JANUARY 2020 | FREE
A MONTHLY CELEBR ATION OF PEOPLE, PLACE AND PURVEYOR
PULLING POWER
with Kit Vaughan of Prime Coppice Working Woodland
EXCLUSIVE READER OFFER WORTH £600
bridporttimes.co.uk
WELCOME
A
nother year passes, our lives neatly wrapped in packs of 12. Have we taken stock or even taken notice? Have we paused to take a breath or are we impatient at the pretence, in a rush to reach the ‘point’? Whatever form our own personal ‘point’ might take. What though, if this is the point? And this. And this. Not then or when but now. Dismiss this as tish and pish by all means, but I’ve been guilty of fixing my stare so firmly on the horizon that I’ve often not noticed life tugging pleadingly at my trouser leg. The nature of this humble publication may require a good deal of forward planning but I am fortunate too in that each month I am introduced to fascinating people doing wonderful things and grounded very much in the now. Ironically perhaps, being present enough to make the most of now gives our future selves something for which to be grateful. This month, out there in the mud and moment with his two gypsy cobs, is Kit Vaughan, heaving timber from his working woodland, Prime Coppice — a place to heal and be healed. Happy New Year to you all. Have a great month. Glen Cheyne, Editor glen@homegrown-media.co.uk @bridporttimes
CONTRIBUTORS Editorial and creative direction Glen Cheyne Design Andy Gerrard @round_studio Sub editors Jay Armstrong @jayarmstrong_ Elaine Taylor Photography Katharine Davies @Katharine_KDP Feature writer Jo Denbury @jo_denbury Editorial assistant Paul Newman @paulnewmanart Print Pureprint Distribution Available throughout Bridport and surrounding villages. Please see bridporttimes.co.uk for stockists.
Simon Barber Evolver @SimonEvolver @evolvermagazine evolver.org.uk David Burnett The Dovecote Press dovecotepress.com Caroline Butler BSc (Hons) MNIMH herbalcaroline.co.uk Kelvin Clayton @kelvinclaytongp greenthoughts.me philosophyinpubs.co.uk Emilie Drew St Mary’s Parkrun parkrun.org.uk/stmarys/ Alison Ferris Charmouth Heritage Coast Centre @CharmouthHCC charmouth.org/chcc Jane Fox and Nadiya Wynn Yoga Space @yogaspacebridport yogaspacebridport.com Kerry Franses @fransesdesign fransesdesign.com
1 Bretts Yard Digby Road Sherborne Dorset DT9 3NL 01935 315556 @bridporttimes glen@homegrown-media.co.uk paul@homegrown-media.co.uk bridporttimes.co.uk Bridport Times is printed on an FSC® and EU Ecolabel certified paper. It goes without saying that once thoroughly well read, this magazine is easily recycled and we actively encourage you to do so. Whilst every care has been taken to ensure that the data in this publication is accurate, neither Bridport Times nor its editorial contributors can accept, and hereby disclaim, any liability to any party to loss or damage caused by errors or omissions resulting from negligence, accident or any other cause. Bridport Times does not officially endorse any advertising material included within this publication. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form - electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise - without prior permission from Bridport Times.
4 | Bridport Times | January 2020
Kit Glaisyer @kitglaisyer @kitglaisyer kitglaisyer.com Charlie Groves Groves Nurseries @GrovesNurseries @grovesnurseries grovesnurseries.co.uk Julie Hatcher Dorset Wildlife Trust @DorsetWildlife @dorsetwildlife dorsetwildlifetrust.org.uk Little Toller Books @LittleToller @littletollerdorset littletoller.co.uk Will Livingstone @willgrow willgrow.co.uk
Gill Meller @GillMeller @Gill.Meller gillmeller.com Anne Morrison The Bookshop @bookshopbridprt @thebookshopbridport dorsetbooks.com Chris Onions The Old Dairy Kitchen @olddairykitchen @olddairykitchen olddairykitchen.co.uk Anna Powell Sladers Yard @SladersYard @sladersyard sladersyard.wordpress.com John Puckey Marine Theatre Lyme Regis @johnpuckeypaint marinetheatre.com Max Riddington Bridport Arts Centre @bridportarts @bridportarts bridport-arts.com Leila Simon Tamarisk Farm @ tamarisk_farm tamariskfarm.co.uk Ann Sydney Bridport Museum @BridportMuseum bridportmuseum.co.uk Emma Tabor & Paul Newman @paulnewmanart @paulnewmanartist paulnewmanartist.com Chris Tripp Dorset Diggers Community Archaeology Group dorsetdiggers.btck.co.uk Colin Varndell Colin Varndell Natural History Photography colinvarndell.co.uk
46
JANUARY 2020
6 What’s On
42 Archaeology
70 Gardening
14 Arts and Culture
46 P RIME COPPICE WORKING WOODLAND
76 Community
26 History 30 Wild Dorset 38 Outdoors
56 Food and Drink 60 Body and Mind 66 Interiors
78 Philosophy 79 Literature 82 Crossword
bridporttimes.co.uk | 5
WHAT'S ON Listings
____________________________
Heritage Coast Canoe Club
____________________________
2nd & 4th Mondays 7.15pm
Weekly, various days
Biodanza @ Othona
Westbay Watersports Centre,
German Language Classes
Othona Community, Coast Rd, Burton
LSi, 51 East St. £65 for 5-week course
Bradstock DT6 4RN. £8-£10.
lsibridport.co.uk
Fisherman’s Green. Age 12+.
01308 862055 westbaykayak.co.uk
____________________________
01308 897130 biodanza-bridport.co.uk
Tuesdays 7.15pm
____________________________
Lyme Morris Rehearsals
Weekly, various days
Mondays 7.30pm-9.30pm
Love Learning Modern
Bridport Folk Dance Club
Charmouth Scout Hut, Barr Lane
Language Classes
WI Hall, North St. Folk dancing with
____________________________
LSi, 51 East St. Prices vary.
recorded music. 01308 423442
lsibridport.co.uk
Playing Field. 07917 748087 Facebook: Lyme Morris
____________________________
____________________________
Tuesdays 7.30pm-9pm
____________________________
Mondays 7.30pm-9pm
Bridport Sangha
Mondays 10am-12pm
Bridport Campfire -
Meditation Evenings
Watercolour Painting
Women’s Coaching Group
for Beginners
67 South St
Quaker Meeting House, South St.
LSi, 51 East St. £80 for 5-week course.
____________________________
07950 959572
____________________________
07881 805510 marion@taylormade.
Mondays 7.30pm-9.30pm
Every 2nd Tuesday 7pm-9pm
demon.co.uk
Bridport Choral Society
Co-operation Bridport
____________________________ Mondays (term-time)
bridportchoral.wordpress.com/Facebook
____________________________
Free. 07974 888895.
6.30pm-8pm
Tuesdays 10am-1pm
____________________________
Bridport ASD & Social
Art Class
Every 2nd Tuesday 7.15pm
Anxiety Support Group
Town Mill Arts, Lyme Regis DT7 3PU.
Bridport Sugarcraft Club
____________________________
Rd, DT6 4AB
Bridport Children’s Centre.
cooperationbridport.eventbrite.co.uk
07812 856823 trudiochiltree.co.uk
Ivy House, Grove Nurseries, West Bay
____________________________
Tuesdays & Thursdays 10.30am
____________________________
1st and 3rd Mondays
Walking the Way
Wednesday or Thursday
7.30pm-8.30pm
to Health in Bridport
9.30am-12.30pm (term-time)
Yoga @ Othona
Starts from CAB 45 South St.
Painting & Drawing Art Classes
____________________________
07505 268797
For teens, parents & carers
Othona Community, Coast Rd, Burton
Bradstock DT6 4RN. £8. 01308 897130 kate@othona-bb.org.uk
01305 252222 sarahdavies@dorset.gov.uk
Mangerton Mill Artist Studio.
Tuesdays 6pm-8pm
____________________________
Thinking of letting your holiday home? We know that your holiday home is just that – a home. That’s why our local team is dedicated to managing your property with the same care and attention you would. With tailored services to suit your needs, you can be as involved as you like, so why not get in touch today?
01929 448 708 enquiries@dorsethideaways.co.uk dorsethideaways.co.uk 6 | Bridport Times | January 2020
DECEMBER 2020 Wednesdays & Thursdays 7pm-10pm Bridport Bridge Club St Swithun’s Church Hall, Allington.
LSi, 51 East St. Free/donation. All ages/
LSi, 51 East St. Suitable 3- to 8-year-
saturdays-2/
____________________________
abilities. lsibridport.co.uk/chess-club-on-
olds. lsibridport.co.uk
____________________________
Saturday 4th 7.30pm
bridgewebs.com/bridport
Sundays starting 12th
Twelfth Night Entertainment
____________________________
for 5 weeks 2pm-3.30pm
Wednesdays 2pm-4pm
Time to Write at the Museum
Bridport Town Hall. Tinker’s Cuss Band;
(term-time)
Lyme Regis Museum, Bridge St, DT7
Maiden Newton Art Group Maiden Newton Village Hall, DT2 0AE.
3QA. £5.95 for 5 weeks. 01297 443370,
poetry readings. £7.50/£6.50 includes food/drink. 01308 425037
____________________________
lymeregismuseum.co.uk
Saturday 4th 7.30pm
____________________________
Bridport Ceilidhs: Jigs for Gigs
____________________________
Sundays starting 26th 3pm
Wednesdays 6pm-8pm
Sunday Music Sessions
Church House Hall, South St, DT6 3NW.
Contemporary Patchwork
Marine Theatre, Lyme Regis DT7 3QA.
01300 321405
Evening Classes Studi0ne, Broadwindsor Craft Centre.
Free. 01297 442394 marinetheatre.com
£9 (pre-booked) £10 on door. 01308
423442 bridportceilidhs.wordpress.com
____________________________
____________________________
Sunday 5th 2pm-4.30pm
07383 490026 getcrafty@studi0ne.com
Until 5th January 10.30am-4.30pm
Qi Gong & Meditation
____________________________
Winter Art Fair
Wednesdays 7pm-10pm
The Gallery Symondsbury DT6 6HG.
Quaker Meeting Hall, South St. £15.
Bridport Scottish Dancers Church House, South St. 01308 538141
Free entry/parking. lymebayarts.co.uk
07800 717283 dianabarnardtherapy.co.uk
____________________________
____________________________
Tuesday 7th 9.30am-1pm
bridportscottishdancers.org.uk
Until 12th January
Willow Workshop –
____________________________
Art Exhibiton: Radiance
Hedgerow Basket
Every 4th Wednesday 7.30pm
Sladers Yard, West Bay, DT6 4EL.
Studi0ne, Broadwindsor Craft Centre.
____________________________
josadlerforgednwillow.bigcartel.com
Philosophy in Pubs George Hotel, South St. Read Kelvin
01308 459511 sladersyard.co.uk
£55. Booking essential. 07531 417209
Clayton’s monthly article on page 78
Until 22nd March 2020
____________________________
Exhibition: Roots of
Tuesday 7th 7.30pm-8.30pm
Every 1st Thursday
Religion in West Bay
Art & Archaeology
10.45am-11.45am
West Bay Discovery Centre. Free/
with Chris Tripp
____________________________
lsibridport.co.uk
Free Community Coffee Morning
____________________________
donations. westbaydiscoverycentre.org.uk
LSi, 51 East St. £60 for 6-week course.
01308 420943
Friday 3rd 7.30pm-9pm
____________________________
____________________________
Dorset Wildlife Trust:
Thursday 9th-Wednesday 29th
1st & 2nd Friday 2pm-5pm
Now & In The Future
10.30am-4.30pm
Bridport Bridge Club
Bridport United Church Hall, East St,
New Year’s Art Sale
____________________________
Estate DT6 6HG. 01308 301326
St. Swithun’s Church Hall, Allington.
St Swithun’s Church Hall, Allington.
DT6 3LI. montycrook@rocketmail.com
The Gallery & The Space, Symondsbury
____________________________
Saturday 4th 10.30am-1.30pm
____________________________
Every 3rd Friday 10.30am-3.30pm
Bridport Seed Potato Day
Thursday 9th-Thursday 13th
Bridport Embroiderers
Bridport United Church, East St.
February 1pm-2pm
bridgewebs.com/bridport
Free. Light refreshments available
Therapeutic Writing Course:
____________________________
New Beginnings
____________________________
Saturday 4th 11am
Saturdays 10am-12pm
Family Storytime
Bothenhampton Village Hall. £42
Chess Club
with The Flying Monkeys
St Swithun’s Church Hall, Allington. 01308 456168
for 6 weeks. 07747 142088 george@ georgegottscounselling.co.uk
bridporttimes.co.uk | 7
WHAT'S ON LSi, 51 East St. £5. lsibridport.co.uk
Maiden Newton Village Hall, DT2 0AE.
Paul Jones & Dave Kelly
Thursday 16th 7.30pm
____________________________
Marine Theatre, Lyme Regis DT7 3QA.
James Rowland – Revelations
Wednesday 22nd 7.30pm
£25. 01297 442394 marinetheatre.com
Talk: Cultivating Beauty &
____________________________
Broadoak Village Hall. 01308 424922
Function Within The Organic
Sunday 12th 3pm
artsreach.co.uk
____________________________
Kitchen Garden
Film - Five Seasons:
Thursday 16th 7.30pm
The Gardens of Piet Oudolf
The Lesser Known New Forest
Uplyme Village Hall. Non-members £3.
Marine Theatre, Lyme Regis. Tickets:
WI Hall, North St. Bridport & District
tiny.cc/ulrhs-film. 07767 261444
01308 459469
Alvorada: Choro
____________________________ Friday 10th 7.30pm
£6 + £1.06 booking fee from
____________________________
Non-members £5 incl. refreshments
01297 631850 ulrhs.wordpress.com
____________________________
Gardening Club. Non-members: £2.
