Kazuo Ishiguro came on with Jonathan Coe to rapturous applause.
‘I’m missing Spurs v. Real Madrid for this?’ Mr Grigg said.
‘In the literary world, Mr Grigg, this man is bigger than Pat Jennings’s hands,’ I said, showing my age and also my ignorance of 21st century football.
Mr Grigg settled back and attempted to enjoy the interview…
You Tubers: on the World Wide Web it means video-makers. In Dorset it means something else.
After being gripped by a sudden fear of coconuts, a cartoon boy sets off on a quest that leads to Dorset.
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.
FOR JUST six hours visitors will be allowed to walk across the mosaic floors of Dorchester’s Roman Town House.
The ancient tesselated pavements of the best preserved Roman Town house in Britain can normally only be seen through the windows of a modern protective structure.
But this August – between 2 and 4pm on Wednesdays 11, 18 and 25 – the doors will be opened.
Because the mosaics are fragile, visitors must wear suitable footwear. That means no heels.
Admission is free but donations are welcome.
The house can only be opened up because volunteers have agreed both to supervise and to answer questions about its mosaics, its underfloor heating system and its history.
Its history is fascinating.
The buildings were uncovered in 1937.
The First Interim Report on The Excavations at Colliton Park at Dorchester, 1937-38 was quickly written up by Lt Col C D Drew and K C Collingwood Selby and their words still palpitate with surprise – though very much in the style of the time.
“It was a dwelling house of some importance and from its style must have been built by people of position and means.”
The authors also express no qualms about the Romans’ bloody imperial conquest of Britain, as evidenced by the skeletons uncovered earlier in the 1930s at Maiden Castle.
“The advantages of Roman rule, with its comfort and security, were demonstrated to a newly conquered people by the establishment of a well-ordered town [Durnovaria] in the vicinity of their old stronghold, a town which was the centre of the civil adminstration of the district, of trade, and from which would spread the ever growing waves of Roman thought and culture.”
What shocks the authors is the evidence they uncovered of the house’s – and the Roman Empire’s – decline and fall.
“It is evident that the mansion degenerated into a slum, whose tenants treated it with scant respect. They knocked holes in the floors, some for the burial of their unwanted infants, and they built a ramshackle fireplace, partly of broken roof-slabs, for their cooking.
“One cannot say how long their tenancy lasted, but it is probable that it was not long before the end came… it is probable that the house was completely abandoned by the end of the 4th century.”
The bones of three babies were found in shallow graves.
Editor’s note: The Town House is tucked away behind County Hall in the centre of Dorchester. The county council’s advice is to use town centre car parks and walk to the site. The best approach is to follow the route of the Roman Walls, along West Walks and enter the site to rear of County Hall.
Walker Evans, Roadside Stand, Vicinity Birmingham, Alabama, 1936. Gelatin silver print from negative in the collection of the Library of Congress, Washington, LC-USF342-8253A
SO, WEST DORSET has a new artistic venue: Axen Farm outside Symondsbury.
Probably just two miles from Bridport town centre, but it feels startlingly like another world, as you suddenly rock up towards the end of a narrow track and find yourself faced with the northern side of Colmers Hill, with just a fleck of Bridport visible eastwards.
Dragonflies dart around the improvised car park and the shadows of clouds scud over the landscape.
Axen Farm was built almost exactly 100 years ago for the gamekeeper on the Colfox estate. The view through the big windows of the first room you go into is something you really should go to see for yourself. That’s all I’m going to say about it.
Axen Farm is the clustering-point of Burr Projects.
Burr as in the seeds or dry fruits of plants with little hooks (though burr is one of those words that also has many other appealing meanings – circle of light around moon or star, dialectal pronunciation, hard sandy Dorset limestone, etc).
The woman with the un-shake-offable liking for the word burr is Nancy Clemance, who moved to West Dorset last year and is a leading member of Bridport’s new Gig Rowing Club.
She’s also a freelance arts curator and she’s been mulling over Burr Projects for eight or nine years.
She said: “It’s about sticking to things, picking up things, that end up stuck to your jumper and won’t go away.
“It’s about picking different things up and putting them together.”
Ideas include Hutliving (about shepherds’ huts) and Carnie (about outdoor festivals).
