‘It’s the pictures,’ I said. ‘We love the pictures.’

I didn’t mention the author of Never Let Me Go was going to be there, interviewed by From Page to Screen film festival curator Jonathan Coe. That was a highlight for me. For Mr Grigg it would be anathema.

He was already accompanying this harem of village book lovers under sufferance, filling in for the outing organiser when she suddenly became a grandmother. The thought of a couple of literary luvvies stroking each other’s navels on the Palace stage would have turned his stomach.

And then a little voice piped up from the back seat: ‘It’s a very weird book, about cloning people for organ donations. I didn’t really like it.’

My neighbour, Mrs Warboys.

And then Mr Grigg remembered he was missing Champions League football on the telly. He almost did a handbrake turn and headed back up into the hills. Instead, he wore his grumpiness like a shroud for the rest of the journey, placated only when I promised him snogging in the back row of the movies if he was good.

Fortunately, we had to fill up from the front.

‘What are those two chairs doing on the stage?’ Mr Grigg said.

‘Oh, there’s going to be a quick talk about the film before it starts.’

He sighed as big as Devon.

And then author Kazuo Ishiguro came on with Jonathan Coe to rapturous applause.

‘I’m missing Spurs v. Real Madrid for this?’ Mr Grigg said.

I passed him his gin and slimline tonic and kicked his leg.

‘In the literary world, Mr Grigg, this man is bigger than Pat Jennings’ hands,’ I said, showing my age and also my ignorance of 21st century football.

Mr Grigg settled back and attempted to enjoy the insight of the interview. He warmed to Ishiguro and it was going well until Coe referred to the novelist as ‘Ish’.

‘It’ll be Angel Drawers next,’ Mr Grigg said.

And then Never Let Me Go began. We were spellbound by this beautiful film, which, despite its futuristic tone is a haunting story of love, friendship and regret as the protagonists gently make their way to their inexorable fate. It was beautifully acted, scripted, directed, photographed and lit.

As we filed out of the Palace, the editor of Black Beauty and Hornblower, who lives in Lush Places, breezed past and made a very intelligent comment I did not understand.

‘Yes, the lighting and cinematography did it for me,’ I said, turning to Mrs Warboys, who has very close links to a film director of international repute, and whose approval I seek constantly.

‘And what did you think?’ I asked Mr Grigg.

He wiped a tear from his cheek.

‘I liked it so much, I want you to read the book,’ he said.

Result.

YOU TUBERS: Potato lovers in Drimpton Village Hall. Potato Day tables are set out in a horseshoe pattern in the middle of the hall, with potatoes displayed round two sides, and onions, shallots and seeds on one side.

WEST DORSET’S fourth annual Potato Day, organised by gardeners for gardeners, will be held in Drimpton Village Hall on Saturday 12 February from 10:30am to 3:30pm.

Over 60 varieties of Seed Potatoes will be offered for sale by Somerset nursery Pennard Plants, by the tuber or in bags, with information on type, cultivation and disease resistance for each one.

Potatoes are not a difficult crop to grow, though they can be prone to a range of diseases.

Planting varieties suited to local conditions can make the difference between success and failure.

Potato Day enables growers to meet together, chat about what has grown well for them and also chose from a wide range of varieties brought by Pennards, who are familiar with our soil and climate.

Previous Potato Days here in Drimpton have attracted growers from West Dorset as well as our neighbours in Somerset and Devon. Some are very experienced, heading straight to the types they know – but always with an ear to what others are recommending.

There are novice gardeners as well, for whom the expertise on hand, from other visitors and from Pennards and Horticultural Society members, really does offer encouragement and reassurance.

This fourth Potato Day arranged by Clapton, Wayford and District Horticultural Society will follow the format of previous years, with tweaks and improvements, including all-day brunches, so if you skip breakfast you won’t need to await lunch time.

Other features:

Warming drinks and for young people, activities and fun as usual.

SPUD FUN: Mural created with potato painting by children visiting Drimpton’s Potato Day, under the guidance of local artist Jenny Beck and helpers

Heritage Vegetable seeds, a selection of Garlic, Onion and Shallot sets, plus herbs, fruit bushes, rhubarb and more.

Chance to enter our popular potato growing competition, (classes for young people and adults – weigh-in on Show Day, Saturday 14th August).

There is no need to book, but for further information please contact 01308 868843.

Drimpton Village Hall is on Chard Road, Drimpton, between Chard and Beaminster.

For SatNav: DT8 3RF

As gardeners we try to work with Mother Nature improving the soil and keeping a good balance in the garden, let’s hope she smiles on us with the weather on Potato Day on 12th February.

Editor’s Note: Brian Hesketh blogs at http://soggydaygardener.blogspot.com/

Or click here for more on Real West Dorset about potatoes (and parsnips) and Drimpton.

