazine March 2021 33

CAULIFLOWER & CHILLI Cauliflower, cheddar cheese and big pasta shells are transformed by the addition of red chilli in this warming dish!

LESLEY WATERS

INGREDIENTS

DIRECTIONS

• • • • • • •

1. In a large pan, heat the oil. Add the bacon and fry for 5 minutes.

2. Stir in the wine, stock and chilli and cook for 5 minutes. Add the cauliflower and season well.

Cover and steam for 8-10 minutes until the cauliflower is cooked.

3. Meanwhile, cook the pasta as directed on the packet.

4. To serve, drain the pasta and toss with the chilied cauliflower, cheddar cheese and parsley.

5. Transfer to serving bowls, scatter with a little more parsley and serve at once.

1 tablespoon olive oil 4 rashers bacon, chopped 150mls (1/4pt) white wine 150mls (1/4 pt) vegetable stock 1 red chilli, finely chopped 450g (1lb) large cauliflower florets 350g (12oz) large dried green pasta shells • 55g (2oz) mature cheddar cheese, grated • 1 bunch flat leaf parsley, chopped • salt & freshly ground black pepper Serves 4

34 The Marshwood Vale Magazine March 2021 Tel. 01308 423031

Over the Moon at Pub of the Year Award AFTER what has been an incredibly challenging year for the hospitality industry which has seen pubs, bars, and restaurants closing with little notice and struggling with restrictions when allowed to open, there was some good news for The Half Moon Inn Melplash, which was awarded “Pub of the Year” 2020 in the Dorset Tourism Awards.

Jamie Pimbley, Landlord at the Half Moon said: ‘2020 has been a trying year but it has given us chance to strengthen our ties within our local community as they have shown us incredible support. Without their support, and a generous local donor who has asked to remain anonymous, we would have had a very different year. The Lockdown in March gave us time to design a web site which was able to process our customers’ orders to give the best service you could wish for. This award means so very much to us and our team, and has made the struggles of the last year all worth while.’

Clare Pimbley, Landlady at the Half Moon added: ‘Having only just celebrated our first “pub” birthday days before we had to close for the first lockdown last March, we were very concerned for our future at The Half Moon. 2020 gave us time to spend time with our three sons and support them as they began their home schooling adventure. Our second year has seen us transform our business to a pub at home format and we are so proud of our team who have worked so hard to enable this.’

Chair of the Judging Panel Professor Peter Jones congratulated the winners: ‘Dorset tourism, like tourism the world over, is demonstrating resilience and fortitude in coping with the impact and implications of Covid-19 in some amazing ways.’ For more about The Half Moon and their popular takeaway service visit https://halfmoonmelplash.co.uk/

Tel. 01308 423031 The Marshwood Vale Magazine March 2021 35

SEA BREAM WITH FISHERMAN’S POTATOES In my eyes, serving fish whole is the best way and easy to cook. Presenting a whole fish to your friends or family has a celebratory feel about it. I recently had some beautiful gilt head sea bream off a local fishermen which are a bit of a rarity around here. I cooked one for supper with a fishy version of the classic pommes Boulanger.

You can use any meaty fish for this like bass or turbot or brill and feel free to use a bought in fish soup if it’s too much of a faff.

MARK HIX

INGREDIENTS

DIRECTIONS

• 1 sea bream weighing about 1.2 - 1.5 kg • Extra virgin rapeseed oil • Cornish sea salt and freshly ground black pepper • A few sprigs of rosemary

1. Pre-heat the oven to 200°C Gas mark 6.

2. In a roasting or ovenproof dish, large enough to fit the fish arrange two layers of the sliced potatoes overlapping then scatter over the onion and use up the rest of the potatoes overlapping them as in the photo. Cover with the fish soup and put the butter on top. Bake for about an hour, basting the potatoes as they are cooking.

3. Turn the oven up to 240ºc/Gas mark 8 or the hottest setting your oven will go to.

4. Score the sea bream a few times, lay on top of the potatoes and season the scored side of the fish and spoon over some rapeseed oil. Return to the oven for 10-15 minutes then scatter over the rosemary and return to the oven for a few minutes.

5. Test the fish by inserting a knife into the incisions and see if it comes away from the bone easily and serve immediately.

For the Fisherman’s Potatoes • 2-3 large baking potatoes, peeled and thinly sliced • 1 medium onion, peeled, halved and thinly sliced • 1-2 litre of fish soup or fish stock • A couple knobs of butter Serves 4

36 The Marshwood Vale Magazine March 2021 Tel. 01308 423031

Spider Crabs

By Nick Fisher

I

’m afraid I have worrying news for you.

Spider crabs aren’t actually crabs at all. They are extraterrestrials from another planet, who have landed on Earth and have cunningly decided to use the sea as part of their clever disguise. Instead of falling out of the sky, or arriving in suspicious-looking, unidentified flying space craft, whose presence would immediately cause concern, they are instead attempting to invade the planet by using the unsuspecting vector of our commercial fishing fleet.

You may think I’m mad. You may point your sceptic’s finger, shake your head and say ‘that Nick Fisher’s been on the magic mushrooms again’. But, mark my words, these spider crabs are not of this world. You only have to look at them to see they were designed in another galaxy.

At this very moment, there are armies of spider crabs crawling across the sea bed, creeping towards the beaches where they intend to amass into one unified terrible force, and then invade the planet. No doubt their strategic offensives will focus on the cradles of political power: Downing Street and the White House.

This cunning alien-crustacean plan of world domination would undoubtedly succeed. And Man would become just another forgotten chapter in world history, were it not for one terrible mistake that the spider crab invaders have made. In their search for a convincing form in which to sneak onto Earth, they made the tragic error of choosing a body, that is just sooo tasty.

Spider crabs are failing to take over the world because ever time they pop out of the sea to start their invasion, we eat them.

