Archive for August, 2010

Lush Places: The village flower show

HERE IN Lush Places, it is the day of the village flower show.

Car boots are open on the hall forecourt, spilling out dahlias, leeks the length of Chile and spikes of gladioli sharp enough to impale yourself on. Gardeners, bakers, photographers and handicraft makers walk into the hall steadily, carefully, so as not to trip.

A gardener from Lush Corners, Lush Places’ smaller neighbour, clutches a mother-in-law’s tongue and peeks out from the stiff leaves to find her way in through the lobby, which is lined with decorated paper plates all in a class of their own.

She is annoyed with herself because she has left her tomatoes and her longest runner bean at home and time is running out.

There is muttering over marrows too heavily polished and slurpy-looking jam. A late entry is brought in by a tousled-looking woman who stayed up until 3.30am playing Pictionary, making buttonholes and cooking chutney.

Over on the photographic table, people surreptitiously swap their entries around, hoping their top left spot will make their picture stand out that much more than the opposition. People new to the village are eyed suspiciously, as they bring in beautifully decorated cakes and artwork good enough to line the walls of Sladers Yard at West Bay.  Bloody incomers.

This year I have submitted eight pictures in the photographic section. I am hoping for success with my entry in the ‘wildlife’ category. It’s a close-up of our local lottery winner pointing at the camera. He has a face carved from Mount Rushmore and hair of steel grey wire.

It could win, I tell him, agreeing to split the prize money if it does.

His eyes light up.

‘That’ll be all of 20p then,’ I say.

Two days ago, an upside down rainbow hung in the blue sky above Lush Places, like a multi-coloured smirk in the air.

Winning entry? I should be so lucky.

Rare Roman camp discovered in West Dorset

TRACES of a Roman camp have been discovered near Sherborne in West Dorset.

Aerial photographs taken earlier this summer revealed three sides of a lightly built defensive enclosure in a barley field near Bradford Abbas.

Marks showed up through the crop because the long hot days of June had parched the ground.

The Roman camp discovered near Bradford Abbas in West Dorset. Photograph copyright English Heritage.

English Heritage say the camp provided basic protection for Roman soldiers on manoeuvres in the first century AD.

It’s one of only four discovered in the south west of England.

Aerial photography was developed as a technique to uncover archaeological secrets by OGS Crawford before World War Two.

You can read more about him and Dorset by clicking here.

English Heritage say they were lucky to avoid the effects of the Icelandic ash which grounded thousands of other flights, but not their Cessnas.

Damian Grady, English Heritage Senior Investigator based in Swindon, said: “Fortunately the piston-powered Cessnas used by aerial archaeologists were not affected by the ash, so it was easier to undertake planned flights inside airspace around Gatwick, Stansted, Luton and Bristol airports.  

“Promising signs started to emerge in late May when the dry conditions had started to reveal cropmarks on well drained soils, especially river gravels and chalk in the East and South East of England. By June it became clear that the continuing dry conditions would produce good results across most of the country. We then targeted areas that do not always produce cropmarks, such as clay soils, or have seen little reconnaissance in recent years due to recent wet summers or busy airspace.

“Unfortunately July saw deterioration in the weather which reduced the amount of flying we could do and the cropmarks started to disappear just before the harvest got underway.

“It will take some time to take stock of all the sites we have photographed, but we expect to discover several hundred new sites across England.” 

Updated: Opera flies again at Bridport’s Electric Palace

EIGHTY-FOUR YEARS after it first opened the Electric Palace in Bridport is returning to its original purpose: OPERA.

Yes, opera.

“The building was originally erected for dual use as a cinema and opera house for the Palmer brewing family, who wanted to bring opera to Dorset.”

So reads the citation for the Grade II listing of the Electric Palace by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport on 29 April, 1999.

I found my copy of this document by chance after it was first reported (on Real West Dorset) that the Palace wanted to install an expensive satellite dish so as to be able to broadcast live high-definition performances from the Metropolitan Opera in New York and perhaps also the National Theatre in London.

And I thought – fancy that…

[Note added Saturday, August 28: You can now read the Electric Palace listed building details online by clicking here]

So, even though I have almost no appreciation of opera whatsoever, I’m going to report that this Thursday evening (August 26) West Dorset MP Oliver Letwin will be taking to the stage of the Electric Palace to show his support of the venue’s efforts to reinvigorate opera and reach out to a broader public.

The opera shown will be Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, directed for the stage by Franco Zeffirelli, and starring Fiorenza Cedolins, Marcello Giordani, and Juan Pons.

Madama Butterfly

The aim of this benefit screening is to raise money for the costly purchase and fitting of the bespoke dish required to receive a season of 11 Met Live performances.

This will be the fifth year that shows have been broadcast live from New York; they now reach more than 1.6 million people in 35 countries.

Tickets for Madama Butterfly cost £15, including a glass of wine.

