dovegreyreader scribbles

And finally... @PortEliotFest

Four weeks and thirty-one blog posts later we are done....I think you all deserve a medal if you are still there.

The quilts are washed and aired and back in their places around the house, the bunting is stuffed in the box folded neatly and put away and finally we reach the end of the reports from Port Eliot 2014...I can almost hear a collective sigh of relief as you all bundle your festival gear in the wash and we resume Normal Service (after maybe a brief interlude)

I'm not sure how many letters of thanks I have written and posted, but it is quite a lot and it all bears repeating here...

To Lord & Lady St Germans for the gig and all that went with it (and that was a lot.. tent, sound system and engineers, chairs, tables, teapot, crockery, tea supplies, sofa, blackboard...and nothing was too much trouble if we had a problem) and here is Cathy St Germans about to receive her Knitsuke (a very special elephant to add to the symbolic Port Eliot herd) and the Quiltsuke..



a hand-quilted block called Doves in the Window, (spot the naughty doves facing the wrong way...ahem) a reminder of the doves that sit on the window ledge next to Cathy's desk..

and with apologies, that is the best shot I have of the elephant but the pattern is this one, but with much Knit Angel embellishment.

Thank you to all the guests in the tent...we couldn't have done it without you.

To Team dovegrey...I couldn't have done it without you and my apologies for a couple of absentees from the photo collage...Barbara you kept hiding I think... and Tim must always have been doing the washing up..

From top left...
Becky, Evie & The Knit Angel (and with extra thanks to Becky & Evie who knitted for England amongst the audience)
Half a Happy Camper (Linda W)
The Knit Angel
Half a Happy Camper ( Angela)
Evie
Becky & the Knitters
Curzon
The Happy Campers & Fran H-B
Fran H-B

Oh no, look there's Barbara (no escape)

 and Tim on the washing up with assistant Curzon...

Thanks to the Kayaker for taking hundreds of photographs and editing them down to a mere 400 from which I could choose, and which have all been a happy reminder as I have written up each event...

...and good practice for that degree in Commercial Photography which he starts in a few weeks time. Yes, after ten years of travelling and working around the world, he's done the whole 'put the passport away (apart from a quick trip to Rio last week)/ interview/ student finance/ find a flat' thing at last.

To Ron and Daniel Johns, (Plymouth, Falmouth & St Ives booksellers,) in the book tent next door who made sure all our guests had plenty of copies of their books to sign and sell.

To the festival itself for going on around us and creating such a vibrant and fun-filled atmosphere and in such idyllic surroundings too. Everyone arrived at each event with a smile on their face...

To Bookhound for...well for doing what Bookhound does so well, and this a rare 'resting' moment...

To the weather...you almost has us roasted there.

And finally to all of you for reading along, and joining in with comments and for being there.

And very finally of all...well I am sad but relieved to have made the decision that after five festivals, (two blogging 'live', three with a tent) this will be my final dovegreyreader tent event at Port Eliot.

The festival and the whole experience has been so much fun, an incredible experience, but it also entails a minimum four months of intense preparation through the summer, with a lot of reading and thinking time prior to that as well. We hope to go along and enjoy it in future as punters, and listen and learn and laugh and jig and dance around and maybe go swimming in that mud...well maybe not that last one. This is a festival that goes from strength to strength year on year, always keen to reinvent itself and try new things whilst never losing sight of that family-friendly foundation on which it is built, and we wish them many good and exciting things for the future.

We've had a ball, thank you Port Eliot.

“A Year in the Making.
Three Days to Consume.
Hard to Forget.”

Heathcote Williams

 

Fran & the Flower Show @PortEliotFest

One last report before a final festival wrap-up post, this just in from Fran about her flower show experience...and if I tell you this was all achieved in soaring temperatures which cannot possibly be the flower-arranger's best friend. From moment of picking to moment of arranging a time lapse of six hours or so for the poor flowers steeped in buckets of cold water, stems wrapped in wet tissue...lordy lordy, over to Fran, and as you will see it's all in the detail...