One of the things that convinces me of spider crabs’ extra terrestrial origins is the fact that it seems like they’ve only just arrived. I’ve been sea fishing since I was 5, and I’d never even heard of a spider crab until a few years ago, let alone seen one. Now it feels like I’m surrounded by them.

The south coast of England and the Channel Islands have been chosen as the preferred landing site for the spider crab invaders. At this time of the year, in early summer, the number of spider crabs that are caught increases exponentially, as the armies of these maja squinado move from the deep water of the Channel, to the warmer, shallow inshore water.

Spider crabs have long, powerful, articulated claws (not unlike a Martian spaceships) which they use very effectively to tweeze open small mussels, clams and to mince up tough starfish. They are very efficient predators, equipped to hunt in daylight or dark, when they’re even able to catch small fish taking shelter amongst rock ledges. At the same time, if there’s nothing alive for them to hunt, spider crabs are happy to scavenge and eat all forms of marine carrion.

The summer migrations to shallower, warmer water makes

the spider crabs more devious which results in some rather astonishing behaviour. Divers all along the south coast have reported sightings of huge underwater gatherings of spider crabs, who congregate together in tightly packed mounds of writhing, scraping bodies.

These orgy-like mounds are the spider crab equivalent of the Glastonbury Festival. A time for them all to get frisky in a heap and make beautiful music together. Marine biologists aren’t exactly sure why the spider crabs congregate in these heaving heaps for short periods of time. It doesn’t seem to be directly related to any specific spawning needs. One theory is that the mounds, which feature a concentration of females at the centre are simply a means of protecting the females from predators, while their shells are soft after moulting.

Brown crabs and shore crabs require the female to moult her shell and be in a soft state in order for her to mate. Male brown crabs aren’t interested in women unless they are all soft and smooth, plucked and waxed. Similarly, the female doesn’t want to know about getting it on with her man unless she’s in this squidgy and receptive state.

Spider crabs don’t care. Spider crabs will mate with enthusiasm even when both the male and females are hard-shelled and littered with more spikes and spines than a hedgehog in a piercing parlour.

Another undisputed example of the spider crab’s other-worldly origins is the spooky ability of the female to reproduce, even when there are no males about. It’s true. Female spider crabs that have been kept in isolation, separated from any males, have been witnessed to give birth to as many as five consecutive broods, without any evidence of mating or egg fertilisation.

The current theory that marine scientists have come up with, to explain this bizarre ability to self-fertilise and reproduce is that the females are able to store male sperm in a special part of their body in order to use it later when there’s no blokes around. However, we know that the reason spider crabs behave to oddly and have these inexplicable, unearthly abilities to hunt, mate and reproduce is because they aren’t crabs at all, but in fact just invaders from a far away galaxy.

Basically the sooner people accept this little known fact, and start eating their way through these invaders, the better.

My favourite is spider crab pasta, when the space invaders’ boiled claws are cracked, the white succulent meat is extracted, mixed with a little brown meat from the body cavity and folded lightly into the soft, cooked, warm pasta and dusted with Parmesan cheese.

Eat an alien today. Please. Our galactic future may depend on it.

Tel. 01308 423031 The Marshwood Vale Magazine March 2021 37

Arts&Entertainment

Behind the Masks More of Jill Dudley’s adventures in Greek mythology

W

hen East Devon author, Jill Dudley, was researching her latest book, Behind the Masks, she was looking at a time when the now ubiquitous facial covering had a very different role. The masks that Jill was seeking were part of an age not immediately concerned with modern viruses. They were designed to enhance the characters in ancient Greek theatre and were part of an entertaining live event. Something that is beginning to feel somewhat alien.

Although the most recent years of her life were given to travelling and writing, Jill claimed that it was just ‘beginner’s luck’ that saw her first play performed at the Leatherhead repertory company while she was living in Iraq in the late fifties. Born in Baghdad and educated in England, she says that she learned ‘very little’ and that her real education only began when she was thirty. Today, with a growing selection of books, as well as a series of guides to Greek mythology to her credit, that humility seems unnecessary. She has become a much admired writer and explorer of Greek mythology and religious beliefs.

In her most recent venture, tracing the footsteps of the early Greek dramatists whose tragedies and comedies told stories she had not previously investigated, Jill became absorbed with the vast landscape of Greek drama. It opened up yet another fascinating avenue for her interest in the subject. The book is the latest in her series of investigations into Greek mythology.

‘Behind the Masks is written for those, who like me, paid little attention when told at school about Greek dramatists or such legendary figures as Theseus, Oedipus and Heracles’ says Jill. ‘I never became interested until middle-age when I wanted to learn Greek. I attended evening classes at Exeter University and there met Greek enthusiasts who had exciting stories to tell about the country and their travels and adventures. The whole vista of Greek legend and mythology suddenly blossomed for me; I planned my first journey, and so my travel-writing about Greece began.’

Behind the Masks required several trips to Greece where Jill sought to explore the areas where the first dramatists had lived and worked. Readers familiar with her past adventures will note a change in travelling companions. Her husband Harry, deciding to stay at home in Devon, has been replaced by two keen companions whom Jill described as invaluable—one drove while the other navigated.

‘We flew to Athens to see the small theatre of Dionysos, god of wine and drama, whose tiered stone seats rise fanshaped up the slope below the sheer rockface of the Acropolis in the south-eastern corner. It was where the Great Dionysia festival was held where the best fifth century B.C. dramatists staged their work’ explained Jill.

They then sailed to the island of Salamis where Euripides was born. Climbing up the mountainside to the cave where Euripides wrote many of his tragedies in peace and solitude on the southern tip of the island.