They are on sale now from Bridport Tourist Information Centre 01308 424901.

Lush Places: all hail to the council’s King Rat

Once upon a time in Lush Places, the village had a problem with rats.
They would scurry from house to house, holding parties under the floorboards, orgies in the airing cupboards and having babies in the boiler.
I recall this after hearing the news that a rat the size of a coypu and dubbed ‘Ratzilla’ by The Sun has been shot in Bradford. Readers of The World from My Window blog will know that Bradford has nothing on Lush Places, where my neighbour is currently lying in wait for a rodent the size of a flat-coated retriever.
A year or so ago, after six weeks away from the Grigg hovel, I opened the lavatory door only to see a rat diving for cover down the hole it had excavated with a diamond-tipped drill and a fine pair of incisors.

Before leaving, it looked up at me. I screamed, the rat screamed and the pair of us fled in different directions.

Mr Grigg wouldn’t believe it until he went to put his beach towel away in the airing cupboard and saw the shelves were littered with droppings the length of Panama. And my great aunt’s lace – made by fallen women she was looking after at the turn of the 19th century – lay in tatters.

We had a rat infestation, as we discovered when we switched on the central heating and the boiler wouldn’t work. Bits of towel, sheets and great aunt’s lace had been used to fashion a rather comfortable nest inside the boiler, from which Mother Rat had multiplied in biblical proportions.

So, faced with this horrible situation, who you gonna call? We dialled R for Rat and got Clive from West Dorset District Council’s pest control department. He arrived in record time, after hearing a tale of woe that there was a woman near Beaminster who was perched on a chair and refusing to use the only lavatory in the house.

I was rather disappointed by his vehicle’s livery – a boring WDDC logo rather than a giant rat or a humungous cockroach sitting on the van roof like in the film Men in Black – but, overall, I was delighted.

Clive was brilliant, attentive, helpful and funny. Especially when he opened the airing cupboard and a young rat popped its head up among the duvet covers to say hello.

Clive the Rat Man squealed, and dropped the trap on the utility room floor as he slammed the airing cupboard door shut.

‘I hate rats,’ he said.

All those years in pest control and he still hadn’t got used to it. Priceless.

As is the service provided by the council, at a time when other local authorities have scrapped their pest control deaprtments. Yes, you have to pay for it, but at a small fraction of the money you’d be handing over to a private firm.

I’m the first to criticise poor service but in this case, credit where credit’s due. So a big round of applause to Clive please, the hero of the hour.

Wonder what he’d be like, though, with the capybara down the road..?

Revealed: Dorset councils’ website costs

THE LOCAL government website dorsetforyou.com has been redesigned three times in the last five years and costs more than £350,000 annually, according to figures released in response to Freedom of Information requests.

Questions were sent to councils across the country by The Daily Telegraph and PeoplePerHour.com, and the nationwide results were published this week.

Birmingham City Council’s last re-design cost £2.8 million.

The average (mean) is £100,00, or £15,000 (median).

Dorsetforyou’s last redesign cost £3,404.  

Since the questions below were asked Purbeck District Council and North Dorset District Council have agreed to join dorsetforyou, so costs will have changed.

But what’s below (provided by a communications officer at West Dorset District Council) still provides an interesting snapshot.

Note: One reason for dorsetforyou’s re-designs has been that it used to have very low user satisfaction ratings, ie people didn’t like it and couldn’t find what they wanted. These days, the scores are higher. Overall satisfaction has gone up from 15% two years ago, way behind other councils, to 37% now, just ahead of other councils (Thank you to Kirstie Smith of West Dorset District Council for pointing out that a whole range of statistics can now be found at http://www.dorsetforyou.com/successmeasures)       

1) How many redesigns has the council website gone through in the last 10 years?

Dorsetforyou.com is a shared website for four Dorset councils; Christchurch Borough Council, Dorset County Council, East Dorset District Council and West Dorset District Council.

Producing info for all four partners since they created their websites would take too much time. Therefore the following info is since April 2005 when the combined website was born.

Dorsetforyou.com has had three redesigns, the original one in April 2005, one on 30 June 2008 and the most recent in September 2009.

2) How much is spent annually on the website, and for what tasks?

Figures for the 2008/9 financial year are as follows:

Development: £46,394 (Tribal and GOSS)

Design: £6463 (GOSS)

Hosting/co location: £15,180.33 (GOSS, Tribal, Trading Eye)

Domain registration: £200 (estimated)

Licensing/support/analytics: £21,373.96 (GOSS, Smartlogic and Matraxis)

Staffing (central team): £157,913.28

Updates/changes (internal staff time): £100,000 (estimated)

Consultancy: £9,400 (e.g. Shawtrust, SiteImprove)

Other: £4737.02

TOTAL: £361,662

3) How much was spent on the most recent redesign of the website?

£3404