That’s why in Chideock, late this afternoon, Dave Symonds – captain of the bells at St Giles’ church – has been up the tower there, muffling the clappers. See the video below.

The bells will be rung more quietly before midnight – there’ll be a break for refreshments in The Clock House over the road – then the muffles will be taken off and the bells rung loud and clear.

Chideock’s bells were restored earlier this year, so tonight will be the first time they’ve been rung on a New Year’s Eve. It should – as Dave Symonds suggests – be quite a party. Chideock’s bellringers are due to be joined by a small group from Whitchurch Canonicorum, including Dave’s nephew Mark Symonds, who is Captain of the Bells at the church of St Candida and Holy Cross in Whitchurch Canonicorum.

So, it has been over a week since I uploaded my ‘labour of love’, Bridport by Night, to YouTube. The video really took off in the first four days, accumulating some 8,000 views in that period alone. Hits from technology site Gizmodo and Anglotopia helped it along its way, but the majority of views were picked up by an organic sharing frenzy on Facebook and Twitter.

Throughout last week, I had people who I didn’t know from the local area following me on Twitter and adding me on Facebook. Many of them commented expressing their praise for the video. To date, the video on YouTube has had about 75 comments (and the same number of replies by me), 206 likes and 2 dislikes – a comment reading “Two dislikes for this video? The pair of you: YOU ARE DEAD INSIDE” made me chuckle.

Interest has died down at the moment. A few people have quietly complained about how much I was mouthing off about it, so I haven’t been sharing it around so much. But the other night, ITV West Country Tonight came to West Bay and filmed me for a piece they are running. And this Saturday, the film is being shown at the Bridport Arts Centre as part of a Spirit of Bridport event.

My target number of views for the video is 12,977 (which is Wikipedia‘s listed population for Bridport). It should soon surpass that. I already have plans to make a second, improved version of the video. Difficult second album?

When it comes to exclusives I am going to be bringing you a real hum-dinger, a blow-your-socks-off, bells a-ringing and horns a-tooting exclusive of the type that most of us only get to see once in a lifetime. Yes, this is going to be a belter.

Today, this very one, all the legal formalities are being completed for a change of management and ownership of one of Bridport’s premier nosheries – sorry , I should have written – establishments for the participation and enjoyment of your dining experience. Either way, the sort of place that dishes up your grub.

Once the formalities are finished and done with and the dust has settled down this very place will be offering the good folk of Bridport the chance to enjoy, for one day only, a delicacy that most of them will not have seen or tasted in decades. It is one that the vast majority of them would give their eye teeth to enjoy again, I know I would, if I still had any.

Beyond that I bound by the journalistic code of honour, the usual well-stuffed brown envelope, to say no more for the time being. However, I will do. I must admit I seldom get excited about food but this is something even I am determined not to miss, come the day.

I promise you – if you are middle-aged, or older, you are going to love this one. Just you wait and see!

No less so in the fashionable wine bars, exotic eateries and working men’s cafes of Islington, Kensington and Chelsea. The talk is of little else. “Who will wear the proud and much-venerated chain of office next year?,” they all wonder aloud, scarcely able to keep their anticipation and enthusiasm within their trousers.

That must be the case.

After all, the London-based national press and broadcasters assume that the selection of one or the other of a pair of self-opinionated, publicity-mad, cringingly embarrassing oafs, whose only hope of gaining paid employment, outside of Bertram Mills Circus, is elective office as Mayor of London, is of interest to the rest of the nation.

So London must be just as interested in our affairs.

The thing is though, we have got a Mayor at the minute. Yes, I promise you we have. Obviously, though, he is a man who wouldn’t want to court the unwanted attention of keeping a low profile.

Invisible and unreported completely are the words that spring to mind.

I suppose he’s been busy all year finding his way around town, give him his due and always remember he has been here for a shorter period of time than Peacocks’ shop.

So who will replace him? That is the question that keeps most of us awake at nights. Old wasisname, the present incumbent of the exalted office, is of the Conservative 2nd XI party, and the big boys in the first team were pretty miffed when one of their number didn’t get the job last time around.

“It’s our turn and that’s so not fair” they screamed with all the maturity that we have come to expect of politicians when they don’t get their own way.