Thursday 23rd 7.30pm
____________________________
Music from Brazil
Sunday 12th 3pm
Saturday 18th 11am-4pm
Allington Strings Winter Concert
Mixed Media Workshop:
Wootton Fitzpaine Village Hall.
Sir John Colfox Academy, Ridgeway
Twigs, Leaves & Berries
Bookshop, South St. 01308 897133
£30. Booking essential. 07436 062343
Comedy Club with Jonny Pelham
____________________________
£10 advance. £12 on door. 01297 442394
____________________________
01297 560948 artsreach.co.uk
____________________________
DT6 3DT. Tickets: £10 from Bridport
Studi0ne, Broadwindsor Craft Centre.
Friday 24th 8pm
allingtonstrings@outlook.co.uk
studi0ne.com
Marine Theatre, Lyme Regis DT7 3QA
Monday 13th 2pm-3.30pm
Saturday 18th 7.30pm
Art & Design History: Realism
People’s String Foundation –
marinetheatre.com
Chapel in the Garden, Bridport. £60 for
Res Publica
Saturday 25th 7pm
6-week course. 01308 321715
New Elizabethan Singers:
chris.pamsimpson@btinternet.com
Burton Bradstock Village Hall.
Bach & Mozart
____________________________
01308 897421 artsreach.co.uk
____________________________
Monday 13th 7.30pm
Sunday 19th 2pm-4.30pm
St Mary’s Church, South St.
Beaminster Moviola:
Qi Gong & Meditation
Tickets £12 from Goadsby, Bridport
Downton Abbey
Quaker Meeting Hall, South St. £15.
Saturday 25th 7.30pm
____________________________
Drimpton Village Hall. 01308 867241
____________________________
____________________________
____________________________
07800 717283 dianabarnardtherapy.co.uk
Spitz & Co – Les Gloriables
____________________________
Monday 20th 7pm-9pm
Wednesday 15th 11.15am
Therapeutic Writing Course:
artsreach.co.uk
Nordic Walking in the Vineyard
On Dreams
Saturday 25th 8pm
Furleigh Wine Estate, DT6 5JF.
Bothenhampton Village Hall. £15 07747
Ninebarrow Folk Duo
£10 furleighestate.co.ukevents
____________________________
£14 advance. £16.50 on door.
Beaminster Public Hall. £5
booked/£5.50 on door. 01308 861746
Accessible to all. Poles provided.
____________________________
142088 george@georgegottscounselling.co.uk
Marine Theatre, Lyme Regis DT7 3QA.
____________________________
Tuesday 21st 2.30pm
Thursday 16th 2.30pm
The Battle of Britain Over Dorset
01297 442394 marinetheatre.com
Arts Society West Dorset: Klimt
Beaminster Museum. £3.
Sunday 26th 8pm
____________________________
Marine Theatre, Lyme Regis DT7 3QA.
& the Viennese Secession 1900
____________________________
info@beaminstermuseum.co.uk
Jazz in the Bar: Trio Simbora
£7.50. taswestdorset.org.uk
Wednesday 22nd 1.30pm-4.30pm
____________________________
Maiden Newton Art Group
£8 advance. £12 on door. 01297 442394
Thursday 16th 3pm
Lecture: Winter - An Exploration
Talk: The Role of Poetry in Health
Through Art
Bridport Town Hall. Non-members
8 | Bridport Times | January 2020
marinetheatre.com
____________________________ Monday 27th 2.30pm
January Programme
Film
Exhibition on Screen
Lucian Freud 16 January, 7.30pm
Allsop Gallery
Theatre
Film
Music
Another Way of Life as seen from a Motorcycle, Photographs by George Wright
Encore School for Scandal
MET Opera, Wozzeck
The Schmoozenbergs
8 January - 11 January, 7.30pm
19 January, 4pm
25 January, 7.30pm
4 January - 15 February, 10am - 4pm Tues - Sat Box Office 01308 424 204
bridport-arts.com
WHAT'S ON Talk: A Year in the Country Bridport United Church Hall, East St.
£10 advance. £12 on door. 01297 442394
____________________________
marinetheatre.com
Every Wednesday & Saturday
____________________________
Weekly Market
(West Dorset). Non-members: £5 incl.
Thursday 30th 7.30pm
South, West & East St
____________________________
Marine Theatre, Lyme Regis DT7 3QA.
2nd Saturday of the month,
marinetheatre.com
Farmers’ Market
Studi0ne, Broadwindsor Craft Centre.
Friday 31st 7.30pm
____________________________
Presented by the Golden Cap Association refreshments. 01308 863577
Cinema: Blinded by the Light (12A)
Tuesday 28th 10am-4pm
£6 advance. £7.50 on door. 01297 442394
9am–1pm
____________________________
Bridport Arts Centre
Linus Project: Patchwork & Quilting Volunteers Day
____________________________
Donations. Booking essential.
Neil Maya Quartet,
Every Saturday, 9am–12pm
07436 062343 studi0ne.com
The Brubeck Project
Country Market
____________________________ Tuesday 28th 2pm
Evershot Parish Hall. £9/£6 U18/£25 family. 07867 536754 artsreach.co.uk
WI Hall, North St
____________________________
Last Sunday of every month,
Talk: Faith, Angels and the Poor Bridport United Church Hall, East St.
____________________________ 10am-4pm
Non-members £2. u3asites.org.uk/bridport
Planning ahead
____________________________
____________________________
Wednesday 29th 9am-4pm
Saturday 1st February
Health MOT: Free Check
9.30am-4.30pm
Up With LiveWell Dorset
Willow Workshop: Make a Hare
Sport
LSi, 51 East St. lsibridport.co.uk
Studi0ne, Broadwindsor Craft Centre.
____________________________
Wednesday 29th 9.30am-4.30pm
studi0ne.com
Brewery Fields, Skilling Hill Rd, DT6
Studi0ne, Broadwindsor Craft Centre.
Saturday 1st February 7.30pm
Saturday 11th Dorchester 2nd (H)
____________________________ Willow Workshop: Leaping Hare
Bridport Vintage Market St Michael’s Trading Estate, DT6 3RR
____________________________
£75. Booking essential. 07436 062343
Bridport RFC
____________________________
5LN. bridportrugby.co.uk. 2.15pm start
£75. Booking essential. 07436 062343
Cinema: Bait (15)
Saturday 18th East Dorset (H)
studi0ne.com
____________________________
____________________________
Marine Theatre, Lyme Regis DT7 3QA.
To include your event in our FREE
Wednesday 29th 2pm for 3pm
£6 advance. £7.50 on door.
01297 442394 marinetheatre.com
listings please email details (whole
____________________________
listing in 20 words max) by the
Exhibition on Screen: Lucian Freud Marine Theatre, Lyme Regis DT7 3QA.
10 | Bridport Times | January 2020
Fairs and markets
1st of each preceding month to listings@homegrown-media.co.uk
PREVIEW In association with
NINEBARROW
N
ot only exceptional singers and musicians, the multi-
number two in the Amazon Folk Chart and earned five-star
Jay LaBouchardiere — are also equally passionate
Dance & Song Society’s EDS Magazine. Folk luminary
award-winning duo Ninebarrow — Jon Whitley and
about the stories behind their songs. An evening with the duo isn’t just an evening of great music, it’s also a night of history,
reviews in both The Morning Star and the English Folk Mike Harding hailed it as, ‘absolutely monumental.’
folklore, and storytelling.
evolver.org.uk
of one voice’ and by Kate Rusby as, ‘absolutely amazing’,
____________________________________________
delivering original songs that are rooted in the landscape and
Marine Theatre, Church Street, Lyme Regis, DT7 3QA.
Described by Mark Radcliffe as sounding like, ‘two halves
they combine breathtaking vocal harmonies and melodies,
Saturday 25th January 8pm
history of the British Isles.
£16.50/£14. 01297 442394 marinetheatre.com
Their latest album, The Waters and the Wild, reached
12 | Bridport Times | January 2020
____________________________________________
ORIGINAL WORKS • FINE ART PRINTS BOOKS & HOME • COURSES & EVENTS
Thoughtfully sourced, carefully chosen. ELEMENTUM GALLERY SOUTH ST, SHERBORNE • 01935 813776 ELEMENTUMGALLERY.CO.UK • @ELEMENTUMGALLERY
ALL ART IS EROTIC
Gustav Klimt and the Viennese Secession, 1900
Speaker - Anne Anderson Thursday 16th January 2.30pm at Bridport Town Hall Visitors welcome - £7.50 Details: taswestdorset.org.uk
PETE MILLSON PHOTOGRAPHER petemillsonphotographer.uk 07768 077353 CREDIBLE PORTRAITS FOR PRESS / ARTS / COMMUNITY / COMMERCIAL bridporttimes.co.uk | 13
Arts & Culture
FROM BANGALORE TO BRIDPORT Max Riddington, Bridport Arts Centre
M
ick Smith was in Bangalore, India, when he first saw the advert for a new director at Bridport Arts Centre - not so surprising for a man who has visited 28 countries and almost ended up farming in Ecuador. However, at the age of 59 and ‘looking forward to 60,’ Bridport is the place in which he has decided to put down roots after a career in mental health, arts charities and… jazz. Son of an Anglican vicar and midwife mum, Mick was born in Reigate but grew up in south London with three older sisters and a younger brother. His education was disrupted by moves to different parishes and when he left a comprehensive school for an academic grammar in Slough it was not a good fit. ‘I told the careers teacher I wanted to be a musician,’ recalls Mick with a smile on 14 | Bridport Times | January 2020
his face. ‘He said that wasn’t possible and directed me to a woodworking course for a job repairing pianos.’ Mick left school with two ‘O’ levels. His father, who went to Cambridge, persuaded him to take more exams and Mick eventually opted for mental health nursing, ‘something I could get my teeth into.’ He arrived, aged 18, at a nurses’ home in St Albans alongside a hundred other students. There was, he confesses, ‘a lot of partying.’ He found his niche working in the adolescent unit of a major psychiatric hospital. ‘It was very forward-looking. I wasn’t much older than some of the kids and I’d had a rubbish adolescence too so I could identify to a degree.’ By day there was the demanding job but evenings saw Mick doing what he loved most – music. He plays by ear and found it easy to fit in with bands, gigging as
Image: Pete Millson
a session musician on piano and guitar. He released an album track in Japan, appeared on TV in three countries, had a remix of one of his songs in a Cannesnominated film starring Tilda Swinton and supported the band Jamiroquai. It was a heady time. He married but, when the relationship broke down, decided on a fresh start in Spain. That’s where he met his second wife to whom he was married for 26 years (they have since divorced). They have three children: Jessica, who is in the final year of medical school; Tom, an animator; and Dan, a linguist. Mick and the family returned to London where he continued as a professional musician and locum nurse before relocating to Bournemouth as area manager for
a national mental health charity. It involved hours of driving and Mick found himself newly acquainted with Bridport - at the Magistrates Court for a speeding fine. He received an absolute discharge. The children were growing and, following a few years helping to launch arts businesses in Southampton, the family travelled to Ecuador for three months. Mick wanted to stay, his wife didn’t, and they both realised it was time to separate. That’s when the Isle of Wight came calling where Mick, ‘had a nice time running an arts centre for five years.’ He lived close by, was duty manager and very hands-on. Then Mick’s mum became ill and the cost of commuting to London from the island was problematic. ‘It was so expensive I considered having two cars, one on the island and another on the mainland.’ His mum took priority and he returned to London, helping care for her until she died. Back in the south of England he helped to create a not-for-profit business with a group of artists in Southampton. On retiring from the Board, he went travelling. Arriving in Bangalore and surfing the web, he saw the Bridport Arts Centre role. His experience and passion for a programme befitting an arts centre of Bridport’s calibre is clear. He has big ambitions. ‘I want to revitalise the theatre, put on good art house films and exhibitions you wouldn’t expect, as well as celebrating talented local artists. I want the gallery to include cross-artform exhibitions with live events and workshops. And there’s a very exciting project for 13- to 25-year-olds coming soon!’ Unafraid of change, Mick has abandoned the printed seasonal brochure. ‘We always throw away boxes of them and with 2 out of 3 of our funders declaring a climate emergency that’s not acceptable. We also have a smaller team to manage the production and print and mail costs are expensive. In total we’ve saved £20,000, which will be used across the arts centre. ‘Bridport has a great word of mouth network and I hope the community will help spread the news about our events and support our exciting new ventures.’ Mick has been given the warmest of welcomes and is enjoying making Bridport home. ‘I love it,’ he says with genuine affection, ‘and I have the best job in town.’ bridport-arts.com @BridportArts facebook.com/bridportartscentre/ instagram.com/bridportarts bridporttimes.co.uk | 15
Arts & Culture
SAM LEE
REUPHOLSTERING FOLK John Puckey
Image: Dominick Tyler 16 | Bridport Times | January 2020
S
