FineCity Magazine - May 2016 by Spider Creative Media

Issue 54 May 2016

Picture Perfect. Steve Browning features a great Norwich photographer Daniel Tink, show casing some of the amazing images heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s captured around Norwich.

Interview

Meet Professor Jacquie Burgess, Chair of The Broads Authority, who talks to Pete Goodrum.

The Arts

Norwich based writer Tony Cooper looks at the Stamford Shakespeare Festival.

FINEMotors FINEplaces FINEpeople FINEarts

PLUS

FINEEvents

Edinburgh comes to Norwich.

NORWICH

Issue 54 May 2016

Picture Perfect Steve Browning features a great Norwich photographer Daniel Tink, show casing some of the amazing images he’s captured around Norwich.

INTERVIEW

Meet Professor Jacquie Burgess, Chair of The Broads Authority, who talks to Pete Goodrum.

THE ARTS

Norwich based writer Tony Cooper looks at the Stamford Shakespeare Festival.

FINEMOTORS FINEPLACES FINEPEOPLE FINEARTS FINEEVENTS

PLUS

Edinburgh comes

FINE people

to Norwich.

NOR WIC H

FINE places

Issue 54

Your community magazine FineCity Magazine would like to thank all those who have contributed to this issue. This includes but is not limited to: Pete Goodrum, Stephen Browning, Tony Cooper, Michael Chandler and Tim Barnes-Clay Cover Image courtesy of: Daniel Tink (www.scenicnorfolk.co.uk)

Editor Jonathan Horswell @JonathanHorswel

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Administration

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Sales

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© FineCity Magazine Disclaimer: No part of this magazine may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means, either wholly or in part, without the prior written permission of the Publisher. The views expressed by contributors are not necessarily those of the Publisher. Every effort is taken to ensure that the contents of this magazine are accurate, but the Publisher can not assume any responsibility for errors or omissions. Whilst reasonable care is taken when accepting advertisements the Publisher will not accept any resulting unsatisfactory transactions. They will, however, immediately investigate any written complaints. The Publishers reserve the right to amend such submissions and cannot accept responsibility for any loss.

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2016 May | 03

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Norwich receives winter boost with new Flybe schedule

Winter programme features sunshine flights to Alicante and Malaga plus new route to Chambery

orwich Airport is boosting its range of holiday routes with tickets on sale today (Thursday 14th April) for winter sunshine flights to Malaga and Alicante, plus a new ski flight to Chambery in the French Alps all of which will be operated by Flybe, Europe’s largest regional airline.

£17.49 including taxes and charges.

With travel effective from 31st October, Flybe’s new winter timetable will see two scheduled flights a week to both Alicante and Malaga, with a new Saturday service to Chambery commencing mid-December. These are in addition to its recently launched Exeter service through the winter months.

The new flights are operated by one of Flybe’s E195 118-seater jet aircraft and have been made possible through an innovative partnership between the airline and Regional & City Airports (RCA), the airport management division of Rigby Group PLC, which owns Norwich Airport.

Tickets are on sale now at www. flybe.com with one way fares from

04 | May 2016

Norwich saw the return of scheduled sunshine flights to Spain at Easter, following a nineyear absence. The Chambery link will be the first winter ski flight from Norwich since 2010, further boosting the airport’s growing range of holiday destinations.

Flybe means the new sunshine routes will operate year-round and we are delighted to be adding the popular ski resort of Chambery to our winter schedule. “With the addition of regular flights to Exeter, Norwich Airport is offering one of its best winter schedules for years.” Flybe’s Chief Revenue Officer, Vincent Hodder added: “Together with our partners at Norwich, Flybe will continue to look at ways to provide an increasing selection of attractive routes for our regional customers. The diversity of our new winter schedule

reinforces this commitment; and we look forward to welcoming many new passengers on board as they head off for winter sun and ski breaks, as well as those who are already enjoying the fast, easy convenience of our recently introduced services to Exeter. As the lowest possible fares sell out quickly, we would advise customers to book as early as possible to avoid disappointment, especially when looking to travel over peak holiday periods.” For more information about scheduled and holiday flights from Norwich Airport please visit www. norwichairport.co.uk

Richard Pace, General Manager at Norwich Airport, said: “The partnership between RCA and

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Professor Jacquie Burgess Pete Goodrum meets Professor Jacquie Burgess, Chair of The Broads Authority, to talk about her life and career. www.finecity.co.uk

2016 May | 05

FINEPeople

acquie Burgess lives just outside the centre of Norwich, and on a cold, wet, April day it’s good to sit down in her comfortable kitchen with a mug of coffee. She’s driven back from North Wales the previous night, and admits to being tired. She shows no signs of it as she deals with phone calls and a visiting electrician who is sorting out a minor domestic crisis. We’re soon settled in to talking about her career and what’s brought her to the role she currently holds. Professor Jacquelin Burgess was born in Rhodesia. Her father had joined the RAF in 1937 and was home on leave in 1946 when he was introduced to the girl he would end up marrying. ‘They somehow both knew it was meant to be. Within weeks they were totally committed to each other. In a matter of months they were married and went together when he was posted to Rhodesia. They stayed married for 62 years!’ Jacquie was still only a few months old when her father was posted back to the UK, at RAF Mar-ham. ‘I was brought up there. We stayed for six years, which is a long time for a service family. Eventually though we moved to RAF Wyton where, as a Chief Technician dad worked on Valiants’. That posting proved to be long term as well. They would live on the base for ten years, with Jacquie attending Houghton Village School, and then Ramsey Abbey Grammar School. In 1964 her father was posted to Swanton Morley and the family moved to Norwich, buying their first house, in Eaton. ‘It was a defining moment’, she says. ‘As an RAF family we effectively owned nothing. In service life everything is provided, down to the last teaspoon. Now we needed to furnish a house. Completely. I remember us going to Wallace Kings, in Norwich, and buying everything we needed. It was bizarre’. It’s also interesting. As our 06 | May 2016

conversation develops I will learn more about Professor Burgess’ academic work, and of her fascination with how people relate to where they live. Looking at it objectively I wonder if this ‘defining moment’ was somehow a catalyst for that. Living in the city meant that Jacquie attended the Blyth school for her sixth form. ‘I discovered Norwich. In truth it was exciting after life on RAF camps’. The excitement did not detract from her studies. She got to University, in Hull, to read geography. And again, the seeds of her academic life are evident when she talks of how Hull was then a ‘left wing, working class university located in a city which had a strong community, plagued by negative perceptions from outside’. She has an innate understanding for how people relate to where they live. As a 1960s student she had, by her own admission, a good time. ‘It was a good university. There was a healthy radicalism about it. We ‘sat in’ in 1968 - as you did!’

She’s conscious of having been at university in the era of having a grant, and not a debt. It means something to her that the system as it stood allowed her to be the first one from her family to go to university. Given that it was Hull I mention Phillip Larkin. She laughs. ‘Firstly, at the outset we simply weren’t aware that our librarian was this world class poet. Secondly I remember that he always wore fluorescent socks. But he was great. His work in establishing a library of recordings of poets reading their work was wonderful. I used to love going there, and still love hearing poetry and prose read aloud to this day’.

train as a teacher, that’s what she did. And she furthered her interest in that relationship between people and places that plainly fascinates her. The early 1970s saw her in Peterborough and ‘a brief marriage’ before beginning the next, long and successful chapter. She joined University College London as a lecturer, where she would stay for 31 years, becoming the first woman professor of Geography in 1998. ‘I loved UCL. It was a great time to be there. A great team, and a great department’. Her next move came as a result

Covering the fact that my brain is processing the information that I’m talking to someone who actually knew Phillip Larkin, (!) I move on to ask her why she stayed in Hull beyond her degree. ‘I completed my degree with good results. Nobody was more surprised than me! Geographical ideas were changing, and it was thought that I had some ideas worth exploring. I was able to do a Ph.D on a three year scholarship’. So, shelving plans to

feature by:

Pete Goodrum Writer, broadcaster @petegoodrum

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FINEPeople of several factors. She was renting a small room, ‘because effectively I had nowhere to live in London at that time. It was the end of a second, longer, marriage’, she was also concerned about her ageing parents. In a timely coincidence a post in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia became available. ‘I’d had strong links with UEA, and knew people there.’ She applied for the post and got it, starting in 2006. By 2007 she was appointed Head of School, responsible for running the department. Throughout all of our conversation so far Jacquie Burgess has displayed a constant and cheerful sense of optimism and positivity. She’s articulate and engaging, smiles a lot and laughs, often self deprecatingly at anecdotes. But, now, as we approach the end of her time at UEA a certain sadness colours her tone. ‘I was Head of School’, she says, in 2009, when ‘Climategate’ broke’. This was the episode when a large number of emails were hacked from within the UEA which were used to throw doubt on the scientific evidence for climate change. . She sums up the entire incident in one concise, and plainly heart felt, statement. ‘My job as Head of School was very much about looking after my colleagues. What I saw was individuals being subjected to exposure because of often out of context e mails being leaked to a foreign website. It was obvious that hackers had worked on this for a long time, and that they had plundered correspondence going back over 20 years. The exercise had clearly been planned to destabilise the forthcoming Copenhagen conference on climate change. What it did was to under-mine the impeccable work of my colleagues, compromising reputations and wrecking self esteem. It was wrong. It left me thinking that ‘I’ve had enough’. The destruction of peoples’ careers for political gain appalled me and made me wonder about the relationship between academic work and politics’. www.finecity.co.uk

2016 May | 07

FINEPeople residents and visitors. We learned a lot about the different attitudes and perspectives that these groups have about the Broads and about the Broads Authority. The surveys gave us the objective evidence we needed to help shape future plans for the area. On the face of it this is commercial market research. The same techniques would be applied to a new product launch. But this is different. This is the application of a scientific mind, a geographer’s mind, to enable decisions to be taken fairly, transparently and effectively, even if they’re not always popular; to address the issues of how people live and work within their environment. It’s everything she’s ever done in her career channelled into one massively important and excitingly relevant project.

Four separate independent enquiries cleared the climate scientists of any wrong-doing , but the experience scarred her. It’s the only time in our meeting that I will see her frown. It’s as if a light had been temporarily switched off in her eyes. By 2010, further affected by ‘cuts, changes and downsizing’ she took early retirement and concentrated on caring for her father. ‘My mother had died in 2008, and now dad was ill. I wanted’, she says, ‘to give him a good end of life’. It was not an easy transition. Shifting to carer of one from managing a team of 200, stepping out of academic life in to a domestic routine, left her adrift. ‘I struggled with the loss of responsibility. It was shattering’. She looked for new challenges. ‘I took up the clarinet, and still have lessons every week. I became a Steward of The Norfolk County Music Festival and I joined the Embroiders Guild’. In January 2012 her father died. ‘It was peaceful’. In the same week she saw a press announcement 08 | May 2016

that there was a vacancy for a Secretary of State Member on the Broads Authority. ‘It fitted with so much of the work I’d done. This was about landscape, and how people lived within it’. So she applied for the role. After what she admits was an agonising wait following the interview Jacquie was appointed by the Minister as a Member of the Broads Authority. ‘I spent my first year as a Member, finding out about things from the inside. I’d always loved The Broads and I immersed myself in it’. By 2013 she was Vice Chair. Two years later, in 2015, she was elected as Chair. ‘I like organising’, she says, smiling. If we’ve been motoring along at quite a pace so far, this is the moment when the pedal goes to the metal and the turbocharger kicks in. ‘It’s about communication’, she says. ‘I believe very strongly that the Members should be the Ambassadors for the B.A. and this means going out, meeting people and listening to their concerns. At the same time, it is important that

we explain clearly what the Broads Authority is trying to achieve for the Broads National Park. This is not idle rhetoric. It’s a manifesto. And she quickly moves in to explaining what she’s doing to deliver it. ‘We are organising more meetings with local people, more workshops to which local stakeholders are invited, and I am very keen to accept invitations to talk to local groups. In the last few weeks, I’ve made presentations to two Parish Councils, a Rotary Club, the Dean’s Breakfast Group, the Norfolk and Suffolk Boating Association, and the Waveney Starlight AGM, based in Beccles which offers boat trips for the elderly and people with disabilities. And then comes an informed and impassioned explanation of a project which, as much as anything else she’s said, sums up why she is the right person for the job. ‘We have a lot of scientific knowledge about the Broads environment, but we didn’t have any social scientific evidence of how people feel. We commissioned research to get that information from private boat owners, hire boat companies,

She shows me documents to explain what she believes to be the next big step. ‘Water, Mills and Marshes’ is the Broads Landscape Partnership Scheme, which has received initial approval from the Heritage Lottery Fund. The partners are currently working on the full proposal for projects which will be worth nearly £4.5million. The LPS focuses on the people, communities and heritage of the Broads drained marsh landscape. It’s goal is to ‘reconnect local people with their local landscape and its natural and cultural heritage’. It’s still raining as I leave. She kindly accompanies me to my car, with an umbrella. ‘It’s been a pleasure’ she says. And it has. As I drive away I think about the size and shape of The Landscape Partnership Scheme. It will involve 38 projects, 55 partner organisations and take 5 years to deliver. So, there’s a need for a born organiser, a respected academic with a track record in geography, someone who loves Norfolk, understands the Broads and has a deep rooted knowledge of the relationship between the environment and how people live and work within it. Can you think of anyone better than Professor Jacquie Burgess to do that? I can’t. www.finecity.co.uk

CompetitionFINEPeople

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All you have to do is complete the following sections and send it back to ensure your are included in the draw. Or enter online at: www.FineCity.co.uk/winamini Only one entry per household Your name: How much is your home phone bill ? £ Your address: Would you like to pay less than that? Postcode: Your landline contact number: Your email address:

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Please send your entry to: FineCity Magazine, Queens House, Queens Square, Attleborough, Norfolk, NR17 2AE. Terms & conditions apply. Go to www.FineCity.co.uk/winamini for full T’s & C’s.

2016 May | 09

Picture Perfect This is about my friend and co-author on four books, Daniel Tink. He also happens to be the top photographer around these parts, a full time smartphone app designer for a highly respected app-development company in Norwich and a young Dad to little Charlie. Busy life? Have a readâ&#x20AC;Ś..

10 | May 2016

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FINEPLACES

feature by:

Steve Browning Writer @returningperson

Where Can I Find Some High Res Pics? I first came across Daniel in 2008 when I had just finished a book, ‘Norwich’ in the Halsgrove Discover series. I was kind of pleased with it but the publishers told me that it needed some high resolution photos to round things off. So, I went to see a local photographer I know who runs a camera shop and he said ‘Fine, no problem. I have lots of really good shots of the Cathedral, Castle etc and will put them on a disc for you. Just give me a week’. So I did, then another week, then another, then a month, then another. Every time I asked for them there was always a reason for a delay.

Norwich In the end I gave up and started scanning the internet under ‘Norfolk photographers’ and I came across a website www. scenicnorfolk.co.uk run by someone called Daniel Tink. He had/has some gorgeous pictures on there and I selected 21 of them and I sent the book off to the publishers. ‘Norwich’ came out a few months later, topped Jarrolds charts and is still doing very well, I am delighted to say.

Own Book OK, so how did this affect Daniel Tink? Quite a lot actually, as the book had been out for only a few days when he received an email from Halsgrove asking if he would like to do his own book. It had only taken me nine months

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2016 May | 11

of badgering Halsgrove and three face-to-face meet-ups to win a contract for ‘Norwich’ and here he was being offered his own after three days! We laugh about it quite a bit – life is a funny old thing sometimes. Daniel’s book is called ‘Spirit of Norwich’ and is published by an imprint of Halsgrove called PiXZ Books, priced at £4.99. FineCity magazine featured it in the December edition as a recommended ‘Great Read’ for Christmas. Has it done well? Six years after publication, this spring 2016, it was number 1 in Jarrolds Local chart. Not too bad, I’d say.

12 | May 2016

The Cathedral, Food And Lots Of Walking There followed ‘Spirit of Norwich Cathedral’ in the same PiXZ series, the majority of which was photographed on a day many people will remember in January 2009 when the whole of Norwich practically came to a standstill as a smothering blanket of snow fell on the city. We had previously arranged with the Cathedral authorities to have a photo session so we struggled in. Apart from being cold it was brilliant as we had the whole place to ourselves and discovered all sorts of fascinating things. Did you know, for example, that there is a

rusted musket ball in the side of Bishop Goldwell’s tomb which was fired into it by a marauding mob in 1643? Or that there is a good amount of graffiti carved into the stone work depicting ships and churches? Or that the priceless Dispenser Reredos was hidden in plain sight for many years? The Puritan rabble hated anything this beautiful and so someone had the bright idea of turning it upside down and using it as a workman’s table. Again, the magnificent Pelican Lectern was simply buried in the Bishop’s Garden and forgotten about for decades – now it occupies pride of place in the Ambulatory. We have pictures of all this. In the middle of the

afternoon, a lovely person took pity on us and went home to make a flask of hot tea – the café was closed as staff could not get in. All in all, it was one of those days never to be forgotten. The book was subsequently launched in the Hostry with slides, wine, nibbles and an auction of some of Daniel’s prints, the proceeds going to the Cathedral.