38 The Marshwood Vale Magazine March 2021 Tel. 01308 423031

Images clockwise from left: The Lion gate, Mycenae, Great amphitheater at Epidaurus., On the Pnyx, centre of democracy, Theatre of Dionysos below the Acropolis and Temple of Apollo at Delphi

From Salamis they then took a ferry-boat to the Peloponnese to see Troezen, a vast archaeological site a few miles inland from the sea; a rarely visited site with a backcloth of mountains whose higher reaches are bare crags soaring up against the cloudless blue sky, its lower slopes clothed in olive groves. It was there that Euripides set his tragedy Hippolytus in which Phaedra (wife of King Theseus) hangs herself because of her unrequited passion for her stepson Hippolytus.

‘We then drove on to see the amphitheatre at Epidaurus where Aeschylus’ trilogy the Oresteia was recently staged by the London National Theatre, the cast wearing masks and costumes as in its first production in Athens’ said Jill. ‘From there we drove to Corinth, the setting for Euripides Medea—another tragedy where passion turns the mind.’

The group visited Thebes, home of legendary King Oedipus about whom Sophocles wrote several tragedies, one of which was Oedipus Tyrannus where Oedipus discovers he murdered his father and was married to his mother which resulted in him blinding himself.

But Jill is quick to point out that Greek drama is not all doom and gloom. ‘The comic playwright Aristophanes brought much-needed laughter’ she says. ‘He was born in Athens but spent his adolescent years on the island of Aegina, an hour’s sail from Piraeus. He would have seen (as we did) the amazing temple of Aphaia, standing high and solitary on its terrace to the east of the island, majestic against the skyline and in perfect harmony with the landscape. Aristophanes never wrote about historical events, but applied himself to topical subjects, frequently poking fun at the public figures of the day, such as in his Clouds in which he lampoons Socrates, and Women of the Thesmophoria where Euripides is the butt of his humour.’

Their final journey was to Macedonia where Euripides lived the last years of his life at the court of King Archelaus who wanted to bring Greek culture to his kingdom. ‘We ended finally at Dion, the religious centre of the kingdom, where Mt. Olympus (home to the twelve Olympian gods) looms large as a natural backdrop to the ancient site. In both tragedy and comedy the gods played their part; and in the fifth century B.C. their presence was part of everyday life.’

For those who have given little thought to Greek drama, Jill Dudley’s Behind the Masks opens up a whole new world of extraordinary imagination and legendary stories and is a welcome follow-up to her last travel book Gods & Heroes (on the trail of the Iliad and the Odyssey).

For a complete list of all Jill Dudley’s books, see: www.orpingtonpublishers.co.uk

Tel. 01308 423031 The Marshwood Vale Magazine March 2021 39

March GALLERIES

Until March 6

Christopher Riisager, Day by Day Since graduating from Goldsmiths with a BA in Fine Art in 1984, Christopher Riisager has through a consistent and diligent working practice built a profound knowledge of the landscapes he loves in Wiltshire and Dorset. Often working en plein air, the race against the changing light and the weather enforces focus and speed. Christopher’s tacit knowledge of colour and light, built through years of experience and observation, result in paintings that invoke the beauty of a scene at a distance, but when drawn in to a closer view unexpected and beguiling motifs appear, capturing the ancient attraction of the Wessex landscape. The Art Stable, Kelly Ross Fine Art, Child Okeford, Blandford, Dorset, DT11 8HB. All the work will be available to see on the gallery website: www. https://www. theartstable.co.uk/ Brian Rice, Then and Now Few artists from the 1960’s and 1970’s were more prominent than Brian Rice. Critically acclaimed, his work was everywhere - in galleries, in colour supplements and magazines.

His work is held in over 60 public and corporate collections worldwide, including the Tate Gallery, V&A Museum, the Geffrye Museum, the Government Art Collection, the British Council, Plymouth City Art Gallery, Southampton City Art Gallery, Exeter Museum, and in several USA institutions. Brian Rice was born in 1936 and studied at Yeovil School of Art and Goldsmiths College, London. In the 1960s and 70s he taught at numerous art colleges in and around London, and until 2001, at Brighton College of Art (now the University of Brighton). The Art Stable, Kelly Ross Fine Art, Child Okeford, Blandford, Dorset, DT11 8HB. All the work will be available to see on the gallery website: www. https://www. theartstable.co.uk/

March 6 – April 25

British Studio Ceramic online exhibition of a collection of senior twentieth century ceramicists curated by Paul Greenhalgh, Director of the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts. This exhibition highlights Magdalene Odundo, Alison Britton, Carol McNicoll, Martin Smith & Stephen Dixon, the leading lights of a new wave

40 The Marshwood Vale Magazine March 2021 Tel. 01308 423031

in ceramics that emerged from the Royal College of Art in the 1970s. Creative freedom and an anything goes attitude defined this time at the Royal College and an influential group of students radically challenged and deconstructed notions of ceramics and particularly functional pottery. They led a revival of ceramics in the UK and continue to shape the scene today as leading figures in British ceramics. Messums Wiltshire, Place Farm, Court St, Tisbury, SP3 6LW. + 44 (0)1747 445042. www.messumswiltshire. com

Until March 11

Chinese New Year, Fun activities to celebrate the Year of the Ox. Online. Brighten your day and welcome the New Year, whilst learning about some of the museum’s iconic Chinese objects.

Celebrate the Chinese Year of the Ox with RAMM and take part in our engaging craft and literary challenges. We will show you how to create your own ‘silver’ plate, make a fishing game and lucky money cat, as well as how to write an exciting story about a dragon, plus much more. Royal Albert Memorial Museum & Art Gallery, Exeter. https://rammuseum.org.uk/

Until March 13

Henry Lamb RA (1883 – 1960) ‘In Arcadia’ online exhibition of oil paintings and sketches from the Estate of Henry Lamb.