Walker Evans, Graveyard, Houses, and Steel Mill, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, November 1935. Gelatin silver print from negative in the collection of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington DC, LC-USF342-1167A
But the first venture, now open until September 5, is an exhibition of around 40 black and white photographs taken by Walker Evans in the Deep South of the USA in 1935-36, during the Great Depression.
Evans was employed as an Information Specialist in President Franklin D Roosevelt’s Resettlement (later Farm Security) Administration. His job was to record the work of the FSA and document the lives of farmers and flood victims.
Evans travelled to Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and South Carolina photographing sharecroppers’ homes, churches, graveyards, busy streets, shops, cafes, signs and billboards. He also took portraits.
Walker Evans, Allie Mae Burroughs, Wife of a Cotton Sharecropper, Hale County, Alabama, Summer 1936. Gelatin silver print from negative in the collection of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington DC, LC-USF342-8139A
The show is on tour from London’s Hayward Gallery. It’s accompanied by an exhibition book, with examples of Evans’ writing, interview excerpts and articles written by James Agee and Lincoln Kirstein. Ms Clemance also prepared material for the Axen Farm display with pupils from the Woodroffe School in Lyme Regis, Symondsbury teenagers, a professional photographer and a professional painter.
There’s an obvious interest in seeing how Deep South Depression Era communities speak to West Dorset in 2010; a few of the images might almost have been taken in the spartan rooms of Axen Farm itself.
There’s also a subtler reason why Evans could be a brilliant starter for a new series of projects intended to be sticky.
There’s a superb account of Evans’ photographs in Geoff Dyer’s book The Ongoing Moment (Little, Brown 2005), concerning in particular the idea that places “have their own inbuilt capacity for memory”.
Dyer writes: “Connie, in D.H.Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, senses this on a walk through her husband’s ancestral home. ‘The place remembered,’ she exclaims, ‘still remembered’.
“This does not feel like a psychological projection on the part of the viewer but of a receptiveness to something abiding in the place itself.”
“Evans believed these memories could be coaxed out and distilled by the camera.
“He could show memory in the process of formation and, by so doing, make it part of our memory.
“In this way we get a sense not just of the chronological passage of years but of psychological time.
Receptiveness to something abiding in the place itself is a quality that West Dorset can never get too much of…
Editor’s Note: Updated August 8 to reflect the start of the exhibition. For details of opening times, and a useful map, click here for the Burr Projects blog.
NB Looking at the map before you set off is highly recommended.
Use of the car park costs £2. But as you’ll have gathered, I’d say it’s well worth it.
THE WORLD FAMOUS RAF aerobatic team have appeared in the skies over Paris, New York and Sydney. Now at 12.30pm on Saturday 21st August for one very special time the Red Arrows are coming to the sky over Drimpton in West Dorset! It’s true! Why? To help open the village Fun Day.
Mike Saunders, the leader of the village Youth Club, and formerly with the RAF, says: “We had the idea last year when Zane (Red 5) and Monte (Red 7) joined the Red Arrows and I was thinking of ways to raise funds to maintain the momentum of our new Youth club.
“Zane and Monte had spent a great weekend in Drimpton meeting the locals the previous year and were keen on the idea of supporting our Fun Day. Zane came to stay at the beginning of the year and the plan was set in motion.
“I spent my last 3 years of 42 years in the RAF as a Reservist teaching our future fast jet pilots at RAF Valley on the Hawk aircraft. It was here that I got to know some fine young fliers, four off whom, Ben Plank, Kirsty Moore, Zane Sennet and David Montenegro (Monte) are currently with the team.”
The Fun Day is for everyone. Parking and entry is free.
Gates open at 11.30am and events run non-stop from 12noon to 12midnight.
During the afternoon the Recreation Field will be full of activities for all ages, including the Homemade Fair, Football, Tug-of-War, Archery, Steam Train and Pony Rides with refreshments and BBQ.
At 5.00pm the free Children’s Party and Disco begins, followed at 8.00pm by the Summer Dance with live music from well-known local band, The Sidekicks.
For full details of the programme, go to www.drimptonfunday.org.uk
Editor’s Note: The Red Arrows have made over 4,000 appearances in 53 different countries. They’ve just been waiting for the chance to visit Drimpton. (What people think of Drimpton is a revealing test of character).