am Lee is a Mercury-nominated folk singer, intrepid song collector and environmental activist. He describes himself as a workaholic with very little routine, other than a frequent swim. Sam says he can often be found in Hackney, ‘working on a laptop in the sunshine, on my front doorstep.’ The thread that links it all is a commitment to the natural world, which he speaks about with a boyish enthusiasm. Sam is a natural communicator, so the news of his latest project comes as no surprise. ‘I’m deep in the middle of writing a book at the moment, which is hard work. It’s all about the nightingale stories, ornithology, natural history, biography and social history.’ It follows a live music project from the last few years, Singing with Nightingales. Sam recently recorded an album and is about to go on tour. When we meet up, he takes a call half-way through to chat about his new song video (‘I had to scramble together in about three days a location, a film crew and a director,’ he explains). It’s a challenge fitting it all in. ‘I’m having to cut myself away at certain times to write the book and go into deep concentration, which is not my superpower!’ February’s tour brings him to Lyme Regis and Bodmin and marks the release of the album, which he describes as ‘half and half.’ ‘Half are traditional and half are rewritten folk songs. I have changed them substantially, so I’m reupholstering new meaning into an old song, hence the name, ‘Old Wow’. I’ve got some really good people: Bernard Butler, Elizabeth Fraser from the Cocteau Twins, the band who are my team, Cosmo Sheldrake and Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh from The Gloaming. It’s an album with music that relates to how we connect to both nature and our deeper self.’ He loves the beauty of the south-west. ‘I’ve been to Bridport many times, and Lyme Regis. I did my A-level Geography on sea arches in Dorset!’ Coincidentally, it will be a year to the day since his last visit down this way, when Sam performed and spoke at an event in Exeter entitled, Is there anything left to explore in the 21st century? ‘I really enjoyed my trip down for the Agile Rabbit event; good memories, it was amazing.’ Agile Rabbit is an outfit I keep reading about, with innovative events across the south-west looking at ideas, global affairs and the natural and scientific world. The conversation drifts on to Sam’s most played song online, the theme from King Arthur: Legend of the Sword. ‘I loved it. It was an amazing experience. Guy Ritchie, despite his reputation, is a genius. He has an extraordinary mind and is a gifted storyteller who is utterly devoted to history. It’s not a perfect film but he’s still a great film-maker. He pushed to have folk music in that film. I was honoured to be the musical director and work with Dan Pemberton who is a gifted composer and the hot new thing in films - he’s even done Spiderman.’ The Guardian wrote a piece on Sam, with a headline calling him the ‘Extinction Rebellion Musician’. ‘I’ve been doing work with Music Declares, who are a wing of XR trying to radically shift the music industry. I do a lot of speaking, a lot of singing and a lot of lecturing on conservation issues in the grip of nature depletion.’ When I last saw Sam he was about to become a parent. He is surprised to be asked what becoming a father is like. ‘Being a parent is radical, it changes your DNA a little bit. I definitely call myself up on the bad bits of my personality. It really helps me focus on what’s important to me in this world. There’s a real acknowledgement of what my duties are.’ At least in part, Sam is referring to the challenge of becoming a parent in a world in crisis from a changing climate. ‘It’s been really hard balancing the activism with being a parent. However, it’s made it even more necessary to do what I’m doing.’ ___________________________________________________________________________ Saturday 8th February, 7:30pm Sam Lee Marine Theatre, Church Street, Lyme Regis, DT7 3QA. 01297 442138 marinetheatre.com
___________________________________________________________________________ bridporttimes.co.uk | 17
Arts & Culture
LYNNE STROVER
Anna Powell, Director, Sladers Yard Gallery and Café Sladers
W
e have jewellery in the gallery again! After quite a search, we are thrilled to be showing Lynne Strover’s lovely, flattering pieces made in beaten silver with semi-precious stones. Lynne’s story is one of courage, skill and determination, and the source of inspiration for her jewellery winds back through some immensely creative minds from Alexander Calder, the famous American sculptor of mobiles, to Breon O’Casey the sculptor, painter and craftsman. 18 | Bridport Times | January 2020
Lynne Strover is known to many as the curator and owner of the Lynne Strover Gallery in Fen Ditton, Cambridge. Born in Nelson, Lancashire, she moved to Cambridge in her early twenties where she married and helped her husband in an antique business. In 1989, she found herself a single mum with two small boys to support. With no official art education but a strong love of art, she boldly set up her gallery. Over twenty-seven years she built it up into a leading contemporary art
gallery showing work by many exceptional artists and craftspeople including Maggi Hambling and for many years Breon O’Casey. As is the way, she not only bought their work herself, and lives surrounded by it, but she learned from them about composition, colour and texture. More importantly they became her friends. Some have been a deep and lasting influence, particularly the charismatic and fascinating Breon O’Casey, son of the Irish playwright Seán O’Casey. Breon O’Casey was born in London but at the age of 8 or 9 moved with his family to Totnes in Devon, mainly to be close to Dartington Hall School. Dartington was founded by Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst, who had a vision of a Utopian community where working the land was combined with the life of the spirit through the arts. The school placed equal importance on physical activities and skills as on academic achievements. There, Breon O’Casey said he learned, ‘to think with my hands as well as my head.’ The metalwork teacher at Dartington was Naum
Slutsky who, before the war, had been head of metalwork at the Bauhaus. Entry to his special metal class involved passing a test. The children were asked to file a piece of steel down to exactly an inch square with perfect right angles. The task was impossible but if they stuck at it for three whole sessions, they were allowed into the class. After school and National Service, Breon went to a small art school in St John’s Wood, which enabled endless visits to London art galleries. He described the ten years after leaving as, ‘full of doubt and lethargy: dark years.’ Many years later in a piece entitled Speeches I Never Made, he tells art graduates, ‘Once you leave here, nobody gives a damn and, as Bernard Shaw said to my father, “You’ll just have to go through the mill like the rest of us.” And believe me, that mill grinds exceedingly small.’ A film about Alfred Wallis and the artists in St Ives saved Breon. Living and painting in a shed that looked over Porthmeor Beach, he felt he had come home. He worked for some years as an assistant to Denis Mitchell, plugging and filing bronze sculptures by hand, work he > bridporttimes.co.uk | 19
Arts & Culture
described as, ‘heartbreakingly tedious’ but it taught him, ‘the passion of getting it just right, step by patient step, at whatever the cost’ - words I have heard over and again from very good craftspeople and artists. Later he worked for three years for Barbara Hepworth. In an American book entitled, How to Make Jewellery, Breon came across some blurry photographs of Alexander Calder’s jewellery. At the time he knew nothing of Calder, ‘but over the years he was to become one of the artists from whose work I learned the most. Any aspiring jeweller has only to study Calder’s jewellery to be set on the right path for life.’ Famous for his entrancing, brightly coloured, lightas-air mobiles, Alexander Calder made over 1800 pieces of jewellery in his life. They were worn by some of the most high-profile women in New York including Peggy Guggenheim and Georgia O’Keefe. Closer to wearable sculpture, his pieces brought movement and invention to the wearer. Each piece was individually handmade from beaten metal and often included found materials such as broken pottery, buttons, even once his daughter’s tooth, linked with spirals and coils in a joyful effervescence of metalwork. 20 | Bridport Times | January 2020
To Calder’s coils and creativity, Breon brought his own iconography, the simple powerful Celtic imagery of birds and leaves. Just as making jewellery helped Calder pay the bills, it allowed Breon to give up other jobs and hire an assistant of his own. Always collaborative, he worked over many years with a small number of other artists, for the last twenty-five years with Guy Royle, who has in turn taught Lynne Strover. Over many visits to Cornwall, working alongside Guy Royle, Lynne learned to work metal and design her own jewellery in this rich tradition. Each of her pieces is slowly made by hand in silver using the simplest of tools. Often, she incorporates beautiful semi-precious stones. She closed her gallery in 2016, five years after Breon O’Casey died. His deeply rooted language lives on in the birds and leaves and simple beautiful imagery of her work with an added lightness and sense of glitter that come from Lynne herself. Lynne Strover’s jewellery is available at Sladers Yard sladersyard.co.uk
D I S C O V E R | E AT | S H O P | S T AY | C E L E B R AT E
Welcome to Symondsbury Estate, set in the beautiful Dorset countryside just a stone’s throw from the Jurassic Coast. Join us for lunch. Browse our shops. Visit the gallery. Explore our fabulous walks and bike trails. Relax and unwind in our holiday accommodation. Celebrate your wedding day... ... Isn’t it time you discovered Symondsbury Estate?
SY M O N D SBURY E S TAT E
+44 (0)1308 424116 www.symondsburyestate.co.uk The Estate Office Manor Yard, Bridport, Dorset DT6 6HG
Arts & Culture
JON ADAM
PAINTING AS EMOTION Kit Glaisyer, Artist
B
ridport has become renowned for its lively contemporary art scene, with an ever-growing reputation that extends far beyond the west country. We’re still relatively young compared with St Ives or Newlyn but I feel these are really the most exciting times; as our community continues to grow and evolve, we can enjoy watching all the wonderful, unfolding creations as new generations of artists emerge, develop and mature. While it’s hard to predict which of our artists will achieve the greatest popularity or success, I have no doubt that Bridport artists will continue to rise in acclaim and influence in the years to come. Naturally, it’s important that we never take our creative community for granted. We absolutely need to celebrate, support and invest in the works of our local artists and galleries. Besides, it’s exciting to collect the work of artists you admire. I find it’s usually best to follow your gut and buy art that you connect with emotionally and instinctively, whether that’s at a gallery or on a visit to an artist’s studio. Many artists are also happy to create commissioned pieces and, if you’re on a budget, you can always enquire about affordable works, perhaps smaller pieces, drawings or prints. There are a handful of notable artists that I’ve been following for years, particularly those with a uniquely personal vision, who have focused exclusively on their art and have succeeded in creating a truly impressive body of work. I’ve written about some of them in previous issues and this month I’ve been looking at the work of Jon Adam, a pioneering painter based in West Bay. Jon is a widely respected artist who has exhibited in galleries in New York, London and across the UK since the early 1990s. His unique style of painting has evolved over many years, strongly influenced by nature and the inimitable quality of light that surrounded him growing up on an isolated farm in Cornwall. This formative experience was the primary stimulus for his creativity >
22 | Bridport Times | January 2020
Big Skies Evolution 001, 148x172cm, oil on linen bridporttimes.co.uk | 23
Arts & Culture
Evolution 04, 147.5x172cm, oil on linen
and made a profound impression on his sense of identity. His distinctive oil paintings express an emotional interpretation and abstraction of the natural world around him, using pigments he has ground by hand in order to maximise depth and luminosity, and to intensify the viewer’s visual and sensual response. His intense relationship with paint has always fascinated him, recognising that the alchemical transition from thought to emotion through the application of paint on canvas is both innately methodical yet also mysterious and magical. Working with a systematic and evocative use of colour to build surface and construct depth, he creates his own worlds of psychologically internalised landscapes. This idea of how Jon is, in a sense, connecting to a deeper reality through his emotions, reminds me of a passage in the book, The World View of Paul Cezanne, by Jane Roberts: ‘Generally speaking, most people express themselves through the world as it is: they let their existence flow through the available conventions, social and professional groupings, government or religious organisations - and through these means they express themselves. To some extent, they disperse themselves so automatically into these ready-made cultural forms that their own inner feelings are never directly encountered. Unlike them, the artist is always making a new world that is their body of work; an artist is always encountering themselves because they are not dispersing themselves as others do. Their stability, such as it is, is in their work. It is not sanctioned by convention. 24 | Bridport Times | January 2020
Black Pearl Sky, 78x84cm, oil on linen
‘By taking themselves out of that context, however, artists are more aware of their sensations and reactions than others who have more or less automatic pockets in which to place them: love goes to the family or the church; hatred to the despoilers of church, property, life, or state; envy against the rich, and so forth. The artist has no place to put their emotions in those terms, and sometimes their own feelings astonish them. Their emotional experience is more vivid in many ways - for this reason - that they do not disperse it. With this energy an artist forms their world of pictures. ‘For all this, the artist’s goals are often unknown to them except as they unfold. In this fashion, they go on faith more than others. Their medium is not primarily one of words, so often even their thoughts are shaped and formed without what is considered reason’s substance. Not that an artist’s thoughts may not be reasonable, but that their intuitions and purposes are ‘shapes’ for them rather than words - a vocabulary of pigment, light and shadow rather than letters. For an artist’s vision is concerned with inner substance.’ Jon Adam’s studio can be visited by appointment – please email jonadam@jon-adam.co.uk Kit Glaisyer’s studio and gallery at Bridport Contemporary, 11 Downes Street, Bridport can be visited on Wednesdays and Saturdays from 11am to 3pm. bridportcontemporary.com jon-adam.co.uk kitglaisyer.com
BRIDPORT ANTIQUES Situated on West Street, in the heart of Bridport, the historic building that was Joseph Gundry and Co Ltd now houses one of the finest antiques showrooms in the south-west of England. With its diverse range of furniture, art, silver and collectibles from the 1600’s through to the 1900’s there is something to cater for everyone’s tastes.