Norfolk Food Heroes, Norfolk And The Peddars Way A bigger book, ‘Norfolk Food Heroes’, followed which entailed us driving all over the county and eating lots of things. We met

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FINEPLACES

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2016 May | 13

FINEPLACES

14 | May 2016

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FINEPLACES Grimsby from Pye Bakers, who you can see at weekends outside the Forum with people queuing up to buy his designer bread and cakes (hint: the Portuguese custard tarts are wicked). In search of authenticy, Daniel drove down to Cromer before dawn to watch and take pics as Shawn Grey took his fishing boat out into a choppy sea and watched as the catch of prime lobsters and the famous ‘Cromer Crab’ reached the shore three hours later. Amongst a host of other adventures, we were biffed by enormous Aberdeen Angus cows, chased by Steve Childerhouse’s free range turkeys

its own personality – some are easy in this way and difficult in that, some zoom along and some crawl and some, like this one, you almost give up as difficulties mount. Here it was the obvious really – the trail is 93 miles long and along the Peddars Way section we had to correspond with our MP and the British Army (please don’t ask!) amongst other things. There was just too much information and we had to be very selective. We stopped writing it for several months but in the end proceeded with it. If it was a human being I would say it had a difficult childhood but

and learnt the art of bee keeping from Mike Thurlow at Orchid Apiaries, Surlingham.

turned out fine in the end and made us proud.

Then came ‘Norfolk’ in the Halsgrove Discover Series which was a wonderful book to write as we explored Norfolk in all its nooks and crannies. This was followed by the one that I think is our favourite, ‘Peddars Way and the Norfolk Coast Path’, of which one kind Amazon purchaser said ‘I could smell the sea reading this wonderful informative book’. I think it does have the best of Daniel’s pictures in it but, as is often the case when writing a book, it had a difficult beginning. I find each book has

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We also worked together on ‘The World of Charles Dickens’ which involved a not-to-be-forgotten trip to London when the coach did not turn up at Norwich Bus Station in the morning and we missed it on the way back. We did, however, get some wonderful shots of key locations from Dickens’ books. Daniel was subsequently asked by Halsgrove to produce the pictures for a beautiful ‘Norfolk Address Book’ and, separately, its little brother, Mini ‘Norfolk Address Book’.

2016 May | 15

FINEPLACES

Top Five Photography Tips OK, so what makes a good photograph? Here are Daniel’s top five tips. 1) For landscape photography there’s no better investment than a tripod, especially when shooting in low light conditions and ensuring your horizons are straight.

16 | May 2016

2) Learn the Rule of Thirds to apply a better general composition to your photos. When composing your photo in your cameras view finder or screen divide the scene up into imaginary thirds both horizontally and vertically. Then place your areas of interest at points where those lines cross or your horizon along one of the lines. 3) L ook for leading lines in your scene. These pave an easy

to follow path for your eye through different elements of your photo. Examples of leading lines are roads or rivers that start at the bottom or side of your scene and flow away towards your horizon. 4) Experiment with slow exposures for dramatic coastal scenes. Capture the ocean or a fast flowing river as a smooth and milky movement. Look for

the ‘S’ mode on your camera to adjust your shutter speed and experiment with short to long exposure times for amazing results. To avoid blurry results, you will need a tripod, unless you have an extremely steady hand. You’ll struggle to do this in daylight as you’ll capture too much light and your photos will appear over exposed so wait until the light levels drop.

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FINEPLACES Here We Go Again!

5) Most photographers will shoot from a standing position, which is fine for general landscapes, but experiment from a low level and discover a whole new perspective on the world. You don’t necessarily have to lie on the floor looking through your view finder, just crouch down and hold your camera on the floor at a slight upwards angle and fire off shots for some creative results. The website www.scenicnorfolk. co.uk has led to many things. Daniel now sells his photographs all over the world and also sells them at craft fairs in the county. There has been an inevitable decrease in nipping about, however, due to the joyous arrival

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of one, Charlie Daniel Tink on the wonderful date 11/12/13, although it is no doubt true that family photography has increased just a little bit!

Nelson’s Journey

comfortable space from which to receive their support. This year I have been asked to help with a brand new room that they have been given access to at the Norfolk Hospice in West Norfolk’.

What of the future? We obviously have lots of our own things to do – Daniel has his very busy job designing and developing smartphone and tablet apps and a lovely young son to concentrate on and I am writing a couple of books on the Great War for Pen and Sword along with some in Asia for a completely different market – Language Learning for businesspeople. But Daniel recently had this great idea: ‘Let’s do a book on …..’ (It is a famous Norfolk monument and cultural centre but we must keep it under wraps for the moment). I enthusiastically agreed but then thought, ‘that’s a bit of a tall order, actually, isn’t it? Where on earth will the time come from?’ But I haven’t said anything and I am sure another wonderful adventure awaits. Eventually. Oh, well, here we go again…..

He receives some interesting requests. One was from Nelson’s Journey, the Norfolk child bereavement charity based in Little Plumstead, Norfolk. He explains: ‘In 2014 I was proud to be able to donate my photography to be used as full size wallpaper in their new HQ. The idea of the photo wallpaper was to help bereaved children and their families who live in Norfolk, to access a facility that is therapeutic in nature and gives them a relaxing, welcoming and

2016 May | 17

FINEPLACES

EACH Ride for Life – back for it’s 23rd year!

ast Anglia’s Children’s Hospices (EACH) longest running event, Ride for Life, is back for it’s 23rd year! Ride for Life is the charity’s most popular cycling and walking event suitable for the whole family, taking participants through the beautiful scenery of Thetford Forrest. The event will take place on Sunday 12th June, starting at Mayday in Thetford Forest. The day features a number of different routes to suit all ages and abilities - with three and six mile walks plus on and off road bike rides from 10 to 50 miles. If you haven’t been in the saddle for a while this is the perfect place to start! 18 | May 2016

New for this year is a Children’s Treasure Trail in the woods good family fun to get people back to nature. The treasure trail will cover just under a mile through the forest around Mayday. Search for clues among the trees and solve the mystery, having lots of fun on the way. Everyone who completes a treasure trail map will receive an EACH goody bag. Each child taking part will receive their very own T-shirt, medal, sticker and gift. For extra fun, come dressed as your favourite superhero or Disney character! For further information and to sign up Ride for Life today visit: www.each.org.uk/rideforlife. Alternatively you can contact the EACH Norfolk Fundraising Team on 01953 666767.

Make a difference TRUSTEE APPOINTMENTS East Anglia’s Children’s Hospices (EACH) supports families and cares for children and young people with life-threatening conditions across Cambridgeshire, Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk. With a reputation for excellence and innovation, our services include: specialist nursing care, symptom management support, short breaks, wellbeing activities, therapies and counselling. We rely on voluntary donations for the majority of our income and have recently embarked on a capital appeal project to develop our hospice services in Norfolk, including a new hospice. We are looking for Trustees to broaden our representation of skills and seek applications from individuals who have a strong strategic focus and an understanding of organisational governance. We welcome all applications, but have particular interest in those with senior management experience in the commercial and business environment and/or a strong network of high level contacts. The role is unpaid, although expenses can be reimbursed. To apply, please email your CV and a short statement on why you want to join EACH to: gillian.phillpot@each.org.uk. If you would prefer to speak with our Chief Executive or Chairman before applying, please just let Gillian know.

Royal Patron: HRH The Duchess of Cambridge Registered Charity Number 1069284

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FINEPLACES

The Big Birdhouse Tour

The Big Birdhouse Tour takes flight at intu Chapelfield

rt and nature combine in a bold way this spring as The Big Birdhouse Tour lands at intu Chapelfield, Norwich on Monday 2nd May 2016. Fifteen larger-than-life birdhouses have been individually and artfully designed by British celebrities, sporting heroes, and well-known names, including: Olympian Becky Adlington, radio DJ Jo Whiley, One Show presenter Alex Jones and funny man Vic Reeves. On display around the centre until Saturday 28th May, intu’s latest art installation project has been created in partnership with the RSPB: aiming to raise money and awareness for Europe’s largest nature conservation charity. The first national tour of its kind, The Big Birdhouse Tour took flight last July. At the mid-point, the birdhouses have already migrated around eight intu shopping centres, before landing in Norwich. Throughout May, there will be a host of exciting, informative, and entertaining activities at the centre. Each one helping shoppers to learn more about protecting birds, insects and other wildlife living in and around our gardens, window boxes, parks and countryside.

including a RSPB Active in Nature stand where you can try out a kayak machine. Kids’ crafts on both days plus information about how to protect British birds and wildlife. Saturday 21st May 10am – 4pm intu Chapelfield Kids’ Club activity. Make your own bird cake with all sorts of treats that birds like to eat. Take home to feed the birds in your own back garden. Suitable for 3 years and over. Beautiful RSPB nest boxes will also be on sale from the customer service desk throughout the tour, at just £9.99. Spreading its wings further across Norfolk, intu Chapelfield staff have taken The Big Birdhouse Tour to four local schools. • Year 2 pupils from Angel Road Infant School in Norwich, • Year 1 and year 2 pupils from

Great Witchingham Primary in Lenwade,

• Browick Road Primary in Wymondham • Reception class at Lodge Lane Infant School in Old Catton The children have been busily creating giant bird wing collages to go on display at the centre later this month, alongside the celebrity installations. Sheridan Smith, marketing manager at intu Chapelfield, said “The Big Birdhouse Tour is bright, bold and colourful and we can’t wait for it to nest in Norwich this May. Visitors can choose their favourite celebrity-decorated birdhouse, try their hand at bird puppetry or get involved in making a seed-cake to take home. There are lots of fun, interactive ways to learn more about caring for our feathered friends and we hope that hundreds of people will flock to the centre to take part! We’re particularly excited to see what our young artists will create for us and looking forward to welcoming them to intu Chapelfield soon.”

Trevor Pereira, commercial and digital director at intu, said: “In 2013 we launched the first ever national tour for the world famous Elephant Parade raising awareness of the plight of the Asian elephant to millions of our customers. The Big Birdhouse Tour is all about creating a buzz around the nature that surrounds us in our own back gardens and countryside, inspiring people to look after the UK’s birds and wildlife so our towns, coasts and countryside are thriving with nature.” Bryan Bland, Head of Corporate Partnerships at the RSPB, said: “Our partnership is a superb example of reaching out to people where they are and showcasing the relevance and importance of Giving Nature a Home. intu centres offer fantastic spaces to enable us to do something really fun and creative, and we hope to connect with people up and down the country to inspire and encourage them to connect with nature.” For more information on The Big Birdhouse Tour and how you can get involved, visit www.intu.co.uk/birdhouse

All Big Birdhouse Tour activities are free and will take place on the intu Chapelfield lower ground mall. Events will include: Saturday 7th May 10am-4pm intu Chapelfield Kids’ Club activity in partnership with Norwich Puppet Theatre. Make your own bird puppet to take home. Suitable for 3 years and over. Saturday 14th & Sunday 15th May Visit from Strumpshaw Fen RSPB reserve team on Saturday,

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2016 May | 19

Stamford Shakespeare Norwich-based theatre writer, Tony Cooper, looks in on the Stamford Shakespeare Festival

’ve heard lots of good things about the Stamford Shakespeare Festival and the Rutland Open Air Theatre based at Tolethorpe Hall near Stamford in Lincolnshire. It’s a festival I’ve always harboured a desire to visit but, unfortunately, I haven’t made it yet. But as this year celebrates the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, perhaps now’s the time. It should be! But, we’ll see!

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Performances take place on an outdoor stage of a permanentlycovered auditorium on Tolethorpe’s seven-acre estate and The Stage named it as one of England’s premier outdoor theatre venues. In addition to the recognised high standard of performances, the theatre - which can comfortably accommodate up to 600 people on a well-raked auditorium - is well known for the quality of its facilities thus making it

one of the finest open-air theatre settings in Europe. Running throughout the balmy summer months of June, July and August, the festival (which attracts over 35,000 eager theatregoers each season) is in celebratory mood this year as it chalks up its 40th anniversary at Tolethorpe. From small acorns, mighty oak trees grow! They certainly do, especially in the case of Stamford’s resident company aptly named Stamford Shakespeare Company. Founded in

1968 by Jean Harley - a graduate of RADA and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama - she nurtured this company to be a major dramatic force in presenting the works of Shakespeare. Jean was ably assisted in her endeavours by Joan Pendlebury, a graduate of London University and the Central School of Speech and Drama and greatly encouraged and supported by the actor and founder member of the company, Chris Coleman.

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‘By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes (Macbeth)

Festival Their first production, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, produced and directed by Jean in the confines of the Monastery Garden of Stamford’s historic George Hotel in the year of the company’s founding, was staged under the aegis of the Stamford Arts Centre committee to raise funds for the proposed new arts centre and the restoration of the Georgian theatre in St Mary’s Street. The production was so successful that Jean followed on with two other well-loved plays by Shakespeare: Twelfth Night and www.finecity.co.uk

Romeo and Juliet. When in 1976 the George found that they could no longer accommodate the company due to building work and an extension being carried out to the hotel, a new venue had to be found - and found fast! Conveniently, Tolethorpe Hall came on the market and was purchased for £26,000, a good price when taking into account the bad state of repair of the building. Incidentally, the last production at the George was Henry V.

Tolethorpe Hall with the theatre looming in the distance.

But with less than £100 in the bank, the committee of the hugelyenthusiastic amateur Stamford Shakespeare Company had a job on their hands to raise the allimportant capital. Banks and so forth were not that interested but a knight in shining armour came their way by the name of Tim Clancy, a local businessman. He stepped in when needed and offered a private loan of £36,000 which was fully repaid. The theatre company - which Tim served as president from 1993 to 2010 -

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Tony Cooper Writer tc@tony-cooper.co.uk

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A dramatic scene from ’Romeo and Juliet’ from the 2008 festival.

was back in business and treading the boards just one year after leaving the George. Not bad going, eh! Their first season at Tolethorpe opened in a blaze of glory in May 1977 with productions of Macbeth and The Taming of the Shrew. But good drama at Tolethorpe is married to a good social life, too, and the social side of Stamford is similar to that of Glyndebourne inasmuch as prior to performances and during intervals audience members can dine alfresco in the

grounds of the hall or, alternatively, they can treat themselves to a picnic hamper prepared by Prykeman Theatre Catering. There are two choices available and they come reasonably priced at £14.95 and £23.50. They must be booked in advance and you can contact Prykeman on 01572 813303. However, if you want to go even further up the culinary scale preperformance buffet suppers can be enjoyed in the splendid and

‘Double, double, toil and trouble; fire burn and cauldron bubble!’ (Macbeth) Dining al fresco at Tolethorpe Hall.

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‘Stars - hide your fires. Let not light see my black and deep desires.’ (Macbeth)

elegant surroundings of historic Tolethorpe Hall. There’s a varied selection of starters to choose from and there’s always a tempting choice of hot dishes on offer such as fish, carved meats and nicelyfilled pies. That sort of thing! There’s also a good choice of mouth-watering desserts or an appetising cheese board to devour for ‘afters’ while the meal can be rounded off in the usual amicable way sipping piping-hot coffee, enjoying convivial conversation and gorging chocolate-coated mints - and even more coffee! What could be better! And, of course, vegetarian options are readily available, too. The cost of the buffet comes in at £22.75. That’ll not break the bank, either! And if you’re wondering how Tolethorpe gets its name, it derives from Toli the Dane, who’s reckoned to be the first inhabitant of the site arriving in the year 800. It’s not known how long he stayed but over time his patch became known as Toli’s Thorpe

(homestead) which later became known as Tolethorpe.

There’s no actual record of when Tolethorpe was built but people have lived here for a good 900 years therefore one must assume

various extensions and so forth. The actual theatre itself has seen many changes, too, over its comparative short life-span and following a major refit to coincide with the 1993 season its seating

‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on and our little life is rounded with a sleep.’ (The Tempest)

that a small manor-house probably built by a Norman family who arrived in 1086 the year before William the Conqueror died - was the start of what we know today as Tolethorpe Hall which, of course, has been added greatly to over the centuries by

capacity was increased from 450 to 600.

Opening the new theatre was none other than Sam Wanamaker, responsible for the construction of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre at Southwark on London’s South Bank. He loved Tolethorpe so much that he regularly attended the festival with his wife, Charlotte. And to aid Wanamaker’s Globe Project, Tolethorpe mounted a special production of Romeo and Juliet which was attended by

About Nothing’. A scene from the outstanding production in 2010 of ‘Much Ado

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Hollywood veteran actor, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Other well-known stage personalities who have supported Tolethorpe with their presence include the likes of Sir Alan Ayckbourn, Richard Todd, Jane Lapotaire, Geoffrey Kendal, Colin Dexter, Margaret Wolfit and Jimmy Ellis (Sgt Lynch of Z Cars fame). Royalty has graced the theatre, too, with the Duke of Gloucester enjoying a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1992. By the way, Jean Harley retired as artistic director of the Stamford Shakespeare Company in 2008 after 41 years loyal and devoted service. Succeeded by Carol King, Jean was duly appointed President but sadly passed away in 2014. Her legacy speaks for itself. By tradition, the season always include two productions by Shakespeare and one by another playwright. Therefore, this year’s offering to The Bard in his special year is Macbeth and The Tempest while The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame completes the repertoire. And here’s a bite of the repertoire to whet your appetite:

Macbeth Macbeth’s descent from a popular and successful war hero to a deranged tyrant has all the ingredients demanded by modernday audiences: foul murder, witchcraft, misguided ambition, madness, justice and retribution. After the prophecies Macbeth receives from the three witches he sees the first come true. Goaded by his wife, Macbeth’s unbridled desire to be king leads him to murder the saintly King Duncan. Once he’s enthroned he discovers

‘Give sorrow word - the grief that does not speak knits up the o’er wrought heart and bids it break.’ (Macbeth) 2016 May | 23

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‘Hell’s empty and all the devils are here.’ (The Tempest) that he has to commit even more murderous deeds to keep in power. The tragedy of Macbeth resonates throughout the ages and man’s inclination to push himself beyond the borders of acceptable behaviour is as prevalent today as it was in Shakespeare’s time.