 

Looking through the schedule, way back in May it was this class which caught my eye; 

 ONE LUMP OR TWO? 

An arrangement in a tea pot for tea when the Vicar Calls.

12 inches by 12 inches. To be viewed from the front.

 

 

How specific is that?

 

So, first thought was to find a suitable teapot. It had to be one which would compliment the flowers, and also enhance the theme. When my search through a dozen charity shops in Eastbourne yielded nothing I was a little downcast. But then I had still had at least another dozen waiting to be seen in Bexhill.

 

Barby Keel Animal Sanctuary was about the sixth I visited.

 

Not a usual haunt of mine as  the book selection is very small. But there, high on the shelves amongst a lot of bric a brac stood the perfect one; size, shape and colour. It would compliment perfectly the cottage flowers I was planning to use from Lynne's garden. 

 

The flower content would be easy. I knew that Lynne's garden would be full of the cottage garden flowers I needed. And by late July I reckoned the Rudbeckia would be out which was a perfect colour and size for the main flower interest. The background could easily be filled with Alchemilla mollis, the flower arrangers dream.

 

But something more was needed to make this arrangement stand out.

 

About a week before Port Eliot began Knit Angel got in touch telling me she had just crocheted a slice of battenburg cake, a tea cup and saucer and an iced bun, complete with cherry. All wired too, would they be of any use? And, she added, had I thought of an Apostle spoon? 

 

That got me thinking. I knew I had one somewhere, probably up in the attic. Yes, looking through the boxes belonging to my late in laws I found one. Next thought;  what was I going to stand the teapot on? More boxes unpacked to look through the large collection of linens I have inherited. Just the thing, a small pale yellow napkin embroidered by my late mother in law. 

 

One lump or two? Sugar cubes? My local Deli was where I headed next as they have a great selection of fancy food items. Much more than I would normally spend on a box of sugar, but the hand cut organic brown cane sugar cubes were just the thing. 

 Fast forward to Friday morning as Lynne and I wandered around her garden. I knew there would be flowers and foliage aplenty and more. Bags were soon overflowing with Bells of Ireland, Ammi majus, Astrantia, Lupins, seed heads from poppies and Nigella, Rudbeckia and plenty of Alchemilla mollis, along with honeysuckle I had gathered from the lane on my way there, oh and a small sprig of Honesty; Lynne's idea as it was the Vicar coming to tea. 

 

The coolness of the basement in the house was welcome on Friday afternoon when I finally got there to set up. I was taught the basics of flower arranging when a teenager and so keeping those few simple rules in mind I got busy. It all seemed to come together quite naturally. I had packed a tape measure so I could be sure I didn't exceed the 12 x 12ins rule. With the final addition of Knit Angel's crochet items and the Apostle spoon holding one cube of sugar, several more piled up beside on the yellow napkin and I was done. 

 

My surprise and pleasure at being placed second (especially as Jane Churchill was the judge) is thanks to all the extra help and ideas I had from Knit Angel and Lynne, so really a second place for Team DGR. 

Peter Beacham ~ Down the Deep Lanes @PortEliotFest

If I have a favourite book, amongst those I would never part with, it has to be my copy of Down the Deep Lanes, a collaboration between Peter Beacham and photographer James Ravilious (son of Eric).

I had borrowed the book from the library in the midst of last year's Beating the Bounds (which I plan to resume on here this autumn) and in an effort to cut back on my book-buying. All to no avail because to see is to covet; I quickly ordered a copy of my own, and the book became my guide for spotting the beauty of the everyday around here which it is so easy to walk past and miss.

At first glance the book could be shelved under 'Nostalgia' but look more carefully, as I did, and it becomes clear that much still exists...the cob, the belfry, the barns, the corrugated iron, the quarries. This is rural Devon with all its mud and manure, the minor, the obvious and the eccentric captured in the photographs, and beautifully described in Peter Beacham's words. We had seen the exhibition of James Ravilious's photographs in, of all places Truro Museum. Fortunately. according to the Pevsner, 'the interior is remarkably intact,' and this 1845 building seems to have escaped with its integrity preserved.

