An interview at Bridport Arts Centre with the artist Brian Rice, exhumed from the archives to celebrate the current exhibition at the Redfern Gallery in London – Brian Rice: Early Works 1959-1970.

Brian was born in Yeovil in 1936 and grew up in the nearby villages of Tintinhull and Montacute. On his father’s side, his family came from South Somerset. On his mother’s side, from Dorset, from Lyme Regis and from Whitchurch Canonicorum in the Marshwood Vale. “We were peasants,” he says.

Brian went to Yeovil Grammar School, Yeovil School of Art, did two years of National Service with the Army and then trained as a art teacher at Goldsmiths College in London. He did a year’s teaching at a secondary school in High Wycombe, and then resigned in the summer of 1960 and went to the Sahara desert. “It just came to me sitting out in the desert waiting for lifts that being a painter was what I wanted to do more than anything else.”

He cycled back from Gibraltar to Montacute (he was a superb cyclist and used to race for the army) and a disused chicken shed next to his parent’s house became his studio. Brian also worked as a gardener; one of his jobs was to maintain the graveyard at West Coker. He was disgusted by the racism of the vicar’s wife at West Coker, and his painting “Persil For Whites Only”, in the Redfern Gallery show, is a rare, explicitly political work. Otherwise, as Ian Massey remarks in the excellent show catalogue, there is in some of the work from this period “a residual neo-romanticism… informed by the landscapes of Piper and Sutherland.”

Through 1961, Brian had paintings accepted for several group shows. The Bath and Wilts Evening Chronicle praised the “strength and virility” in his work.

Early in 1962, keen to develop his artistic career, he moved back to London… and that is some of the background to the chat in the video above, which covers subjects including the impact of London on Brian and his art, how he used to hire out works for movies, magazine shoots and adverts, how he was part of a working-class grouping that felt it was changing the visual face of Britain – and so on.

There’s a great selection of images on the Redfern Gallery website:http://www.redfern-gallery.com/brian-… Having a look there is highly recommended. The exhibition itself is on until March 1.

NB: These notes above also draw on an essay by Sara Hudston (http://www.watershedpr.co.uk) in the 2001 University of Brighton Gallery catalogue Brian Rice: Retrospective Exhibition. The video above was filmed when this exhibition travelled to Bridport Arts Centre in 2002. We’ll also see if we can exhume from the archives another interview with Brian in which he talks about returning to the South West to live in Dorset at the end of the Sixties and the start of the Seventies.

The new oak bench made for Tudor Arcade in Dorchester by Simon Thomas Pirie Furniture of Dorset has been installed and is now “officially open”, as a smiling John Beaves tells a smiling passer-by at the end of this video.

Click here to see how the bench was steam-bent and scorched, and read why.

Note: this video was filmed and edited by Stephen Banks (“Dorset Scouser“) with me (Jonathan Hudston) chipping in from the sidelines in a manner that I like to think was sometimes useful.

When we there, we were approached by a rather belligerent old man who pointed at the bench and said: “I hope this isn’t being paid for on the rates.” Momentarily, it was tempting to say YES, to see his reaction, but it was obvious what it would have been, and anyway,  it wouldn’t have been true. It’s paid for by the private owners of the arcade.

Personally, I think it’s good to have features that add character to a place.

One of the reasons that Lyme Regis has fared well in recent years is that the resort has been able to secure some eye-catching and distinctive street furniture; the famous ammonite lamp-posts, for example.

Or E: All of those things and more? The answer, of course, is E, certainly in the eyes of its makers – the team at Simon Thomas Pirie Furniture at Briantspuddle near Bere Regis in Dorset. The oak bench they’ve steam-bent and scorched is going to be installed in Dorchester’s Tudor Arcade, outside of Waitrose and Fat Face, at the start of May.  So how does Simon Pirie hope his creation will impress the eyes of its beholders and the backsides of its users?

He said: “I hope people will get a sense of fun out of it, I hope it will be visually stimulating, and I also hope it will spark conversation, because in a sense it is a conversation piece.

“It’s a practical piece of furniture with a few quirks, but it is first and foremost a conversation piece, somewhere people can meet and talk and people watch.”