The Tempest Tolethorpe’s beautiful gladed stage provides the perfect setting for The Tempest widely considered Shakespeare’s last play. It shows The Bard at the height of his creative and poetic powers: a magical mystical tale of a remote island, of shipwrecks and lost

kingdom, of spirits and monsters, of true love and revenge, of conspirators and clowns. At its centre is the towering figure of Prospero - a reflection, perhaps, of Shakespeare himself?

The Wind in the Willows The stage adaptation of Kenneth

Grahame’s classic novel, The Wind in the Willows, captures vividly the idyllic world of the river bank and the distant wild wood where wily weasels lie in wait. We all know about the exploits of nautical Ratty, modest Mole and wise old Badger in their strong determination to save the irrepressible Mr Toad from his relentless passion for fast motor-cars. But will reckless Toad ever change his ways? A timeless, enchanting story - set in Edwardian England - and loved by all! But where will it end? Booking info: Tickets - evening performances: £13 (Monday/Thursday), £15 (Friday), £18 (Saturday); matinée

performances: adults £13; children £7.50; previews: 7th/8th June, 14th/15th June, 5th/6th July (all tickets £10). Theatre deal: book for all three plays at the same time and get £2 off each ticket (Monday to Friday only). Directions: From the A1 Great North Road (southbound), Tolethorpe Hall can be approached from the Old Great North Road (B1081) through the village of Little Casterton (PE9 4BH) which is about two miles from the A1. Box office: 01780 756133 www.stamfordshakespeare.co.uk

‘What’s past is prologue.’ (The Tempest)

The Mad Hatter and Alice having a good time enjoying a cup of tea in ’Alice in Wonderland’ - a riveting scene from the 2014 festival production.

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‘Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.’ (The Wind in the Willows)

proved a big hit in 2014. The modern-dress production of ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ A pastoral scene from ‘As You Like It’, a popular production

from the 2014 festival.

Swords at the ready! The Montagues and Capulets duelling in the 2008 production of ‘Romeo and Juliet’.

‘After all, the best part of a holiday is perhaps not so much to be resting yourself, as to see all the other fellows busy working.’ (The Wind in the Willows) www.finecity.co.uk

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The James Plays May 14-15

The James Plays Photo by David Eustace

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t is a step-up from a DVD box-set binge. A live dramatic experience is promised when The James Plays takes to the Norwich Theatre Royal stage this May. A key period of Scottish history is brought to life in three plays all performed in a day, as John Bultitude discovered. A Royal court in a time of political turbulence and conflict can be a hotbed of intrigue and plotting. And this is brought home in a trilogy of plays which brings to life three generations of Scotland’s Stewart Kings. But while the Telegraph has dubbed it ‘better than Shakespeare,’ do not expect a heavy day of drama. Each play uses contemporary language, has a fastmoving plot, and aims to lock the audience into the drama. It also boasts a wide-ranging cast including Blythe Duff (Jackie Reid in Taggart), Steven Miller (Black Watch, and Lenny Lyons in Casualty), John Stahl (Rickard Karstark in Game Of Thrones)

and Andrew Still (Joel Dexter in Hollyoaks). Each individual play follows an individual King and has an individual style, as director Laurie Sansom explains. James 1: The Key Will Keep The Lock follows the monarch who has been imprisoned in England for 18 years. He returns North of the border accompanied by his English bride finding a nation fractured and troubled, and facing some difficult decisions in order to save his love and his country. Laurie said: “The plan was that he would come back and stop the war that sees Scotland fighting with France against England. It ends very differently as James has a tricky time coming back to a country that does not really want him. It really is about civil war in Scotland.” Fast-forward to James II: The Day of the Innocents. He is crowned monarch at just six years old and finds himself a pawn in the power battles between powerful families in his own country. As he gets older and closer to adulthood, James has to cling to power while also dealing with the demons of his Rona Morrison as Pherny and Blythe Duff as Annabella in James III The True Mirror. Photo by Robert Day

Andrew Rothney as James II and ensemble in James II Day of the Innocents Photo by Manuel Harlan

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FINEARTS Daniel Cahill & Ensemble in James I Photo by Tommy Ga-Ken Wan

youth. “It is fascinating to watch him grow up, become an independent ruler, and struggle with friendships and relationships as he becomes an adult,” said Laurie.

Andrew Rothney & Andrew Still in James II Photo by Tommy

Ga-Ken Wan

Daniel Cahill & Malin Crépin in James III Photo by Tommy Ga-Ken

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Wan

The trilogy ends with James III: The True Mirror which follows a King whose charisma and need to be liked means he also divides opinion among his people. His wife Margaret of Denmark is both clever and practical, and he realises he may have to rely on her more to save his country. “It is really a relationship comedy about a King and Queen,” said Laurie. “You watch Queen Margaret gradually take control. Because James III is a vain narcissistic man and fun to be with, Queen Margaret has to gradually take over the reins of government because James is incapable.” But despite the period of the pieces, the cast say there is plenty for a modern audience to relate to. Andrew Rothney, who plays James II, said: “You could take these plays out of their medieval setting and make them contemporary pieces of theatre. James I is the story of

a boy coming home. James II is about a young boy who has to shake off his issues to become a functioning human being.” Fellow cast member Matthew Pidgeon, who plays James III, added: “The third play is about a dysfunctional relationship and a marriage coming apart. I think the thing about these plays is they’re not about them being kings. They work on a universal and a domestic level as well.” And these contemporary echoes of what happened then are still relevant today as writer Rona Munro says. “Each of the Kings lived in the shadow of their larger, richer, Southern neighbour, and it is fascinating to trace some of our contemporary attitudes to that relationship back to that time, when violent and epic events touched each succeeding generation.” As well as each play following a specific King, each one also has a very individual tone. Director Laurie explained: “They have their own flavour and feel. You get all your sword-fights but you also get www.finecity.co.uk

FINEARTS to see a dance to a Lady Gaga song in James III. They become more and more irreverent and more and more contemporary as they go along. Mixing up the rehearsals and doing a bit of James I, then a bit of James II and then some James III is something I like doing as they inform each other.” Despite their differences, there are also some strong themes examining the sense of duty that comes with a regal position, as well as the bonds of family. “We did a scene about Queen Joan in James I where she is worried about living where she is and about to have her first child. It connects up with all the other plays in terms of parents and children,” said Laurie. “It examines how they feel about their children and also how Kings feel about their sons who will inherit their power as they look back on their own lives and worry. It is also about mothers who love their sons too much. Across the plays those themes play out

in number of different ways and different versions.” And it will also mean an exciting piece of event drama taking to the Theatre Royal stage. So give the DVD box-set a miss and enjoy the chance to experience some turbulent moments in Scottish history up close and personal.

Listing: The James Plays, Saturday 14-Sunday 15 May. James I: The Key Will Keep The Lock at 11am, James II: The Day Of The Innocents at 3pm and James III: The True Mirror at 7.30pm. Trilogy tickets £24-£85. Individual tickets £8-£30. Discounts for Friends, Corporate Club, and Groups. To book, call the box office on 01603 630000 or log on to www. theatreroyalnorwich.co.uk Daniel Cahill in James III Photo by Tommy Ga-Ken Wan

John Hurt, actor and Chancellor of Norwich University for the Arts. The exhibition is part of the Holt Festival Art Trail that also takes in many other galleries and exhibition spaces around the town.

Holt Festival

Holt Festival Art Prize 2016 is open for entries!

Cash prize and Sainsbury Centre exhibition for winner Saturday 23 – Sunday 31 July 2016, Holt, North Norfolk

olt Festival is delighted to announce that entry is now open for this year’s Holt Festival Art Prize. The Holt Festival Art Prize is open to artists everywhere. In past years artists from all over the UK have submitted work. There is a cash prize of £1,500 and in addition the winning artwork will be exhibited at Norwich’s www.finecity.co.uk

prestigious Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in the autumn. All types of original visual art is welcome, the only proviso is that The deadline for entries is midnight Sunday 26 June. Judges will select a shortlist of 20-30 that will be exhibited at the Auden Theatre, Holt from 23-31 July. The winner will be announced at a private view on 24 July by Sir

Last year’s competition attracted another extremely high standard of entries. The winner of the prize and its attendant cheque for £1,500 was Norfolk artist Brüer Tidman’s acrylic on canvas portrait of his partner Beth Narborough. The painting was unanimously selected from over 250 entries This year’s judges are Amanda Geitner, Director of The East Anglia Art Fund and former Chief Curator at The Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Head of Collections Management and Conservation at the Sainsbury Centre Calvin Winner and Sarah Shalagosky, Curator of the Mead Gallery at Warwick Arts Centre. International Art Appraiser and Holt Festival Art Prize organizer James Glennie commented ‘Each year I am both impressed and delighted at the standard of entries which really does seem

to get higher each year. It will be a tough job for that standard to rise even higher this year but I’m really looking forward to seeing the entries’. Entry forms can be downloaded from http://www.holtfestival.org/ whats-on/arts-prize/ The 2016 Holt Festival runs from 23 – 31 July and is acknowledged as the leading new festival in north Norfolk. The charming Norfolk Georgian country town comes alive for an exuberant week of international music, drama, visual art, dance, comedy, cinema, children’s and workshops. It has just announced its first 12 highlights and the full programme will be revealed in May. The Holt Festival Art Prize: Closing date for submissions midnight Sunday 26 June, Winner announced on Sunday 24 July at The Auden Theatre, Cromer Rd, Holt, Norfolk, NR25 6EA Winners and shortlisted entries will be exhibited 23-31 July 2016 May | 29

FINEARTS UEA graduate (Suffolk resident) Luke Wright.

Edinburgh comes to Norwich Sh!t Theatre’s Women’s Hour and Luke Wright’s new play, What I Learned from Johnny Bevan. Tony Cooper reports

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Women’s Hour: Rebecca Biscuit and Louise Mothersole in defiant mood!

fast-paced, theatre sketch show, Women’s Hour - commissioned by Camden People’s Theatre, presented and produced by Sh!t Theatre and performed by Rebecca Biscuit and Louise Mothersole - wowed audiences and critics alike at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival last year as well as on tour. Now this extremely-funny show can be seen in Norwich when it plays the Arts Centre in St Benedict’s Street on Wednesday, 4th May (8pm), promising great fun all round. But at the same time it employs some very serious and pertinent points about the way the media treats women in today’s society. Women’s Hour won the prestigious 2015 Three Weeks Editors Award while other recent Sh!t Theatre shows (Guinea Pigs On Trial and JSA) won the Total Theatre Award

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and The Arches Brick Award while being shortlisted for the 2014 Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award. Critics from The Guardian, The Independent and The Times waxed lyrical about the show describing it as ‘feminist theatre for people of all genders’ while the theatre industry’s bible, The Stage, was equally impressed. It was also hailed as one of the Top Five to see in Edinburgh by The Daily Telegraph. And that’s pretty good going when you consider that there were almost 1500 other shows up against it. A mixture of satire, song, comedycabaret and performance art, Women’s Hour - which takes its cue loosely from the BBC Radio 4 programme of a similar name - is a cutting exposé of the treatment of women in the media all wrapped up in an hilarious one-hour show focusing on what happens when

women are given one single hour a day to think about what it’s like to be a woman. The show’s kept bang up to date politicallyspeaking, too, as parts of the script are rewritten for each show to reflect current and topical affairs. ‘We should love to see people of all ages and all genders come along and enjoy Women’s Hour,’ enthused Becca, ‘and we should be more than delighted to engage with a younger audience, too they’re important to us.’ Louise also added that the show has been ‘variously described by critics as hilarious, irresistible, daring, outrageous, bang up to date and a total ‘‘must-see’’. So, therefore, you obviously must!’ Sh!t Theatre had hoped, initially, to write a show about how great Dolly Parton is but they shelved this idea when they were commissioned by a man in London to write a show about

women for his festival of feminism! The result turned out to become one of the biggest hits of the 2015 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. It enjoyed sell-out performances plus four- and five-star reviews. Therefore, Norwich, get ready to revel in Women’s Hour’s ‘giddy, freewheeling silliness’ so wrote the critic of Exeunt, the well-respected on-line theatre magazine.

feature by:

Tony Cooper Writer tc@tony-cooper.co.uk

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FINEARTS Wright’s work will recognise his deft hand’. And The Daily Record also waxed lyrical about the piece saying that ‘it’s like an episode of This is England but delivered by one man. Brilliant!’ The scenario surrounds whipsmart undergraduate, mercurial Johnny Bevan saving his good friend Nick, smashing his comfortable middle-class bubble and firing him up about politics, music and literature. Twenty years later, as their youthful dreams disintegrate alongside the social justice they hoped for, can Nick, now a jaded music journalist, save Johnny from himself?

Luke Wright in character as Nick in his new play What I Learned

Sh!t Theatre, by the way, are associate artists at Camden People’s Theatre and live together in Hackney in what turns out to be an illegally sub-let council flat. They’ve been told many times by theatre professionals to change their name! Why? What I Learned from Johnny Bevan, a compelling and politically-charged new play encompassing shattered friendships, class and social ceilings and the Labour Party’s battle for its soul took the Edinburgh Fringe Festival by storm last year and is written and performed by UEA graduate (Suffolk resident) Luke Wright. Best known for his blistering, incisive and astute performance poetry, he enjoys regular slots on BBC radio channels but this is his first theatre show. Following Edinburgh, Johnny Bevan capitalised on its success north of the border and stormed London’s Soho Theatre playing to packed houses over a three-week run. Now it comes to Norwich for the first time on Tuesday 24th May (8pm) playing Norwich Arts Centre [Live] Art Club as part of the Norfolk & Norwich Festival. Focusing upon voters’ visceral fear

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from Johnny Bevan.

of change, Johnny Bevan - which received a Stage Award for Acting Excellence for Wright’s hurricane and impassioned, spellbinding performance of his razor-sharp script that’s infused with humour, humanity and wit - is set to some punchy verse complemented by a riveting score by Ian Catskilkin, guitarist of the Berlin-based, English/German, indie rock band, Art Brut. Directed by Soho Theatre associate director and nabokov artistic director, Joe Murphy, Johnny Bevan also took away a Fringe First for the quality of its writing while Murphy also won a Fringe First with nabokov for

Bunny (staged at Underbelly) and universal acclaim for Blink (Traverse Theatre), both of which transferred to Off-Broadway. As artistic director of nabokov, Murphy also directed the hit production of Nick Payne’s Incognito seen at London’s Bush Theatre and, more recently, was associate director of the mega West End hit show, Wolf Hall, which made it to Broadway. Lyn Gardner (The Guardian) commented that Johnny Bevan ‘was a pulsating piece of poetic storytelling’ while Time Out said it was ‘an evocative, poetic monologue… anyone familiar with

Without a shadow of doubt, Johnny Bevan strikes at the heart of British politics, questioning the middle-class value system that encouraged the rise of New Labour and David Cameron’s brand of Conservatism which saw both parties abandon the working-class majority. This gripping story is, in so many ways, a modern-day fable that reflects today’s political polarisation and resonates with the disillusionment felt by so many. Luke Wright - who recently appeared on Clive Anderson’s Radio 4 show - is unique and tours the world each year with his distinctive brand of poetry and can often be seen opening for John Cooper Clarke. His verse documentaries on Channel 4, for instance, have been enjoyed by millions of viewers and his poems are often heard on BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4. He’s a regular contributor to the Sony awardwinning show Saturday Live and he has numerous main-line channel TV appearances under his belt. He curates spoken-word line-ups at Latitude and Festival Number 6 as well as at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. Women’s Hour: £pay what you can! - Johnny Bevan: Tickets £12, concs £10 Box office: 01603 660352 www.norwichartscentre. co.uk www.shittheatre.co.uk / www.lukewright.co.uk www.finecity.co.uk

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Vocal Invention 2016 Norfolk & Norwich ‘Festival within the Festival’

full weekend of inspiration, creation and experimentation for the human voice

Vocal Invention is a packed weekend of extraordinary singing adventures hosted by Norwich Arts Centre as part of its [Live] Art Club strand of the Norfolk & Norwich Festival. Featuring singers, improvisers, composers, poets, talkers and thinkers it celebrates the creativity and inventiveness of the human voice. Vocal Invention will feature performances, workshops, talks and surprise pop-up performances around Norwich. The weekend is curated by The Voice Project, twice EDP People’s Choice winners at the Norfolk Arts Awards and run by professional singers and educators Jonathan Baker and Sian Croose.