The exhibition will shed light on a remarkable body of mid-career painting, and the pencil drawings and watercolour sketches Lamb made throughout his life. The oil paintings come after 1928, when Lamb moved to the Wiltshire village of Coombe Bissett. Portraits and paintings of his family are assured and familiar, and often wonderfully playful. They are joined by three still lives, unusual in Lamb’s oeuvre which largely focussed on people. Alongside are a selection of drawings taking us from Brittany and Ireland in the early 1900s to a war hospital in France in 1915, ward rooms in the 1940s and socialites of the interwar years. Messums Wiltshire, Place Farm, Court St, Tisbury, SP3 6LW. + 44 (0)1747 445042. www.messumswiltshire.com

March Around

T H E G A L L E RIES

Portrait of my Cousin by Henry Taylor. Acrylic on Canvas. Hauser & Wirth Somerset

Until March 14

In the mind’s eye: David Atkins, Rachel Fenner and Paul Jones. In the mind’s eye, memory and imagination hold sway. We perceive the world through the cipher of our human senses, via the changing direction and nature of our attention, in minds that are influenced by moods, memories and sensations. Everything, you might deduce, is unreliable and individual. However, good artists are able to reach our minds’ eyes directly, startling us with a common perception, a common humanity. The three artists in this exhibition all paint landscape in very different ways, each reaching for different areas of our human perception. Sladers Yard Gallery and Café Sladers, West Bay Road, West Bay, Bridport, Dorset DT6 4EL. Exhibition can be viewed online. https://sladersyard. wordpress.com/in-the-minds-eye/

Until March 20

Creative Cabin Shorts an inspiring digital programme of art and nature activities, films and workshops offering you some enjoyment and light relief at this time. They connect to nature and the landscapes around us, creatively exploring everything from wild swimming to healing herbs, tidal patterns to tree planting.

They have been created in collaboration with a range of South West artists, rangers and practitioners including photographer Paul Blakemore, artist printmaker Emma Molony, artist/boat builder Gail McGarva, artist/herbalist Belle Benfield, artist/lecturer in sculpture and environmental art Justin Carter and theatre director Tom Bailey. Thelma Hulbert Gallery, Enfield House, Dowell Street, Honiton EX14 1LX. 01404 45006. Viewable on social media and through the website www.thelmahulbert.com.

Back Then by Paul Jones. Sladers Yard, West Bay, Dorset

Until June 6

Henry Taylor (online until further notice). Henry Taylor culls his cultural landscape at a vigorous pace, creating a language entirely his own from both historic and immediate imagery, disparate material and memory. Through a process he describes as ‘hunting and gathering,’ Taylor transports us into imagined realities that interrogate the breadth of the human condition, social movements and political structures. For his inaugural exhibition with Hauser & Wirth, the American artist will take over all five galleries in Somerset to present a major body of sculptural work and paintings. In preparation for the exhibition, Taylor extended and unraveled his studio practice within the galleries at Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles, followed by an artist residency at Hauser & Wirth Somerset this winter—energetically building, stacking and affixing a vast array of objects and collected materials together to create a holistic record of his everyday experiences and the materials that define them. With a guiding sense of human connection, Taylor will build a multifaceted narrative for the exhibition that unites live sitters, changing environments and art historical predecessors from Louise Nevelson to Philip Guston. Hauser & Wirth Somerset, Durslade Farm, Dropping Lane, Bruton, Somerset BA10 0NL. https://www.hauserwirth.com/

GALLERIES IN APRIL Live or Online send your April gallery details to info@marshwoodvale.com by March 15th.

Tel. 01308 423031 The Marshwood Vale Magazine March 2021 41

Festival goes online and free for 2021

A

lthough not an ideal situation, one of the hidden benefits of having so many cultural events online is the option to catch up and watch things that one might have missed. This year’s Shute Festival, now an online event running throughout the year was opened by Annie Freud with an event on her just published poetry collection Hiddensee in February. It is now available to view on the festival website, as is the other event in February, a talk with musician Armand D’Angour on Socrates in Love.

Now in it’s 6th year, Shute Festival, has a sparkling line up of speakers spread out from February to December, all online and free and available on replay.

Co-director Samantha Knights explained how the last year has affected the Festival. ‘We faced a stark choice of cancelling our programme or going online’ she said. ‘We had very little in our bank account but we also realised that if we did go online we needed to make it free to all and could only ask for donations.’

The question was, would it work? Their existing BT internet was so poor it couldn’t sustain any online webinar so they upgraded their modem and trialled an event in April – “Human Rights in a Covid-19 climate”.

‘In fact over 100 registered for the event which was as many as we could have fitted into the church’ said Samantha. ‘They came from Shute, from the surrounding area, but also from all over the UK and a few from Miami. This was a first. Our last event of 2020 – Philippe Sands speaking about The Ratline: Love, Lies and Justice on the Trail of a Nazi Fugitive had an audience from all over the UK and beyond including Mexico, NYC, Kiev, Vienna, and Geneva.’

So at least for the time being Shute Festival Online looks as if it is here to stay. We are locked down again, children at home, working and juggling the home schooling, additional cooking, checking up on the community, and doing all the things that have become life for many in the UK. The directors hope that the literary feast this year will bring no less interest, engagement and respite in what is going to be a long and difficult trajectory out of the pandemic.

‘We now have a global audience we don’t want to lose; we have people joining us from all over the South West and the UK who similarly would never previously have been able to join us; and we can bring in multiple speakers for panel events without the expenses that would previously have been beyond our means. Despite not having ticket sales, our Shute Festival audience have been incredibly supportive in terms of donations which has kept us afloat and allowed us to pay our writer speakers.

‘There are so many issues that we as a region, and country and world need to think about and think about holistically. But it is good to root issues in specific places and learn lessons that can be transplanted elsewhere.’

