Photograph taken near West Milton in Dorset on 28 December, 2010.

Here’s a closer look.

Closer up view of object in the sky photographed near West Milton in Dorset on 28 December, 2010.

I have to say, I don’t think it’s a UFO – it must be the moon – but I’ve never seen it in quite this guise before.

The way Strauss (110), Cook (235NO) and Trott (135NO) batted they are almost up to the standard of the team I used to play for in the Crosby Cup.

Certainly each of them could earn a place in the Chideock Veterans XI any day of the week. Mind you, they were always one of the weaker sides in the competition.

INSPIRED by a recent mention on this site of the poet William Wordsworth, who lived at Racedown in the far west of Dorset in the mid-1790s, the Upper Marshwood Vale parish councillor and former Bridport News reporter Ali Cameron, got in touch.

“To the seriously important stuff - Bettiscombe and daffodils,” he wrote – and he sent photographs.        

“This is my patch and from the Marshwood ridge we can see the lane from Horse Mill Cross past the Rowe’s fields and Waterhouse farm and on into Bettiscombe.

“Drifts of daffodils follow the field side of the hedges along the lane as well as down the small streams that trickle from under Pilsdon and eventually form the Char.

“These tinge the fields giving them yellow shadows.

“But the most spectacular occurrence of daffodils is to the south end of Bettiscombe… a small bank which annually turns to gold. Not the end of a rainbow but the smallest and most beautifully formed outcrop of daffodils, this is the Vale at its best…”

He hasn’t got any pictures of this bank, unfortunately. Nor have I.

It’s this bank of wild daffodils I remember once being shown by the poet James Crowden. It was a spectacular sight. Even if either of us did have pictures, they wouldn’t do it justice. (But next year perhaps, if I can find it again, I might try.)

The only Weymouth man to become Lord Mayor of London told 187 members of the society at the annual County Dinner, held at Sherborne School: “I’ve now been President for 28 years and I have decided this is my last year.

“This is a great society, one of the very best county societies in the country.

“However, I will continue to give the Society my full support.”

Chairman Stuart Adam expressed members’ thanks to Sir Anthony.

He said: “You, my father Roy Adam and Gordon Hine have transformed the Society of Dorset Men into a very successful organisation.

“We thank you sincerely for your hard work and commitment to our Society, you will be sorely missed as our President.”

Members then stood to drink to the health of Sir Anthony and Lady Jolliffe.

The President of the Society of Dorset Men with his principal guests, before the County Dinner at Sherborne School.

Pictured above, from left to right: Gay Mole, Captain Peter Mole, Fran Leaper, Professor David Leaper MD ChM FRCS FACS FLS, Sophie Palmer, Hon. Tim Palmer [HM High Sheriff of Dorset,] Emma Jolliffe, Sir Anthony Jolliffe GBE DL DSc [President of the Society of Dorset Men,] Lady Georgina Jolliffe, Stuart Adam [Chairman of the Society of Dorset Men.] Photograph by Michel Hooper-Immins.

Message from The Queen

The County Dinner began with the traditional message from The Queen.

“Her Majesty sends her best wishes to all concerned for a most enjoyable gathering,” wrote HM Private Secretary.

Speech by High Sheriff Tim Palmer

Principal guest speaker The Hon. Tim Palmer, HM High Sheriff of Dorset, began by remembering the late David Woodhouse, a Deputy President of the Society, who had nominated him three years ago.

“Being High Sheriff takes you to all four corners of the county and beyond. I have discovered that there are a huge number of volunteers who keep the communities of this great county going.

Vikings

“The first High Sheriff of Dorset had his head chopped-off by the Vikings, but fortunately we live in more enlightened times,” he went on.

“The last Government was planning to abolish the shrievalty, but it never happened. High Sheriffs used to exercise great power in the county. They have always been associated with law and order; my predecessors had to stand witness at executions. Indeed, the rope for all English hangings was made at Bridport.

Libraries

“One of the modern duties of High Sheriffs is to get to know the volunteers of Dorset. There’s lots of talk these days about the ‘Big Society,’ but the fact is that it’s already happening in Dorset.