Music, The Voice Project choir’s Sian Croose and Jon Baker, stunningly unique composer and singer Sianed Jones, internationally renowned poet George Szirtes, and many more. There will also be an exclusive preview of artrockers The Neutrinos new KlangHaus collaboration with artist Sal Pittman before it heads

to London’s Royal Festival Hall for a 4-week residency and the World Premiere of Sian Croose’s performance/installation for 12 female voices Harmonium. A specially recruited Voice Project Choir will tour the city for surprise pop-up performances on Saturday 21st May with songs on bikes, in

hats and in harmony. They will sing a selection from the fantastic repertoire of material that The Voice Project have created for their site-specific adventures over the past three years as well as new songs created specially for the event. Jon and Sian are keen to stress

From exquisite song to experimental vocal installations, 8-part harmony and digital poetry, the weekend is a chance to see and take part in a huge range of vocal events featuring the likes of acclaimed poet and theatre experimentalist Ross Sutherland, vocal octet Human

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FINEARTS and thinkers come together for performances, workshops, talks and surprise pop-up performances in the city, curated by the evercreative Voice Project. From exquisite song to experimental vocal installations, 8-part harmony and digital poetry, the weekend is a chance to see and take part in a huge range of vocal events. [Live] Art Club at Norfolk & Norwich Festival

that Vocal Invention is not just for those who think of themselves as singers but for anyone interested in the inventive and the spontaneous – using the voice as a instrument to explore ideas. The emphasis is strongly aimed at accessibility and creativity. Voice Project co-director Sian Croose said ‘Many people are far more musical than they think, and we hope that Vocal Invention will encourage as many people as possible to dip their toes in the water. Absolutely everyone of whatever ability or experience is very welcome to come along to the workshops or just to watch the performances’

surreal experiments in sound, light and space.

£5 - £15 for individual workshop & concerts

Further workshops and a concert from composer, improviser and soprano extraordinaire Sianed Jones feature on Sunday 22 which is rounded off with a show at The Bicycle Shop from poets Ross Sutherland, George Szirtes, Esther Morgan and Stephen Watts.

Details and booking via: www. norwichartscentre.co.uk <http:// www.norwichartscentre.co.uk/> Full listing info follows

www.voiceproject.co.uk <http:// www.voiceproject.co.uk> Full Weekend Tickets £90/£67.50 Concessions. Prices range from

Listings info: Vocal Invention Weekend 20- 22 May 2016 A packed weekend of vocal adventures, celebrating the creativity and inventiveness of the human voice, poets, singers, improvisers, composers, talkers

All events at Norwich Arts Centre, 51 St Benedicts Street NR2 4PG unless stated Full weekend ticket £90, £67.50 concessions Individual Workshops £15, £10 concessions Concerts as priced Full details and bookings www. norwichartscentre.co.uk <http:// www.norwichartscentre.co.uk> 01603 660352 Friday 20 May 8pm Helen Chadwick ‘Fragments of Love’ + Mouthful + Human Music An evening of extraordinarily uplifting vocal music Saturday 21 May 9.30am Helen Chadwick ‘Creating Songs’ workshop Create fragments of songs and sing

The ‘mini festival’ opens of Friday 20 May with ‘Fragments of Love’, a concert from solo singer Helen Chadwick, with additional performances from 4-piece vocal group Mouthful and the 8-voice Human Music. A day of workshops takes place on Saturday 21 May followed by the early evening world premiere performance by the Sian Croose led female vocal 12 piece Harmonium. The evening’s show features Ross Sutherland using looped video, poetry and rap to create a new poetic form, music from the extraordinarily inventive Birds of Hell and ends with The Neutrinos and artist Sal Pittman’s darkly 34 | May 2016

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FINEARTS the harmonies on other people’s creations, led by international vocal composer and performer 9.30am Dave Camlin & Sharon Durant ‘In the Groove’ Workshop Explore different aspects of rhythm and groove, using voice and body 3pm Pete Murdoch ‘Songmaking – Starman Strategies’ Workshop

Fun and hands-on workshop that will will explore some of the creative methods of David Bowie 3pm Bex Mather & Katherine Zeserson ‘Making it New’ Workshop Experiment with many different ways of creating multi-layered vocal music Lunchtime FREE The Vocal Invention Choir Popping up around Norwich City Centre, the open access choir perform selections from fantastic repertoire of material drawn from their site-specific adventures over the past 3 years as well as specially created new songs. 5.30pm, 6.15pm, 7pm £5 Harmonium concert/installation www.finecity.co.uk

(world premiere) An experiment in vocal sound from12 female voices, created by Sian Croose of The Voice Project 8.30pm Ross Sutherland / Birds of Hell / The Neutrinos & Sal Pittman concert Ross Sutherland uses looped video as a poetic form, Birds of Hell deliver twisted tales of everyday life and family history while The Neutrinos preview excerpts from

their forthcoming residency at London’s Royal Festival Hall Sunday 22 May 10.30am Sian Croose & Su Hart Harmonium Workshop An opportunity to explore wordless experimentation in vocal sound 10.30am Sianed Jones Voices on Location Workshop Explore different locations in Norwich to discover the acoustics, the architecture and the landscape of the city 10.30am Dan Richards ‘Writing in Landscape’ Workshop

Engage with our environment and express it in words on the page 1pm £5 Sianed Jones Concert Composer, improviser and soprano extraordinaire who has featured in most of the Voice Project’s Festival performances

around in an intimate setting The Bicycle Shop 17 St Benedicts St, Norwich NR2 4PE

2pm The Neutrinos & Sal Pittman ‘Speechless’ Workshop A cooperative activity of finding

The Voice Project is an openaccess singing project offering a whole range of creative ways to use your voice. The Voice Project was created by singers Sian Croose and Jonathan Baker in 2008 and since then we have involved hundreds of singers in performances of great new vocal music as well as workshops

song and sound and voice in the strangest of places using limited conventional communication

designed to build vocal confidence and explore a wide variety of uplifting and inspiring vocal music.

2pm Neil Paris ‘Moving the Singer’ Workshop Work with renowned dancer and choreographer to discover how to combine movement with your singing

Sian Croose is a singer and community musician who has run choirs and vocal groups for 25 years. She has sung in cathedrals and village halls, in tiny villages and capital cities, on her own and with a cast of thousands. She has created music projects in the UK, Ireland and France and is cofounder of The Voice Project.

2pm Stephen Watts Writing Workshop Writing workshop with international poet, translator, editor and bibliographer 7.30pm£8, £6 Ross Sutherland / George Szirtes / Stephen Watts / Esther Morgan Poetry reading Poetry from 4 of the best poets

Jon Baker is a singer, teacher and composer who has written extensively for TV, radio and theatre. He is a founder member of The Neutrinos with whom he has toured throughout Europe and North America. He is co-founder of The Voice Project. 2016 May | 35

FINEARTS

Norfolk & Norwich Festival

feature by:

Tony Cooper Writer tc@tony-cooper.co.uk

ne of the biggest arts festivals in the UK, Norfolk & Norwich (running from Friday 13th to Sunday 29th May) offers a massive programme spanning performance, drama, music, visual art and literature as well as events for children plus a free outdoor extravaganza programme.

The Norfolk & Norwich Festival comes round this month offering a brilliant, varied and entertaining programme in a cultural extravaganza like no other. Tony Cooper reports

Race Horse Company: White Nights

36 | May 2016

Undoubtedly, one of this year’s highlights is a brand-new production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest at Great Yarmouth Hippodrome directed by the festival’s artistic director, William Galinsky. Farther up the coast (Felbrigg in north Norfolk), Dutchborn artists/composers, Jeroen Strijbos and Rob Van Rijswijk, will be gallivanting about in their new enterprising and interactive work Walk With Me travelling through the grounds of the National Trust’s imposing property of Felbrigg Hall using GPS technology to superimpose site-specific compositions and sounds on to the estate’s beautiful surroundings. Another enterprising piece surrounds ten young singersongwriters from across Norfolk working with the award-winning artist/comedian Kim Noble in conjunction with Pol Heyvaert of Belgian arts centre CAMPO creating an innovative piece of music-theatre entitled Wild Life. It promises a startling piece using original music and everyday sound-bites acting as a backdrop to expose the stark truths about life as a young person today. The work is developed organically from the lives of the performers, the songs that they write and what science tells us about how teenagers’ brains work. Funny, www.finecity.co.uk

FINEARTS beautiful, angry and honest, Wild Life (Norwich Playhouse) explores the lives of young people and the universal experience of how music makes one feel. Festival associate artist, David Parry, will lead two nights of this year’s classical-music programme including a major new commission for the Festival Chorus entitled Cain written by one of the UK’s foremost young composers, Kemal Yusuf. The Norwich Philharmonic will present an epic staging of Mahler’s Symphony of a Thousand to celebrate their 175th anniversary and the pioneering

while Flat, an aerial act opening the free outdoor programme, features an entire apartment suspended high in the air while one man circumnavigates it in truly spectacular fashion. The show aims to leave its audience questioning perception of time, space and gravity. A couple of interesting shows turn up at Norwich Arts Centre featuring The Voice Project dispensing a weekend of vocal adventures celebrating the creativity and inventiveness of the human voice (Friday-Sunday, 20th-22nd) and Martin Figura

of Literature, Writers’ Centre Norwich (in partnership with the Festival) will deliver a worldclass literature programme while Writers’ Centre (based at Dragon Hall, King Street) will be transformed into The Story Machine in an immersive literary experience through Dragon Hall’s hideaways, hallways, gardens and cellars with live performances complemented by pop-up street food and a licensed bar. The popular Adnams Spiegeltent pitches once again in Chapel Field Gardens hosting a characteristically-vibrant programme which includes former Andy Warhol factory superstar, Penny Arcade (aka Susana Ventura) - artist, writer, poet and experimental theatremaker - presenting her double award-winning Edinburgh show, Longing Lasts Longer, which turns contemporary stand-up on its head to create a crack in the postgentrified landscape. Other Spiegeltent acts lined up include Moh! Kouyaté, one of Africa’s hottest young guitarists,

The FB Pocket Orchestra will dish up a feast of hot jazz, blues and ragtime as well as popular dances of the 1920-30s while the Ragroof Tea Dances will entertain and offer a couple of themed dances: Tutti Frutti and Top Hat and Tails. But if Norwich is an important cultural centre for the county so, too, is King’s Lynn and their yearly festival offers arts’ lovers practically all they desire over a couple of glorious weeks in July. Classical music, thankfully, remains the festival’s cornerstone and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra opens this year’s festival with a programme featuring works by Tchaikovsky, Mozart and Dvořák while the Czech National Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Libor Pešek, featuring stunning Moscow-born violinist. Alexander Sitkovetsky, will close the festival. Other musical highlights this year include lyric soprano Lesley Garrett and the Ronnie Scott All-Stars while popular art historian, Andrew Graham-Dixon, will give a couple of talks about Scandinavian art and the secrets of the Mona Lisa. Check out the

The Tempest.

National Theatre of Scotland: The James Plays

Aurora Orchestra will take Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony on to the streets of Norwich. Other music highlights include the Sun Ra Arkestra, celebrating their 60th anniversary; Dutch band The Analogues presenting a completely authentic version of The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour; the first-ever solo concert from Twenty Feet from Stardom star, Lisa Fischer; an audio-visual spectacle from Tindersticks; a special one-off gig from Billy Bragg; the UK première of Nikolai Galen’s interpretations of Jacque Brel in a set of brandnew translations and acappella arrangements while Tin Men and The Telephone will deliver their modern jazz sound alongside their revolutionary app allowing audience members to contribute to the show in real time. There’ll also be a UK première from Finnish circus-cabaret troupe Race Horse Company www.finecity.co.uk

(Thursday 26th) turns to Sir Erik Christopher Zeeman’s Catastrophe Machine, the moon and photographs to help him sort out love, loss and when to let go. The show’s directed by multimedia provocateur Ross Sutherland and on stage the titular Catastrophe Machine provides an imposing prop that plays an active part in proceedings flanked by a series of visual projections complemented by a soundscape created by acclaimed artists such as Andre Barreau and Karen Hall while Figura’s commanding presence brings alive the wit and humanity of his words. The popular Garden Party returns for the middle weekend of the Festival showcasing sound installations, circus, live music, dance and a scrap-metal firebreathing dragon. In England’s first UNESCO City 2016 May | 37

FINEARTS full programme by visiting www. kingslynnfestival.org.uk And for more detailed info on N&N Festival, check out their website at nnfestival.org.uk (plus on-line bookings) Box office (situated at Norwich Theatre Royal) 01603 766 400 Norfolk & Norwich Festival is funded and supported by Arts Council England and Norwich City Council with a great deal of support coming from the Festival’s principal sponsors: Travel Partner - Abellio Greater Anglia; Spiegeltent - Adnams; Free Outdoor Programme - Lafarge Tarmac; Norfolk & Norwich Open Studios - Wex Photographic, plus generous support from numerous corporate partners, trusts and individuals. As I mentioned this was a HUGE hit at the Edinburgh Festival where it was hailed as one of the top 5 plays to see in Edinburgh by The Daily Telegraph (not bad when there were almost 1,500 theatre

productions at the Festival), won the prestigious Three Weeks Editors Award and was fulsomely praised by the likes of The Guardian, Independent, Times and theatre industry bible The Stage. Women’s Hour A fast paced theatre sketch show that wowed audiences and critics alike at the Edinburgh Fringe and on tour. It’s a show that’s great fun, very funny yet makes some very serious points about the way the media treats women in 2016 feminist theatre for all genders. A mix of satire, song, comedy cabaret and performance art taking its cues loosely from the Radio 4 programme with a similar name, Women’s Hour is a cutting expose of the treatment of women in the media and includes sections that are rewritten for each show to reflect current affairs. Out of almost 1,500 rivals it was hailed as one of the top 5 plays to see in Edinburgh by The Daily Telegraph and won the prestigious Three Weeks Editors Award.

Wild Life.

Sh!t Theatre are Rebecca Biscuit and Louise Mothersole and they are really really excited to be coming to Norwich ‘We’d love people of all ages and all genders to see our show with younger audiences especially important’, said Becca ‘It’s been variously described by critics as hilarious, irresistible, daring, outrageous, bang-up to date and a total must see, so obviously you must!’ added Louise. Women’s Hour – Sh!t Theatre Theatre, comedy and cabaret

feminism for all combine in a hilarious hour about what happens when women are given a whole 60 mins a day to think about what it is to be a woman. Feminist theatre for people of all genders. 4 May 8pm Norwich Arts Centre, St. Benedict’s Street, Norwich, NR2 4PG £pay what you can 01603 660352 www.norwichartscentre.co.uk <http://www.norwichartscentre. co.uk>

Penny Arcade (aka Susana Ventura)

38 | May 2016

www.finecity.co.uk

FINEARTS Women’s Hour in Norwich

Award and been shortlisted for the 2014 Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award.

What happens when women are given a whole hour a day to think about what it is to be a WOMAN?

Women’s Hour – Sh!t Theatre

Edinburgh hit cabaret does it in Norwich

Theatre, comedy and cabaret feminism for all combine in a hilarious hour about what happens when women are given a whole 60 mins a day to think about what it is to be a woman. Feminist theatre for people of all genders.

Sh!t Theatre had hoped to write a show about how great Dolly Parton is, but then they were commissioned by a man in London to write a show about women for his festival of feminism. The result also went to become one of the big hits of the 2015 Edinburgh Fringe. It enjoyed sell out performances, 4 and 5 star reviews, a Three Week’s Editors Award and was hailed as one of the ‘Five Best Plays to see’ by The Daily Telegraph. Now audiences in Norfolk can revel in its ‘giddy, freewheeling silliness’ (Exeunt) when it comes to Norwich Arts Centre on 4 May as part of an extensive national tour. ‘Swaggering, smart and sideachingly funny... A funny but fierce look at what it means to be a woman today’ WhatsOnStage Women’s Hour is a show that’s part comedy, part theatre, part cabaret, part performance art and totally fun. Discover what happens when women are given just one hour a day to think about what it is to be a WOMAN. Feminist theatre for all genders. ‘surreal, clever and hilarious...the standing ovation at the end was equal parts male and female’ Daily Telegraph (‘Five Best Plays to see in Edinburgh’) Women’s Hour is a mix of satire, song, clowning, movement and mess akin to cabaret or sketch comedy. Combining newly written sections and verbatim text taken from advertising, news media and pop culture, it is constantly updated in response to current affairs. There’s loads of new sh!t happening to women all the time… ‘bang-up-to-date old-fashioned piece of feminist agitprop theatre… from a young company who are really finding their own distinctive www.finecity.co.uk

4 May 8pm Norwich Arts Centre, St. Benedict’s Street, Norwich, NR2 4PG

Billy Bragg

I’m working on at N&N Festival are Dr Zeeman’s Catostrophe Machine by Norwich poet Martin Figura (26 May) and The Voice Project’s Vocal Invention ‘Festival within the Festival’ (2022 May). I can send info on these if of interest but won’t clog up your inbox otherwise!

voice’ Lyn Gardner Guardian Sh!t Theatre are Louise Mothersole and Rebecca Biscuit and they are really really excited to be coming to Norwich’We’d love people of all ages and all genders to see our show with younger audiences especially important’, said Becca ‘It’s been variously described by critics as hilarious, irresistible, daring, outrageous, bang-up to date and a total must see, so obviously you must!’ added Louise. They are Associate Artists at Camden People’s Theatre and live together in Hackney in what turns out to be an illegally sub-let council flat. They have been told many times by theatre professionals to change their name. Women’s Hour was commissioned by Camden People’s Theatre. www.shittheatre.co.uk <http:// www.shittheatre.co.uk> Women’s Hour won a 2015 Three Weeks Editors Award. Their other recent shows (Guinea Pigs On Trial and Sh!t Theatre’s JSA) won a Total Theatre Award, The Arches Brick 2016 May | 39

FINEARTS

What’s On At Maddermarket Here’s What’s Happening At Maddermarket This Month The Gondoliers Wed 04 May - Sat 07 May 7.30pm (2.30pm Matinee On Saturday 7th May) By Gilbert and Sullivan

The Gondoliers’ is one of the most popular of the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas, with some of Sullivan’s best loved melodies and one of Gilbert’s wittiest plots, involving baby swapping, an unknown prince, an impoverished duke and the Spanish Inquisition!