Shute Festival 2021 will be entirely online and free to all. All our events from 2020 are still available on replay. Details at www.shutefest.org.uk. Speakers for 2021 include Annie Freud, Armand d’Angour, Karoline Kan, Martin Hesp, Caroline Eden, Alex Wheatle, Emma Stonex, Laurence Anholt, Salud Botella, Jason Webster, Clive Stafford Smith, Corinne Fowler, James Crowden, Lucy Maddox and Sir Ghillean Prance.

In addition to fiction there are a number of events on topics of current importance such as climate change and the environment; criminal justice; colonialism and country houses; trees and agroforestry; biodiversity and wildflowers, and mental health during the pandemic.

The Festival’s March events feature Laurence Anholt on the next installment of his series on Mindful Detective Vincent Caine, Festival of Death, introduced

by Jason Webster. It is on March 11 followed by Martin Hesp on, The Last Broomsquire, in conversation with Sam Knights on March 25. For more information and to catch up on previous events visit http://www.shutefest.org. uk/

42 The Marshwood Vale Magazine March 2021 Tel. 01308 423031

Annie Freud

Armand D’Angour

Laurence Anholt

Martin Hesp

The Lit Fix

Marshwood Vale based author, Sophy Roberts, gives us her slim pickings for March

O

ne of the most difficult aspects of this pandemic is maintaining a positive focus, which is why this month’s lit fix is brief and to the point. I’m recommending a book which is part self-help, part philosophy, part call-to-arms: How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell (London: Melville House, 2019) Odell is an American artist and writer, based in Oakland, California. Much of her world view is informed by her physical proximity to big tech—Facebook, Google etc on West Coast America. Her glimpses of nature are rarer than ours here in Dorset: a wetland carved out of the urban landscape of San Francisco, a city park. But as the opening quote from Walter Benjamin reads, “Redemption preserves itself in a small crack in the continuum of catastrophe”.

Make time and space to do nothing, Odell argues, and we wrest our focus away from the attention economy (our phones and computers) to reposition ourselves in a present, physical realm (“that tiny, glowing world of metrics cannot compare to this one, which speaks instead in breezes, light and shadow, and the unruly, indescribable detail of the real.”).

My father, a constant gardener, has no desire to even try social media. I, on the other hand, use Instagram relentlessly, perceiving it as a vital tool in my work as a writer and journalist (reading Odell, I suspect only 5% of my claim to productivity is really true). As for my kids, like most teenagers they’re involved with different tech platforms (Snapchat, TikTok) more than I’d care to admit. In our household, some of the most familiar four words you’ll hear spoken is GET OFF YOUR PHONE. Odell’s book is something of an antidote to that. I’ve been scribbling in the margins of her book all month, not because it’s an easy read, but because it’s a thought-provoking one—and one I think will resonate with our West Dorset community.

In loose terms, it looks at three movements: 1. “a dropping out, not dissimilar from the ‘dropping out’ of the 1960s”

2. “a lateral movement outwards to things and people that are around us” 3. “a movement downward into place” In intelligent, nuanced writing, Odell gives ‘a plan of action’ to counter the noise. She argues that in silence, there is everything to hear. “It takes a break to do nothing, to just listen, to remember in the deepest sense what, when, and where we are.” The book, although written pre-pandemic to huge critical acclaim, seems to resonate even more deeply in lockdown, and the opportunities the next era could bring.

Right now, there’s no #FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) because life as we once knew it has been put on hold. But maybe when things start to return to normal, we can try to become less obsessed with constant distraction, and live instead by a more empowering hashtag: #NOSMO (the Necessity of Sometimes Missing Out). Maybe we can replace misspent time (which is only profiting the corporates) with doing less, immersed in the reality of place.

For me, however, I fear Odell has replaced one distraction with another. Her textured thinking unspools so many new threads. In putting down Odell, I’ve found myself picking up some of the great American nature writing she references. They include the works of Gary Snyder (The Practice of the Wild) and Rebecca Solnit (A Field Guide to Getting Lost). I like the link she draws, between the global push for habitat restoration (the trend for rewilding) and what Odell calls the necessity of ‘restoring habitats for human thought.’ There’s an irony to that, of course... To hear the silence, I realise I need to go further, to do nothing, not even read.

Buy any of the books above at Archway Bookshop in Axminster in March and receive a 10% discount when you mention Marshwood Vale Magazine. archwaybookshop.co.uk.

Sophy Roberts is a freelance journalist who writes about travel and culture. She writes regularly for FT Weekend, among others. Her first book, The Lost Pianos of Siberia—one of The Sunday Times top five non-fiction books for summer 2020—is now available in paperback.

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MARCH YOUNG LIT FIX PICTURE BOOK REVIEW I Used to be a Fish: The Story of Evolution by Tom Sullivan Published by Hodder Children’s Books, Ages 4+ Recommended by Antonia Squire I love a silly picture book, and what could be sillier than the story of a fish that turns into a boy who wants to fly?

With simple, yet vibrant illustrations, Tom Sullivan tells the tale of a fish who grew legs and walked on land. But then grew fur and hid from big monsters. And then the monsters disappeared and he changed again into a monkey who loved to swing from the trees. Soon he grew taller and cleverer, but lost his fur and started to hunt and build. And he kept building and inventing wonderful new things before wondering if he will ever learn to fly.

This silly tale of a fish who becomes a boy who wants to fly is a brilliant introduction to the concept of evolution for the smallest homo sapiens living amongst us. Included in the back of the book is a brief graphic history of life on earth from 4.6 BILLION years ago to now and a very simple definition of how evolution has happened over that time.

CHILDREN’S MIDDLE GRADE BOOK REVIEW The Unadoptables

by Hana Tooke and Illustrated by Ayesha L. Rubio Published by Puffin Books, Ages 9+ Recommended by Nicky Mathewson Five “unadoptable” orphans live under the same roof; The Little Tulip Orphanage in Amsterdam. What makes them unadoptable? They’re a little quirky you could say.