In the video above Simon explains that the bench is partly inspired by traditional love seats, in which people sit side-by-side but back-to-back, so the bench is divided into a series of separate chairs.

Simon said: “The chair that you see as you walk down the arcade towards the supermarket will be face on towards you and the idea is that it will feel quite throne-like. The person who gets that seat is going to feel quite important because they are going to have the whole vista of the shopping arcade coming towards them. I’m looking forward to getting that kind of long shot down the arcade to see who’s got that prime seat.

“It might be me on occasions, I suppose.”

Simon Pirie trained in the 1990s at Hooke Park College near Beaminster in West Dorset. The college was set up by the internationally renowned furniture maker John Makepeace to encourage a generation of “entrepreneurs in wood”. Simon has been running his own fine furniture business for 12 years, until now working largely with individual clients.

The Dorchester bench is different. The result of a public art commission, it’s a significant new venture.

Simon said:  “We wanted to create something special for this. I mean, we’re known as fine furniture makers. Public art is relatively new for us, and it’s an area we’re looking to expand into.

“This is the first piece that will actually go in situ, so it’s an important job for us.

“We’re working with architects and commercial companies rather than individual clients and that’s a little bit different for us, so it’s a groundbreaker.

“It also manages to encompass lots of other areas of interest, like steambending, like high-tech manufacturing techniques, and like scorching, so there’s lots of elements in there which are very exciting for us as furniture makers.

“And I guess the slightly quirky joke from my perspective is that, if you look at it from above, it’s actually in the shape of a question mark.

“So, there is that kind of question – What should it be used for? How can it be used? Hopefully it has that sense of fun about it, because you don’t want want to be too po-faced and serious.”

Simon said that he has always had a hankering to do outside furniture, and the chance to fulfill that wish in Dorchester has been gratifying.

“It’s our county town, it’s where local and regional government is based, so it’s good to do it in Dorchester.

“It’s a gem of a little town, it’s a beautiful place, and the arcade where it’s going to be the visual centrepiece is having a refresh.

“Despite the general air of gloom about the economy there’s actually quite a lot of optimism in Dorchester, there’s new projects and new buildings, so it’s an exciting place to be.

“It’s our local county town, six or seven miles away from our workshop; it feels very nice.”

Editor’s Note: I’ve been interested in Hooke Park College and people associated with it ever since I first went there about 18 years ago. Simon Pirie is part of the group of people who’ve spread out from there across Dorset… I made the video above with Stephen Banks (“Dorset Scouser“).

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?

Thomas Hardy mentions this tree (although he calls it Bockhampton Sweet) in one of his novels.

Claire Tomalin, on page 19 of my copy of her biography of Thomas Hardy, says: ‘He was in charge of the garden, growing fruit and vegetables – carrots, onions, parsnips, broad beans and potatoes; in the autumn there would be Gascoyne Scarlets, Golden Pippins and Bockhampton Sweets on their apple trees and cider to be made.’

She got this information from  a book called Hardyana by J Stevens Cox 1964. She also quotes from a letter written by Mary Hardy listing vegetables growing which is to be found in the Museum H.1975.316.22.

The Bockhampton Scarlet was listed in the RHS Journal No.25 as exhibited in 1900 but there are no further records and I can’t find it listed in the Brogdale collections. There is one listed in 1904 as Bockhampton Beauty but no recent records.

My plan is to start a small cider orchard. It would be wonderful to find this tree and even more wonderful if it happened to be growing locally in Dorset.

The National Apple Register describes it as: Size, large; Shape, intermediate to flat, truncate-conic; Skin, yellow-green flushed deep red; flesh soft, yellowish; Flavour, subacid [good dessert]; Season, very late [February onwards].

If anyone knows anything at all about it please would you contact me.

Ruth Whitty works in Green Skills & Garden Industries at Kingston Maurward College near Dorchester and is the co-ordinator for ‘Apple Day’.

Tel: 01305 215183

Email: ruth.whitty@kmc.ac.uk

Editor’s Note: Ruth said to me: “I thought how lovely it would be to find out it was still growing round here. Apple trees live for more than 100 years, so it’s possible.