OPEN DAILY 10am to 5pm EARLY CLOSING Thursday at 2pm CLOSED SUNDAY APPOINTMENTS AVAILABLE OUTSIDE OF THESE HOURS THE OLD COURT, 41 WEST STREET, BRIDPORT, DORSET DT6 3QU TELEPHONE: 01308 455646 WEBSITE: www.bridportantiques.co.uk
bridporttimes.co.uk | 25
History
LOST DORSET
LITTON CHENEY
C
hildren in Chalk Pit Lane in about 1900. The first cottage on the right was also the post office. When the row was modernised in 1909 (and given a stone plaque saying ‘Graves Cottages’) the thatch was replaced with tiles, despite Abbotsbury’s reed beds being only a few miles away. Lost Dorset: The Villages & Countryside 1880-1920, by David Burnett, is a large format paperback, price £12, and is widely available throughout Dorset or direct from the publishers. dovecotepress.com
26 | Bridport Times | January 2020
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History
POLLS APART
T
Ann Sydney, Volunteer, Bridport Museum
his handbill would have been passed around, possibly even stuck in windows, by sympathisers during the 1868 national election, a turning point in British politics. In the Bridport Museum archives we have many interesting snippets on elections, including who was paid for what and examples of shameless electioneering. Picture the scene, around 160 years ago, when only property-owning men could vote. They had to get past crowds at the polling booths who were trying to push some voters in and keep others out. Ignoring the shouts to vote for a particular party, voters had to tell the polling clerk publicly how they wanted to vote. The 28 | Bridport Times | January 2020
choice was between Conservative and Whig/Liberal. In Bridport you could vote for two MPs but Manchester, with a population 100,000 in the mid-1800s, had no MP. Most MPs were in the south of England and came from a small number of land-owning families. In 1846, the general election in Bridport was a national scandal. The result had been Conservative 240 to Whigs 239 but this was contested because of allegations of widespread bribery. There was a parliamentary committee enquiry. William Rockett, a cordwainer (shoemaker) aged 64 from South Street, told the enquiry he had voted Tory despite being taken for a drink by the Whig election agent. Later that day
he had voted a second time, this time for the Whigs. Rockett said, ‘My memory is shallow. I am got old and my faculties are decreased.’ He was also illiterate, like many poor people then, yet he was named as the petitioner in the enquiry. The enquiry was cut short because the election agents from both sides got together and reversed the election result to avoid a full-blown investigation into ‘bribery and treating’. Money changed hands. Of course, everyone involved had to go up to London for two or three days, all expenses paid. Not the same expenses, however. William Rockett was allowed less than £4, the election officials received over £8 while the solicitor, who attended for two days, was paid expenses of over £9. Bridport was a parliamentary borough electing two MPs from 1295 to 1865. It was a ‘Scot and Lot’ borough where all male ratepayers could vote but not tenants. The Scot and Lot taxes came from Anglo-Saxon times (if a man did not have to pay the Scot tax he got off ‘scotfree’). Two Liberals were elected in 1865, with a turnout of over 80% of the 472 voters on the electoral roll. This had been the pattern for some time. The Reform Act of 1867, a year before this handbill,
reduced the number of MPs in small towns like Bridport and increased the number in fast-growing industrial towns. The Act extended voting rights to male householders over 21 and their male lodgers, which resulted in over a thousand men being eligible to vote in Bridport. Lord Salisbury was leader of the Conservatives and opposed extending the vote to working-class men. Women of course had to wait until 1928 to vote and there was no Labour Party candidate in West Dorset until the election of 1922. At the 1868 election, the Liberal candidate was unopposed for the one Bridport seat. Whetham, named on the handbill, was a Conservative councillor and it isn’t clear what his role was in the election, or why there was no Tory candidate. We have intriguing snippets in the museum archive but not the complete narrative. Incidentally, in a drawer upstairs in the museum, we have items from two Bridport tradesmen displayed, with Mr Trump (on the far right) and Mr Corbin on the left. bridportmuseum.co.uk @bridportmuseum facebook.com/BridportMuseum
HUTS TO HUNKER DOWN IN plankbridge.com 01300 348414
bridporttimes.co.uk | 29
Wild Dorset
WINTER WATERLAND Julie Hatcher, Marine Awareness Officer
W
hile wildlife on land is slowing down for the winter - some animals hibernating, others having headed off for warmer climates - the seabed can still be a hive of activity. For those animals living in sheltered harbours and estuaries, safe from the worst of the winter’s storms, seagrass meadows provide a year-round haven. At this time of year, many sea snails and sea slugs are starting to gather with a view to breeding. Divers have recently been seeing large numbers of the elusive bubble snails congregating on the sandy seabed alongside seagrass meadows. These snails remain hidden for most of the year, although their jelly-like egg-masses festoon the green seagrass blades in spring and summer. They are small, mostly measuring around 30-50mm, and have a much-reduced shell that is partly concealed beneath their mantle and into which they cannot retreat. With their blunt head and small black eyes, they glide over the fine sand on a conveyor belt of mucus. Although they can be difficult to spot at first, camouflaged against the pale sand and with tiny sand grains trapped in the layer of slime enveloping them, once spotted it is obvious that they are present in large numbers. They can even 30 | Bridport Times | January 2020
Image: Julie Hatcher
be found hanging from seagrass blades by their trailing mucus train. It really is an extraordinary sight. Other animals are left to face the worst of the winter storms, with pounding waves threatening to dislodge them. Limpets for example, living on rocky seashores, turn the winter storms to their advantage. Instead of cosying up together for mating, these abundant molluscs just throw all their reproductive products into the sea, choosing the stormiest time of year in November and December and leaving fertilisation of their eggs to chance. The resulting larvae, measuring less than 1mm long, settle into lower shore rockpools after a few days. So, while you put out extra food for the birds and leave nest boxes and insect hotels for wildlife to shelter in your garden, spare a thought for the sea’s inhabitants at this time of year. Dorset Wildlife Trust’s Fine Foundation Wild Seas Centre is open for visiting during the winter, 12pm to 4pm Wednesdays and Sundays. Visit the website for details. dorsetwildlifetrust.org.uk/wild-seas-centre
New ideas for the New Year Help wildlife in Dorset and Volunteer with Dorset Wildlife Trust
DORSET WILDLIFE TRUST
www.dorsetwildlifetrust.org.uk/things-do/volunteering Registered Charity No. 200222
Photos © Amy Corton & Rachel Janes
Wild Dorset
MERMAID’S PURSES
Alison Ferris, Deputy Senior Warden, Charmouth Heritage Coast Centre
W
ith the winter storms hitting our shores since last September we have been seeing the familiar mermaid’s purse washing up on the beaches. We have a few examples on the Heritage Centre desk and visitors often get very excited when they recognise them but then always ask, ‘What is a mermaid’s purse?’ A mermaid’s purse is the leathery egg case of a shark, skate, ray or chimaera. You can often see the egg cases in some aquariums with the embryos inside. Once the babies hatch, the egg cases then wash up along our 32 | Bridport Times | January 2020
shores and they can tell us a lot about which species are living in our waters and which might be visiting. Since 2003 The Shark Trust has run the Citizen Science Project ‘The Great Egg Case Hunt’ which, having started in Devon, is now a global project. We have participated during the last two years by walking the strandline and collecting the cases ready to be identified. Earlier this year we had over 40 participants and recorded over 100 egg cases. Egg cases can wash up any time of year but we find that during the stormier weather more seaweed and driftwood wash up with the
Khairil Azhar Junos/Shutterstock
egg cases entwined. We noticed that different cases wash up at different times of the year and in differing abundance. Excitingly, in November, myself and another Centre warden were walking the strandline and found a ray case with a blonde ray hatching! It was great to release the ray back to the sea. You don’t need specialist skills to be a Citizen Scientist; you can simply download identification sheets and recording forms from The Shark Trust website or join one of our egg case hunts. As well as scouring the strandline, The Shark Trust is equally
interested to record what is underwater, so if you dive, snorkel or carry out any other water sports please keep an eye out. Pinpointing a location underwater helps the Trust understand where these creatures are laying. They are often camouflaged underwater and may have algae and seaweed attached to them. So why record these egg cases? Sharks have been around for 400 million years and survived 5 mass extinctions but they face many challenges today, with a quarter of all species under threat. Sharks are threatened by overfishing for their fins and are susceptible to environmental changes. Some sharks are slow-growing, late to mature and have long pregnancies of 9-12 months. Sharks produce few young and may not reproduce annually. The Greenland Shark for example can live to be 400 years old and does not mature until it is 150! There are 500 species of shark, 600 skates and rays and 50 chimaera (a close relative that diverted from sharks, skates and rays about 400 million years ago). In Britain there are 21 species of sharks plus 11 deep-water species. You may even spot visitors such as the Basking shark during the warmer months; although not a shark but the second largest fish in the world, it is still recorded. There are 18 rays and skates and 8 chimaera in Britain too. Here in Charmouth we have recorded the small spotted catshark, nursehound shark, thornback rays, small eyed rays, spotted rays, undulate rays plus the occasional skate. 50% of British sharks are under threat including the once very common Angelshark, which is now so rare it is on the IUCN Red List as critically endangered. Sharks are often thought of as dangerous and scary and not always portrayed well in the media, even though there has never been a report of an unprovoked shark bite in Britain. Only a few sharks are potentially dangerous to humans and none of these species has been reported in the UK. You can find out more information about sharks and how to do your part and record egg cases on The Shark Trust website. To see examples locally, the Wild Seas Centre in Kimmeridge occasionally has egg cases in its tanks. The Lyme Regis Aquarium often has the small spotted catshark and Sea Life in Weymouth or the National Marine Aquarium in Plymouth have examples of sharks and rays. Here at the Centre we have a few dried egg cases on display too. Keep a look out on our website for the next Great Egg Case Hunt! sharktrust.org charmouth.org/chcc bridporttimes.co.uk | 33
Wild Dorset
THE KINGFISHER
I
Colin Varndell, Photographer
have always had an interest in natural history, however it was the kingfisher that drew me into wildlife photography. I was sitting on a riverbank near Bradpole when I heard the distinct, sharp whistle of a kingfisher hurtling downstream towards me. I remained motionless as the bird flew straight to a wooden fence post only a few feet from my position. It bobbed its head as its piercing gaze searched the slow-moving pool beneath. Suddenly there was a splash and, in an instant, the bird flew up from the water carrying a wriggling minnow. Holding the fish by the tail, the bird flipped its prey repeatedly, bashing it on the post, and then swallowed the fish headfirst. A flash of cobalt blue accompanied by a shrill, piping whistle is what catches our attention as a kingfisher bolts along the river at what, at first, seems to be lightening speed. However, this is not the case, for kingfishers fly no faster than most other small birds. The fact that they fly so close to the water and in a straight line is what gives the impression of speed. For Bridport residents, the kingfisher must be a familiar bird as this species holds territories along the rivers Brit and Asker around the town. Often I have watched a kingfisher working its way from perch to perch, staring into favourite pools in the river behind Morrisons supermarket. Kingfishers are great ambassadors for nature as, once they have grabbed our attention, we tend to look out for them and begin to see other natural wonders too. Cottus gobio is the scientific name for the kingfisher. It is a small bird but what it lacks in size it more than makes up for with its appearance and charismatic lifestyle. The wings of the bird are blue and the back flaunts an almost fluorescent, bright cobalt colour. The breast is chestnut and the bird has contrasting white patches around the neck and bill. The feet of an adult bird are bright, wax-red. Juveniles have darker brown feet. In winter, kingfishers become solitary, holding individual territories and showing aggression to other birds. Defence of the home range is vital in order to preserve fish stocks, favourite fishing perches and roosting sites. In times of prolonged heavy rain, rivers become swollen and energised, carrying silt, sand, earth and other debris. Such murky conditions make catching fish difficult for kingfishers. During one such prolonged period of wet weather, I was watching a kingfisher nest near Netherbury. While the river remained muddy, the adult birds were bringing back bullheads, caught in the cleaner, shallow rapids where these fish occur. During the breeding season, a pair of kingfishers share the territory, nesting in steep banks, usually above slow-moving water. The nest chamber is formed at the end of a tunnel, which the birds dig with their formidable bills. The tunnel can be up to a metre in length, rising slightly to a rounded chamber about 150mm across. Both birds incubate the clutch - usually 6-7 eggs - over a three-week period. Nestlings are tended by both parents for around three-and-a-half weeks. Once the fledglings leave the nest their parents tend them for only two or three days before driving them out of the territory. Juvenile kingfishers have to learn the delicate techniques of fishing, the ultimate challenge. Being double brooded with large clutch sizes potentially produces a wealth of progeny. This explosion in population is offset by the challenge of learning to fish, which results in a large proportion of young birds drowning in their early attempts. It is thought that only half of fledglings survive for more than a week or two, and only a quarter of youngsters survive to breed the following year, enough to maintain population levels. In the long term, very few kingfishers live longer than one breeding season. info@colinvarndell.co.uk
34 | Bridport Times | January 2020
Image: Colin Varndell bridporttimes.co.uk | 35
Wild Dorset
BESS’S TALE Leila Simon, Tamarisk Farm
J
ust thirteen years ago this month, Ellen returned from Puddletown veterinary surgery with a rolypoly, black, tan and white collie called Scamp. Probably between 2 and 4 years old, Scamp was, we hoped, to be our new sheepdog. We’d spent two months without one, struggling to gather and move the sheep alone. Perhaps more difficult than that, we’d had no loving doggy presence in the house or companionship 36 | Bridport Times | January 2020
out and about. For years we had been looked after by a golden retriever who thought we kept the farm especially for her to play in, and then we got Moss as a puppy who we trained up as a sheepdog ourselves. She had died suddenly at 8 years old from an undiagnosed liver cancer that haemorrhaged. She had been asking for gates to be opened rather than jumping them, however she had seemed fine and was working well - just the evening