Matron Gassbeek is a crook, a mean and selfish individual who just wants to be rid of these misfits. Agreeing to sell the children to a brute of a man she thinks she has solved all

of her problems. The plan, however, is interrupted and the children escape the orphanage.

All they need now is to find a guardian. Milou is convinced that her parents are coming back for her and so, with her friends, follows a very thin thread of clues to find them.

An incredible adventure unfolds and nothing is as it seems. The children are running out of time before they are discovered by the authorities and sent back to that awful place. Can they solve the mystery and be happy at last?

This is an imaginative, fast-paced adventure with wonderful characters that takes you on a whirlwind of a journey.

TEEN BOOK REVIEW Heartstopper Volume 1: Boy Meets Boy

by Alice Oseman Published by Hodder Children’s Books, Ages 14+ Recommended by Nicky Mathewson Charlie and Nick go to the same school but they’re not friends, you could say they’re opposites, moving in different circles. They are asked to sit next to each other in class one day and a wonderful friendship is sparked. Charlie falls quickly for Nick but is not foolish enough to think that Nick would ever reciprocate the feeling. Stranger things have happened though, and you shouldn’t write off romance before it has a chance to grow. They do say opposites attract...

I love graphic novels for the speed with which they pull you into a story, two pages in and I’m right in there with the characters. With her well-crafted and sensitive illustrations, Alice Oseman portrays so much, the experience is so visceral. I felt the anxiety of the teenage characters and the pure warmth of their budding love for each other.

I am completely head over heels in love with this series and I cannot wait to read book four which is on the horizon.

It’s a bit sweary, but I would happily recommend it to readers ages 14 and up.

10% off RRP of these books for Marshwood Vale Readers at The Bookshop, 14 South Street, Bridport

44 The Marshwood Vale Magazine March 2021 Tel. 01308 423031

Screen Time with Nic Jeune

Lupin on Netflix

NETFLIX Lupin In the first 28 days of its release, Lupin was seen by over 70 million Netflix subscribers.

The show has a razor-sharp script from George Kay (Killing Eve).

It is inspired by the books by Maurice Leblanc who created the character of Arsene Lupin.

“Lupin is an addictive, clever puzzle that combines elements from Luther, Sherlock Holmes and Inside Man for an engrossing experience.” Roger Ebert.com Omar Sy is superb as Assane Diop.

BBC A Matter of Life and Death (1946) Powell/ Pressburger wrote, produced and directed a host of great British films. This is a must. Jack Cardiff one of the greatest cinematographers of all time made full use of black and white film and glorious technicolour. A movie that I will never tire of watching. “a romantic, daring and beautifully realized allegorical fantasy— one of the best of the Powell/Pressburger movies.” Martin Scorsese Shakespeare in Love (1998) Won 7 Oscars. Very clever script by playwright Tom Stoppard and Marc Norman “The richest and most satisfying romantic movie of the year.

It’s really about two great loves at once—the love of life and of art—and the way that Shakespeare, like no writer before him, transformed the one into the other.” Entertainment Weekly.

Owen Gliberman.

MUBI Since 2007, MUBI has quietly positioned itself by word of mouth as the go-to film service for film lovers.

African Queen (1951) “As charming as the C.S. Forester novel on which it is based, The African Queen is top flight entertainment, delightful, different, always interesting. It is filled with excitement and adventure and sparked by superlative performances from Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart.” The Hollywood Reporter.

AMAZON PRIME Supernova ( 2020) “The actors Stanley Tucci and Colin Firth have been friends for 20 years and that is plainly evident watching them play longtime lovers in the wrenchingly beautiful film Supernova.”

The Associated Press. Mark Kennedy.

One Night in Miami ( 2020) Set on the night of February 25, 1964, One Night in Miami follows a young, brash Cassius Clay as he emerges from the Miami Beach Convention Center the new Heavyweight Boxing Champion of the World. Against all odds, he defeated Sonny Liston and shocked the sports world. While crowds of people swarm Miami Beach to celebrate the match, Clay—unable to stay on the island because of Jim Crow-era segregation laws— spends the evening at the Hampton House Motel in Miami’s African American Overtown neighbourhood celebrating with three of his closest friends: Malcolm X, Sam Cooke, and Jim Brown.

“It’s an immensely watchable evocation of a moment when black America was on the verge of an upheaval that continues to resonate, in 2020 as strongly as ever. It absolutely puts you— to coin a phrase of the time—in the room where it happened.”

The Guardian. Jonathon Romney.

Tel. 01308 423031 The Marshwood Vale Magazine March 2021 45

Health&Beauty

Daffodil Appeal

E

nd of life charity Marie Curie is calling on residents of Dorset to support its flagship fundraising campaign, the Great Daffodil Appeal— which is reaching its 35th anniversary next month—and has, for the first time, had to cancel all of their iconic public collections for the campaign.

After an extremely difficult 12 months, the charity is facing a potential loss of Alison Steadman over £3 million due to the cancelled public collections but has a variety of creative ways that people in Dorset can support the campaign this year including donning their trainers and ‘stepping up for Marie Curie’ by walking 10,000 steps every day throughout March.

All donations from the Great Daffodil Appeal will ensure that Marie Curie Nurses can continue working on the frontline, providing end of life care in people’s homes throughout Dorset and the South West.

Stephanie Sterndale-Bennett, Marie Curie Community Fundraiser for Dorset, said: “The Great Daffodil Appeal is vitally important to us. Having been held every March for over three decades, this is the first time we’ve had to cancel all of our public collections. This is a huge blow as each volunteer would usually raise an average £80 from a collection shift: enough to pay for the equivalent of four hours of nursing care.

“In these unprecedented times we need peoples’ support now more than ever. From simply making a donation and wearing a daffodil pin to hosting a virtual ‘Wear Yellow Day’—we’ve created a wide range of fundraising ideas in the hope that we have something to suit everyone.”