“It might just be spotted somewhere, with the leaves now falling, and with this particular apple staying on trees so late. It might be visible.”

It’s not a variety that was spotted during all the research that was done into Dorset’s cider history by Liz Copas and Nick Poole, but who knows? Liz and Nick re-discovered 20 ‘lost’ Dorset varieties of cider apple; there might still somewhere be one more.

As for the question of whether there was ever ‘a Dorset cider’ see the video above with Nick Poole, founder of the West Milton Cider Club, supremo of Powerstock Cider Festival, and maker of West Dorset Real Cider.

A companion video with Liz Copas can be seen by clicking on this link: ‘Was there ever a Dorset cider, part 2?’

Ms Dean is involved with the Road for the Future project, which has been set up to look at ideas about the countryside, transport and access.

As Powerstock Hut is not itself the most easily accessible place in the world, especially on a Sunday afternoon, a free minibus will run from Bridport to Powerstock (and back again).

Passengers are promised “a special intervention” by Ms Dean to entertain them during the journey.

The minibus will leave the Nationwide bus stop, West Street, Bridport at 4.00pm sharp on Sunday, November 27, and the return trip will arrive back in Bridport by 7.45pm. Seats are bookable on a first come, first served basis.  Anyone interested is advised to book early with project manager Jo Morland on 01305 860461 or via joanna@jomorland.f9.co.uk.

According to Ms Morland: “Judith responds to different contexts using a wide range of media, including sculpture, installation, video and performance. She’s particularly interested in ideas of territory and claiming, and is often concerned with questions of behaviour, including her own. Judith will be showing images of recent projects and discussing their relevance to her work for Powerstock Common.”

Road for the Future is a year-long project offering artists’ residencies and commissions and educational workshops on the disused railway line between Maiden Newton and Bridport.

Sustrans is working to develop the route as a multi-use Trailway.

Powerstock Common nature reserve, long-leased by Dorset Wildlife Trust, is at the centre of the Trailway and is the focus for these collaborations between artists, educators, architects, makers and the community.

Road for the Future continues until May 2012.  Its first event was a residency by the Energy Café on Powerstock Common in April 2011, offering lunches using foraged and local produced ingredients.

The Energy Cafe can be seen in the video above by John Holman of Transition Vision TV, the online TV service for Dorset, Somerset and Wiltshire.

New artworks made in response to different aspects of Powerstock Common will be shown to the public during April or May 2012.

Project partners are Dorset Wildlife Trust, Sustrans, the Architectural Association at Hooke Park, PVA MediaLab and Treewise Co-op.

Road for the Future is funded by the National Lottery through Arts Council England, West Dorset District Council, Artsway Associates and The Dorset Design and Heritage Forum.

For further information contact Anna Best, 07810 374745, me@annabest.info

Brian Wood at Palmers Brewery in Bridport. His lorry has done more than 1.5 million miles. Above Brian's head is the trapdoor that leads though into Palmers' malt loft.

THIRTY years ago one of the unsung heroes of British brewing began criss-crossing the country with sacks of malt.

Brian Wood started carrying malt for Hugh Baird and Sons at Station Maltings in Witham in Essex in the Autumn of 1981. When Baird’s got taken over in the mid-1990s, he set up on his own.

I’ve met him a couple of times at Palmers Brewery in Bridport, where he’s been delivering malt since the early 1980s.

He’s a fine man, as I hope comes through in the video that I made about him for the Palmers Brewery YouTube channel.

Here, also, is a link to a story written about Brian Wood and Palmers.

What that story doesn’t contain is a list of all the UK breweries that Brian has been to.

It’s an evocative litany, so here it is. Fifty-nine different brewers, 63 separate breweries, some of them now shut for many years. Morrells’ Lion Brewery, for example, was converted into ‘luxury apartments’. Julia Hanson’s in Dudley was knocked down to make way for a Netto supermarket, turned this summer into an Asda.