before, she had moved the cattle very neatly from below the car park at Cogden to the field next door. The day she died had been spent apparently enjoying herself as a passenger in the tractor cab but when she got out she clearly felt bad, and we were on the phone to the vet when she died curled up in her basket. We had mourned the loss of a companion and a working partner and felt we couldn’t wait for a puppy to grow and, as we couldn’t afford a trained adult dog, we tried out a rescue dog. We looked at this new dog, not completely convinced she was 100% collie. Maybe the rescue home had got it wrong? She looked more like a labrador or German shepherd-cross, with her broad shoulders and plump belly and no classic white on the tip of her tail, so important for spotting her in the dark. First, though, she needed a new name. No self-respecting sheepdog would answer to the name of Scamp! Fly, Jill, Gyp, Dot, Flo, Meg... traditional collie names are short and easy to shout across a field. Riff had been the sheepdog of my babyhood, belonging to my grandmother, and Moss the dog of my childhood. We settled on Bess. Bess had been in kennels for 4 months, having come from Ireland. That’s all we knew about her past. We started her slowly, taking her for walks and introducing her to the various animals of the farm. After dieting and exercise, she began to slim down and, incredibly enough, a white tip did begin to appear on the end of her tail. We got an explanation for this after a boring day when she’d done less than usual. Never before, and never since, have I seen a dog chase its own tail, but Bess spent the better part of the evening doing so – and catching it! With more to fill her mind and keep her body active when she was with us, she had stopped this exciting self-harm. After a short while she looked like a proper sheep dog and had the basic fitness and obedience needed for a farm dog. Now we wanted her to prove that she could work with the sheep and cattle. Keeping with her, we started using her to ‘walk up’ behind the sheep. They responded just as they should, by moving forward and away from her. She, however, showed no sign of enjoying this. Never mind, we said to ourselves, it will take time to teach her. It took five months to realise that Bess was never going to be a sheepdog. We had invited John Randall to visit, a neighbouring farmer who had more knowledge of sheepdogs in his little finger than we shared through the whole family. He watched her with the sheep and thought she might have potential even
though she lacked the focused, instinctive behaviour of a good sheepdog. We worked as he suggested but there was no joy in it for her or for us and she never learned. Mostly unperturbed by the sheep, she was scared silly by the cows. She did at least learn to tolerate the horses, which was handy, as we often check on our animals from horseback. If there is one thing Bess did do well though it was to fill the void that had been left when Moss died. We’d spent months expecting to trip over a dog lying in front of the stove, looking for one to take walking when we went out or to tidy up spilt milk on the floor, and it felt proper to have this again. What she did love was finding and following scent; she loved it even more if she had an excuse to dig a hole to follow it. She was shaped and coloured like a collie but at heart she was a terrier. By the time we were sadly certain of this, she was too ingrained in our lives to think of giving her up to a new home. She was happy and settled with us, and we loved her. She had arrived as a wayward adolescent with an unhappy back-story and now she was a happy adult. Luckily, she proved her worth as a farm dog by finding and taking rats. At about that time a neighbouring farmer had a young collie needing a new home. One-and-a-half years old, she came from a working family and had already been doing the basics with the sheep. So, Toffee joined the farm team and there we were, a two-dog household: one for companionship and one an effective worker. And that is how we stayed until three years ago when the nowageing Toffee started getting very arthritic and had to be forcibly slowed down. We then bought Sally, Toffee’s great-niece, from the same neighbour, in the hope that she too would be as good and faithful a friend and servant. We became a three-dog family. Sally has learned the basics and is functioning reasonably well, though her outrun is not the best. However, she’s still young and still learning. She did not start working as soon as she should have because the threat of retirement had caused a magical short-term cure of Toffee’s arthritis! A year ago this month our beautiful Bess died. The death of a friend is never easy but this time the loss wasn’t such a shock. At 14 years old (at least) she’d been slowing down for a while and we knew it was likely to happen. We buried her in our back garden, where she liked to sit, and readjusted to being a two-dog household again. tamariskfarm.co.uk bridporttimes.co.uk | 37
Outdoors
38 | Bridport Times | January 2020
On Foot
RINGSTEAD AND WHITE NOTHE Emma Tabor and Paul Newman
Distance: 4¾ miles Time: Approx. 2¾ hours Park: Ringstead Bay car park (fees apply) Walk Features: This is a good hike to start the new year with! The route starts with a gradual incline to reach the top of White Nothe from Ringstead and there is one steep descent on the return from Falcon Barn. The outer route makes the most of this stunning section of the Dorset coast, with sweeping views across Weymouth Bay as you walk up to White Nothe and then views to the east, past Durdle Door and Lulworth Cove towards St Aldhelm’s Head. Care needs to be taken along the cliff edge, particularly on the approach to White Nothe. The return section along Old Dagger’s Gate Road is straightforward and looks inland towards the Frome and Piddle valleys. It’s a walk best enjoyed when the low winter light is playing across the Channel. Refreshments: The Smuggler’s Inn, Osmington >
bridporttimes.co.uk | 39
E
ach month we devise a walk for you to try with your family and friends (including four-legged members) pointing out a few interesting things along the way, be it flora, fauna, architecture, history, the unusual and sometimes the unfamiliar. For January we walk from Ringstead to the top of White Nothe, discovering a wealth of unusual buildings and structures including the wooden chapel of St Catherine’s by the Sea, Ringstead radar station, White Nothe coastguard cottages and various barns and tumuli. It’s also possible to take a detour at the end and make another, much smaller, circuit around the woods to the west of Ringstead and the remains of Ringstead village, as well as taking time to view the marvellous sweep of Ringstead Bay overshadowed by the protective bulk of White Nothe. The views west to Portland and Weymouth and across the Channel are dramatic, while the views east reveal some of the rock formations and deep geological time for which this coast is known. With such an dramatic and inspiring landscape, it’s not surprising that the area was home to writers and artists between the two World Wars, with Llewellyn Powys living in the coastguard cottages at White Nothe and his brother, Theodore, living in nearby East Chaldon, as well as Sylvia Townsend Warner, Valentine Ackland and Elizabeth Muntz to name but a few. Directions
Start: SY 752 814 1 Park in the beach car park at Ringstead Bay. Note: fees apply. Make your way south towards the beach and, after the kiosk, turn left to follow a coast path sign to White Nothe 1¾ miles. 40 | Bridport Times | January 2020
2 Walk down this track with cottages and the sea on your right. Keep on this track for a few hundred yards as it winds away from the sea and up towards the cliffs and White Nothe. At a sign for National Trust South Down, on the left, it is worth a quick detour to see the remains of Ringstead radar station. Back on the footpath, go through a kissing gate then up the footpath - as you look back there are now good views towards Portland. Keep walking more steeply uphill until you reach the small wooden chapel of St Catherine’s by the Sea on your right. Take time to explore this beautiful little chapel, as well as the grounds with benches looking out over the channel. One of the surprising features of this chapel are the windows etched by Simon Whistler, son of Sir Lawrence Whistler who engraved the windows of nearby Moreton church. 3 Walk back to the footpath and turn right. Almost immediately after the church there is a footpath sign. Here, bear right along the smaller path just signed for White Nothe (not the one marked for the Coast Path). Pass a house on your right with a large wooden fence around part of its garden. Follow this path to soon cross a drive which leads to Holworth House. On the other side of the drive, go through a kissing gate and into a field. The path now runs about 10 metres inside a fence and then up some steps - keep climbing until you reach another kissing gate and the highest point of the walk. There are incredible views all around from here. Go through this gate to follow along the footpath - be aware of steep drops along here as the path runs along
the cliff edge. Keep on the path until you reach the former coastguard cottages at White Nothe. 4 Here, it is worth walking to the southern tip of White Nothe to the lookout post. A marker stone indicates a steep smuggler’s path down to the beach. In a previous walk we looked at some of the inspiration for the novel Moonfleet and this path is believed to be the setting for the scene where John and Elzevir make an impossible escape from the excise men on the beach. To the left is a stone bench which makes a good spot for a picnic, especially as the views from here take in the dazzling white chalk cliffs which roll and dip towards the broken limestone band comprising Durdle Door, Lulworth Cove and beyond to St Aldhelm’s Head. 5 Go back to the coastguard cottages. Keeping them on your left, carry on along the footpath until it starts to bend around to the left and the cliffs are straight in front of you. After 400 yards, a marker stone indicates straight on to Lulworth Cove and Durdle Door, and left for Daggers Gate and South Down NT. Here, go left, away from the sea and through a metal kissing gate into a field. Follow the footpath along the fence, keeping this on your left. Just after a couple of burial mounds on your left, you meet a stone sign and a metal gate. Here, go sharp left through this gate, now starting to walk back towards Ringstead. This track is called Old Daggers Gate Road. 6 Follow this straight, grassy track with lovely views to your right inland. After ⅓ mile the track goes slight right and then, after a few yards, slight left, following the field boundary. Go through a small
metal gate beside a large metal gate and then onto a stone/flint track. Head down towards another set of gates. Go through these, continuing on the track, past a fine-looking thatched barn on your left and then up through a small metal gate to the right of a larger gate to meet the track coming from Holworth House. Turn right onto the track. 7 Follow this track, passing a drive on your left for Marren and other cottages. Keep straight on up the track, through an open gateway and then another open gateway. Just past the entrance for Falcon Barn, on your right, look out for a footpath sign on your left. Here, turn left down a narrow grassy and overgrown footpath. After a few yards, take the first right and, in a few more yards, reach a stile. Cross this, into a field which slopes away in front of you. Walk straight down this hill, looking out for another stile in the hedge on your left, about halfway down the hill (don’t go all the way to the bottom to Southdown Farm). Go over this stile into the adjacent field and walk across the field, keeping parallel to the sea and aiming for the right-hand corner of this field. After crossing a track coming from the farm, go through another gate with a stile, then straight over this field keeping parallel to the hedge on the right-hand side. Again, head for the right-hand corner with a stile, taking you into a boggy area with a pond. Go slight right, across a small, wooden footbridge, then over another stile, into a paddock, going straight ahead to then leave the paddock by a stile and onto the road. Turn left to take you back to the car park and the start. bridporttimes.co.uk | 41
Archaeology
ANCIENT DORSET TREASURES SERIES No.1: CLANDON BARROW GOLD LOZENGE
I
Chris Tripp BA (Hons) MA, Community and Field Archaeologist
have mentioned the Clandon Barrow before: the large bowl barrow of the Bronze Age, 21 metres in diameter and 5.6 metres in height, composed of layers of sand, clay and gravel overlooking the village of Martinstown. It is, in fact, ‘barrows’ plural, with one set on top of the other. The top barrow was excavated by Edward Cunnington in 1882 by using Cornish miners to dig a vertical shaft. About two metres down, a low 42 | Bridport Times | January 2020
cairn of flints was uncovered and grave goods found that represented the wealth, taste and wide-ranging contacts of elite society in Bronze Age Dorset. Most startling of all was a gold lozenge-shaped plate. The lozenge has been studied alongside a similar artefact from Bush Barrow (near Stonehenge). Both the form and decorative elements of these lozenges were based on geometric designs, the Clandon example
Benoitb/iStock
being decagon-based geometry, the other based on a hexagon. The precision and accuracy displayed by both works demonstrates a sophisticated toolkit and a sound knowledge of geometric form. Finely decorated with distinctive patterns of incised lines, they are generally interpreted as ornamental breast plates and an imposing mark of status for the owners, seen as indicative of the ‘Wessex Culture’. Many theories have been postulated. One example is that the nine-fold geometry of the Bush Barrow plate produces acute angles which define the range of sunrises at the latitude of Stonehenge, while the obtuse angles match the extreme rising and settings of the Moon. The Clandon gold plate
provides the same information but at a more southerly latitude. In the 1980s, Archie Thom claimed that the lozenge was a sophisticated astronomical observing instrument. By holding the plate horizontally and lining it up in the correct orientation, the various markings could have been used to indicate the sunrise and sunset positions on significant epoch dates in the ‘megalithic calendar’ that Archie Thom’s father, the engineer Alexander Thom, proposed. Attractive as the idea seemed, problems emerged when it was examined in detail. For one thing, there would be various practical difficulties using such a device, not least in determining its correct orientation. The most serious problem, however, is that the directions supposedly marked by the patterns on the lozenge do not really fit very well. Several of the alignments fall between the markings, while many of the markings do not fit any of the alignments at all. By the 1990s it had become clear that the other evidence supporting the idea of a ‘megalithic calendar’ did not stand up to critical evaluation. The example of the Bush Barrow lozenge demonstrates very clearly the dangers of trying to mould the evidence to fit a favoured theory rather than letting the evidence speak for itself. It is nonetheless impressive, without recourse to sophisticated calendars and astronomy. Re-evaluation of the rich materials of the Clandon Barrow and the ‘Wessex Culture’ has also taken place. It does not necessarily represent a definable cultural package but instead points to a complex set of inter-relationships with ‘foreign’ lands achieved by establishing maritime networks. Connections are shown to have run up the east coast of Britain, west towards the Irish Sea and across the Channel to both Armorica and the Frisian coast. By contrast, links with inland Wessex were insubstantial. Although it is uncertain whether it was a grave group or some other ritual deposit, the assemblage can be seen in a positive light as a record of great exploits in distant travel. The material assembled can stand for the success of the south Dorset community and its key personages in relation to connections to Europe and beyond. Its paramount importance is emphasised by the choice of site - a relatively isolated barrow within a dense monumental landscape, but also a barrow that saw recurrent rejuvenation as part of a cycle of remembrance. dorsetdiggers.blogspot.com bridporttimes.co.uk | 43