“A third of the county’s population are volunteers for some cause and I have seen some outstanding examples as I travel around Dorset, whose people are ever ready to support their communities.

“For example, the libraries of tomorrow will almost certainly be run by local volunteers. Dorset people know what it is to look after their neighbours,” concluded The Hon. Tim Palmer.

Gavin Henson

Weymouth Harbourmaster Captain Peter Mole, who grew up in the resort, talked of his interesting role in running one of the South Coast’s most historic ports.

He felt much at home back in Weymouth, enjoying meeting the sailors and yachtsmen, including Wales rugby international Gavin Henson, whose yacht was berthed in the harbour.

Martinstown vineyard

Surgeon Professor David Leaper spoke about his happy experiences of being in Dorset for seven years. Revealing he owned a vineyard in Martinstown, he had developed a love for Dorset.

Sir Anthony Jolliffe presented the Bryan Challis Cup for recruiting most members to Chairman Stuart Adam and the Hambro Golf Cup to Secretary Hayne Russell. The President closed the evening by thanking Stuart Adam for taking-on the Chairman’s mantle from his father.

“What a fantastic evening,” said Sir Anthony Jolliffe, “and we are grateful to Hayne and Pat Russell for all their sustained hard work on organising this and other Society functions.”

Master of Ceremonies Colin Fry, from Lyme Regis, donated his fee to the Youth Cancer Trust.

A HALLOWEEN murder mystery night in Bridport proved a marvellous success for the town’s newest amateur dramatics group.

Marvellous Amateur Dramatics (MAD) cast became movie producers, directors and stars for the evening as they turned St Mary’s Church Hall into the wrap party of their latest horror flick “I’m your number one fang”.

Guests were entertained by an evening of improvised performance, on Saturday night, and then used their sleuthing skills to try and uncover the murderer in the line up.

Top detective on the night was Paul Cosser, who correctly deduced that production company boss Don Canelloni (Tom Glover), had been behind the deaths of both Gracie Dullard (Jasmine Northover) and Carla Di Lucci (Lauren Antinoro).

Also starring in the show were Ben Kapur and Zuzka Aukett as hot shot director Sam Wannital and his author wife Ivana, Roy Bowskill as former star Rex Bannister and Callam Thom as young director Nick Noble.

The group raised £150 to help fund their first Bridport Show Our House, which will be at the Electric Palace next spring.

Organisers thanked everyone who came and took part as well as everybody who volunteered their time to make the evening a success.

For more information visit www.marvellousamdram.co.uk

The fate of Harry Marsh has been researched, ahead of Remembrance Day, by the military historian Richard Connaughton, who lives in Nettlecombe.

Harry Marsh was born in 1893. He left Powerstock for the Navy in 1912, survived World War I, and was by 1918 a Petty Officer (Stoker) on HMS Carlisle. In the summer of 1919, the ship sailed for Russia. Her mission was to help defeat the Bolsheviks who had led the Russian Revolution.

Harry Marsh was killed on 22 October, 1919, in what Mr Connaughton calls the “lawless frontier port” of Vladivostok.

“He was shot to death whilst walking along a lonely road in Vladivostok by a person unknown. This suggests that Marsh was robbed… He was buried in the Lutheran section of the Pokrovskaya Cemetery.”

This is the barest of summaries. Mr Connaughton’s full article can be found on page 19. (The magazine has plans for a website but nothing at the moment beyond an ‘under construction’ page).

I’ve reproduced some of the facts here, firstly because they show what startling human details lie behind the letters that we see on memorials like the one in Powerstock church that lists ‘H. Marsh. HMS Carlisle’.

Secondly, because Mr Connaughton also mentions a project that I’d never heard of.

This is the UK National Inventory of War Memorials, an archive of Britain’s 100,000 war memorials, which aims eventually to record as much information as possible about every one of them. (The appeal for money to help achieve this, incidentally, is led by Paul Atterbury of BBC Antiques Roadshow fame who has lived for several years in Eype near Bridport, but is now, according to the selfsame issue of the Eggardon & Colmer’s View, moving to Weymouth).    