This time they might get a crack of the whip. Should word of the Tory plight reach Lib Dem HQ they might well order the lads to be nice to each other and take turns fairly.

Failing that, perhaps bashing a couple of heads together might prove hugely satisfying and fairly effective.

That’s a job I would take on.

Can you imagine the satisfaction to be gained from hearing the clunk of two empty heads colliding with force?

As time goes on we shall see. For just a few more weeks I shall have to contain my excitement and pretend that life is carrying on as normal.

Difficult, I know, when so much is at stake, but I shall try.

Editor’s Note: The Red Bladder has just been awarded a One Lovely Blog Award by Maddie Grigg for his blog at http://theredbladder.blogspot.com/ As Maddie Says, the award will look “particularly fetching” hanging on the wall of his online lair.

But he will have no problem in supplying the five random facts now expected of him, as readers of his singularly entertaining Twitter feed will know. Follow at http://www.twitter.com/theredbladder

The Waste Land app for iPad will kick-start a debate – sponsored by Bridport-based Watershed PR – about The Future of the Word.

The event on Saturday, November 19 is a coup for the new Bridport Open Book Festival, set up by Bridport Arts Centre to tie in with the famous Bridport Prize and celebrate reading and writing.

Faber’s Head of Digital Henry Volans, who published the app with Touch Press, said: ‘Though it has been presented at industry conferences in New York, London and Frankfurt, The Waste Land for iPad has never been shown at a public event.

‘So this is an exciting opportunity. Publishers spend much of their lives discussing the digital future of books but they rarely ask readers what they want.

‘Here’s a rare chance to bridge that gap, to bring a pioneering digital book to a book festival and provoke debate around new ways of presenting literature. Sceptics welcome!’

Mr Volans will be on a panel at Bridport Arts Centre alongside Jonathan Hudston (who runs the Real West Dorset site and is a director of Watershed PR), The Bridport News’ news editor James Tourgout, Bridport writer Katherine Locke and Exeter-based poet and IT specialist Damian Furniss.

Fiona Shaw performing The Waste Land

The Waste Land app is much more than just an electronic book. It includes a specially-commissioned film of actor Fiona Shaw performing the poem, archive recordings by Alec Guinness, Ted Hughes and Eliot himself that are otherwise hard to find, a new reading by actor Viggo Mortenson, and numerous interviews with such luminaries as Nobel Prize winner Seamus Heaney, many of these filmed by the BBC.

The Waste Land app has just been shortlisted for a 2012 Interaction Award by the Interaction Design Association (IxDA) for Disrupting – Re-imagining completely an existing product or service by creating new behaviors, usages or markets. The app is up against products including the Ford SmartGauge, Nike+ GPS and the Morgan Stanley Matrix.

TS Eliot (1888-1965) is buried not far from Bridport at East Coker in Somerset. He was voted the nation’s favourite poet in a BBC poll in 2009. The Waste Land, first published in 1922, is commonly regarded as the 20th century’s greatest poem.

Tickets (£5 / £6) are available from Bridport Arts Centre (01308 424204).

Once – I am not a greedy man – just once I would love to see a single person actually working on the gas pipe holes at the bottom end of South Street in Bridport.

Time after time I have driven through the narrow passageway left by these decaying archaeological pits, having waited an age at the ‘temporary’ traffic lights, there’s piles of yellow piping, none of it ever moves, and a scene so utterly desolate that it could be the surface of the moon.

I have spoken to others and all agree – no one ever actually does anything there.

I might see somebody working there one day but I am getting older and time passes so quickly. I try to tell myself that I can’t have everything in whatever time I have left but I don’t ask much – a single workman from Southern Gas Networks would do. Not a lot to ask is it, really?

Editor’s Note: The Red Bladder is a former national newspaper journalist (tabloid and broadsheet) and now a self-styled ‘retired layabout’. Follow him on Twitter @TheRedBladder or read his blog http://theredbladder.blogspot.com (or even do both).

How it happened then, that I ended up Frolic-ing last night, I’m not sure.

Tory HQ looked distinctly un-Oliver Letwin, decorated with feather boas, vinyl records hanging from the ceiling, giant posters of John Peel and Simon Callow but, weirdly, no glitter ball.

After paying the £3 to get in, there’s a poking ceremony with a giant plastic Flintstones club – but only if you’re new.