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PRIME COPPICE WORKING WOODLAND Words Jo Denbury Photography Katharine Davies
T
he air hangs heavy with moisture. A light chill tickles the back of our necks; it’s the northerly wind, reminding us to put on another layer and grab a hat. Winter is tightening her grip on Prime Coppice in the Marshwood Vale. Deep in the Vale is Kit Vaughan’s 42-acre wood. It is the largest block of semi ancient woodland and coppice in West Dorset and what Kit likes to think of as ‘the last remnants of Marshwood.’ Many wildlife species have made their home among the dominant ash, hazel and oak. In spring and early summer there would be a carpet of bluebells, wild garlic and violets but today the clay-leaden earth is heavy with rain and the tracks thick enough with mud to lose your boots. The most ecological way to work the wood in these conditions is with horses, which is why we find Kit Vaughan and his helpers, Matteo Greggi and Joe Elks, busy tacking up Turpin and Mr Pickles, Kit’s two gypsy cobs. >
46 | Bridport Times | January 2020
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‘Any mechanised vehicle would chew up the tracks in one trip, which in turn would damage the forest floor,’ explains Kit. He is what you might call a new working woodlander. Kit bought Prime Coppice seven years ago with his wife, Ruth; they are determined to develop the coppice into a working woodland. There were once five families working and living here within the trees but in the 1970s it became neglected after the last man retired. ‘For too long woodlands have become places that are closed off from people,’ says Kit. It is something he wants to change. They have opened up the bridleways and paths so that people can once again enjoy the space. They also welcome people onto their courses. In fact, through managing his wood in this way, Kit has created a therapeutic place to share with others, while offering a personal response to the climate emergency. Kit had a nomadic childhood: he was raised in Tanzania, Norway and Germany and later spent time in London. He dropped out of school at 16 with no qualifications and then had a spell as a gamekeeper before leaving to work in the USA as an illegal immigrant. On his return to the UK, he worked in environmental conservation before heading off again for Africa and spending five years living and working on the Skeleton Coast in Namibia. After that he returned to the UK, finished a Masters and found work as a climate campaigner at WWF where he established the climate impacts team. He later became the director of CARE International’s climate programme. These were big jobs that took a lot of energy and Kit is the first to say he felt burnt out. He had also become disillusioned after spending a further 10 years working for NGOs and the failure of the Copenhagen climate talks. The time had come for him to put down some roots of his own so he returned to his first love, being a woodsman. After buying Prime Coppice and its adjoining semi ancient woodland pasture and orchards, Kit spent the next 18 months building a house using left-over cedar wood timber that would have otherwise been chipped for biomass energy. He wanted to demonstrate how the wood was perfectly useful and could be repurposed for the construction of a non-invasive structure. He and Ruth now live in the house with their two young sons. Insulated with wool, it makes for a welcome, cosy retreat for a quick cuppa away from today’s drizzle. Hot tea promptly dispensed, we are soon outdoors again. The horses are tacked up in their Amish harnesses and ready to work. As we make our way over the wooden bridge that crosses the river Char, the sound of
their unshod hooves rings out through the valley. At first the path is stoney and water from the hill streams over the toes of our boots. Further into the wood it becomes heavy going, and where there aren’t stones for footholds, the clay squelches, sucks and threatens to claim our footwear. The horses snatch mouthfuls of young hazel as we climb. Each step forward taking us further back in time. Thankfully we soon find what feels like a plateau, a clearing deep among the trees. Kit and his team have been coppicing here. The cut wood is stacked neatly in piles waiting to be dragged down the hill by Turpin and Mr Pickles to the wood yard. There is a knack to lining up the horses and backing them in towards the wood pile so that the long logs can be attached, but Turpin and Mr Pickles clearly know what they are doing. They respond to spoken commands and appear to genuinely enjoy the work. ‘Sometimes they know what to do before we do,’ laughs Kit. They can pull up to 250-300kg depending on the conditions but today the load is lighter. Turpin is feeling a bit fruity and is eager to pick up the pace so Kit keeps him on a short rein as they begin to pull the logs out of the wood. It’s a physical endeavour and forms a strong bond with land and animal alike. For those who are interested, Kit offers lessons in horse logging. It’s all part of his mission to make our woodlands more accessible. ‘Woods can help to heal people,’ says Kit. ‘With all the mental health and obesity problems in the world, a wood is a place to come and be. Our aim is to bring the wood back to life, not just for timber but also for wellbeing.’ While Joe and Matteo tether the horses, we make our way to the ‘camp’ in another part of the woods. Here, Kit has erected a giant bivouac-style cover which keeps us dry as we sit around the fire with another brew on the go. ‘The other week I had a group of terminally ill and disabled children here,’ he says. ‘I made a bow and arrow for one little lad in a wheelchair and he spent the whole day shooting it and collecting the arrows. Others worked on a ‘lathe’ and ‘shave horse’. They didn’t want to go home at the end of the day; for once they had spent a full day outside.’ Forest bathing (Shinrin-Yoku) is another activity that Kit would like to offer. The idea comes from Japan where it often forms part of a therapeutic programme that connects people with the natural environment as a way of reducing stress. ‘I have a no phones policy for those who come here,’ explains Kit. ‘Everyone puts their phone in a bucket and leaves it there for the day, then I will say, ‘Go for a walk in the woods alone — in any direction > bridporttimes.co.uk | 49
50 | Bridport Times | January 2020
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for 15 minutes and just listen.’ It’s a way of putting people at ease. Then we return to the camp and spend the day working with wood, whether that be whittling or coppicing or working with green wood crafts. Kit wants to encourage local community group involvement and to make the woods part of a sustainable living community in West Dorset. To do this the woodland needs to be managed and, for this to be financially viable, Kit makes his living by selling firewood. The wood sold is largely the ash, hazel and oak that he has harvested himself from the Coppice. It is fully seasoned and cured to 20% moisture — as checked using a moisture meter. ‘I am passionate about selling good local firewood as a way to reduce carbon emissions, restore woodlands and heat homes,’ says Kit. He is equally passionate about people using an efficient wood-burner and the right wood due to its huge bearing on carbon emissions. The type of log wood (ash is ideal) and the efficiency of the wood burner are two vital components to heat production but of equal importance is the wood’s moisture content. A seasoned log will produce around twice as much heat as a green log but one of around 20% moisture or less is ideal. Sourcing your logs locally not only reduces the carriage carbon footprint but also means that our woods are returned to places of employment, creating a strong local and
sustainable supply chain. ‘It becomes part of a circular economy,’ explains Kit, ‘and that is very important to me.’ Prime Coppice was also part of the Community Energy Sector Project, an initiative assisting the participation and action of local communities in managing and generating energy. The project has finished but Kit and Ruth want to continue the good work. The trees at Prime Coppice and woods like it around the country will welcome us back; they don’t want to be choked with overgrowth, our sensitive management is to their advantage. We are invited to tread lightly, to follow Turpin and Mr Pickles along the tracks, pulling logs from the heart of the wood, leaving its floor intact and letting nature do the rest. As we sit around the fire a twig snaps nearby; most likely it’s a deer watching us from afar. For a moment we all sit and listen. ’People come here to be still,’ says Kit. ‘At first they feel awkward and jumpy, but by the end of the day they don’t want to leave.’ Our chat drifts to spring and plans for a “kids’ camp-out”. They will build bivouacs to sleep under, fires to cook over and children will roam free in the woods. If all goes to plan, these ancient woodlands will one day again brim with the sound of children’s laughter and a community at work, earning its keep. primecoppice.com bridporttimes.co.uk | 53
The Monmouth Table Fish Tapas Pop-up Restaurant Fresh, Ever-changing and Local
Served from 12 .00pm to 8.00pm
Sunday Lunch Carvery
Let someone else do the shopping, preparing, cooking and all the washing up
Closed in January Back on the 6th of February THURSDAYS at Soulshine Cafe, Bridport FRIDAYS and SATURDAYS at The Pop-up Kitchen, Lyme Regis. From 6pm 07425 969079 | themonmouthtable www.themonmouthtable.co.uk
The George Albert Hotel is delighted to offer a Sunday Lunch Carvery. Always featuring two freshly cooked joints of meat with all of the trimmings and homemade Yorkshire puddings. A choice of freshly prepared starters both hot and cold and of course a selection of sumptuous desserts to tempt and delight you. There is always a vegetarian option available and we are happy to cater for any additional dietary requirements. For those wanting a more luxurious Sunday experience, the Kings Restaurant a la carte menu is ideal. Booking is recommended to avoid disappointment George Albert Hotel Wardon Hill, Evershot, Nr. Dorchester, Dorset DT2 9PW Tel: 01935 483435 • www.gahotel.co.uk
Winter 2020 at The Alexandra *Launching 1st February…
Winter Menu featuring the best of seasonal West Country produce. New ‘Tasting Menu’ in the Ammonite Restaurant. Continue to Enjoy… Local to Lyme Menu – two-courses and a glass of wine £19.50 pp Monthly Film & Supper Nights – two-courses, cocktail and a film in the Old Chapel £30 pp Valentine’s Day… Tasting Menu for Two – a chance to try a selection of Chef’s favourite dishes. Visit www.hotelalexandra.co.uk to view our menus and offers in full
(*Please note the hotel & restaurant is closed in January)
For more information please call us on 01297 442010
www.hotelalexandra.co.uk
54 | Bridport Times | January 2020
Food, Glorious Food! Let’s do lunch!
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Can’t make dinner? Come in for a Valentine’s lunch instead for £30 per person.
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Food & Drink
ROAST BREAM WITH ARTICHOKES, ONIONS, SMOKED BACON AND THYME Gill Meller, River Cottage
I
t is winter. As I write this, I’m sitting at my desk looking out over the bay. The crumpled grey sea liquefies a grey sky; my body remembers August. Every day the little trawler makes its way home. I see her now beyond the black pine. On the shortest days of the year I’ll only see the pitch of her riding light. Last night I cooked this dish using black bream. It was probably one of the most delicious ‘all-in-one’ recipes I’ve made for years. I stop and wonder whether the little trawler caught any bream today. Ingredients Serves 4
500g (1lb 2oz) Jerusalem artichokes, peeled and cut into large pieces 2 red onions, cut into wedges 250g (9oz) smoked bacon lardons 1 small bunch of fresh thyme 4 garlic cloves, bashed but not peeled 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil 1 large bream or other white fish (about 1kg/2lb 4oz), scaled and gutted salt and freshly ground black pepper Method
1 Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/gas mark 4. 2 Take a large, heavy roasting dish or tray and scatter over the artichokes, onion wedges, bacon lardons, thyme, and garlic cloves. 3 Trickle over the olive oil and season well with salt
56 | Bridport Times | January 2020
and pepper. 4 Use a piece of baking parchment to cover the dish loosely to stop anything colouring too quickly, then roast for 35–45 minutes, or until the artichokes are tender, turning everything once or twice during the cooking time. (Note: the cooking time can vary quite dramatically with these little tubers.) 5 Once the artichokes are tender, remove them from the oven. Slash the fish three or four times on each side and lay it on top of the artichokes. 6 Use a spoon to baste the fish in some of the bacon fat from the bottom of the dish, then season the fish with salt and pepper. 7 Turn the fish over and repeat the process. 8 Return the dish to the oven and bake for a further 20 minutes or until the fish is just cooked through. You can check this by inserting the tip of a sharp knife into one of the slashes and teasing the flesh from the bone. If it comes away with ease, it’s cooked. 9 Bring the whole tray to the table and let everyone help themselves. From Time by Gill Meller (Quadrille, £25) gillmeller.com
Image: Andrew Montgomery bridporttimes.co.uk | 57
Food & Drink
SQUASH AND RAISIN BRIOCHE Chris Onions, The Old Dairy Kitchen
J
anuary is a sleepy time here in the Old Dairy Kitchen at Trill Farm; we close the restaurant doors for the month and have a good rest. This is one of my favourite times of year as it gives me the chance to cook for friends with long lunches and cosy evenings around the candlelit dinner table, trying new recipes and enjoying the preserved bounty of the previous year. I find baking and cheese-making become winter hobbies in preparation for our first cookery courses of the 58 | Bridport Times | January 2020
Images: Matt Austin
year, practices which, as an added bonus, fill the kitchen with warming aromas and the promise of deliciousness. Our spiced squash and raisin brioche loaf is a winter staple at home for weekend breakfasts. I roast the squash and portion it up in little tubs and keep them in the freezer, making it a quick loaf to prepare. The squash and spices make for a rich and soulful loaf. Leftovers make an amazing bread and butter pudding, to warm you even further if needed.
Ingredients
280g strong white flour 20g egg yolk 35g whole egg 10ml milk 160g squash of your choice - peeled, chopped, roasted until soft, then mashed and cooled pinch cinnamon pinch nutmeg pinch ginger 5g instant yeast 5g salt water, as needed 40g brown sugar 75g unsalted butter, cubed and softened 15g raisins
3
4
5
Method
1 Place the flour, eggs, yolks, milk, squash, spices, yeast and salt in a metal bowl or stand mixer. Mix well for a few minutes - the dough should be stiff but should come together. If it seems too dry, add a little water to form the dough. 2 If working by hand, tip the dough onto a work surface. Slowly mix in the sugar, a little at a time. Knead for a few minutes until well incorporated and
6 7
the gluten begins to work. The dough will become elastic and springy. If you’re using a stand mixer with a dough hook, it will take half the time but you’re looking for the same light springiness. Add the soft butter and mix it in until the dough is soft and silky with a good spring. Knead in the raisins until well combined. Transfer the dough into a greased mixing bowl. Set to one side and allow the dough to double in size; this will take around one hour at room temperature. Alternatively, place in the fridge overnight (8-12 hours). This will make a better dough, with a greater depth of flavour and stronger gluten. When the dough is ready, tip back onto the work surface and shape as desired, either a freestanding loaf or rolled to put into a loaf tin. Place into tins or onto greaseproof paper. Brush the dough lightly with egg wash made from the remaining egg, a little milk and a pinch of salt. Allow to prove for a further 45 minutes or so. Preheat the oven to 190C. Brush the dough once more with the egg wash and bake in the oven for 20-40 minutes depending on loaf style. Allow to cool slightly before eating.