• Whitbread (Sheffield, Cheltenham, Salford)
• Boddingtons (Manchester)
• Joseph Holt (Manchester)
• JW Lees (Manchester)
• Timothy Taylor (Keighley)
• Samuel Smith (Tadcaster)
• Bass (Burton)
• McMullens (Hertford)
• Julia Hanson (Dudley)
• Banks (Wolverhampton)
• Hardy Hanson (Kimberley)
• Brains (Cardiff)
• Buckleys (Llanelli)
• Felinfoel (Dyfed)
• Wadworth (Devizes)
• Hall & Woodhouse (Blandford)
• Palmers Brewery (Bridport)
• Otter Brewery (Blackdown Hills)
• Butcombe (Blagdon)
• Smiles (Bristol)
• Hook Norton (Oxon)
• Morrells (Oxford)
• Fullers (Chiswick )
• Tring (Hertford)
• Adnams (Southwold)
• Tolly’s (Ipswich)
• Harveys (Lewes)
• Hepworths (Horsham)
• King & Barnes (Horsham)
• Hull Brewery
• Batemans (Wainfleet)
• Robinsons (Stockport))
• Thwaites (Blackburn)
• Jennings (Cockermouth)
• Moorhouse (Burnley)
• Higsons (Liverpool)
• Burtonwood Brewery
• Everards (Leicester and Burton on Trent)
• Marstons (Burton on Trent)
• Ind Coope (Burton on Trent)
• Castlemaine (Wrexham)
• Oldham Brewery
• Hart Brewery (Preston)
• Mitchells (Lancaster)
• Vaux (Sunderland & Sheffield)
• Federation (Newcastle)
• Courage (Bristol & Reading)
• Crouch Brewery (Essex)
• Gales (Horndean)
• Devenish (Redruth)
• St Austell (Cornwall)
• Halls (Oxford)
• Tisbury Brewery (Wiltshire)
• Ringwood Brewery (Hampshire)
• Shepherd Neame (Faversham)
• Trough Brewery (Idle)
• Brakspears (Henley on Thames)
• Pilgrim (Reigate)
• Mendip Brewery (Somerset)

Imagine going to the Trough Brewery at Idle for the first time! And seeing this, when you got there.

Nowadays Brian delivers mostly to Palmers in Dorset, Arkell’s in Swindon, Felinfoel near Llanelli, Harveys in Lewes, Elgood’s in Wisbech, Wadworth in Devizes and Fuller’s in Chiswick.

Good reason, I’d say, to favour those seven brewers.

Chesil Beach, Dorset, looking towards the Isle of Portland - and roaring towards London. Photograph by Nigel Mykura, reused under Creative Commons Licence.

SO JUST where would you expect to hear the sound of waves crashing on stones along the Chesil Beach?

As questions go that might sound fairly daft. But there are two answers.

The one that might not immediately spring to the minds of Dorset residents is London’s Euston Road.

Yes, “the mighty roar of London’s traffic” is to be drowned out by the crashing of Dorset surf.

It is all the idea and work of one Bill Fontana, a ‘sound artist’. He has made a series of recordings of the incoming tide along the beach. He will then mix and edit these to be played through a series of speakers mounted on the building of the Wellcome Foundation in one of London’s busiest and noisiest thoroughfares.

This “experiment in perception” will show that “most people don’t pay any attention to the sounds around them,” explains Fontana. Who goes on to tell us that “to change the context in which you hear something, you change the meaning of it“.

Well, I would never argue with that – even if I understood it.

I suppose he might even consider the alternative.

Why not a string of speakers stretching from West Bexington to Portland carrying the sounds of heavy lorries rumbling, car horns tooting and motor bikes revving in a busy London street?

No, that would be silly!

Editor’s Note: The video is embedded – with thanks for making and sharing it – from WiredVideoUk’s channel on YouTube.

BILL BARTLETT, a great Dorsetman, passed away in late July 2011.

I was privileged to shoot an interview with him at Eype on the Dorset coast about his involvement with the Symondsbury Mummers – how the tradition was revived in 1950 and particularly about the film of the Mummers made by the late Peter Kennedy in 1952.

Bill was simply brilliant company and to meet him was to feel that you had known him for years: a very special person to many, many people.

