By excellent, I mean almost gratuitously obsessed with quality, and with the means and the skill to produce superb results.

The first individuals that came to mind were the West Bexington chilli growers Michael and Joy Michaud, the Beaminster furniture maker John Makepeace, the Bridport tiler Tony Bird of ASB Tiling, the West Milton cider maker Nick Poole, and the Netherbury wildlife photographer Colin Varndell.

Then I got distracted, and forgot all about it, until Dorset Wildlife Trust sent me some images from their new 2011 calendar, all given by Colin Varndell, and all – you guessed it – excellent. Really tremendous. See:

Dormouse, hibernating: January's image on Dorset Wildlife Trust's new calendar Wildlife Encounters. Copyright Colin Varndell.

Nuthatch, February's image on Dorset Wildlife Trust's 2011 calendar. Copyright Colin Varndell.

Otter: Pictured for September 2011 on Dorset Wildlife Trust's new calendar Wildlife Encounters. Copyright Colin Varndell.

Mr Varndell is a long-standing member and supporter of Dorset Wildlife Trust. He said: “Dorset is one of the richest counties for wildlife in Britain. If it is to remain so, it is the responsibility of each and every one of us, as custodians of this natural heritage, to protect, preserve and improve it for future generations. We can all help to achieve this by supporting the Dorset Wildlife Trust.”

In other words, and entirely reasonably, given his own generosity in supplying pictures, he wants people to buy the Trust’s new calendar.

Myself, I think that’s an excellent idea.

The calendar is called Wildlife Encounters and it costs £5. It’s available from Dorset Wildlife Trust at www.dorsetwildlifetrust.org.uk/calendar or call 01305 264620.

It’s also stocked by most Dorset Tourist Information Centres, including Bridport, Dorchester, Shaftesbury, Wareham and Wimborne.

The county council wants to move the special school on to land next to Beaminster Technology College (BTC).

A national schools adjudicator gave his approval for the idea last year, and last month county council cabinet members agreed a budget of just under £9 million for the project.

If planning permission is granted, work could start next spring and a new Mountjoy could open in autumn 2012.

The aim is to serve 48 pupils with physical and learning disabilities, aged from two-and-a-half to 19.

BTC and Mountjoy would remain separate establishments, but the county council argues that Beaminster would benefit from improved sporting facilities, such as a new synthetic pitch, and alterations.

Changes would include new car parking facilities for Beaminster staff, which would be accessed from Tunnel Road, and should therefore reduce traffic along Fleet Street. An improved footpath would also link the schools with the town centre.

Answers to frequently asked questions about the scheme are available online at http://www.dorsetforyou.com/mountjoyschool

Full details of the application will be viewable later this week at http://www.dorsetforyou.com/planning

Search under the town name of Beaminster.

Editor’s Note: Based on a press release issued by Dorset County Council. I’ll update this piece when the planning application can be seen online.

You can be driving through a murky Mosterton, go through the tunnel and, abracadabra, emerge into a beaming Beaminster.

Dorset folk will say the weather is invariably better this side of the tunnel. Somerset Cuckoos – and I confess I am one – will probably say the opposite. But it works both ways.

You can be pootling up the twilight Tunnel Road and, bam, you come out into sunrise Somerset. It’s like a geographical time tunnel.

Here in Lush Places, however,  more times than not we are surrounded by fog when everywhere else in Dorset is bathed in light. A veil of mist hangs over Bluebell Hill nearly every day, hiding the tops of the beech trees as they say hello to the sky.

People move into the village and then, after a month or two, the truth dawns on them.

‘It’s always so damp and cold here,’ they whine.

‘We really didn’t realise that when we first came here,’ they say, as the people who sold them the house rub their hands in glee and roar off in a removal van towards Salway Ash.

But there are advantages in living in a cloud. For one thing, we are mightily grateful when we get even a twinkling of sunshine. And for another, it can be very useful to head up the hill in the swirling mist when you need to make a quick getaway.

Like the time when four of us descended on Netherbury for a quiz in the village hall. We won the main prize, the beer leg and three raffle prizes.

And before the natives even had time to mutter, ‘now just who were those bloody people?’ (although they would never swear as they’re far too genteel), we swiftly jumped into the car and drove into the clouds, never to be seen again.

Every cloud has a silver lining.

Photograph by Agencia Brasil, reused under Creative Commons Licence.