Alison Steadman, actor and Marie Curie Ambassador, said: “I have seen first-hand the incredible difference Marie Curie makes and just how important their work is in caring for people with a terminal illness and their families. The loving care they gave my mum when she was dying is something that I’ll never forget and will always remember. I don’t know how we would have managed as a family without the Marie Curie Nurses and doctors and dread to think about what it would mean if they weren’t there for all the families that need them.

“The work Marie Curie do is needed now more than ever as the Covid pandemic has had a big impact on their ability to fundraise.

That is why I’m encouraging people across the whole of the UK to show their support in any way they can in March for this year’s Great Daffodil Appeal. Every donation means that when the time comes, Marie Curie can be there for people and their loved ones when they need it most.”

During the Great Daffodil Appeal the first annual National Day of Reflection will take place. Since the first lockdown began in 2020, millions of people have been bereaved. Join Marie Curie on 23 March, the first anniversary of the first UK lockdown, for a day to reflect and commemorate this tragic loss of life.

For more information please email Steph.Sterndale-Bennett@ mariecurie.org.uk or visit www.mariecurie.org.uk/daffodil 46 The Marshwood Vale Magazine March 2021 Tel. 01308 423031

Rainbow Campaign reaches local towns and villages

Local support is much appreciated by NHS staff

A

small initiative started by a group of friends determined to show appreciation for NHS staff working on the frontline in local hospitals has taken off across Dorset and South Somerset.

After careful research and in consultation with Dorchester Community Hospital and Yeovil District Hospital, the Nurturing Hospital Staff (NHS Rainbow) campaign has taken off across more than 50 local villages and towns. Weekly collections of specific items, designed to give staff a treat and a bit of a pamper, have soared. The campaign has so far collected nearly 1,000 individual donations of hand cream, lip balm, shower & bath gels/soaks, scented candles, eye masks, moisturisers, relaxation and sleep treats and will run into March 2021.

The feedback from both hospitals has been tremendous: ‘Thank you for all of this hard work, it really is appreciated.

As you can imagine the stress levels are quite high at the moment, so being able to support our staff with these items will bring a much needed morale boost’ said a spokesperson from Yeovil District Hospital ‘As you can see the staff were absolutely delighted to receive these gifts and were really overwhelmed with our ongoing support and generosity. It certainly brought a lot of cheer and smiles and perked everyone up.’

The campaign would like to thank all the village shops, garden centres and service stations who have agreed to take a box.

If you would like to give your donation, please check the live map for your nearest collection box: https://www. google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=17GLpxNMNFoOCb WBSOx3kxdAm0G2rlUhg&ll=50.86998905878451%2C2.6558713025390657&z=11 If you’d like to set up a box in your local shop, garden centre or garage, please contact: mjattwood1@hotmail.co.uk.

Tel. 01308 423031 The Marshwood Vale Magazine March 2021 47

Services&Classified Check our website for things you may have missed www.marshwoodvale.com

SITUATIONS VACANT

DEATH NOTICE

Cooking & light care for one in Chideock.

Please call 07879 332736

SMITH : Trudie Jane (nee Legg) on 29th January passed away peacefully at Musgrove Hospital aged 52 years.

A much loved, wife, mum, daughter, sister and aunt, who will be sadly missed by all her family and friends.

A private funeral will take place at North Poorton Church.

Tributes, and donations for Macmillan and Cancer Research UK may be given online at www.stoodleyandson. co.uk. All enquiries to Stoodley & Son Tel 01460 73229.

Housekeeper/ Caretaker Berehayes Holiday Cottages info@berehayes.co.uk

FOR SALE Internal Redwood Pine Door with hinges, unpainted, as new condition 730mm wide, height 1.95m. £38; Close Boarded Timber Wicket Gate by Larchlap, 3ft x 6ft height. VGC £45; Skirting board 100mm MDF Bull Nose 11 x 4 metre lengths, £10 each; Shower Screen Lakes Classic Range, size 1400mm x 1850 mm high, 6mm glass, semi-frameless, silver. Brand new still boxed. New price £294; price £135. Steel cavity wall lintel, 3metre long, foam filled, condition new. £55. 01300 321299 Mechanic’s doublesided storage rack. 10 rows, 118 trays various sizes £160. Glass fronted wooden cabinet, 1 shelf 1m x 50cm x 40cm £50. Mid-century oak desk 1.5m x 83cm x 70cm 9 drawers £200 ONO Filing cabinet, 4 drawers, £10. Call 07970 077852 Vintage garden tools.

Strong equipment for the discerning gardener or display purposes. From £10 Details 01460 55105 Black and Decker 500w hedge trimmer. See working £28 01460 55105 Violin. Full size, good condition. Lovely sweet and mellow tone. £250 Violin bow. £50. 07984 547980 48 The Marshwood Vale Magazine March 2021 Tel. 01308 423031

LAND WANTED Wanted to buy, field, half acre upwards. Not best land, to grow few trees for environment.

Can decide immediately! Trees I have ready, urgently need space to grow.

Tel:- 07508 106910 Apr 21

CURTAINS Little Curtains.

Handmade Curtains, Blinds and Cushions.

Contact 07443 516141 or 01308 485325

Apr 21

FOR SALE Norris A5 Smoothing Plane £250 o.v.n.o. Phone number 01460 52645 (Nr. Ilminster).

Compost bin: Black.

Diameter at base 66cms.

Height 90 cms. Used but undamaged and now not required. £5 07984 547980

ELECTRICAL

WANTED

CHIMNEY SWEEP

Vintage & antique textiles, linens, costume buttons etc. always sought by Caroline Bushell. Tel. 01404 45901.

Apr 21

Postage stamps. Private collector requires 19th and early 20th century British. Payment to you or donation to your nominated charity.

01460 240630.

Secondhand tools wanted. All trades.

Users & Antiques.