Georgina Jackson With The Chris Ingham Trio

Join us for a romantic night in Venice with great tunes and lots of fun.

others, in the story of a unique woman, heart and voice. A singular evening of nostalgia and romance.

Tickets £12.00

Tickets £12.00 (£11.00 concessions)

Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien Sun 08 May 7.30pm Making a welcome return to The Maddermarket, this is an intimate evening of the spellbinding songs and heartrending journey through the life and loves of ‘The Little Sparrow’, Edith Piaf. Born in poverty in 1915, and named after Norfolk’s own Edith Cavell, the little girl from the backstreets of Paris grew up to become France’s most beloved and iconic songstress. From her early years singing in the streets of Paris, to discovery, intrigue, fame and heartbreak, the show features Edith’s most memorable and moving numbers of love, loss and storytelling, sung in both French and English. Including the music of her fellow chanteur and friend Charles Aznavour, ‘Non, Je ne Regrette Rien’ pays tribute to France’s most enduring musical icon. Edith’s indomitable spirit and emotion, her meteoric rise to fame, tumultuous and tragic personal life, and death at just 47 years old, captivated the world and secures her place in the hearts of a nation. ‘Non, Je ne Regrette Rien’ includes ‘La Vie en Rose’, ‘Mon Dieu’, ‘Hymn to Love’, ‘Padam Padam’, ‘Milord’, ‘She’, ‘Autumn Leaves’ and many 40 | May 2016

Norwich Jazz Club Monthly Jam Session Mon 09 May 8pm 10:30pm in The Redwell Theatre Bar Doors open at 8pm, music begins at 8.30 - 10.30pm Join us in the Redwell Maddermarket Theatre Bar for our monthly jam session, where guest performers are invited to sit in with the house trio. Musicians of all ages and experience are welcome, so come on down and have a blow, or relax and listen to some of the city’s finest jazz talent. Tickets £5 to nonparticipants tickets on the door

Georgina Jackson With The Chris Ingham Trio Tue 10 May Georgina Jackson (vocal & tumpett) with Chris Ingham (piano) Rob Palmer (bass) George Double (drums) Georgina and the trio are back with us in the bar after delighting the crowd during her sellout appearance at 2015’s Jazz Weekender. www.finecity.co.uk

FINEARTS the heart of Norfolk. All in the space of one evening. For actors it is a brilliant chance to be the first to bring these characters to life in a ‘rehearsed reading’ style environment. There is plenty of scope to try something new, play a different character and experience a plethora of genres

Doors 7.30pm / music 8.30 - 11pm If you enjoy this you may also enjoy: Monthly Jazz Jam sessions on the second Monday of the month 12th April Alan Barnes 14th June The Janet Seidel Trio 9th July Gabrielle Ducomble 16th August The Tomasso Starce Trio Tickets £12 (under 25's £6.00)

Scratch Shot - New Writing Evening Thu 12 May 7:30 in The Redwell Theatre Bar REDuck ProDUCKtions and The Maddermarket Theatre brings you ‘Scratch Shot’, an evening dedicated to the performance of

Scratch Shot - New Writing Evening

fresh writing – be it for theatre, screen, radio or just for fun. Experienced and new writers are given the opportunity to test-drive their pieces as talented actors take their text off the page and bring their characters to life. It is

an exciting opportunity for writers to see their work in progress and how it would look, sound and be tested on a welcoming audience. Be it a screen play, radio piece or a script for stage. A whole range of writing genres and styles all from

Submissions for both writing and actors will open soon in readiness for our opening night on 14th January! Scatch Shot will then continue each month on the second Thursday thereafter. It is all in the effort to promote and support new writing in Norwich. And best of all, it happens all in one evening. For actors there is no stressing about learning lines and for writers it’s a quick snapshot of what their finished piece could look like. If you are interested in taking part, please email redduckproduck@ gmail.com as soon as possible and stating if you are interested in submitting a piece of work of it you are interested in acting.

The Vortex

www.finecity.co.uk

2016 May | 41

FINEARTS A real life marital comedy now evolves. The situation is further complicated when the actor playing the old father, Edward, makes his entrance. He is an ageing Shakespearean star, once famous for his King Lear but now an alcoholic on the skids. He happens to have asked his new agent to the performance that night. Edward is blissfully unaware that the play has switched from art to life. Out of loyalty to a fellow actor, the rest of the cast do their best to accommodate the poor chap, but he gradually begins to crack up, especially as some of his cues are coming from a cabin trunk.

The Shackleton Sessions Presents Jess Morgan

SEATS are in the bar and not numbered, do arrive early to get a great seat for this show in the bar. We apologise for an error in our brochure. All tickets are £5 NO concessions available. Tickets £5

Let’s Get This Party Started Mon 16 May - Tue 17 May A Night at the Movies They say variety is the spice of life and if that’s true, then this is the night for you! The entertainment team from Norwich Pride invite you to join them for an evening of Hollywood-inspired performances; from the forties to the noughties! Being held in support of Norwich Pride 2016, your ticket price also includes automatic entry into our fantastic prize draw, which will be held on the night! Tickets £10 (unwaged £7.50)

The Vortex Fri 20 May - Sat 28 May 42 | May 2016

7.30pm (2.30pm Matinees on 21st And 28th May) By Noel Coward Directed by Stash Kirkbride The Vortex focuses on sexual vanity and drug abuse among the upper classes. A young composer, Nicky, proposes to his lover named Bunty. Meanwhile, Nicky’s mother has affairs with younger men. The action of the play centres on Nicky’s confused sexuality as well as his resentment for his mother. His mother ends up having an affair with Nicky’s ex-lover’s fiancée. Sponsored by Allens Music Centre and Special thanks Deco Days Tickets £12 / £10 / £8

The Shackleton Sessions Presents Jess Morgan Sun 29 May 7:30pm Jess Morgan will have you sloshed and woozy over a tumbler of songwriting, so disarmingly uncomplicated it could be the best kept secret on the folk scene right now. Morgan’s spirited, story-fuelled songs are anchored

by warmth of delivery, with her easily distinguishable voice carried over the driving wheels of unfancified, claw-hammerfinger-style guitar playing. Tickets £11.75

Kindly Leave The Stage

Kindly Leave the Stage is a celebration of fun, mayhem and thespian mischief, and is of a similar format to ‘Noises Off ’, a play within a play. The ensemble go head to head as they play the characters in the play and the actors who are performing in the play. It’s a fast-paced farce which is easy to watch and lots of fun. You’ll see jealousy, revelations, and the precious actor-ego laid bare. This is sharp writing from John Chapman, master of the double entendre! Tickets £12.00 (£10.00 concessions)

Tue 31 May

Box Office

A comic farce by John Chapman

Our box office is situated in the foyer area, opposite the coffee shop.

It is a celebration of fun, mayhem and thespian mischief, and is of a similar format to ‘Noises Off ’ - a play within a play. The marriage of Rupert and Sarah is on the rocks and their friends Charles and Madge, both of whom are lawyers, agree to handle the divorce. After the curtain has been up a few minutes, Rupert forgets his lines, has a brain storm and threatens to kill Charles in full view of the audience because he’s been having an affair off stage, with Rupert’s real wife, Madge. Quite true as it happens. The rest of the cast try to ignore the incident and forge ahead with the original play but Rupert picks up a knife and advances on Charles, who is forced to take cover in a large cabin trunk which is on the set at the time.

Box Office opening hours Normal Open Hours Monday to Friday 10am to 5pm Saturday 10am - 5pm. On Show Days Monday to Saturday 10am - 7.30pm Sundays 5pm - 7.30pm Booking Tickets Tickets may be booked in person, by telephone or online. Box Office: 01603 620917 office@maddermarket.org www.maddermarket.co.uk

www.finecity.co.uk

FINEARTS

The Car Man

Cinema City Norwich-based arts writer, Tony Cooper, looks at special screenings at Cinema City Films to look out for in May: Florence Foster Jenkins (PG) Florence Foster Jenkins - starring Meryl Streep and Hugh Grant - is the story of a New York heiress

who dreamed of becoming an opera singer, despite having a terrible voice. Hot on the heels of the fictional (but similarly-themed) Marguerite, revered director Stephen Frears (Philomena) and screenwriter Nicholas Martin have fashioned an equally-amusing and

often-poignant biopic of a woman driven by self-deceit whose willing accomplices included her longsuffering accompanist, Cosmé McMoon (Simon Helberg), if not Bayfield’s long-suffering wife (Rebecca Ferguson). Our Kind of Traitor (15) For fans of Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy and The Night Manager, this British spy-thriller, Our Kind of Traitor, adapted from John le Carré’s novel of the same name, is most definitely for you! Written by Hossein Amini and directed by Susanna White, the scenario surrounds a couple who find themselves lured into a Russian oligarch’s plans to defect and, in doing so, get caught up in the web and intrigues of the Russian Mafia and the British Secret Service neither of whom they can trust.

Based on the novella by Jane Austen, Love and Friendship stars Kate Beckinsale (co-starring Stephen Fry, Chloe Sevigny and James Fleet) as the seductive and manipulative Lady Susan Vernon who takes up temporary residence at the estate of her in-laws. While there, she’s determined to be a matchmaker for her daughter, Frederica - and herself, too, naturally! Alice through the Looking Glass (PG) Alice (Mia Wasikowska) returns to the whimsical world of Underland and travels back in time to save the Mad Hatter played by Johnny Depp.

Green Room (18) After witnessing a murder, a punkrock band is forced into a vicious fight for survival against a group of maniacal skinheads. Green Room stars Patrick Stewart and Imogen Poots. Florence Foster Jenkins www.finecity.co.uk

Love and Friendship

feature by:

Tony Cooper Writer tc@tony-cooper.co.uk

2016 May | 43

FINEARTS Special events - the merry month of MAY: Vintage Sundays: The Big Lebowski (18) Sunday 1st (2.45pm) The Coen Brothers follow their Oscar-winning movie, Fargo, with a characteristically-stylish, energetic, crowd-pleasing comedy of mistaken identity and bowling. The Dude (Jeff Bridges) is a man who has never quite made it past the Seventies and in whom ‘casualness runs deep’. He lives a quiet life hanging out with his bowling buddies until someone breaks into his flat and soils his rug. His decision to seek justice leads him into a

Tuesday 3rd (9.00pm) FREE live music in the bar featuring Miniature Universe plus support acts. Discover Tuesdays: The Pearl Button (12A) Tuesday 3rd (6.15pm) Around the story of Jemmy Button, a native of Tierra Del Fuego who briefly became a celebrity in England before returning to Chile, documentarian Patricio Guzmán (Nostalgia for the Light) has crafted a beautiful (yet often harrowing account) of Chile’s troubled and troubling relationship with the Pacific Ocean.

Studio Ghibli season: Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (PG) (English subtitles) Thursday 5th (8.30pm) Warrior/pacifist, Princess Nausicaä, desperately struggles to prevent two warring nations from destroying themselves and their dying planet. Kids’ Club: Capture the Flag (PG) Saturday 7th (11.00am) Fun and activities, 10.30am; film, Capture the Flag, 11am.

inspectors. Death awaits him if he and Lola cannot come up with 100,000 German marks. Directed by Tom Tykwer, the story focuses on love, commitment and destiny. Matthew Bourne’s The Car Man Monday 9th (6.30pm) A sensational new dance event for cinemas from the internationallyacclaimed choreographer Matthew Bourne and his innovative dance company, New Adventures. The Car Man - which is loosely based on Bizet’s popular opera Carmen - has one of the most thrilling and instantly-recognisable scores in classical music brilliantly arranged by Terry Davies. The familiar 19thcentury Spanish cigarette factory becomes a greasy garage-diner in 1960s America where the dreams and passions of a small town are shattered by the arrival of a handsome stranger. Fuelled by heat and desire, the inhabitants are driven into an unstoppable spiral of greed, lust, betrayal and revenge. Lez Brotherston’s epic design, Chris Davey’s evocative lighting and Matthew Bourne’s vivid storytelling take in a wealth of cinematic references, creating a powerful and uncompromising vision of small-town America. Studio Ghibli season: Laputa: Castle in the Sky (PG) (English subtitles) Monday 9th (8.30pm)

labyrinthine world of extortion, double-crossing and deception in a plot so convoluted that it’s worthy of the great Raymond Chandler. As visually stylish, inventive and elaborate as the best of their previous work, The Big Lebowski is crammed with supremely off-thewall characters, hilarious dialogue, wonderful performances and stunning unforgettable images. E4 Slackers Club: Green Room (18) Monday 2nd (8.30pm) / FREE student screening O/S/T

44 | May 2016

Aided by interviews with eminent social historians, anthropologists and tribal elders, Guzmán links the virtual eradication of entire indigenous groups along Chile’s coastline in the 1800s with the Pinochet government’s dumping of thousands of ‘disappeared’ political prisoners into the sea over a century later. The director’s unrushed and persuasive narration, together with the stunning cinematography by regular collaborator Katell Djian, drives this evocative testament to lost cultures, both past and present. (Warning: the film contains images of real dead bodies and references to torture.)

Vintage Sundays: Run Lola Run (15) Sunday 8th (2.45pm) Three ‘what if ’ variations on the same story provide the basis for this German-made thriller featuring a race against the clock in which a young woman has exactly 20 minutes to save her lover from certain death. Featured players include Franka Potente as Lola and Moritz Bleibtreu as Manni, an errand boy for a local criminal. Earlier in the day, Manni was assigned a smuggling job but after delivering the loot and accepting payment, he left the bag on the subway in his haste to avoid ticket

The very first feature from Studio Ghibli, this action masterpiece gives the Indiana Jones franchise a run for its money. From the opening sequence in which a young girl, Sheeta, floats down from the sky into the arms of apprentice miner Pazu, the film glows with adventure and magic and audiences soon find themselves off on a wild ride that promises to amaze and grips the imagination. Miyazaki’s career obsession with flight is everywhere: airships, biplanes, gliders, all manner of battle-craft, even a flying island. Each is drawn with loving precision as though da Vinci’s flying machines www.finecity.co.uk

FINEARTS

ROH Live: Frankenstein - Liam Scarlett,

took wing above the invented worlds of Jules Verne. But it’s the imagination of the film which soars most spectacularly and is subtly delivered. Sky pirates compete with government agents to chase missing royalty and the stuff of legend; two orphans meet, save the world and fall in love; a robot dies to save a princess; an old man talks to rocks about an ecological message about balancing the powers of technology with respect for the earth. Cheer red-headed Captain Dola and her crew of hapless male offspring one minute and yearn for the lost innocence of the Laputan civilisation the next. Laputa: Castle in the Sky - a heart-stopping, breathtaking film - has more life than many a live-action movie. Discover Tuesdays: Arabian Nights - Volume I: The Restless One Tuesday 10th (6.00pm) A kind of modern fairytale, The Restless One is a kind of modern fairytale and is the first instalment www.finecity.co.uk

of Miguel Gomes’ astonishing tryptic of art films.

broadcast live from London’s West End by the National Theatre.