Little Howard’s Big Question

Episode: What is the World’s Most Dangerous Food?

Broadcast Info: Wednesday, 15 Sep 2010, 16:00 (30 mins), BBC1

Synopsis: More adventures with the inquisitive six-year-old cartoon boy. A sudden fear of coconuts sends Little Howard off on a quest. What’s more dangerous – honey gathering in Nepal or eating a Dorset chilli?

And at this point, I thought Woo… That must be the Dorset Naga (one of the hottest chillies in the world).

The Dorset Naga. Photograph copyright Sea Spring Seeds.

So I phoned up Michael Michaud at Sea Spring Seeds in West Bexington, and he said: “Yeah, that’s us. They came down to see us. It’s a kind of half-cartoon, half-real-person thing. I ended up talking to a cardboard cut out and they filled it in with this little kid. It’s fun!”

Michael said the programme was shown last year but I never heard about it and, now it’s being repeated, I thought you might like to know to about it too.

“What I like about it is, it’s not patronising,” said Michael. “It doesn’t talk down to kids.”

I didn’t ask him which activity was judged to be most dangerous – honey gathering or Naga eating. I’d guess the former – what always surprises me most about the Naga is how fruity it is, not simply how hot – but we’ll have to see.

PS: While we’re on the subject of children’s TV programmes, it’s also worth watching out on CBeebies for Nuzzle and Scratch. Partly filmed in Weymouth, it’s about two alpacas who get sent out from an employment agency to work for different clients. It’s very funny. I particularly recommend the cinema episode.

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.

Dead babies

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). 

England may play their first World Cup Game on the evening of Saturday June 12, but first there’s the annual village fun day and scarecrow festival to enjoy.

Bunting, Union Jacks and St George’s flags are lining the square and village green ahead of the big day, which this year has the theme of Merrie Olde England. Not an allusion to the average age of Mr Capello’s squad (28.7), but to the fact that it’s 350 years since the restoration of Charles II to the throne. The local link being that the fugitive king famously spent the night at Broadwindsor in 1651 as he fled through Dorset from the Battle of Worcester.

Anyway, the fun day starts at 9am with a Big Breakfast in the Comrades Hall until 10.30am.

BBC children's TV presenter Cerrie Burnell with BFG scarecrow in Broadwindsor, 2009.

Scarecrows will be out in force around the village from 10am and will be on show throughout the weekend, when maps will be available.

At 2.15pm there will be a parade around the village’s one-way system by local groups carrying decorated shields. They will be led by Sam Trott from the local Royal British Legion and the Babylon Morris dancers.

The whole shebang will be opened by Ruth Yarde and Jean Frampton, Broadwindsor’s ‘knights in shining armour’ who saved post office facilities in the village.

During the afternoon, there will be teas, a bar, barbecue, stalls including plate smashing, splat the rat, the stocks and entertainment from Stompin’ Dave, Punch and Judy and Mr Hocus Pocus the magic man.

After that it will be up to the England team to either crown a glorious Dorset day – or make people wish they’d kept the stocks out…

I GREW up in ‘deepest darkest’ Dorset, several miles from any town, so the nights were truly dark, and the stars were bright in the sky, with just the sounds of nature, the wind and rain, and the strange noises of howling animals in the surrounding woods and fields. It was an unusual and magical childhood, free of television and pop culture and politics and the rest of the modern world. I didn’t know any of the TV shows that my friends watched, but I didn’t miss them either, because together we’d explore the world of trees and streams, in sun and rain and snow, as hunters and adventurers, and we felt like we had discovered something that the rest of the world had forgotten.

After school I went to London, in order to find like-minds and create a career as an artist. I loved the energy and excitement of the city, it introduced me to great art, and gave me a sense of the development of art and culture over the centuries. It also inspired my first serious works – an ambitious series of abstract paintings, through which I found my voice and developed my own language of expression.

But after a few years, and despite all of these amazing encounters and adventures, I began to miss the feeling of nature surrounding me, along with the deep sense of the sublime it inspires. And one day, while on holiday in Dorset I was introduced to an artistic community in Symondsbury, just outside Bridport, and within a month I’d moved back to live in the countryside. The following year I started a new studio in an empty warehouse on an old rope-making estate in Bridport, and St Michael’s Studios has now grown to become one of the most vibrant art venues in the West County. Our Open Studio events have become very popular, and I find it’s a great way for me to share my work, as it allows visitors to experience the gradual evolution of my paintings over several months.