IS THIS country too anchored in its past or feeling too guilty to be so politically correct?

There is a certain irony that Carnival should be studied in a country that has never been keen on Catholicism.

Mardi Gras, after all, is not very British.

Carnivals no longer have much to do with Lent but to my mind they do have a lot to do with cities.

Rio and London spring to mind, not the Jurassic Coast.

Weymouth or Bridport may well have wonderful carnivals but their reputation is not national, let alone international.

I have only lived here for two years, which makes me ignorant, but none of my forty-something friends that have lived here a while longer – or forever – have ever suggested going to either.

The events we do go to are ones anchored in many of the people who make up West Dorset and East Devon, the districts mainly relevant to the Jurassic Coast.

Culture and food

Take the world-renowned Bridport festival. If you write in English you will probably have heard of The Bridport Prize; thousands of entries from around 80 countries world-wide make a pretty wide introduction to a town and its world-class festival. But who has heard of the Bridport Carnival?

The Beaminster Festival of music and art – when the sleepy medieval town comes alive for a fortnight – is another example.

Dorset Arts Weeks is the largest Open Studios event in the country, 800 artists take part, and that’s only visual arts.

Food festivals compete with each other and attract hundreds of people, local and otherwise. Our area is filled with talented creatives and Dorset could lead the world in placing culture at the heart of quality of life. Who will lead the creatives or at least coordinate them I am not so sure. Working together to a common goal is not something I have seen enough proof of since I have lived in the UK (23 years) although thankfully this is slowly changing.  

Take Normandy as an example. Helped by the French government, Normandy has marketed itself as the birthplace of Impressionism. 2010 sees the largest Impressionists exhibition ever, drawing art enthusiasts from around the world: Americans and Japanese are very keen).

This did not happen in a day, it is a massive investment in time, effort, organisation, structures; more importantly it is born from a realisation that art is a medium by which rich and poor have always communicated, something that not only brings inspiration and well-being but also economic repercussions.

Would Impressionists be the same without Constable or Turner? Should we not celebrate our artists rather than leave them to be marginalised?

Why look to Carnivals in an area that is heavily anchored in the countryside and the sea?

West Dorset and East Devon are not about cities or even large towns, they are about communities that get together on a human scale to come up with child-friendly events, fêtes and festivals.

Drawing an analogy to music festivals, this is not Glastonbury, this is Truck.

Friendly, quirky, socially responsible, sustainable, on a human scale and a hell of a lot of fun.

It may be less socially acceptable to do research on art and culture and far more politically correct to conduct research on inner city leisure time.

Is this a case of looking to the industrial past that makes us believe that cities come first and foremost?

Is it a guilty feeling that countryside people are luckier than city people and need less investment from any governmental body?

Or is it a case of an idea coming from London or even Weymouth rather than from the people that actually live along the Coast concerned?

The originators of the idea cannot be blamed if their lack of vision is due to the lethargy of the people concerned.

We could point the finger if the people concerned have not been properly consulted or even informed. I have not lived here long enough to comment on this.

But I do know that information is difficult to get unless you actively look for it.

Thank you Real West Dorset for coming up yet again with an interesting debate.

Editor’s Note: The three-year PhD Carnival studentship is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and the successful applicant will work with Exeter University academics and members of the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site Arts Programme team.

The project will focus particularly, but not exclusively, on Weymouth, as there is “an agenda of connecting communities along the Jurassic Coast with communities sharing strong carnival cultures across the globe, the aim being to forge a globalised carnival community expressed through embodied performance and arts practice.”

Here, for the record, is the full list of research questions.

• What are the historical geographies of the Jurassic Coast’s carnivals?
• To what extent have elements of transgression, empowerment and resistance played a role in the movement and experience of the area’s carnivals?
• How is ‘carnival’ being used by the Jurassic Coast WHS Arts Programme as a vehicle for community cohesion and relational celebration, both along the coast and through UNESCO World Heritage Site networks?
• How is the local carnival heritage negotiated within the context of an internationally orientated festival that has a global audience?
• How does the mobilisation of carnival in different policy agendas impact on community engagement and participation within the practice of carnival?
• How does the transgressive nature of carnival and mobilization of arts practices within the event work through governance frameworks?

We might come back to the question, just for the fun of it, of whether the nature of carnival is transgressive or whether that notion, generally derived in modern academic discourse from the pre-war Russian critic and philosopher Mikhail Bahktin, is, arguably, wrong.