NT Encore: A View from the Bridge

Kids’ Club: Alvin and The Chipmunks: The Road Chip (U)

Thursday 12th (8.00pm) A stellar cast is led by Mark Strong (The Imitation Game; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy) in the Young Vic’s ‘magnetic, electrifying, astonishingly bold’ production of A View from the Bridge - Evening Standard, The Guardian and The Independent: top theatre pick of 2014. The great Arthur Miller confronts the American Dream in this dark and passionate tale surrounding Brooklyn-born, longshoreman, Eddie Carbone, who welcomes his Sicilian cousins to the land of freedom. But when one of them falls for his beautiful niece, they discover that freedom comes at a price. Eddie’s jealous mistrust exposes a deep, unspeakable secret and one that drives him to commit the ultimate betrayal. The visionary Ivo van Hove directs this stunning production of Miller’s tragic masterpiece which will be

Saturday 14th (11.00am) Fun and activities, 10.30am; film, Alvin and The Chipmunks: The Road Chip, 11am Vintage Sundays: Cinema Paradiso (PG) Sunday 15th (2.45pm) Told in flashback as successful film director Salvatore returns to his native Sicilian village, Cinema Paradiso centres on the friendship between the young Salvatore and the irascible projectionist, Alfredo (Philippe Noiret), who preserves a collection of footage censored from the local cinema programme by the priest. Salvatore inherits from Alfredo not only a love of film, but also his job, as Nuovo Cinema Paradiso enjoys a brief term of glory as the hub of the community before the days of

television and pop. Romantic, nostalgic, funny and exuberant, Cinema Paradiso is all the more memorable for the winning performances by the great Philippe Noiret and ten-year-old Salvatore Cascio. Studio Ghibli season: My Neighbour Totoro (U) (English subtitles) Monday 16th (8.30pm) Miyazaki’s superbly-animated tale is considered to be one of the best-loved family films of all time. The story follows Satsuki (Hidaka) and Mei (Sakamoto), two young girls who find their new home is by a mystical forest inhabited by a menagerie of fantastical creatures called Totoros. They befriend O-Totoro, the biggest and eldest of them, and king of the forest. While the girls’ mother lies sick in hospital, O-Totoro takes them on a magical adventure and helps them to understand the realities of life. Containing a powerful ecological theme, My Neighbour Totoro is a lovingly-crafted work of depth, import and sheer beauty. 2016 May | 45

FINEARTS beautifully brought to life on the big screen through statements and commentary from musicians, experts and aficionados and features photographs, musical scores, paintings and videos from centuries of archive material. Vintage Sundays: To Kill A Mockingbird (PG) Sunday 29th (2.45pm)

Teatro alla Scala - The Temple of Wonders

Discover Tuesdays: Arabian Nights - Volume II: The Desolate One Tuesday 17th (6.00pm) A kind of modern fairytale, The Desolate One is a kind of modern fairytale and is the second instalment of Miguel Gomes’ astonishing tryptic of art films. O/S/T Tuesday 17th (9.00pm) FREE live music in the bar - acts to be confirmed. ROH Live: Frankenstein (12A) Wednesday 18th (7.15pm) Royal Ballet artist-in-residence, Liam Scarlett, has chosen Mary Shelley’s gothic classic, Frankenstein, as the basis for his first full-length narrative ballet for Covent Garden’s main stage. A story of betrayal, curiosity, life, death and, above all, love, it inspires Scarlett to explore the very depths of human nature and our need to find acceptance and a place in the world. For this exciting new ballet Scarlett returns to the music of Lowell Liebermann from whom he commissioned a brandnew score. Vintage Sundays: Ran (15) (English subtitles) Sunday 22nd (1.30pm) This welcome re-release of the 46 | May 2016

last epic by Japan’s greatest auteur, Akira Kurosawa (Seven Samurai, Yojimbo), brings his inimitable style to a new generation of filmgoers. Ran - which contains moderate bloody violence - is his Oscarwinning reworking of King Lear, in which an ailing warlord, played by the venerable Tatsuya Nakadai, decides to cede power to his three sons. Two of them (Jinpachi Nezu, Akira Terao) are selfish and feckless and the youngest (Daisuke Ryu) warns of their impending treachery. For this he’s banished by his father with the consequence of the disintegration of a once-mighty empire as the sons battle each other to achieve control. Sweeping across majestic vistas, the battle scenes are truly breathtaking in this newly-restored version and the powerful moral narrative is a timely reflection on contemporary politics. Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre - Mixed Programme (12A) Monday 23rd (6.00pm) A chance to witness an iconic masterpiece of American dance theatre, Alvin Ailey’s Revelations, was lovingly described by The New York Times as ‘one of the great works of the human spirit’. A stunning, soulful tour-de-force of a work, it draws heavily on AfroAmerican rituals. Studio Ghibli season: Grave of the Fireflies (12A) (English subtitles)

Wednesday 25th (8.30pm) Directed by Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli co-founder, Isao Takahata, Grave of the Fireflies which contains moderate war horror - is an indelible anime about a brother and sister trying to survive during the Second World War. Caught up in the firebombing of Kobe in 1945, Seita and his little sister Setsuko lose their mother and their home. Unable to contact their father on the frontline, they flee to the country, stealing or begging for food. The societal breakdown that inevitably followed the razing of the cities means they are left truly alone to fend for themselves. Undeniably sad (but stunningly rendered) this animation does not flinch from the true human tragedy of war. Discover Arts: Teatro alla Scala - The Temple of Wonders (12A) Thursday 26th (6.30pm) Teatro alla Scala: The Temple of Wonders is the story of one of the world’s most exclusive music and performing arts venues. Thanks to historical music and theatre ‘greats’ such as Giuseppe Verdi and Arturo Toscanini and contemporary directors including Franco Zeffirelli and Patrice Chéreau, Teatro alla Scala has upheld its position as a world-class theatre throughout the years. The film leads us through the main historical, musical, social and political events in La Scala’s 238-year-old history. The story’s

Robert Mulligan’s classic adaptation of Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel set in the racially-charged atmosphere of Macon County, Alabama, in the 1930s, To Kill A Mockingbird is a poignant coming-of-age story told from the perspective of a young girl nicknamed Scout (Mary Badham) whose widowed father, Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck), an attorney, decides to defend a black man (Brock Peters) charged with raping a white woman. But the bigoted townspeople would rather lynch the accused than try him and they make life hellish for the lawyer, his daughter and his son Jem. While their father is in the throes of the trial, his bright, inquisitive children learn a hard and unforgettable lesson in justice, morality and prejudice, part of which requires overcoming their unfounded fear of their mysterious neighbour, Boo Radley, played by a very young Robert Duvall. E4 Slackers Club: Me Before You Monday 30th (9.00pm) / FREE student screening Starring Emilia Clarke and Sam Claflin, Me Before You focuses on a girl in a small town forming an unlikely bond with a recentlyparalysed man she’s taking care of. 0871 902 5724 Online: https://www.picturehouses.com/ cinema/ Cinema_City The Dining Rooms are open daily from 10am to 9pm (Sunday: 8pm) Reservations: 01603 623435 www.norwichdiningrooms www.finecity.co.uk

Norwich Match Play Darts Championships 2016

Peter Wright Wins the Norwich Match Play Darts Championships 2016

he first ever Norwich Match Play Darts Championships was played at EPIC TV Studio’s on Saturday 2nd April with an amazing audience of around 900 ensuring a true PDC style atmosphere. With an atmosphere to rival any large professional darts event along with the studio light show, audio and large TV screens, you would almost feel you were at the Ally Pally but on a smaller scale. As one enthusiastic customer said on

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Saturday night, “This is amazing, even better than the Ally Pally, an atmosphere and top darts championships here in the heart on Norwich”. The event was organised by Lord Russell Baker of Little Moulton and sponsored by Lord Baker’s Company Amber Dew Events. The evening started with four audience members being drawn to form two doubles teams to play two doubles matches with Eric Bristow MBE and Keith Deller.

What a reception both Eric Bristow and Keith Deller received as they entered the arena in full fanfare of lights, walk-on music along with the walk-on girls Emma Craske and Andree Byron. Keith Deller in particular receiving his much awaited partisan reception from the Norwich City faithful raised the roof, and in time honoured fashion Keith Deller responded and entertained the crowd joyfully, so the evening was set for the BIG stage. The Norwich Match Play Darts Championship was to be battled out by eight top PDC players

taking part in the Quarter-Finals, and what a Quarter-Final draw we had in prospect too; drawn live on BBC Radio Norfolk on Saturday 26th March we had the following mouth-watering ties to look forward too: QF1: Dave Chisnall v Steve Beaton QF2: Adrian Lewis v Kevin Painter QF3: James Wade v Colin Lloyd QF4: Peter Wright v Wayne Mardle So the stage was set for a very special night in Norwich, and who was going to win a very glittering championship trophy at the end of the evening playing

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FINEEVENTS

the best of 9 legs through-out the championships? The quarter-finals went the way of the form book with Dave Chisnall beating the 1996 World Champion and North Walsham based Steve Beaton in a very close encounter, the former two times back-to-back PDC World Champion Adrian Lewis came out on top against Kevin painter again in a very interesting match, James Wade overcame the former World No.1 Colin Lloyd and local darts hero Peter Wright who was sportingly wearing the yellow and green of Norwich City Football Club, with yellow and green Mohican hair style, pulled out the big shots to finally eliminate a very entertaining Wayne Mardle.

autographs, selfies but eventually climbing to the stage to rapturous applause bordering at times hysteria through the excitement of the evening. So we were set, it

was game-on for the semi-finals. Four of the PDC Premiership heavyweights lined up to do battle with Dave Chisnall pulling through his semi-final against Adrian Lewis

in a tightly fought encounter 5-3 and Peter Wright defeating James Wade 5-2. So the Norwich Match Play Darts

So the semi-finals were upon us and the crowd were creating an atmosphere that was both vibrant and hypnotic, surely the evening was never going to end. The semifinal walk-ons were incredible with each player in turn taking longer than expected to enter the stage as the audience were getting 48 | May 2016

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FINEEVENTS Championship Final was set with local hero Peter Wright to play Dave Chisnall, with Peter Wright throwing some amazing darts and the 180’s just kept peppering the treble 20 to finally win the match and the Championship by 5 -1. What a night…what a championship…and it will all happen again in 2017. Lord Baker said, “This is the first big event of this type I have organised, but what a night it has turned out to be. I have a few things to iron out for the next event here at EPIC TV Studio’s, and this will always be the case for an inaugural event in a new venue, but overall I’m very pleased with the outcome and seeing so many darts fans having a great evening made it a sensational if not inspirational evening.” Lord Baker added, “My thanks to all the players and official’s, staff at EPIC TV Studio’s and more importantly the audience who made this event a true sporting night to remember. Huge congratulations to too Peter Wright for winning the championship this evening, Peter is an amazing player and was hugely popular with the audience tonight”. Colin Lloyd the Former World No.1 said, “What a fantastic event, all the players are talking in the players’ lounge about how tonight brings back memories of the early fun days of the Premier League – sensational atmosphere and a well organised show. I think all the players will be hearing about the Norwich Match Play Darts Championships and want to take part in this event now”. Wayne Mardle said, “Superb weekend of darts. First was the Circus Tavern on Friday, then on to Norwich for a beast of a show – Class”. Keith Deller said, “What a hot reception I received which was expected, but I played the game with the fans and I think they all contributed to a great night. I’m looking forward to Norwich in October”.

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The next big event in Norwich at EPIC TV Studio’s is the Norwich Masters of Darts 2016 on Thursday 20th October. The

Masters on the night are Adrian Lewis, Jelle Klassen, Dave Chisnall, Terry Jenkins, Stephen Bunting and Wayne Mardle. With Eric Bristow,

Keith Deller and Russ Bray. Tickets hot-line: http://www.amberdewevents.co.uk/ 2016 May | 49

Norwich City of Ale 2016 Thursday 26 May – Sunday 5 June 2016 Celebrating fine ales in pubs all over the fine city

orwich City of Ale 2016, now in its sixth year, is a beer festival with a difference; instead of taking place in just one venue, it’s held in scores of welcoming pubs all over the city, connected by walkable ale trails.

barbecues, and pub quizzes. Truly something for everyone. Norwich City of Ale is a celebration of real ale pubs, Norwich’s venerable brewing history, and the fabulous setting of the medieval city itself, which is so conducive to a historic stroll around the pubs on a fine early summer evening. It celebrates the city’s publicans who keep the timeold tradition of friendly, welcoming hostelries alive. It celebrates local produce - Norfolk produces the finest malting barley in the world - and that new breweries keep popping up to increase diversity and delight real ale drinkers with their delicious products. All well worth raising a glass to.

46 welcoming pubs will be serving over 250 local ales from 37 East Anglian breweries. Ale-trail goers collect a stamp from each pub, and for each completed trail they receive a different-coloured lapelpin badge. If they complete all the trails they can claim a coveted “Trailblazer” T-shirt. There are seven trails in all. City of Ale 2016 kicks off on Thursday 26 May with a big launch party at the Narthex, St John’s Cathedral – tickets are on sale at Eventbrite. Over the ten-day festival there’ll be hundreds of events to attend – everything from meet the brewer to food and beer pairings, book launches, expert tutored tastings, live music, 50 | May 2016

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Main sponsor: Norwich BID www.finecity.co.uk

FINEEVENTS City of Ale Trails 2016 Southern trail Cellar House Beehive Unthank Arms York Tavern Trafford Arms Kingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Arms Thorpe trail Buck Inn Fat Cat & Canary Coach and Horses (Thorpe) Jubilee Compleat Angler Lollards Pit Earlham trail Fat Cat Belle Vue Black Horse Earlham Arms Georgian Town House Coach and Horses (Bethel) Sir Garnet Westwick trail Reindeer Micawbers Tavern Plough

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Rumsey Wells Vine Wildman St Andrews Brew House Castle/Cathedral trail Number 12 Pig & Whistle Murderers Arms Lamb Inn Walnut Tree Shades Take 5 Wig and Pen Magdalen trail Angel Gardens Duke of Wellington Plasterers Arms Kings Head Ribs of Beef Lawyer Maids Head Bar Mousehold trail Fat Cat Brewery Tap Whalebone Marlborough Arms Leopard Cottage Adam & Eve

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covering the county and its people is what this local cancer charity is all about.”

Big C. - Bullards Tour De Norfolk New family cycle ride launches and puts the wheels in motion for Norfolk cancer charity Big C.

new family focussed mass participation cycle ride that enables cyclists to cover the entire county in five years was launched today. The new Bullards Tour de Norfolk cycle sportive is designed for every kind of rider and organised by cyclists for cyclists. The first leg will take place at the end of the cycle tour season on Sunday September 25 and comprises four different length routes for one day, 20, 70, 100 and a special 35mile route, especially devised to mark the 35th anniversary of Big C, Norfolk’s cancer charity who are beneficiaries of the event. Starting and finishing at the Norfolk Showground in Costessey, the entire route is on-road and provides a massive milestone for riders looking to progress their cycling. It caters both for the leisure cyclists or those wanting a day cycling a colour marked and designated route around the county, as well as elite cyclists. It is also a different way to take in a picturesque tour through the

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countryside and historic towns and villages of South Norfolk. “Each year the route will change, so after five events you have completely toured Norfolk,” said Zaradan Rumbelow managing director of organisers Forward Moving Events, originators of the event. There will be plenty of support vehicles and marshalls designated along all routes as well as food and drink stations. Already businesses have signed up to back the event. Leading the field is primary supporter Bullards cask beers of Norwich, Desira motor company is providing support vehicles and photographer Julian Claxton will be on hand to capture participants cross the line. Corporate Big C supporters Alan Boswell who have chosen Norfolk’s cancer charity as its charity of the Year and Lovewell Blake accountants, Hansells solicitors and the Jobs Fair are also on board. One of the food and drink stations will be based at Wymondham College and Active Norfolk will be providing have-a-go sporting activities at the showground.

Every finisher will be awarded a shiny medal and for noncycling family members waiting at the showground there will be entertainment as well as music and Feast on the Street foods to keep them occupied from when the first bikes start at 7.30am to when the last return. “We are excited to be involved in this inaugural event. It’s going to be a great day,” said Big C events manager Dan Bell. “Tour de Norfolk are experienced cyclists and know what works and what doesn’t. They have thought through all the amenities cyclists’ need – from ease of access and registration on site to post-cycling wash facilities and plenty of activities to keep noncyclists and cyclists entertained. Big C is delighted to be involved as

The event is part of Big C’s Challenge 35, an initiative to encourage fundraising in celebration of the charity’s 35th anniversary and have some fun at the same time. Thousands are expected to sign up so participants are urged to register in advance as entry on the day will be limited. The cost is calculated according to which route is chosen, but starts at £10. Each entry includes a £1 donation for Big C. Under 15s cycle for free and there is no charge for car parking on site. Entrants cycling to fund raise for Big C will receive a free Big C T-shirt. To sign up visit www. tourdenorfolk.co.uk Keep up-todate at www.facebook.com/tourde-norfolk join the conversation on twitter @norfolkbybike

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Olverum Bath Oil So, what can I possibly say about this product?

For one, you can instantly conclude that it has a powerful scent before you have even opened it, but nothing could really prepare you for just how true this is... Short of holding your breath! In small doses, the product (Olverum Bath Oil), can be very relaxing, with strong but pleasant notes of lavender making their way through your senses, and soaking into your skin; it leaves a strong scent in your bathroom, but, luckily, it does not exude as strongly from your person once you are dry and clothed. If you have dry skin, combining the use of this oil in the bathtub with a good moisturiser when finished is a good idea, and should leave your skin feeling relatively healthy, hydrated, and smelling nice.

supposedly ‘essential’ oils it is made with are that... well... essential! Saying that, considering its strength – meaning a much longer-lasting product compared with many of the bath-bandits – and the fact that it would appear to have more uses than one, I would have to say that this product is certainly worthy of a try... Maybe even a second or third!