The music is a mix of classic floor-fillers and instant floor clearers (when the niche stuff comes out) but the vibe is fun and friendly, the dancing is unfettered by self-consciousness or talent and in true Bridport style, everyone is out to have a good time.

I will be going back.

Frolic – 13 October, Conservative Club, North Street, Bridport.

Editor’s Note: Lady Blah Blah is a Bridport mother who does not currently wish to be photographed Frolicking. Let’s just say that for now.

It’s not going to be a night club or ‘theme’ bar after all.

No, it is going to be yet another mini-supermarket.

I find it a minor puzzle as to why SPAR should want to have another outlet in the Bridport area but I expect they know their own business best.

It’s a bit of a step from the main part of West Bay but there is plenty of car parking available.

Handy though for the residents of the, comparatively, new Meadowlands Estate, while it remains on dry land.

Will the doors be open for floods of Christmas shoppers?

Time will tell as full details are yet to be revealed from the company that offers such good service from their outlet in East Street.

The Royal Logistical Corps Bomb Disposal Truck was called out and the weapons were found to date from World War Two.

I was out in Loders at about 9.45pm on August 11 when I saw a strange, squat truck beetling towards me in the gloom.

I tweeted then @RealWestDorset: “Just seen R.L.C Bomb Disposal truck driving through middle of Loders towards Bridport. Not going unduly fast; guess going home. From where?”

But it’s only now – thanks to Carolyn Stewart in the ever-informative Eggardon & Colmer’s View parish magazine – that I’ve discovered “from where”.

Ms Stewart writes: “The Rayboulds had to call them in having discovered some items in the loft of Croads Farm that they suspected had not seen the light of day for a few years.

“Alex and one of the bomb disposal squad gingerly removed them from the attic so that they could be properly examined… they were identified as two No. 68 anti tank grenades and a rifle-launched grenade dating from the second world war.

“They were probably never active but may have been used by the Home Guard of which Tommy Dennett’s father was a member and perhaps kept as a souvenir.”

As Ms Stewart comments: “Never a dull moment, eh?”

YOU'RE SO VANE: The weathervane on top of Bridport Town Hall, resplendent in its new coat of gold. Bridport artist Jemma Thompson is pictured right.

THE WEATHERVANE on top of Bridport Town Hall has been re-gilded – and very fine it looks too.

Bridport artist Jemma Thompson applied sheet gold in her studio on St Michael’s trading estate in the South West Quadrant.

The weathervane is much bigger – and heavier – than it looks from down on the ground.

It’s 2.4 metres long and is made from lead and copper, so it weighs around 100kg.

It took 10 men to get it back up on top of the Town Hall’s cupola.

Bob Gillis, clerk to Bridport Town Council, said: “The dome of the cupola has also been cleaned and the columns repainted. The clock face and surrounding slates are now being repaired and restored and as work is completed from the top down we will be lowering the scaffolding.” 

LACKLUSTRE: Bridport Town Hall weathervane and cupola before re-gilding and restoration.

Bridport Town Hall is being restored as part of a £1.2 million Heritage and Conservation Project funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, Bridport Town Council, Dorset County Council, and West Dorset District Council.

Weathervane was stuck in Somerset cart wheel hub

Bridport Town Hall is Grade 1 Listed but that doesn’t mean it was constructed with impeccable skills and materials first time round.

I was talking about it in The Loders Arms the other evening to structural engineer Simon Brody of Brody Forbes Partnership in West Bay.

He was saying that a key part of the structure supporting the weathervane (the bit the pole was stuck into, in very non-technical terms) had been found to be the hub of an old Somerset cart wheel. He knew it was Somerset because there was a name inscribed which he’d traced back as far as 1823.

Mr Brody wondered whether a cart had come down from somewhere like Taunton or Shepton Mallett and broken down and, rather than try to repair it, they’d salvaged the wheel hub for re-use.

And you have to say: it may have been improvised back in the 19th century, but no one could say that it hadn’t lasted, given that it’s now 2011.

Editor’s Note: Jemma Thompson also gilded the fine golden bull hanging outside The Bull Hotel in Bridport. Pretty cool to have two gold artefacts in Bridport town centre. I can only think of the King George III statue in (say) Weymouth. The statue’s mason, incidentally, was James Hamilton – who also worked on Bridport Town Hall…