(And not just because I truly cannot think of anything transgressive I have ever seen in, for example, a Groves Nursery float).

The writer Clive Aslet, editor at large for Country Life magazine and a countryside campaigner, described Mapperton as “a dream of England at its loveliest.”

He wrote: “The garden opens out like the set of a grand opera, descending the valley by stone steps and stately terraces, on which a chorus of topiary yew shapes assemble around stone-lined canals.”

His overall verdict: “Perfection”.

And it’s true, in spring sunshine, with bulbs and buds and birds aplenty, it looks glorious.

But what it is like to work in such a place, especially when seekers after beauty descend in great numbers?

A lovely affectionate new blog by Maddie Grigg recounts life in the Mapperton Pot Shop.

“With 70 guests by four o’clock, I have no time for lunch and only a quick visit to the lavatory.

“Lord Sandwich towers above a party of ladies as he takes the group on a tour of the house.

“A steady stream of visitors to the shop buy plants, Ulster Weavers aprons and pretty notebooks.

“People sit outside the cafe, enjoying the sun and a cream tea.

“By 4.30pm, even the bantams have had enough, going to bed early and settling down to roost in the old yew tree next to the church.

“It’s been a busy day and I’m pooped.

“But I managed to get the till to balance this week.”

You can find out what an achievement that last line represents by clicking on this link here. There’s some fine pictures too, including one of an Indian Runner.

The move is announced on the papers’ website but not (that I can see) in the papers themselves.

The shift means the two Newsquest publications will come out on the same morning as the free newspapers View From Bridport, View From Beaminster and View From Lyme Regis.

“The Bridport News and Lyme Regis News moving to Wednesday is purely for operational reasons relating to available press slots,” says Toby Granville, editor of the Dorset Echo, who also oversees the two weeklies.

View From editor Philip Evans comments (via Twitter): “@RealWestDorset By moving to a Wednesday publishing date they lose their only exclusive news day to the View. Great decision – for the View!”

Analysis

Myself, I think there are three things worth remarking on.

One: when the News did first move from Friday to Thursday that was done to compete more directly with View From titles and the Western Gazette (which comes out on Thursdays). Yet I know people who still dislike that shift intensely and refuse, as a matter of principle, to buy the News on a Thursday, because they believe it should still come out on a Friday. That’s a powerful testament to the strength of the connection that the News had with people, and to the force of habit. It’s Friday: it’s Bridport / Lyme Regis News day. Friday was a crucial part of the papers’ brand identity. Changing to a Thursday affected that, but perhaps moving to a Wednesday will not, particularly, because the first move was the one that showed the brand could be tampered with. Like ITV’s News at Ten; there are people who have never seen that in quite the same way since ITV began moving it around…

Another comment via Twitter: “oninbridders @RealWestDorset Bridport News belongs to Friday, a nice way to end the week, sort it out @Dorsetecho. Though at this rate it will loop back”

Two: it will interesting to see what effect it has, three editions of the View From and two editions of the News coming out on the same day, midweek. All sorts of permutations are possible. Good for the View because people might choose to pick up a free paper rather than pay for one that is now covering exactly the same last week? Good for the News because it’s got more pages at the moment than it’s had for years and people might think that a paid-for publication is always going to be superior to a free? Or good for them both because, if you’re in the shop, why not get them both? Neither is going to want to have exactly the same content as the other so they should (in theory) both get better and more various.

Three: and what of the 60p Western Gazette, which fewer people in West Dorset seem to care about these days, despite the best efforts of its local reporter Danielle Hoffman? (It was noticeable, for example, that she turned up for the recent South West Quadrant appeal hearing whereas no one from the News was seen – a situation that people commented upon.) Alas for the Western Gazette, it won’t have much of an “exclusive news day” to itself on Wednesdays because the deadline for its West Dorset edition is late on Tuesday. Oh well.

Postscript

View From Publications are now planning something for Fridays called the View Online Dorset Weekender – “a brand new weekly paper you’ll only be able to read online!”

Technical hitches sorted out, and the British do what they still do in places like Broadwindsor: they form a queue.

VILLAGERS in West Dorset today saw Post Office services brought back to their community after an absence of more than two years.