However…

£23.50 for a 125ml bottle of bath oil, and £36.95 for a 200ml bottle of bath oil, is a price that I personally would not be willing to pay. On-par with a night out on the town, two bottles of Olverum Bath Oil may just leave you with a financial hangover of perfumery-

proportions! After all of this, its redeemable feature is largely the fact that it can, has, and will be packaged, sold, and used as a muscle relaxant, ideal for runners, gym-frequenters, and musclepullers… Total Ranking: 3 1/2 out of 5 Stars

As for the aesthetics, the bottle is average-sized, and glass. It has a nice weight, look, and feel to it, and - due to its powerful odour - may even be able to double as an alternative appeasement to the senses, by way of leaving the top off and using it as an earthy lavender-scented freshener for the bathroom, perhaps. However, be warned! Make sure not to over-do it, as putting too much into your bath can leave your sinuses in a scorching, perfumery-induced haze, making you feel nauseous as you soak... I suppose the question we have to ask ourselves is: ‘Is it really worth the risk?’ It is a tough question, because though the overall experience was pleasant, there is not an abundant amount of evidence to suggest that this bath oil is any different to other, similarly-scented oils; I’m also not so convinced that the

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2016 May | 53

A TIME TRAVELLING TALE Let’s go shopping in Norwich – 100 years ago! A trip in the Tardis If you use the Millennium Library, you cannot have failed to notice that Dr Who’s Tardis has landed on the first floor of the BBC offices. I use the library almost daily to write and do research and I thought it was a bit of a waste to just let it sit there so, one day, I managed to sneak inside. There were all sorts of lights flashing and a dial which you could turn to set the year, ahead or in the past, where you hoped to travel to. I am not sure if this is the same thing as the ‘flux capacitor’ in the Delorean of the ‘Back to the Future’ films but, anyway, I clicked it round to ‘1916’ and pressed a big red button by the side. With all manner of whirrings, bangings and clankings, the thing shook and seemed to take off. Then, with a thud, it landed, the door opened and I found myself thrown to

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the ground in front of St Peter Mancroft Church. I looked up and it was almost exactly the same. You could see the lighter brick colour, though, of the ‘pepperpots’ and lead-covered fleche that had been plonked on the top by over-enthusiastic Victorians in the 1880s. The air smelt of sheep and cows and a tatty old market below nevertheless looked bustling and noisy. Everyone seemed to be smoking. One of those newfangled trams just missed me as I scurried down across the market. The following is the report I wrote when I managed to get back to 2016 – having accidentally emerged first in 3016 but that is another exciting story! NOTE TO THE BBC: I am truly sorry about the bashes on the Tardis, but I found it very difficult to ‘drive’. It also suffered an axe attack as you will see if you read

on. But really, if you leave it in such a tempting position, you might like to consider leaving some instructions…..

Norwich shopping 1916 At the bottom of the market was a new building - Jarrold and Sons, built about ten years since - which boasted on a poster in the window ‘Jarrold’s Select Library – Free Use to an Entire Family of a well-appointed Reading Room; subscriptions from10/6 per Annum’. Another window was given over to celebrating the role the firm was playing in the present war; apart from the store itself, it operated a printing and publishing works which was already famous as the original publisher of the children’s classic ‘Black Beauty’ by Anna Sewell, who was born in Great Yarmouth and subsequently spent much of her life in the Fine City. But this was 1916 and not

only did Jarrolds produce a series of wildly successful patriotic books such as ‘Shell Shocked’ but the firm also printed booklets and leaflets in their hundreds of thousands for the fledgling RAF and allied forces.

A hot summer It was a very hot summer’s day and I wandered up Gentlemans’ Walk into the Haymarket. A poster for the Eastern Daily Press trumpeted ‘DEATH BY HEATSROKE OF MAN IN GLEBE ROAD’. I wandered up to where, in 2016, MacDonalds plied its trade, to find it was at this time a Sainsburys. They, too, were making the most of the hot weather to increase sales, as across the front window of the shop was written, ‘THE MOST APPETISING AND DELICIOUS FARE! NO COOKING! READY FOR THE TABLE AND AT VERY REASONABLE PRICES. CALL AND INSPECT THE LIST OF DAINTIES’.

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FINELIVING

feature by:

Steve Browning Writer @returningperson

I wandered into Sainsburys and picked up an abandoned copy of the Eastern Daily Press. The correspondence columns had a lively exchange about the problems of being a shop worker in such hot conditions.

Buying a motor car or a bicycle Just down from Sainsbury’s, the site of the present Pret a Manger was a garage advertising that it could supply any make of motor car. I checked inside my copy of the Eastern Daily Press, and found that another firm, Mann Egerton of Norwich, had the following to offer: 12hp 1913 Talbot Coupe, £400; 25hp 1909 De Dion Coupe, £190; 10hp 1912 Austin, £200; 6hp 1907 Rover, £30; 28hp Lanchester, £275; 15.9hp Arrol-Johnston, £160; 25hp 1912 Daimler limousine, £550; 20hp Rolls Royce Landaulette, £250; and 28hp Delauney Belleville Shooting Brake, £100. Bicycles were also popular and the paper was advertising ‘The Raleigh All Steel Bicycle’, intriguingly ‘guaranteed forever (agents all over Norfolk)’. It could be delivered to your door for £3 19 9d. The paper also featured a campaign to repair the Dereham Road which it considered unsafe for cyclists.

Looking good and keeping up with fashion In terms of fashion and generally looking good, the city did not regard itself as lagging behind London. There were several Drapers and clothing

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manufacturers and one notable establishment was Chamberlins which I could see from where I was standing as it occupied the whole corner opposite Jarrolds, below where Tesco is today. What else did my paper advertise? I sat on a wooden bench seat around the pretty gardens – not concreted over as it is in 2016 outside Sainsburys, opposite St

Peter Mancroft, and took a look. Plain false teeth could be obtained from a dentist in Castle Mall for one Guinea and those made from gold and Vulcanite were offered for three times that figure. Hair pomade and all manner of vitamin supplements and cordials, some of which made highly dubious claims such as warding off consumption, were easily available. H A King of 38 Exchange Street was

advertising that it could provide of ‘Artificial Eyes Carefully Fitted’. Another advertisement for hair lotion advised ‘Don’t lose your hair! Keep your employment! Flowing locks and luscious lashes guaranteed with Johnson’s Hair Pomade!’ Those lacking energy were advised to purchase ‘Pratt’s Pink Pills for Pale People’. Should your hair be turning grey, 2016 May | 55

FINELIVING farm wage which was around £75. Some advertisements were seeking or offering a slightly more genteel position. The Eastern Daily Press carried these two – • Companion wanted to elderly lady; to do housework; comfortable home; age about 40. Apply personally 5-8 pm York Street, Norwich • Clergyman’s daughter seeks daily engagement, Norwich; good needlewoman, musical; can teach little children; good references. the paper recommended keeping HOME MADE-UP COMBINGS and said ‘A good method of disguising grey hair is to have the combings made up in the form of a toupee or a switch to wear over the part which is turning grey. Remember, though, to keep the combings in a well-closed box….. or they will lose their colour’. Much was devoted to ladies’ fashion. The back page carried the following advertisement: ‘TO THE LADIES OF EAST ANGLIA. Many Corset Manufacturers (particularly those with no designers of their own) were caught unawares by this year’s great change of fashion and now see that THEY MISREAD THE SIGNAL FROM PARIS with the result that they now find themselves loaded with heavy stocks of unsaleable corsets. This sort of thing cannot be too strongly deprecated; and to offset it we have devoted the sum of £17,854 for REDUCING the prices of ten of the favourite models of Royal Worcester Kidfitting Corsets….. all of which hold the SILVER SEAL CERTIFICATE of the London

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Institute of Hygiene. Agents in Yarmouth, Lowestoft, Kings Lynn, Norwich etc’. For the bath, John Dodson, 28 London Road, offered Honeycomb sponges, ‘Toilet 6d to 3s and Bath 4s to 7/6d’. As regards soap, one big seller was Sunlight. An advert proclaimed under a picture of the Navy unloading crates of it: ‘CHEERFULNESS AS OPPOSED TO FRIGHTFULNESS. THE NATION TAKES ITS CUE FROM THE NAVY. FRIGHTFULNESS IS A MILLSTONE…..SUNLIGHT USERS ARE ALWAYS CHEERFUL’.

The Empire also required servants. An editorial stated that Domestic Servants were in great demand in New Zealand and that the steamer fare was just £2 16s.

As to property, most working people at this time rented their housing, either privately or through their employer – Colmans led the way in this respect with a purposebuilt village for employees in Trowse, just outside the city centre. The cost of a modest property would likely be several shillings a week while a small cottage in Baconsthorpe with one quarter of an acre garden could be yours for 3/6. I noticed from the paper that, for the budding small businessperson, a ‘small poultry farm (1 acre)’ could be rented for £30 a month. Many of the opportunities for more adventurous entrepreneurs centred on the Empire: for example, 700 acres in Nova Scotia, Canada, were offered for ‘£3000 (half cash)’.

Getting a job and a house Should you need a job, there was no shortage – in shoe production, iron design and manufacturing, and the insurance and banking industries. This was also the heyday of the servant and domestic worker with the press packed with adverts for every category of work in private homes and hotels on the coast. Wages were from about £30 to £90 per annum depending on experience – this contrasted with the average

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FINELIVING Sign up now! A large poster was attached to the iron railings of St Peter Mancroft. It read: ‘A SOLDIER OF THE KING. After the War every man who has served will command his Country’s gratitude. He will be looked up to and respected because he answered his country’s call. The Regiments at the Front are covering themselves with glory... ENLIST TODAY. At any Post Office you can obtain the address of the nearest Recruiting Office. GOD SAVE THE KING!’ Another, alongside it, was even more to the point: ‘GET UP YOUNG ENGLAND! Get up! Get up, Young England! Will you always watch the Day come and not get up to meet it? Is it right that you, healthy and strong, should only sit watching when you might be up and doing? Get up! Put your armour on, though it be only a stone heart and a khaki coat. What can withstand them?’ Posters encouraging men to enlist were in many shop windows. I looked around at people rushing past, shopping and going about their business, and it seemed something was a bit odd. Then it dawned on me what it was – whilst there were women of all ages, just about all the men were middle aged or elderly: presumably all the young ones had signed up, and it may have been my imagination but, when I did see any young chap, he appeared to me to be furtive, rushing along with his

eyes to the ground as if he didn’t want to be seen.

Crime and punishment I wondered what had been happening in the courts. Two reports in the EDP caught my eye: The first was heard at Norfolk Quarter sessions and concerned Fowl-stealing charges. John Henry Crittoph, Baker, pleaded not guilty to stealing 25 game fowls, property of Ernest Edward Fish of Scottow. The prosecutor said he missed the fowls on Feb 8th from their portable fowl houses. The leather hinge of one of the doors had been cut through. Mr Dodson said to the witness- ‘Anyhow they were not in the habit of tearing the hinges off the doors of their huts’ (laughter). Witness ‘No’. Robert Lee said he saw the 25 fowls in a cart covered with a net. The prisoner said he had bought the fowls from a man in Ber Street, Norwich. The Jury returned the verdict that the prisoner was not guilty of stealing the fowls, but of receiving them knowing them to have been stolen. The prisoner was sentenced to six weeks with hard labour. The second concerned one of those new-fangled motor cars. Frederick Charles Barber, chauffeur, was summoned for driving a motor at a speed dangerous to the public in Church Street. From the evidence of Inspector William Pile, it appeared that seeing the

defendant driving fast, he called for him to stop. He put the pace at about twenty miles an hour. There were pedestrians about at the time. The defendant said that his car was six years old and noisy. He put his speed at about ten miles an hour. The Chairman said that the magistrates were unanimously of the opinion that the case was proved. Defendant would be fined 10s with 10s costs.

Making a hasty exit Back to the Future I was becoming a little concerned by this time as a small crowd had gathered about me, obviously fascinated by my dress and manner. A policeman came over and asked me where I was from. I said ‘100 years in the future’ which he seemed to take exception to and produced a set of handcuffs. There really was nothing for it but to belt up the hill to where I had left the Tardis. I

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was only just in time for a hostile crowd seemed about to attack it with axes, so great was their terror of this blue square thing with a flashing light on the top. I managed to dodge the crowd, open the door, rush inside and press the ‘travel’ button. I heard the crunch of axe on wood as it whooshed and shook, all the while making that funny noise that it does, and carried me back home again. Goods, prices, jobs, press reports etc in this story are accurate and are taken from contemporary material of the period. They form part of the research for a new book ‘The Norfolk Coast in the Great War – the Critical Coastline’ by Stephen Browning to be published by Pen and Sword in spring 2017. (It doesn’t have the Tardis in it, though).

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Norwich Printers

The First Printer

Anthony de Solempne was the first printer in Norwich, He arrived in 1567 from the Duke of Alva at Antwerp with his wife and two sons. He purchased the freedom of Norwich as a printer and as a vendor of Rhenish wines. The family lived in the parish of St Andrew and by 1572 Anthony was working at premises at the White Dove in the parish of St John Maddermarket. He became one of the wealthiest men in the refugee community in the city. Most of Anthonyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s printing was produced in Dutch and included a psalm book and a catechism, a confession of faith and a perpetual calendar. He also printed a broadside in French and a full English publications which included an execution broadside, a prayer for the abatement of bad weather and the bye laws for the Norwich Corporation.

Francis Burgess and the Norwich Post The Norwich Post is thought to be the oldest provincial newspaper in England covering the years1701-1713. The earliest

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surviving copy dates from 1707. Francis Burgess who printed the post died in 1706 and his widow Elizabeth took over. After Elizabeth died in 1709 the newspaper was then printed by Freeman Collins of London of whom Francis was apprenticed to. The paper was superseded by the Norwich Courant.

Luke Hansard and the House of Commons Luke Hansard was born on the 5th of July 1752 in St Maryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Parish Norwich. The son of a manufacturer he became apprentice to Local printer Stephen White who was also a medicine vendor mainly trading from the Bible and Crown in Magdalen Street. Luke left for London with one guinea and started working for John Hughs who was the printer to the House of Commons. Luke was made a partner in 1774 and run the business almost on his own before owning the business outright by 1800. His sons came to work for him and the business became known as Luke Hansard and sons with offices based near Drury Lane in London.

Luke started to print the journals of the House of Commons from

1774 until his death. With the union with Ireland in 1801 Luke

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FINELIVING

gave up all private printing except when Parliament was not sitting. His son Thomas Curson took over the business when Luke died on the 29th of October 1828. In 1809 Thomas Curson published a pamphlet stating that German mercenaries had flogged British soldiers for mutiny and he was imprisoned in the King’s Bench prison for libel.

The name Hansard was removed in 1892 and was restored to the title pages of debates in Parliament in 1943 and was defined as the official report of the proceedings of the British Parliament.

The publishers of Black Beauty By the start of the 1800s John Jarrold II diverged into printing and in1815 he formed a printing press

in partnership with his brother-inlaw Benjamin Smith at Grove Farm at Dallinghoo in Suffolk which Jarrold had been using as a farm. In 1823 the business was moved to Cockey Lane, Norwich which is what London Street was called. John’s son Thomas became one of the founders of the Norfolk News which Jarrolds printed from 18531858 and the company went on to become Archant. Black Beauty written by Anna Sewell was published by Jarrold in 1878 and when the company became limited in 1902 the printing side of the business moved to St James Mill. The John Jarrold Trust was set up in 1965 giving millions to good causes in Norwich and Norfolk. The printing museum opened at Whitefriars in 1982 and the printing and publishing side was sold in 2005.

Jarrold & Sons it doubled its pages and cost two and a half pence. After the company moved to Prospect House in the late 1960s the company merged with the East Anglian Daily Times to form Eastern Counties Newspapers (ECNG) By 2002 the company changed its name to Archant and it soon purchased twentyseven weekly newspapers from Independent News and Media in two deals worth £62 million. Its Scottish newspapers were sold in 2007 to Johnston Press for £11 million. The company soon became known as Archant Community Media Limited, but the group remains as Archant Ltd. The company also owns Mustard TV.

The birth of Archant Jacob Henry Tillett had an idea to publish a journal in 1844 and along with Jeremiah Colman, John Copeman and Thomas Jarrold they published the Norfolk News, followed by the Evening News and the Eastern Weekly Press, which would later become the Eastern Daily Press. Original printed by Mr Josiah Fletcher the Norfolk News consisted of four pages. Printing was later taken over by Messrs

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feature by:

Michael Chandler Author, Historian & Broadcaster @EastAngliaMedia

2016 May | 59

Posh Plants Growing herbs in containers

ell…our regular spring visitor has surpassed herself with sixteen, yes, sixteen tiny mallard ducklings! This is her fourth year, we know it’s her because she comes up to us and always nests in the same place. She arrives with her chap in the new year, happily approaches us for food and spends the next few weeks doing what ducks do. Daily she disappears under the box hedge in the front garden to lay an egg and then, when we don’t see her we know it’s only a matter of 2 - 3 weeks before the magic happens! It’s a lovely time of year with new life and blossom around us.

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Bumble bees are busy in the strawberry tunnel and thanks to their work our early crop is for sale now in the nursery. The Posh Plant range of topiary are enjoying the fresh air, they have been fed and trimmed and are looking magnificent! We have lots of new and exciting plants and pots in the nursery. Lupin “Masterpiece” is starting to bud up, this is a lovely specimen with spires made up of red and purple florets. We also stock lupin “Red Rum” which is crimson and “Polar Princess”, a clear white…stunning! Lupins are well worth a place in the border. As with delphiniums, cut back the

spikes as they go over and this will regenerate the plant into producing more flowers. I love to have a herb planter close to the kitchen, so handy for cooking as well as looking pretty. I struggle with herbs in our heavy clay soil and as they can look a bit sad in the winter I’m a great believer in container herb growing. l’m aways on the lookout for quirky products to stock on the online shop and having a weakness for pots and planters I’ve come across this rather nice galvanised “Bilbury” planter. Planted up with herbs or perhaps geraniums it will make a lovely focal point on an outside table for the summer. This is instant and easy gardening, no bending or weeding involved, they can even be supplied planted and delivered, www.finecity.co.uk

Posh Plants

topiary, plants, shrubs and trees to hire or buy

Sue Huckle is the inspiration behind many award winning gardens, offering a professional and creative approach to the art and science of garden design. At Seven Acres Nursery we have a range of lovely plants and containers for sale, as well as our beautiful collection of large topiary plants available to hire for weddings, parties and your workplace! ready for you to sit back in the sunshine with a glass of something chilled, what a lovely thought! Order two and have one as a table top ice cooler…hmmm, roll on summer! Sue Huckle

Posh Plants at Seven Acres Nursery, East Tuddenham… topiary, garden and interior plants for hire and sale. online shop at… www.poshplants.com sue@poshplants.com 07703 347014

07703 347014 email: sue@poshplants.com website: www.poshplants.com

Posh Plants, Seven Acres Nursery, Common Road, East Tuddenham, NR20 3NF

Contemporary, classic or chic modern

Kitchens and Interiors The kitchen is the heart of the home. That’s why at Graham Torbitt Kitchens and Interiors we provide quality craftsmanship, contemporary design, unique and fresh ideas to bring you the kitchen you desire. With over 25 years experience, let us put the heart back into your home.