Lewesdon Tree, May 2010, Kit Glaisyer

My recent series of landscape paintings are inspired by the landscape of west Dorset, particularly around the Marshwood Vale, and they are intended as a contemporary update on the historic tradition of landscape painting. While I love the work of the Impressionists and Expressionism, I feel that these styles ultimately led to the idea that anyone could make a painting, and so much of what we see now seems so lazy and stylised. I’ve followed a different path, one closer to post-impressionist Paul Cézanne, who left Paris to go and live in rural France and painted around Montagne Sainte-Victoire for the next 25 years. He said he wanted “to make of impressionism something solid and lasting like the art in the museums”, and desired to unite observation of nature with the permanence of classical composition. Cezanne’s dogged pursuit of these principles led to the birth of Modern Art.

I also return to the examples set by the great masters, who all demonstrated this conviction to a personal vision, also evident in the great works of the British artists JMW Turner and John Constable, who were in turn inspired by the Dutch 17th Century painters like Jacob van Ruisdael and Filips Koninck – some of the first painters to establish Landscape as an independent genre. Turner and Constable were associated with Romanticism – the complex artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th Century and included artists such as Caspar David Friedrich, Eugène Delacroix and William Blake. It also inspired the Hudson River painters, a mid-19th century American art movement of landscape painters that included Jasper Francis Cropsey, Thomas Cole, Albert Bierstadt and Frederic Edwin Church.

One thing all these artists shared is a deep respect for nature, and a determination to do justice to the subject. They all set out to achieve very ambitious paintings, requiring many months or even years of work, as well as the development of accomplished new painting techniques, and that’s also the way I like to work these days – gaining confidence as I tackle ever more complex subjects.

I now feel like I’m beginning to do justice to my feelings for nature. I’ve learnt the necessary patience required to give my work the time it needs in order to capture the intricate subtleties of light and atmosphere, and to honour the incredible complexity and rhythm of this ancient landscape.

It’s 66 years since the US 1st Infantry Division left Dorset to invade Europe and defeat Hitler.

Walditch in World War Two...

... and Walditch nowadays with a member of the World War Two Living History Association.

The event at The Hyde in Walditch has two aims: to honour the young Americans who came to England to fight for freedom, and to raise money for the Help for Heroes charity and the soldiers of today.

Over the weekend of May 29-30, there will be displays of uniforms and weapons as used during World War Two. Visitors are welcome from 10am – 4pm at The Hyde (now a BUPA care home).

Ice-cream, beer, turkey, flame-throwers

Members of the Living History Association have researched the 1st Division’s time near Bridport, and here is a full version of their notes, with details of everything from ice-cream to flame-throwers.

– Back in October 1943 Company E of the 2nd Battalion 16th Infantry Regiment, part of the 1st Infantry Division moved for the winter into Nissen huts at Walditch.

Officers were billeted in The Hyde itself, NCOs in houses in the village.

Pictures may fade, but memories should not

There were hikes and films, rain, Military Police in town, liberal passes, the people were friendly, the First Sgt. got married, there was turkey on Turkey Day and again on Christmas in the big Battalion mess hall, with ice cream and beer besides.

There was cool weather, firing on Symondsbury and Eype Down ranges, a lecture on What We Will Find in Europe, training in street fighting in a bombed-out section of  Weymouth, church on Sundays in Bridport…

In short, the men found England the best place to be next to home.

In January 1944, British General Montgomery reviewed the troops on the cricket field at Bridport, and told them that of all the American Divisions he’d seen, he’d rather fight with the 1st US Division.

In February, they went 86 miles by motor to Barnstaple for assault team training, amphibious operations, attacks on fortified positions, boat landings and obstacle courses.

On the 24th there was a beach landing by the entire Regiment. In March, the Company boarded the U.S.S. Henrico at Weymouth for another practice landing and attack inland. The bright spot in this picture was the chow served by the Navy, which was excellent.

Back in Walditch, James Cagney and cast entertained the troops with Keep ‘Em Rolling.

A Battalion rifle match was won by Company E and on April 2 General Eisenhower came around to inspect, present awards and make a speech.

Any illusions about returning home to the States were dispelled when he said: “The First Division will be one of the last to go home. If nothing else, I’ll just keep you around for good luck.”

From this time on the Division was on alert for the invasion of the continent. They went to Martinstown to train, revisited the U.S.S. Henrico, and assaulted “Able Red” Beach once, then again.

General Heubner, the Division Commander, made a speech.

The Company was organised into 5 assault sections and trained that way, each section equipped with flame throwers, and bangalore torpedoes, and with its own base of fire.

On June 1, they boarded the U.S.S. Henrico again, and when it sailed out from Weymouth harbour on June 5, D-Day and H-Hour were announced.

– It was one of the greatest events in European history.

Editor’s Note: The black and white photographs above are used courtesy of the World War Two Living History Association. To give a fuller flavour of those extraordinary times in 1943-44, I’ve also compiled for this piece a short silent film showing stills of American troops in Burton Bradstock, on the beach, in the pub, in the village school. It’s haunting, to look at all the faces.