Broadwindsor has not had a Post Office since December 2007, and the reintroduction of services now is mostly down to members of the local Women’s Institute.

Ruth Yarde of Broadwindsor WI said: “I missed it dreafully. I was very passionate about us having a Post Office again because a lot of people were having to travel elsewhere. But this brings people together. It’s a part of the community and living in a rural area that’s we want – that sense of community.

“I’m feeling very excited and positive, and it’s now down to the village and the surrounding areas to use it well.”

Apart from limited opening hours, there are few obstacles to the new PO outreach service in The Comrades Hall being used. Fellow WI campaigner Jean Frampton said: “There’s a mini-parking area and there’s easy access for people to walk because it’s flat.”

Between them, Mrs Yarde and Mrs Frampton probably put about 200 hours of effort into getting services reinstated.

One villager, who asked not to be named, praised the two women: “They worked tirelessly to find a solution, holding meetings with Oliver Letwin [West Dorset MP] and then later our local district councillor Jacqui Sewell.

“For some time they felt they were banging their heads against a brick wall. If it had not been for their terrier-like persistence, we would not be in the position we are now.

“It really was people power.

“The village hall committee is letting the parish council have the hall for a reduced fee and then the parish council is claiming it back through grant funding which has come via West Dorset District Council and Dorset Community Action.

“The village hall committee is also meeting the cost of a phone line in the hall.”

Broadwindsor parish council chairman Peter Hardwill said: “The benefit for the whole community of having this facility will be in bringing people out, meeting each other, talking.”   

Broadwindsor resident Wendy Shields agreed: “It’s absolutely marvellous.”

A full range of services will now be offered between 10am and 12.30am every Tuesday and Friday in the Comrades Hall. The new outreach service will be run from Bridport Post Office. Sub Postmaster Graham Burridge says he will be offering everything that the former Post Office offered and more, including postage, wrapping materials, financial services, foreign currency and a selection of stationery.

Tuesays and Fridays have been chosen because on those days The Comrades Hall is used by various groups. Coffee mornings are also planned and the local Police Community Support Officer will be holding his monthly surgeries at the hall to coincide with the Post Office service. The mobile library visits Broadwindsor every other Friday morning in the Square meaning that people using the library can then just walk up to the hall to use the Post Office services.

West Dorset District Council Leader Robert Gould said: “The situation in Broadwindsor has been less than ideal for the past two years. Some people without cars have had to go to Beaminster on the bus to visit the Post Office and there can be a wait of up to three hours for the return bus. I’m so pleased with what we have all achieved.”

Broadwindsor has shown how determination and joined up thinking can benefit local communities, said Cllr Gould.

Note: They might need the same sort of qualities in Portesham because the Dorset Echo today has a story saying the Post Office there may soon be closed, as the couple in charge at the moment are retiring.

I suppose it’s true these days that there might be girls and women who genuinely prefer pasta or even rice or cous-cous… and I can think of men who don’t mind eating these potato-substitutes (sometimes), but their inner Homer Simpson soon goes back to craving spuds.

They are irresistible and fascinating, hence:

And it’s just before Valentine’s Day…

One of the organisers is Brian Hesketh, who’s expecting Drimpton’s third annual potato day to be busy: “We have been quite surprised how well supported it was on the first two occasions, it seems to be meeting a need.”

Mr Hesketh has his own gardening blog covering the Dorset / Somerset borderlands near Drimpton (click here to link). “As gardeners,” he writes, in a philosophical moment, “we are amongst the stewards of Nature’s Life Support Systems, offering up not just tasty lunch time snacks, but also practical examples of sustainable methods, environmental awareness and harmonious living with nature.”

He publishes lots of appealing photographs, including this, an orb-like turnip amidst diamonds of ice: 

“Much easier to dig up than parsnips,” comments Mr Hesketh, as proved by this picture:

Which made me think of a fabulous essay by John  Carey, called “Vegetable Gardening” in Original Copy (Faber, 1987). He writes about how “it’s an immense and exacting pleasure to grow” parsnips, and continues:

“Come the summer, you pull out all but one of the seedlings from each cluster – pale gold pencils, with feathery tops, which it always gives you a pang to throw on a compost heap, though there’s nothing else to be done with them.

“Then, as the winter approaches, the great spreading leaves of the survivors rot and yellow, and the parsnips withdraw into their subterraranean existence until, some time after Christmas, the time comes to crack the frosty crust over them and lug them out gross, whiskered and reeking, from their lairs.”

