Event News and Courses

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

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 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

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

March 23

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

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

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.’

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

If 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 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?