“Singing the Travels” – the song associated with the Symondsbury Mummers – is played on melodeon by the late Peter Kennedy.

This material is drawn from the Trilith production, “Walk in Room”.

Editor’s Note: John Holman runs Transition Vision, the online TV service for Dorset, Somerset and Wiltshire.

You can see the 21st century incarnation of the Symondsbury Mummers here.

Peter Kennedy – writing in the Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, in 1952 – reported being knocked sideways when he first saw the Symondsbury Mummers perform.

‘”Magnificent young lads of sixteen and seventeen, over six feet, took the parts of the warriors and looked like giants in their tall conical hats.

“I found that they had learnt their parts entirely by word of mouth from uncles, fathers and grandfathers.”

The text of the Symondsbury Mummers Play is reproduced, with a short but good introduction, in A Dorset Christmas (Tempus, 2005), compiled by Fran and Geoff Doel.

St George: “Come, give me leave, I’ll thee battle, / And quickly make thy bones to rattle.”

It’s bloodthirsty but entertaining…

THIS IS the story of Lester Cowling’s 15-month battle with Dorset County Council over a parking ticket.

It’s a story that raises some worrying questions about how the county council treats people – and facts.

Why was Mr Cowling not explicitly warned that he needed to buy a ticket?

Why did the council say that new parking restrictions in Dorchester had been advertised – when the Dorset Echo and Wessex FM say they hadn’t?

Why did the council say that the National Trust owned a building in High West Street, Dorchester – when the National Trust insists it does not?

None of the answers to these questions is clear.

But Dorset County Council staff have been sent for “retraining”.

Lester’s battle with Dorset County Council

Most people – when they’re given a parking ticket – seethe but then accept the fact and pay up.

But Mr Cowling describes himself as a bit of an old Bolshie. A Portlander by origin, he trained as a journalist on the famous old Daily Mirror scheme in Plymouth (Alastair Campbell went on this). He had a long career in the media; jobs included running commercial radio stations, being Features Editor on the Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph, and serving for a while as The Sun’s TV critic. These days he lives in West Bexington and works as the head of publicity for an environmental organisation.

In short, he’s no fool.

And he has not appreciated being treated like a booby.

Everybody has always acknowledged that he never intended to commit a parking offence.

Strictly speaking, he did – and Dorset County Council has been determined to make him pay.

Mr Cowling says that the council has spent tens of hours and possibly thousands of pounds in its efforts to make him pay.

The result was – after a tribunal held in Bournemouth – that he parted with £25.

Parking is one of the great local journalistic subjects (dog muck is another). The assemblage of pieces here is an attempt to cover it in a newish way. So first the facts, drawing on an account prepared by Mr Cowling himself.

How Lester Cowling got his Dorchester parking ticket

Mr Cowling’s ticket was issued one Sunday afternoon in November 2009. It was one of many given to motorists after the unpublicised introduction of on-street pay and display parking in Dorchester in 2009.

The scheme operates in some Dorchester streets but not in others, where kerbside parking remains free.

There was a postal strike on. Mr Cowling drove specially to Dorchester to deliver a cheque.

He’d not intended to park in High West Street, but saw a free space and pulled in. For decades these spaces had been free. He didn’t check the kerbside signs because it would have meant stepping into the busy road.

A Traffic Warden (posh title Parking Enforcement Officer) was near where he parked. Mr Cowling had a brief conversation with him before heading off to post his letter.

He didn’t realise that he’d failed to notice a parking machine, tucked away next to railings, which he’d already passed when he pulled in.

The Traffic Warden didn’t let on. When Mr Cowling returned less than five minutes later the Traffic Warden was taping a ticket to his windscreen.

So began, says Mr Cowling, “a long battle which would see piles of correspondence accumulate and which would reveal a side to the County Council very different from the friendly, caring and frugal organisation it likes to portray itself as.

“Some of the false statements made may astound you.

“Watch the video and see what happened.”

Click here for Lester Cowling’s story.

Click here for film-maker Ali Cameron’s story.

Click here for Dorset County Council’s response.