G & E C Dawson.

01297 23826. www. secondhandtools.co.uk.

Oct 20

Dave buys all types of tools 01935 428975

Mar 21

RESTORATION FURNITURE. Antique Restoration and Bespoke Furniture.

Furniture large and small carefully restored and new commissions undertaken. City and Guilds qualified.

Experienced local family firm. Phil Meadley 01297 560335

Mar 21

SURFACE PREPARATION

Alberny Restoration In-house blast cleaning for home and garden furniture, doors and gates. Agricultural/ construction machinery and tooling. Vehicles, parts and trailers etc. 01460 73038, email allan@alberny. co.uk, FB Alberny Sandblasting

FOR SALE Sewing machine Dunelm, used once £25.

Hand Vac Bel Dray, as new, £20. Men’s casual microfibre jacket, 40” x 42”, £10. Bed chair, grey/ blue, £20. David Shepherd tiger picture signed print £75. Gent’s sports jacket Welsh tweed 40” x 42” £15. 01460 68483.

Fire Basket. Cerne Valley Forge cast iron.

Max. width between dogs 70 cms, depth 46 cms, max height 40 cms. Good condition. £80. Also: cast iron fire guard. 60cm x 62 cm height. £20. Buyer to collect, please. 07984 547980 Casserole. Denby “Serenade” casserole with lid. Never used. £10 07984 547980 Rayburn Rembrandt fire £50. Iron work bench with vice L 3ft, £20. 13 Flat irons, £340. Iron bend ends £20. 01460 241942.

Bicycle, 21 gears, all round springing, blue and silver, good condition. £60. 01460 61863.

Dog Kennel or log store £5. Jacket size 14 dark rust Laura Ashley £10.

Motor home awning curtains, six blue/ white stripe £10. 01308 898611.

Dark green rigid plastic 300kg coal storage bunker hinged lid and drop down front access door. Easy to move when empty 900w x 740d x 940h. £80. Buyer collects 01395 577859.

Country style light wood green tiled kitchen table and 4 matching chairs, 4ft x 2 1/2ft , good condition, £75, Buyer collects. 01395 577859.

Moorcroft rare pomegranate vase 7 x 7.5cm, signed, no damage, £100. 01395 577859.

Small Vanity unit in grey wood c/with oblong sink and waterfall tap.

H 88cm, depth 22cm, width 40cm. Also flexible tap connectors.

Good condition, ideal for downstairs, modern design grey veneer. 01308 488064.

Brass and iron headboard, single size from Original Bedstead Company, Par Cornwall, handmade unused cream and brass, reason for sale change to office, offers around £75. 01395 516211.

DISTRIBUTION

Tel. 01308 423031 The Marshwood Vale Magazine March 2021 49

FREE ADS for items under £1,000 This FREE ADS FORM is for articles for sale, where the sale price is under £1000 (Private advertisers only — no trade, motor, animals, firearms etc). Just fill in the form and send it to the Marshwood Vale Magazine, Lower Atrim, Bridport, Dorset DT6 5PX or email the text to info@marshwoodvale.com.

Unfortunately due to space constraints there is no guarantee of insertion of free advertising. We reserve the right to withhold advertisements. For guaranteed classified advertising please use ‘Classified Ads’ form

Name ............................................................. Telephone number .................................

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Monthly Quiz –

Win a book from Little Toller Books

Send in your answer on a postcard, along with your name and address to: Hargreaves Quiz, Marshwood Vale Magazine, Lower Atrim, Bridport, Dorset DT6 5PX. Study the clues contained in the rhyme and look carefully at the signposts to work out which town or village in South Somerset, West Dorset or East Devon is indicated. The first correct answer drawn out of a hat will win a book from local publisher Little Toller Books.

There is no cash equivalent and no correspondence will be entered into.

Last month’s answer was Wareham. The winner was Mr Evans from Weymouth.

50 The Marshwood Vale Magazine March 2021 Tel. 01308 423031

BUSINESS NEWS

Grants available for Farmers FARMERS are being invited to bid in Somerset’s biggest ever auction for works to reduce flooding, boost agriculture and improve the environment.

The event is being organised by the Farming & Wildlife Advisory Group SouthWest (FWAG SW) for Somerset Rivers Authority (SRA) and Bristol Water.

Cllr David Hall, Chair of Somerset Rivers Authority, said: ‘This will be our fourth online auction and this year farmers are being offered a choice of up to 12 different measures, more than ever before. The aim is to help slow the flow of water down to vulnerable areas while delivering other benefits. Moves like grassland slitting and subsoiling, for example, don’t just aerate the ground and let more rain filter in, they also improve the soil.

‘So farmers are being asked to think about win-wins. If there are simple things that can be done that benefit everyone, grants may be available.’

Total funding available this year is £60,000, the biggest sum yet, with £40,000 coming from the SRA, and £20,000 from Bristol Water. Bristol Water’s money is reserved for two areas. The first is within roughly four miles of Westbury-sub-Mendip and includes Chewton Mendip, Wookey, Wedmore and Cheddar. The second is the Egford Borehole catchment north of Nunney near Frome. Bristol Water especially wants to reduce the amount of soil and nutrients running off into watercourses and reservoirs.

Cleaner water lowers reservoir treatment costs, and is healthier for wildlife.

The auction covers the length and breadth of Somerset, with one limitation. As the main purpose of NFM activities in Somerset is to slow the flow of water down through the higher parts of river catchments, the online auction system at somerset.naturebid.org.uk will not allow farmers to place bids for most of the low-lying land in Internal Drainage Board areas. The only exception this year—because of Bristol Water’s involvement—is the chunk of the Somerset Levels near Westbury-subMendip. The auction will run online from Monday 1 March to Monday 15 March at somerset.naturebid.org.uk.

Tel. 01308 423031 The Marshwood Vale Magazine March 2021 51