Feature – Fringe Benefits from Meldreth Station

1 In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm and three or more is a congress.

John Adams 2 If you don’t read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed. Mark Twain

3 I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.

Winston Churchill

4 A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

George Bernard Shaw 5 Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.

Douglas Casey, Classmate of Bill Clinton 6 Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else. Frederic Bastiat, French economist (1801-1850) 7 Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. Ronald Reagan (1986) 8 I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.

Will Rogers 9. In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.

Voltaire (1764) 10 Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you! Pericles (430 B.C.) 11 The government is like a baby’s alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.

Ronald Reagan 12 The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.

Winston Churchill

13 The only difference between a taxman and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.

Mark Twain

14 The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools. Herbert Spencer, English Philosopher (1820-1903) 15 What this country needs are more unemployed politicians.

Edward Langley, Artist (1928-1995) 16 A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have. Thomas Jefferson 17 We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.

feature

Fringe Benefits from Meldreth Station

It’s not often that the claim that an article in a local magazine has inspired a play at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival but that is indeed what happened with Meldreth Matters this year. See below for a review of the play-Editor.

The largest arts festival in the world by some margin, Edinburgh Fringe has quite staggering statistics: this year, 21,000 performers appeared in more than 2,500 shows and just less than 2 million tickets were sold.

A good example of the creative drive for new ideas and new venues was Allotment, a ‘darkly funny physical comedy’ exploring ‘the powerful legacy of generations of gardeners.’ Performed in an actual allotment it won a prestigious Fringe First award. However, even as a serial Fringe-goer, my credulity was severely stretched by reading of a show, which ‘takes you to the tiny village of Meldreth in Cambridgeshire in the throes of a fight to save the name of its railway station.’

And so it was that Shirley and I were at the head of the queue at the Bosco Theatre tent for a performance of New Art Club: Quiet Art of Destruction. New Art Club is a double act who deliberately defy description. Pete Shenton and Tom Roden are trained dancers with ‘proper’ jobs in the world of dance theatre, but each year take a show to Edinburgh to branch out of dance to combine choreography, physical theatre and comedy. Genre-definition, however is not really the point, this show was about conflict, involved lots of audience participation, was very silly and hugely enjoyable.

The audience was cast as the rival populations of Meldreth and Melbourn separated by Melwood. As the dispute over the station’s name boiled over, the villagers started throwing missiles at each other and earning points from daft competitions such as speed-eating cornflakes. There were many, very specific references such as the The Dolphin, ‘the butchers in Melbourn’, One Stop, the Post Office, British Queen, Bowls Club, Church Fete, Meldreth Local History Group and Meldreth Matters all of which for someone such as myself who has lived in both villages was a surreal experience. It was very easy and great fun to get drawn in. Unsurprisingly, when it became apparent that I had local knowledge, I was ‘picked’ but failed to catch an egg in a bowl.

Throughout the show I could not help wondering who might have written the material – could it have been a highly respected ‘station master’ or a Radio 5 presenting resident or even a local historian from the other side of the tracks? But at the end of the show I realised that it was none other than Tom Roden himself who unknown to me lives in Meldreth! Angus Bell