Anyway, the url for the archive is at http://www.ukniwm.org.uk/

There are ten entries for Bridport alone, five for Lyme Regis (including the clock tower in the Cobb Gate car park), and four for Beaminster, including this from St Mary’s church:

In loving memory of/ Cecil Collins Hann/ 2nd Lieut. Royal Flying Corp/ Son of Albert and Edith Hann of Beaminster/ Who was Killed in Action in the air during the Battle of the Somme, Oct. 22nd 1916. Aged 25 years/ His body was laid to rest at Heilly, Mericourt L’Abbe, France

“GREATER LOVE HATH NO MAN THAN THIS. THAT A MAN LAY DOWN HIS LIFE FOR HIS FRIENDS” S. JOHN XV.13

There’s masses of detail, including this, in passing, about West Dorset.

“When one of the Greenes (Hugh) was involved in interviewing captured Luftwaffe pilots during the war, we are told: ‘His life was made easier by the fact that Luftwaffe crews often carried diaries and letters in their pockets, and he made use of his fluent German and his knowledge of their country: a dead Luftwaffe officer on Chesil Beach was found to be wearing pink silk women’s underclothes and carrying lipstick and a powder puff.’

It’s a good thing, notes Collini drily, that “Hugh was on hand to bring his knowledge of the country to bear.”

Has this episode ever been reported before? I suspect probably not, because it’s the kind of story that sticks in the mind and gets repeated (as now).

Mull it over and it raises many questions.

I wonder where the officer’s grave is?

Ms Morpurgo will focus on the ‘period of transition’ that followed the revolution in Romania in 1989.

Ten years after the toppling of Ceaucescu, two young Romanian poets wrote a manifesto proclaiming that authenticity should primarily mean responsibility.

Ms Morpurgo explained: “Amongst other things, they were rightfully reacting against the hijacking of the literary scene by ‘frustration writing’ (i.e. writers unable to publish their work before 1989, now producing manuscripts detailing the awfulness of the communist past).

“The responsibility the two poets and the group that rapidly formed around them were referring to meant that whoever takes to the pen in that claustrophobic chaos of the aftermath of the revolution, must do so fully acknowledging that words should not serve the aesthetic rhetoric, not add to the public language of separation and dissipation and will not dodge the reality no matter how difficult it is.

“I shall discuss these urgent conclusions reached at the turn of the millennium in Bucharest by a group of young writers, outlining the so-called ‘period of transition’ and its reflection in poetry and prose.”

The venue will be Wild and Homeless Books, 12 South Street, Bridport, the time 7.30 for 8pm on Thursday, 24 June.

Biographical note: Ioana Morpurgo graduated in English and Romanian literature from the University of Bucharest in 2002, and was then awarded an MA in Cultural Anthropology in 2004.

She is the author of a novel – Birth Certificate (Polirom, 2004) – that explores the decomposition of the self in a post-communist, transitional society and of several pieces published in Romanian and British journals (such as Contemporary Review, the New Internationalist).

She now lives in Bridport, runs a project celebrating the hedonism of knowledge (‘Lectures on Everything’) and is currently at work on her second novel, on the subject of East European immigration to the UK.

Walk through these holloways and look closely and slowly your senses glow golden like the sandstone.

There are Babylonian descents of ivy from the branches that curve overhead, and sudden shafts of dusty sunlight.

There are mini-landslides, marked by sludgy heaps and long steep discoloured stains.

Elsewhere, the walls are held together by the frizzy plumbing of roots.

Trunks jut straight out before scrunching up their bark and correcting their course.

Then, when your eye’s attuned and if you’re lucky, you might see something like this.

West Dorset’s answer to Mount Rushmore!

Somebody has scratched the thin lines of a smile but otherwise it seems to be an accident of nature. Even the ivy that provides the idea of hair seems to have curved around the side of the face unprompted.

It makes me smile every time I see it.

(It also reminds me of this photograph called Harvest Festival, taken by the artist John Piper, who was a fan of Dorset, of Portland and Toller Fratrum in particular. I don’t know where Harvest Festival was shot; it’s the image on the front cover of Piper’s book A Painter’s Camera, Tate Gallery, 1987.)

What do you think?