olddairykitchen.co.uk bridporttimes.co.uk | 59
Body & Mind
HEART INTENTIONS Jane Fox, Bridport Yogaspace
H
ow often have I started a new year asking the impossible of myself ? Great super-human feats of mental, physical and spiritual achievement are listed and proposed by myself to myself with a timeline of actions needed to attain my goals. Then I wonder why I feel heavy, downhearted and overwhelmed. Thankfully I’ve given up making lists for 1st January and realised: 1 That I’m still in my hibernation period and definitely not ready for massive bold action. 2 That self-acceptance is important. We are who we know how to be at any given moment. It’s Progress not Perfection! 3 That I’m only human after all (Rag ‘n’ Bone Man, 60 | Bridport Times | January 2020
2016) and that I bleed when I fall down. (Christina Perri, 2013) These songs were massive hits and it got me thinking that perhaps I’m not the only one whose expectation of oneself is superhuman. We need to step away from the idea of living up to society’s constructs of success or demands for us to shape our lives in certain ways in order to feel fulfilled, valued and have a healthy selfworth. We are not practising yoga to improve ourselves. We are perfect and all we need is inside of us. We practise to remember this. Our yoga on the mat or in the chair is a great training ground and mirror for our lives, watching, listening and doing self-enquiry:
Sankalpa for the New Year is a brilliant way to set a tone for the year ahead. Live everyday with intention (Nadiya Wynn)
ZephyrMedia/Shutterstock
• Where am I out of balance in my life if I can’t do tree pose today? • Why am I attached to mastering a certain pose? • Why am I pushing myself so hard/feeling distracted/competitive? Ram Dass says in Polishing the Mirror, ‘The essence of yoga is union or becoming one with the universe. Quieting the mind allows the natural depth of the spirit to manifest. Meditation, the practise of quieting, concentrating and purifying the mind and aligning it with the spirit is the foundation of yoga.’ This time of year is perfect for turning inside and listening to our heart and following its guidance. Contemplating or meditating with an intention or
In place of making the familiar New Year’s resolution, which may arise from a desire to improve something in our lives, highlighting what we don’t have or haven’t yet achieved, we could choose to live everyday with intention instead. ‘Intention is more than wishful thinking—it’s wilful direction. It is a philosophy of the heart put into practice, a consistency of conscious patterns of thought, energy, and action. Through intention, we see more and create with more clarity, passion, and authenticity. Our attention then becomes a spotlight for every shred of supporting evidence that we’re on the right path.’ ( Jennifer Williamson) Setting an intention can help shape our yoga practise, whether it’s one word or a short phrase, e.g. calm, peace, gratitude, presence, contentment, mindful breathing, to offer more kindness, to feel more compassion for ourselves or others. The purpose of setting an intention is to then let this flow throughout your practice, noticing where you can apply this to your thoughts, your words and actions. This doesn’t have to be saved for a weekly class. Making the choice to do this daily and deciding on how you ‘intend’ to feel empowers you to make that change happen, rather than wishing it were different. This powerful and positive practice helps us to live our yoga off the mat and weave our practice into daily life. For example, can you bring a sense of calm to your day by making small changes to your morning or evening routine? Instead of reacting hastily to a stressful situation, can you bring your attention to your breath and pause? Can you choose kinder words when talking to yourself or offer more kindness to others you meet throughout your day? These are all ways to fulfil your chosen intention whilst keeping an open heart and mind. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it’s a practice after all, and you get to choose a new intention for every new day. May each day of your New Year sparkle with your chosen intention! Namaste. Janie’s Friday yoga classes resume 9.15am Friday 3rd January 2020 at The Bull Hotel, Bridport. Details on website. yogawithnadiya.co.uk yogaspacebridport.com bridporttimes.co.uk | 61
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Body & Mind
HERBAL SELF-CARE FOR JANUARY Caroline Butler, BSc (Hons) MNIMH, Medical Herbalist
T
he New Year can be a positive time, full of good intentions for new beginnings, but January can also be a fairly bleak month, with festivities over and bitterly cold, dark days stretching ahead. Many of us would quite like to hibernate at this time but life carries on and so we just keep going. It’s important to take a bit of extra care of ourselves, to keep healthy not just in terms of fending off endless coughs and colds but also in our mental outlook, until spring comes with new growth and hope. It’s hard to feel positive when suffering from coughs and colds. There is a very simple remedy that you can make at home that is incredibly effective for chesty coughs. All you need is an onion, some sugar or honey, and a jar. Slice the onion and layer it up in the jar with the honey or sugar, one slice onion, one spoonful honey/sugar, until the whole onion is sliced and in the jar. Leave it for a few hours, preferably overnight. The juice of the onion will have been drawn out, forming a sweet syrup which you can pour off and take by the spoonful. It tastes nicer than you might think and can move a stubborn cough in a couple of days. Cooked onion is very softening for hard, stuck catarrh, so onion soup is a good, soothing winter dish. Raw onion on the other hand is very penetrating, so can be great for really bunged-up head colds, helping to clear the nasal passages – use it either chopped up and sprinkled on a meal or, for the hardy, an onion sandwich! Thyme is also a fantastic herb for coughs and can be added to any of the above, as well as being drunk as a tea. To make a chest rub for coughs (if you’ve had all the syrup and tea you can take, or have run out of onions...) take some dried thyme from your kitchen, put it in a jar or small, heat-proof bowl, and cover it with olive oil. Put the jar/bowl in a water bath and let it gently warm for 64 | Bridport Times | January 2020
a couple of hours. You can make a very simple water bath by standing the jar on an upturned saucer at the bottom of a small saucepan, filling the pan with water to half-way up the outside of the jar, and bringing the water to a very gentle simmer. Stir the oil from time to time. After a couple of hours, carefully remove the jar, let it cool, then strain off the oil through a jelly bag or muslin if you have one; if not, a sieve or tea strainer will do. Use this oil as a chest and back rub for coughs and wheezy chests. You can use this method to make rosemary oil too, as a simple rub for cold, stiff muscles. Strong rosemary
Vitaliy Litvin/Shutterstock
tea can be added to a hot bath for cold-related aches and pains. It improves the circulation and has the added benefit of being an uplifting herb, clearing the head and raising the spirits for some real body/mind self care. Use spices from your kitchen to make a hot decoction that will warm and cheer you up, improving digestion, circulation and immunity at the same time. To do this, gently simmer ginger, cinnamon, cardamom, star anise and coriander seeds in a covered pan (so the volatile oils don’t evaporate) for thirty minutes to make a warm and spicy drink. You can use whatever spices appeal to you and either make it fairly light, to drink straight away,
or make a much stronger brew that you can then turn into a syrup by dissolving an equal amount of sugar into it (i.e.100g sugar to 100ml decoction). Add this to puddings, drinks, or whatever takes your fancy. Lemon balm is a lovely herb that soothes troubled digestion, has anti-microbial properties and helps you relax. It’s great for those who miss the sun in the winter months, bringing a touch of lightness into the dark. Make yourself a hot cup of lemon balm tea and enjoy a moment of peace. herbalcaroline.co.uk bridporttimes.co.uk | 65
Interiors
66 | Bridport Times | January 2020
GETTING ORGANISED
S
Kerry Franses, Franses Design
o, with 2020 underway what better time to tackle what we see around us? I long to start the new year with the feeling of being rejuvenated, ready to take on the year with a spring in my step, as generally I love new beginnings, fresh starts and all that jazz. In all honesty though, I usually have a very foggy head after celebrating the New Year, with the utter exhaustion of all the Christmas shenanigans lingering on. There is also the dreaded anticipation of the standard question we all ask each other, but never really follow through on, regarding our goals and resolutions. My goals usually begin with the ones I admittedly didn’t fulfil the previous year - a standard checklist runs through my head. Whilst we may write these lists, usually in good faith, do we really intend to stick to them? Every year, without fail, somewhere on my list is to ‘get organised,’ to clear out the cupboards, to have no unnecessary clutter. If you are like me and this is also your yearly pledge, then I hope I can help with my personal ideas on how to get those interiors clutter-free and your life possessions more organised. If you are super-efficient, you’ve probably already heard of the ‘KonMari Method’ which stresses that tidying everything at once instead of in small steps is the way forward. Kondo advises decluttering your entire space in one fell-swoop, claiming that you never revert to your old cluttered ways. Now, I’m no minimalist but I do like a tidy interior as it helps your wellbeing; being organised makes life less stressful so I try to tackle de-cluttering all in one go, as Kondo urges. Some say that a clear space means a clear mind - what better way to embrace a new year? I start with my desk which, as I keep justifying to my husband, is ‘my working space.’ I work with ‘the mess’ around me as I’m putting an interior scheme together: fabrics are everywhere, and paper printing often gets piled up to file when I’m taking a call from a supplier or client. So my desk needs constant organising and I like it not only to be practical but also to look good so that I enjoy my working environment. I have a range of box files - all different colours - for different things. Not only are the colours easy for me to identify, they are beautiful as well as practical, like a stack of unopened Christmas presents. I usually go for marbled paper boxes; tax returns and bills to file have never looked so inviting! Compton Marbling in Tisbury has some beautiful boxes, each individually handmade. You will be investing in a beautiful storage solution using natural products and not buying yet more plastic. If you are trying to cut back on your plastic storage solutions and need to organise your winter knits, check out the Baggu 3D zip set, which come in a set of three and can be purchased at Brassica Mercantile. Alternatively, fill your shelves with the beautiful block-colour Kenyan baskets which not only help you organise the smaller knick-knacks (I use them for hats and gloves) but also help make storage fun. They are decorative and add a bit of style to things which are usually hard to find or buried at the back of a drawer. Louise at Brassica, like myself, is a strong believer in ‘if you can see your things you will use them,’ so alongside recycling, selling or up-cycling unwanted possessions, have some fun storing and displaying the things you use. You will become organised and next years’ resolution will hopefully not be the same repetitive one that never actually happens, and the Marie Kondo challenge will finally have been accomplished. comptonmarbling.co.uk brassicamercantile.co.uk fransesdesign.com
bridporttimes.co.uk | 67
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Gardening
70 | Bridport Times | January 2020
KALE AND LEEKS Will Livingstone, WillGrow
O
nly the hardiest vegetables can survive outside during the depths of January but my two picks this month rate amongst the toughest of homegrown produce. With a little planning in the warmer months, kale and leeks can be plentiful in even the leanest of seasons. Brassica oleracea acephala
Kale is still on the rise in popularity, and rightly so. It is the easiest vegetable to grow all year round and is beautiful and nutritious to boot. Standing defiantly against all weather conditions, it will tolerate temperatures down to -15C and rarely has an issue with slugs or caterpillars. Like all plants, however, during the early stages of its life it will need some protection with horticultural fleece to get off to a good start. Sow winter kale in August. Using the last of the warmth will get your seedlings growing well and to a good size for planting out. Summer kale can be equally delicious and very productive. Sow from March onwards (or in February, on heat) for kale all summer. As the seeds are small, I always sow into a seed tray first, then prick out into cell trays or pots ready for planting out. Sometimes potting on again can be useful if you are waiting for a bed to clear. It’s really important not to let them become pot bound. This will give you an assurance of a good strong plant. As with all brassicas, planting deep into fertile soil and firming in very well will give the plants a good anchor. This will prevent them from rocking in the wind. Once mature, kale is very nearly the hardiest of all the vegetables. If you live in a particularly exposed position, staking with a cane can help them stay upright. Leave 40cm between plants and 40cm between rows, or 50cm for larger varieties. Kale grows fantastically well in the greenhouse over winter as well, which gives you a much more tender, sweet crop than that grown outside. The kale outside will yield, albeit slowly through the depths, but as soon as the soil starts to warm in spring it will start growing on, filling the hungry gap with delicious, nutrient-packed leaves. I recommend a cut-and-come-again technique as this will prolong the production of each plant. Simply remove the lowest leaves allowing the new growth to grow on.
Try ‘Westland winter’ for a solid winter crop, ‘Red Russian’ for the greenhouse and summer cropping, and ‘Dazzling blue’ for its colourful beauty. Allium porrum
Standing like soldiers, hardened to all that winter can throw, leeks are easy-keepers. Selecting varieties that mature at different times means you can harvest leeks from early autumn (sown from February) right through to the following spring (sown in March/ April). As leeks are biennial, when the soil warms up in the spring, the leeks can start to become woody as they begin to bolt, so ideally lift them no later than the end of March. Grow leeks in a sunny position in fertile, welldrained soil. Like all alliums, they really don’t like getting their feet wet so avoid growing in wetter parts of the garden. There are multiple schools of thought for growing great leeks. My favoured method is to sow three or four seeds per cell in a tray. Grow on in a greenhouse or conservatory until the seedlings are approximately the size of a pencil. When you’re ready to plant out, pop the module out and wash off all the compost, separating the seedlings. Dib holes in well-prepared soil, approximately 5cm wide, 15cm deep and 20cm apart, and drop each seedling into each hole without backfilling with soil. Then with a watering can, fill each hole up to the top with water, leaving it to soak in. This may seem like a faff to start with but making the hole allows the seedling to swell easily and excludes the light from the bottom 15cm of the leek, giving you that lovely, blanched white portion of the leek. Keeping them well weeded will ensure good airflow and no competition for water and nutrients. Occasionally plants affected by allium leaf miner or leek moth can start to rot off as infection sets in. Covering plants with horticultural fleece or enviromesh can prevent infestation in affected areas. If you can resist eating the whole lot, leaving a row of leeks in to flower the following year will reward you with 3-4ft stems and a beautiful pale purple firework. willgrow.co.uk
bridporttimes.co.uk | 71
Gardening
JANUARY DREAMING Charlie Groves, Groves Nurseries
C
hristmas is done and dusted for another year. The highlight of the winter is over and now it’s the long, hard slog until those first days of spring. I don’t mind January too much; it does always seem longer than the other months and the winter does start to drag when you get to the end of February, but January should be quite an exciting time when you have a garden. It can often present your garden as a blank canvas. The garden is back to its bare bones, its true naked self, and it’s time to start imagining all the fantastic things that you can do in the garden this year and reflect on the things that might not have worked out so well last year. It’s a time to plan, and possibly even execute, those bigger projects. We have a part of the garden that is sorely neglected. It’s at the top, out of sight of the house (it’s the bit where we put the hideous plastic toys when we have guests). It also has a very prolific pear tree that unfortunately split down the trunk during a summer storm. So, this year’s ‘big’ project will be to make better use of this space. In another part of the garden the children have a living willow den. However, it was infested with hundreds of wasps during the summer months. They feed off the honeydew that is secreted by aphids sucking the willow sap. The number of wasps that turn up to this sugary sweet sucrose-fest is quite astounding. As you approach the den you get a combined sense of amazement tinged with a little bit of fear that they will all notice and chase you round the garden like in an old Warner Bros. cartoon. In reality, they don’t ever notice anyone around them. I think they are all flying around on a sugar high, but it wouldn’t be good parenting to tell the children to just ignore the wasps and get out and play in their den. It’s happened for a couple of years now so I’m afraid the den has to go. Actually, I would like to build something bigger and better for the children to play on. The willow den is next to the greenhouse so isn’t an ideal spot for a play area. I am conscious that the old neglected part of the garden has its benefits for wildlife, so my plan is to 72 | Bridport Times | January 2020
remove the willow den and turn this into a wildlifefriendly part of the garden. The wasps can still get some food but so can the other creatures as well. I don’t want to keep it too tidy - perhaps some log piles, a compost heap and the remainder with wildflowers in unmown grass. It’s the other bit of the garden that I would love to turn into a play area for the children. Something natural with a bit of climbing and a small trampoline for the youngest who likes a good bounce. The old
Petr Bonek/Shutterstock
plum tree would have to go, although the trunk could be incorporated into the play area, however plum trees are so reliable, and I love a bit of plum crumble, so another would have to be planted elsewhere. When you have these grand ideas these days, the internet is a great place to start for some inspiration. Pinterest is my favourite for a bit of “Pinspiration” but any of the social media sites can help. If you’re not technicallyminded, then seed catalogues or gardening magazines are particularly useful during the winter months.