Bespoke design and budget Creative solutions Integrity and expert advice Professional service Free consultation Inhouse at Premier Marble 3 Dewings Road, Rackheath, Norwich NR13 6PS

01603 327727 | www.gtki.co.uk | graham@gtki.co.uk www.finecity.co.uk

2016 May | 61

FINEHomes

ClarkBuild, For All Your Building Needs Chartered building company for whom no job is too small

e provide professionalism and integrity, value for money, compliance with good building practice and with the proprietor/ director has been 35 years in business with a professional qualification.

At CLARKBUILD LTD we know you will receive a professional and personal service for all your building, wet rooms and maintenance needs.

No job is too small for us. We offer bathroom and kitchen installation, loft conversions, renovations and extensions, as well as roofing, driveways, building maintenance and repair.

T: 01953 601678 M: 07788 722151 mailbox@clarkbuild.co.uk Unit 15, Penfold Drive, Wymondham, Norfolk NR18 0WZ

Please call us for a free quotation.

Award Winning Landscaping and Design

Paving and Pathways Ponds and Water Features Lawn Laying Walls and Brickwork Timber and Decking Driveways, Fencing and Screening Garden Design by Georgina Read

T: 01953 852139 E: info@lifestylelandscaping.co.uk W: www.lifestylelandscaping.co.uk

62 | May 2016

A family run company bringing an award winning designer, experienced craftsmen and quality materials to your project Garden Design & Build Decking Paving Planting plans and planting

Water features Artificial turf Pergolas and features Lawns Raised beds

Special Offer:

If you choose us to build your garden then the design comes free. Call for a free initial consultation - 01692 535431

www.gardendesignnorfolk.co.uk shadow@gardendesignnorfolk.co.uk

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Norwich Masters Darts Tournament 2016

FINEHomes event promotion & organisation

Adrian Lewis

Dave Chisnall

Jelle Klaasen

Wayne Mardle

Steve Bunting

Terry Jenkins

Eric Bristow

Keith Deller

Russ Bray

Paul Booth

Thursday 20th October 2016

Doors open at 18:00 | Tournament Starts 19:30

EPIC TV Studios

Magdalen Street, Norwich NR3 1JD

TICKET INFO

www.finecity.co.uk

Tel : 0800 564 2220 www.amberdewevents.co.uk

2016 May | 63

Honda Civic Tourer Reviewed by Tim Barnes-Clay, Motoring Journalist

quite like the Honda Civic Tourer. It feels well built; the driving position is good and the load area is massive.

There’s one drawback, though: it’s ugly. Yes, I know, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but the appearance of a car really does matter. After all, any new motor these days costs a fair proportion of your monthly income, so you might as well buy a car you’re pleased to look at. I’m not saying the Civic Tourer looks like a bulldog chewing a wasp – its face is fine – hardly any different to the standard

64 | May 2016

Civic hatch; it’s just that things go horribly ‘Pete Tong’ the further back you go. The backside of the car looks like it belongs to another ride. It’s ungainly and has no flair. Yet, I can see why the Japanese auto maker has made the Civic Tourer the way it is. The shape of the rear ensures a wide, low boot – making it easy to load up anything. For instance, lifting my tot’s buggy into the boot took no effort at all; in fact, I could hardly describe it as ‘lifting’, the lip is so handily near to the ground. And that, apart from the obvious practical aspect, is a positive

tick in the Civic Tourer’s box. Viewed from the side, the vehicle is low-slung and almost sleek. It is, undoubtedly, the best angle to observe the car. And that’s a shame because you want the back to look good too, and, because it doesn’t, it’s frustrating. Inside, the seats are supportive and the instrumentation is clear and intuitive to use. There’s a lot of legroom up front and enough for two six-footers in the back seats. The same goes for headroom, which is weird, considering how squat the car looks on the outside. Clever stuff, Honda. In 1.6 diesel guise, as tested here, the Tourer is smooth, pithy and extremely frugal. The steering feels a little artificially weighted, but the Civic feels planted on motorways - and on A-roads, or twisty country routes, the car is eager and willing to grip hard on

corners. What’s more, a six-speed manual gearbox makes the most of the clout on tap, thanks to a clear-cut shift action. Numbers-wise, the oil-burner will do zero to 62mph in 10.5 seconds and its top speed is 121mph. The on-paper figures don’t do the Tourer justice – the power and

feature by:

Tim Barnes-Clay Writer @carwriteups

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FINEmotors

torque delivery makes it feels much faster. The Civic comes really well equipped, too. Even though I tested the all-singing-and-dancing EX Plus flagship model with leather seats, sat-nav, 17-inch wheels and xenon lights, all Tourers come kitted out, as standard, with Bluetooth and digital DAB radio. The Civic Tourer’s price-tag – especially in EX Plus flagship guise (£26,200) means the Honda will be a fairly costly company car

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choice. However, the diesel’s tank just keeps on giving – you can get up to 800 miles out of it – and the car returns 72.4mpg on average, emitting just 103g/km of CO2. Go for any other non-petrol below the EX Plus trim level and, due to smaller 16-inch wheels, you’ll get 74.3mpg and emissions of 99g/km of CO2. Crucially, this makes the Civic Tourer road tax free and will keep running costs low. If you can live with its ugly rear booty – then another reason to go for the Civic in estate form

is its bullet-proof reliability. The Japanese-owned company has a well-deserved reputation for making cars that stand up to the test of time.

• Efficient ✓ • Pricey X • Ugly rear X

Furthermore, the Civic Tourer is actually built at Honda’s UK factory in Swindon, so you’ll be able to wave the flag for British motormanufacturing with honour, too.

Pros ‘N’ Cons

• Max speed: 121 mph • 0-62 mph: 10.5 secs • Combined mpg: 72.4 • Engine layout: 1597cc 4-cylinder 16v turbo diesel • Max. power (bhp): 118 • CO2: 103 g/km

• Spacious ✓ • Practical ✓

Price: £26,200

Fast Facts

2016 May | 65

FINEAdvice

Marketing

Join in our Success Story

sectors, to feature in our new ‘FineAdvice’ section with a combination of editorial and an advert on a full page, in the same design and layout as this page is being presented to you.

Welcome to the ‘FineAdvice’ section of FineCity Magazine About Us:

In a fast moving world, where the media seem to be ever more distant from people’s real concerns, it is vital that community lifestyle magazines like FineCity Magazine find and print the information and news that is important to local people. That’s where we come in; two years ago we added FineCity Magazine to our portfolio of publications which include; Dispatch Magazine in Attleborough & Diss and a second publication in Wymondham & Dereham. We also publish Norfolk on My Mind for North Norfolk and Suffolk on My Mind for Suffolk. Over the fifteen years we have been publishing magazines our publications have become some of the most well respected community lifestyle magazines, and

a “must-read” across a Norfolk & Suffolk. Our distribution is enormous; Dispatch is delivered Free of Charge Door to Door to 30,000 homes and businesses. FineCity Magazine is delivered or collected around the City centre by 12,000 people each month, and Norfolk on My Mind has 10,000 copies available for pick up across 800 pick up locations. Suffolk on My Mind is seen by 10,000 people in Bury St Edmunds and across Suffolk. This gives us a combined readership of 155,000 every month.

FineCity Magazine:

New for 2016 we are adding a ‘FineAdvice’ section in our rapidly growing FineCity Magazine.

We are offering YOU the full page (normal cost £505.00) for just the cost of a half page advert £295.00. You pay for the advert we’ll give you the editorial (425 words) for FREE, with a 12 months commitment.

Come and join FineCity and be part of our success story!

The FineAdvice section is designed to offer readers advice, and enable your company to be the exclusive provider. In addition to the above, we will also include your company within our daily tweets and Facebook page completely free of charge. FineCity Magazine is growing throughout Norwich, now with a 12,000 print run every month, and available for pick up at our prestige partner locations which includes;

We are inviting just one company from a few specialist market

John Lewis, Waitrose, Jarrold, Cinema City, MadderMarket, The Theatre Royal, The Forum, Norwich Library, The Norwich Tourist Information Centre, Norwich Airport, Castle Mall and Intu Chapelfield, and further copies are delivered Door to Door around Eaton, Cringleford, Easton, Newmarket Road and The Golden Triangle area of Norwich.

Advice by:

Aaron Gould Sales @finecitymag 01953 456789

Meet The Family FineCity Magazine

Dispatch Magazine 2016

Norfolk On My Mind Magazine 2016

Suffolk On My Mind Magazine 2016

Issue 54

May 20

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66 | May 2016

FINEAR TS

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FINEAdvice

Solicitor Can a Family Member Abroad Look After Your Affairs?

t is becoming increasingly common for older people to need assistance with looking after their day-to-day affairs. Appointing an attorney using a Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA)

Advice by:

Ann-Marie Matthews Solicitor amatthews@nicolsonslaw.com 01603 478567

is seen by many people as a wise precaution to take in case they become incapable of managing in this regard. However, if an LPA is not created at a time when someone has mental capacity, the Court of Protection can appoint a ‘deputy’ to fulfil that role if needed.

of travel made foreign residence no bar to having the daughter of a woman who was no longer mentally capable appointed as her mother’s deputy for property and affairs, even though the daughter lives in the USA. In this case, however, the woman’s assets were relatively small, making the job comparatively straightforward. A different

conclusion might well be reached were the affairs of the person needing a deputy more complex. If you require advice on how to make sure that your affairs are properly looked after if you become unable to manage them yourself, contact Ann-Marie Matthews on 01603 478567 or email amatthews@nicholsonslaw. com.

Over the last fifty years in particular, it has become increasingly common for families to be scattered across the globe. Recently, the Court had to consider whether a person resident in another country could reasonably be expected to discharge their obligations if appointed as deputy for a relative resident in the UK. In the case in point, the Court considered that advances in communications and the ease

JTD 14111 Nicholsons Advert.qxp_Layout 1 07/01/2015 13:06 Page 1

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2016 May | 67

FINEAdvice

Health

Let your hearing blossom By Karen Finch, Managing Director of The Hearing Care Centre

eing in touch with your senses is all the more obvious as the spring and summer approaches here in beautiful East Anglia. Listening to birdsong in the countryside, listening to the wind rustling in the reeds at Snape or to children playing on the beach at Southwold; I reflect on just how important my day to day work is, assisting those experiencing hearing loss. Without their hearing aids many of these people just wouldn’t be able to hear, understand and enjoy what most take for granted and that gives me the greatest satisfaction. 2nd May marks the start of Deaf/

68 | May 2016

Hearing Loss Awareness Week 2016 and my audiology team and I have one aim. We want to help explode some of the myths surrounding hearing loss! We are urging people to look after their hearing in the same way as their eyesight, by having hearing checks every couple of years. I know it sounds silly, but when you lose some of your hearing you tend to compensate by turning up the TV or the volume on your music system and blame others for their mumbling and poor diction. That’s fine, but you can’t turn up people’s voices and in extreme cases can become cut off from friends and family who, not understanding the increasing

problem, think you are just becoming unsociable and unwilling to take part in conversation.

Karen Finch is the Managing Director and lead audiologist at The Hearing Care Centre.

It’s all so simple and of course painless! A hearing assessment carried out by a fully qualified audiologist begins with a health of your ear canals, then if all is OK to proceed takes you through a test where different sounds are played through headphones and responses are monitored. Results are translated onto a chart, or audiogram, on a computer screen that plots the level of hearing. Perfect hearing is 0, and anything between 0-20 is within normal range. And of course, if the results show below 20 then there is a hearing loss of some sort.

The multi-award winning, familyrun company has 20 centres across Suffolk and Norfolk. For more information visit www.hearingcarecentre.co.uk or call 01473 230330.

So if you are experiencing any issues with your hearing, do take a moment to consider what it would be like to hear clearly again. As the flowers come out into bloom this spring, book a hearing test and let your hearing blossom!

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FINEAdvice

Money

Residual Income Which of the following is most important to you?

generated after the initial effort has been made. Compare this to what most people focus on earning: linear income, which is “one-shot” compensation or payment in the form of a fee, wage, commission or salary.

• Extra income • Financial freedom • Get out of debt • More free time • Have your own business • Personal development • Help others • Meet new people • S ave for retirement or retire earlier • Leave a legacy

Linear income is directly proportional to the number of hours invested in it (40 hours of pay for 40 hours of work), but one of the great advantages of residual income is that once things are set in motion, you continue making money from your initial efforts, while gaining time to devote to other things... such as generating more streams of residual income!

Do you fancy the backing of a fast-growing FTSE 250 PLC, which provides the opportunity to build a substantial long-term “Residual Income” alongside your other commitments?

Here’s an example of Residual Income; In 1998 my college spent 35 minutes showing a friend of his how to save money on her bills. Last month he got paid for that conversation for the 206th time for that 35 minute chat. That’s Residual Income explained!

Do the work once, get paid forever!

re you looking for a change? Looking for something different? Need more money? Want to take control of your life? Or are you bored or broke? There are lots of massive opportunities out there if you’re energetic & ambitious and if you really want to create a better life for yourself and your family. Remember, if you want things to change and you want things to be different, YOU have to do it. Life doesn’t have a remote control, you have to change it. If that sounds like you, I’d like to introduce you to a fantastic business opportunity that you can work around your other commitments, like your current job or childcare etc.

www.finecity.co.uk

Residual income (also called passive, or recurring income) is income that continues to be

There is No stock to carry, No

targets to meet, No set hours — just talk to people about saving money! So… how soon can you spare 10 minutes so I can show you how to make a lot of money and explain how this award-winning and trusted company can help you achieve what you want?

Advice by:

Jonathan Horswell Mentor @jonathanhorswel 07802 690589

2016 May | 69

FINEAdvice

Utilities

Utility Warehouse Have you claimed your FREE energy-efficient LED light bulbs yet?

live locally and I represent a company that will replace every light bulb in your home with the latest energyefficient LED bulbs, completely free of charge, thus saving you around 11% OFF your electricity bill forever! If you’re a homeowner, I can help you claim: Free LED light bulbs typically worth £300-£500 They are bright, fully dimmable, light-up instantly, and use around 15 times less electricity than traditional light bulbs. Free expert installation by a team of professional fully trained fitters; they’ll visit your home and install your new LED light bulbs

70 | May 2016

at a convenient time for you — completely free of charge. Free lifetime guarantee If a light bulb ever needs replacing, you’ll be sent a new one in the post — so you’ll never have to buy another light bulb again! Lower electricity bills - forever! In addition to helping to save the planet, your new LED bulbs will reduce your electricity bills by around 11% — FOREVER Who’s behind this initiative? It’s being provided by Utility Warehouse, the Nation’s most trusted utility supplier. In addition to gas and electricity, they provide landline, broadband and mobile giving you the

convenience of all your utilities on one monthly bill.

As a member of Utility Warehouse, you SAVE...

Utility Warehouse is operated by Telecom Plus PLC, a major British company whose shares are listed on the London Stock Exchange. The company provides its members with great value, great savings and the best possible customer service. Perhaps it’s not surprising that, in a survey, 93% of Utility Warehouse customers said they would recommend them to a friend.

• Single supplier for all your utilities • Award-winning customer service • Value that’s unbeatable • Easy to switch • Ready to claim your FREE LED light bulbs?

Utility Warehouse is very different to other suppliers because they’re a club - a Discount Club. They don’t have any high street shops and because (unlike their competitors) they don’t spend customers’ money on expensive advertising campaigns on TV, they can afford to charge their customers less for the same services. They have also received numerous awards from Which? Magazine and Moneywise, and have around 600,000 satisfied customers.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me today. I’ll be delighted to explain how it works.

Advice by:

Jonathan Horswell Mentor @jonathanhorswel 07802 690589

www.finecity.co.uk

FINEDirectory Shepherd’s Crook SmithTurnerMarketing SmithTurner offers a great service in design, distribution, copywrite, social media, websites and direct marketing for Norfolk, Suffolk and beyond

Shepherd’s Crook is extremely sumptuous with full-size double bed, freesat flatscreen TV, and fully equipped kitchen including fridge and dishwasher. And unlike a lot of shepherd’s huts, our WC and shower is truly en-suite - you don’t need to go outside! Based on the edge of Framlingham Suffolk

Call Becky on 07778 381953 for availability.

Stunning, responsive websites from the creators of

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2016 May | 71