Isn’t that fantastic? Especially the last bit. If there’s a better passage ever been written about parsnips, I’ve yet to read it!

One final thing I would love to know if anyone has the answer: Why do parsnips sold dirty taste better than ones sold clean?

The proposed “regeneration” of the area, which includes St Michael’s Trading Estate, is going to be fought over at an appeal hearing in West Bay in January.

If landowners Haywards get approval for their scheme, which was first drawn up with West Dorset District Council, it will have a bigger effect on Bridport than any development since the 1970s.

Forty-three letters went to the Planning Inspectorate. One – from the Highways Agency – raised no objections provided certain conditions were met. The rest were all opposed.

To help round off 2009, and to carry us through into 2010, here are a few of the most eye-catching bits.       

“This fake new utopia”

Alan Ross of Burton Bradstock writes: “Should this development go ahead, my wife and I will never visit Bridport again, taking our business to places of character such as Beaminster!”

The letter is also signed – you’ll be relieved to hear – by Mrs Susan Ross. (I didn’t like to think of her being unilaterally barred by her husband from visiting her nearest town… But as it stands, that’s what you call a resolution.)

Mr and Mrs Ross say they object to the idea of Bridport becoming a clone town, yet another victim of the process which sees a vibrant artistic area created, then developers cash in, wipe the slate clean, and cram in houses, “outpricing this fake new utopia to the local people who were instrumental in building, and had pride in, their inter-reliant community.”

“A sterile town”

Antonia Fraser, Pymore: “Many of us think that what is being proposed at present will turn Bridport into a sterile town with smart shops and bijoux cafes of the kind found in the South East of England.

“The alternative is that Bridport retains its authentic Dorset character, rooted in its artisan base.”

“It is honest, it is human and it is real”

Rex Johnson, Nettlecombe: “St Michael’s trading estate is a trading estate and is bound to look a little shabby in places. SO WHAT?

“I find the current and ongoing mania for tidying everything up disturbing, totally distasteful and utterly superficial.

“Bridport is an historic and characterful market town and a characterful, shabby trading estate is very much a part of that.

“It is honest, it is human and it is real.

“The very last thing I would wish to see happen to St Michael’s trading estate is for it to be transformed into yet another Poundbury…”

THREE DAYS before Beaminster Tunnel first opened to the world in June 1832, one of the men working on it died.

William Aplin, a labourer, was killed by “a quantity of earth falling on him in widening the road under Hornhill, this side of the tunnel” [that is, the Beaminster side].

The fatal spot was marked by a stone with a white cross painted on it, about fifty yards up from the entrance to Horn Park House.

For years it’s been difficult to see this memorial, such is the muck and debris that these days accumulates at the side of busy roads, and so fast do vehicles now travel.

But as part of the work to repair the Tunnel, which comes to an end this weekend, Dorset County Council has cleaned up the stone and the surrounding verge.

These days roadside memorials to people who have lost their lives along them are quite common. Is this simple tribute to William Aplin the first of its kind in Dorset?

When it was built in 1831-32, there was a lot of unemployment in Dorset. According to the 1831 census, Beaminster Tunnel provided jobs for 50 out of the 70 non-agricultural labourers in Beaminster. When they were  taken on, The Western Flying Post noted at the time, their faces “seemed to brighten at the prospect of earning their own bread instead of being degraded paupers.” Poor William Aplin must have been so looking forward to celebrating the completion of the tunnel.

Because it was a tremendous occasion, the day it opened. A flag bearer and two bands led the way, and a procession nearly half a mile long marched up from Beaminster to Horn Hill, where a 21-gun salute was fired. Spectators numbered about 9,000. There was a fair on Horn Hill, and a hot air balloon ascended from a field near Beaminster.

Labourers were paid a bonus of two shillings and sixpence, much of which was spent in the town’s 16 pubs. The day ended with fireworks let off from the church tower.

Nothing so spectacular is planned for this weekend, when the Tunnel is due to reopen after five weeks of repair work and improvements. Beaminster town councillors are going for a look round on Saturday morning, and a few final jobs and checks need to be done. The picture below shows surveyors taking measurements of how high the tunnel now is internally, with new tarmac laid and a new lighting-rig up along the roof. Nobody wants to see any lorries crashing into the sides or the ceiling.