We will see how much of this gets done. I have managed to finish a couple of larger projects in the garden in other years but usually I’ll put it off until the weather is a bit nicer to get out in the garden. Then, lo and behold, everyone will be out in the garden, work will become incredibly busy and before I know it we will be heading into the summer and I’ll be hiding plastic toys behind a fallen-down plum tree again. grovesnurseries.co.uk bridporttimes.co.uk | 73
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74 | Bridport Times | January 2020
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Community
ST MARY’S PARKRUN Emilie Drew
N
ever heard of parkrun? Neither had I until last year when my 60-year-old mum was dragged off to Weymouth by her next-door neighbours. For those of you who don’t know, parkrun is a 5km run that happens across the country at 9am every Saturday. For free! So, I thought ‘Why not?’ when she asked me along the following week. I wasn’t feeling particularly great about it as I’m definitely not the faster runner, but it really didn’t matter that I wasn’t soaring over the line in 20 minutes flat. Sure, there were those crazy kids who sprinted the whole way but there were far more sane people who travelled at a sensible speed. There were joggers and striders and people walking the dog, natterers, run-a-bit-walk-a-biters, children urging Dad to speed up and buggy-pushing superheroes who surged past on the open straight. That morning was a game changer. Gone were the days of wishing I was fitter and gazing jealously at people who had found the motivation to go for a run. I was now one of them. I was part of this whole new community and I couldn’t wait for the next week. The organisers were nothing short of brilliant: welcoming, friendly and full of enthusiasm and encouragement. The volunteers who lined the route cheered us on and sang our praises with a chorus of ‘You can do it’, ‘Well done’, and ‘Good job’. I love a good challenge and parkruns definitely provide plenty of those. The run is timed and each week you receive an email with enough stats to send your brain into a spin. You get your time and your position, in total, by gender and by age group. Want to go deeper? Download the Chrome extension and you’ll be in a 76 | Bridport Times | January 2020
Image: Sam Rose
statistician’s dream. You’ll find every record from the number of runs and personal bests to the total distance you’ve travelled. And then you find the challenges… It starts simply. Become a Tourist and visit other parkruns, as many as you can. It’s not hard; there are 1,674 around the world and you’re invited to every one. Try visiting a parkrun starting with every letter of the alphabet. Next beat the stopwatch bingo by crossing the finish line in every second from :00 to :59. After something a bit more hilarious? Try the Pirates challenge or the Bee Gees. If you don’t fancy zipping off to Russia or Japan for a Saturday morning jog, why not join us at St Mary’s playing field in Bridport? We’re a brand-new parkrun and we’ve already seen 1,163 people cross the line. In total we’ve run 10,665km over 44 days, 11 minutes and 40 seconds. Bonkers, right? Tourists visiting us in Bridport say we’re one of the friendliest and motivational events, mostly because we’re a noisy bunch! I am constantly amazed and humbled by the wonderful volunteers who make each run such a success and feel that I’ve become part of an extended family. Why don’t you join the fold and see where you’ll go as a parkrunner? Bridport St Mary's parkrun is a free, timed, 5k walk, jog or run open to all, every Saturday at 9am in Bridport. For more info please see parkrun.org.uk/stmarys to register either as a volunteer or to take part. You can also follow us on Facebook.
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Philosophy
CONSCIOUSNESS
W
Kelvin Clayton, Philosophy in Pubs
hat’s the phrase? The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry? Well I’m not sure to what extent mice are actually able to formulate plans, but the sentiment of this old saying certainly applied to the November meeting of the Bridport Philosophy in Pubs group. To start with, the demands of the General Election meant that, for the first time since we started, I was unable to attend. Then the person who had volunteered to introduce the discussion on ‘consciousness’, had to pull out due to a bad back. All this is a roundabout way of saying that my comments this month are only a reflection of the notes the absentee presenter supplied. These notes asked three questions about consciousness: What is it? Where is it found? What does it do? A fairly straightforward response to the first question would be to say that it is sensitivity and responsiveness to external stimuli, to stimuli from the external or surrounding environment. Perhaps an awareness, or even knowledge, of events beyond the site of consciousness. Having said that I think it important to straightaway make a distinction between consciousness/awareness and selfconsciousness/self-awareness. I suspect that most of the time, in everyday day use, we understand consciousness as self-consciousness – the capacity not just to be responsive to external stimuli but also to know that we are responsive. This is an important distinction to make when it comes to answering the second question: Where is it found? It could be argued that all living things, to some degree, are conscious; that they are sensitive and responsive to external stimuli. At the most basic level this could be regarded as the ability of plants to turn towards light or respond to the presence of water but more usually it implies the possession of a nervous system – the ability to respond to sound, touch, shape, smell and taste. To my mind what makes humans (and, to varying degrees, higher apes and some other highly evolved animals) distinct from life in general is their ability to reflect on this awareness, to produce an additional mental construct. However, the philosophical problem that we very quickly come up against is that of ‘other minds’. Whilst we humans have some ability to imagine, but never to know for certain, what is in the minds of other humans, this becomes more problematic with non-human animals. I suspect that most of the time, when considering these animals (and particularly our pets) we are guilty of anthropomorphism, the projection of human characteristics onto non-human animals. And finally, What does it do? At its most basic, I would suggest, it allows a living entity to live within, and respond to, its immediate environment. No living thing can survive on its own; everything is part of, and interdependent on, the natural environment, and if it cannot interact with its environment it cannot survive. As we move up the scale of living complexity, I like to think of consciousness gradually forming a map of this environment, a map that is continuous with consciousness until, arriving at humanity, we have a map that is separate and capable of being read. The Bridport Philosophy in Pubs group meets on the fourth Wednesday of the month in The George Hotel, South Street at 7.30pm. Anyone can attend and propose a topic for discussion. Attending the discussion is free and there is no need for any background knowledge of philosophy. All that’s required is an open mind and a desire to examine issues more closely than usual. For further details, email Kelvin Clayton at kelvin.clayton@icloud.com
78 | Bridport Times | January 2020
Literature
LITERARY REVIEW Anne Morrison, The Bookshop
American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins (Headline Publishing, January 2020) £14.99 Bridport Times reader price £12.99, The Bookshop, South Street
T
he subject of migration is in the news constantly these days, be it driven by economics or flight from danger. It is an issue with enormous implications, the societal effects being felt on many different levels. Yet what proportion of us actually feels its impact directly on our lives? Migrants are often perceived in general terms: over there (somewhere), without much connection to our own comfortable existence. Cummins has written a novel that brings a migration story abruptly into our view with a personal, intimate reality. We are brought face to face with the randomness of violence and fear, something that could happen to any one of us. Set in the Mexican seaside city of Acapulco, Lydia owns a small bookshop and leads a good life. Her journalist husband, Sebastian, driven by the need to write the truth and justice of contemporary Mexico, unravels their family life with catastrophic results. Lydia and her eight-year-old son, Luca, have their lives turned upside down in minutes. Left with no choice, they run. The drug cartels, the narcos, so powerful and so brutal, are behind the destruction of their Acapulco life. The control and terror inflicted by them on the Mexican population is palpable and insidious and this story is full of mistrust and fear. And yet there are marvellous moments of humanity and kindness. After a particularly nasty incident, Lydia is offered help by a stranger and, in spite of herself, feels a deep need, ‘…to trace evidence of goodness in the world. She needs a glimmer.’ Sadly, these glimmers only give what Cummins perceptively describes as, ‘instead of happiness or relief… a tentative, miniature suspension of dread.’
Lydia and Luca slowly create a small group of co-travellers, all of whom are escaping something dreadful and heading northwards, pushing towards the mythical ‘el norte’. Their friendships, love and loyalty are sensitively described and we feel them keenly. We learn about the astonishing sense of community and support amongst the travellers atop the huge, northbound train, colloquially known as ‘La Bestia’. The sheer peril of boarding the moving train, strapping yourself on with a belt and managing your supplies of food and drink and the burning sun, is heart-stopping. The characters all have different ways of coping: Lydia withdraws into her world of books, Luca turns inwards to his store of information derived from a fascination with maps, drawing comfort from geographical positioning and population statistics. Two sisters, Rebecca and Soledad, retreat into memories of their tranquil mountain home in the cloud forest from which they are fleeing. All of the travellers are on a journey of extraordinary endurance, always accompanied by the sorrows and griefs of each person’s particular story. Cummins pays tribute to the inextinguishable strength and courage her characters retain despite their losses. Lydia ‘…feels every molecule of her loss and she endures it. She is not diluted but amplified… [she] is vivid with life.’ ‘Luca cries often. But he also talks, he laughs, he reads. He lives.’ Beautifully written and a great read, this book ultimately allows us to hope and dream that all will be well. 21st January release date, pre-order available dorsetbooks.com bridporttimes.co.uk | 79
Literature
Archie Parkhouse cutting trees by James Ravilious, 1974
EXTRACT
ARBOREAL: A COLLECTION OF NEW WOODLAND WRITING Edited by Adrian Cooper (Little Toller Books, 2016) £20 All royalties go to the charity Common Ground
Two Storms, William Boyd
I
’d always had a curiosity about trees – probably because I’d been born and brought up in West Africa. Unreflectingly, I had come to know the names of the trees in our large garden – the casuarinas pines, the frangipanis, avocado, guava, the flamboyants with their huge seed pods. Our garden was hedged by eight-foot-high banks of hibiscus and poinsettia. Step beyond that and you were in a version of tropical rainforest – hugely buttressed figs, teak, lianas, palms – and all manner of noxious wildlife. By contrast, our family home in the borders of Scotland was arrived at via a tall landscaped avenue of mature beeches. The small tributary that flowed through the fields surrounding the house, and that fed the Tweed downstream, was lined with willow and black alder, ash and hazel. Yet it wasn’t until I moved (part-time) to the French countryside, about an hour or so east from Bordeaux, that my relationship with trees changed – forever. In 1991, we bought a semi-ruined farmhouse there set on a small hill and nearly surrounded by mature oak woods – huge trees, 80 feet high. On the night of 27 and 28 December 1999, France was hit by a storm of genuine hurricane force – Cyclone Martin, as it was officially known. It arrived after dark and the winds, we later learned, reached 180 kmph. At one stage I peered out with a
80 | Bridport Times | January 2020
Untitled by David Nash
torch, flashed the beam around, and was shocked by what I saw. Our house on its small hill was always identifiable from miles away by the towering cedar tree that grew beside it. My torch beam picked out the cedar, now uprooted and flattened, its tip a few feet from the front door. It had come down with no noise, any thud of its falling obliterated by the cyclonic winds. We anxiously waited out the rest of the night until the storm subsided. I was worried about our trees. We had planted many around the farmhouse – cypresses, oaks (holm and deciduous), figs, maple, two acers, umbrella pines, a chestnut. At dawn I went out to inspect. They were all standing, except for two cypress trees, horizontal but unbroken. However, a huge mature oak had come down, along with the cedar. On reflection, we had been lucky. When the cedar was cut up for firewood I counted the rings on the bole that was left and they came to a hundred. It was obviously a tree planted to commemorate the arrival of the centennial change in 1900 – it had lasted an exact century before the storm brought it down. In its place I bought more trees – three oaks, three lime trees, a mulberry, and planted them in a rough grove where the cedar had stood. Sixteen years later they’ve all flourished and have easily doubled in size. I’ve come to know, almost as individuals, all the 30 or so trees we’ve planted around our house in the last two decades. I see how they’ve fared, note how they’ve grown, inspect them for maladies, fret about them at times of drought, marvel at their new growth as spring moves into summer. And this familiarity has stimulated an interest in trees in general, in London and wherever I travel, and in the many acres of oak woods around our house where I can see and study natural woodland flourishing and changing through the seasons, always with the words echoing in my head: ‘Planter un arbre – c’est un beau geste’. littletoller.co.uk
bridporttimes.co.uk | 81
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DECEMBER SOLUTIONS
ACROSS 1. Participation (11) 9. Sharp-pointed organ of a bee (5) 10. Great distress (3) 11. Head monk (5) 12. Chasm (5) 13. A lament (8) 16. Wild prank (8) 18. Ridge (5) 21. Strange and mysterious (5) 22. Nay (anag) (3) 23. Semiaquatic mammal (5) 24. Free from control (11)
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DOWN 2. Fourth book of the Bible (7) 3. Driving out (7) 4. Expressed something in words (6) 5. Hot fluid rock (5) 6. Recently (5) 7. Sudden large increase (7,4) 8. Quantification (11) 14. Provided with food and drink (7) 15. Continue (5,2) 17. Fine-drawn (6) 19. Most respected person in a field (5) 20. Call forth or cause (5)
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