How sad to hear of the death this week of Candida Lycett-Green, a good friend of the Festival and prevented by her final illness from attending Port Eliot where she was to judge the flower show...but I quoted her introduction to Down the Deep Lanes, which she had called a revelation...

'It is not the stuff of ordinary guide books eulogising the familiar front of Devon...it is a beautifully painted portrait of the back...the terrain of Devon dictates the way men fashion it. Its ten thousand miles of lanes cannot easily be tidied up with kerbstones and widened to suit Euro lorries, for their paths are too sinuous and the hills over which they snake too steep.'

And what a joy it was to see Peter Beacham not only holding and signing my copy of the book (he uses a fountain pen for everything) but also telling us of its genesis in the last days of James Ravilious's life.

Desperately ill with cancer, James told Peter he felt his life and all his work had been wasted... all these photographs...what was the point...who would ever see or be interested in them. Rallying to the cause Peter reassured James that good things would happen, that there was a book in all this, that he, Peter, would write a series of essays to accompany the pictures, and thus Down the Deep Lanes was begun. Sadly no publisher would take it, and James Ravilious died without seeing this collaboration find its audience.

Fast forward to the Millenium when Devon County Council approached Peter Beacham about the possibility of a book celebrating the Shire...

'Well here's one I made earlier,' said Peter brandishing the ready-made and most perfect answer, and thus was Down the Deep Lanes published to much popular acclaim...and I at least had a tear in my eye at this point, at the thought that hopefully James Ravilious was up there somewhere, looking down on us all admiring his handiwork, and us all declaring it to be something very special indeed. 

Time was really definitely up now, we had overrun, the book shop next door were ready for Peter's signing and so it was Knitsuke time... what better than a Cornish pasty, some scones and a notebook...

...plus a little yarn-bombed house for Peter's lapel, made by the Knit Angel while he had been talking..


Ron in the bookshop next door had, at my behest, gone to the ends of the earth to be sure to have copies in stock and I felt a tinge of pride that people were buying it and getting it signed and taking a wonderful slice of the Shire home with them. The signing queue was moved to the sofa and Peter took his time, talking to everyone as he signed each book.


A really special final event... we couldn't have wished or planned for better.

Thank you Peter.

 

Related articles

Down the Deep Lanes ~ Peter Beacham with photographs by James Ravilious.

Peter Beacham ~ Pevsner's Cornwall @PortEliotFest

Peter Beacham ~ Pevsner's Cornwall @PortEliotFest

And so to my final guest in the dovegreyreader tent, and a very warm welcome it was to Peter Beacham, and this will be a post of two halves because there is much to recount.

3.30 on Sunday afternoon, still scorchingly hot and by this time we were all a bit de-mob happy, so this promised to be a relaxing end to the weekend. 

On reflection, and a few weeks later, I can see just how much bookish ground we had covered in those nine events over three days, and now saving the biggest book until last, almost 800 pages of the new Pevsner guide to Cornwall, recently published by Yale University Press and written by Peter Beacham. Needless to say I hadn't read it cover to cover, but I had read enough to know that this had the potential to be among the most fascinating of the events, and I don't think anyone was disappointed.

Peter Beacham came to Devon in 1967 taking up the role of the first Conservation Officer with Devon County Council (as it was known then...please don't ask me who runs it now, probably about six different authorities, in six offices with six lots of staff...don't get me started). Since then Peter has also worked as the Heritage Protection Director for English Heritage as well as serving as an Anglican priest in Exeter for forty years...it is said there is nothing Peter Beacham doesn't know about a church.

Once armed with a cup of tea, Peter settled comfortably into the sofa and we were off.

After a quick potted history from Peter about Nikolaus Pevsner and the orginal series of guide books, my first question was a general one about conservation, and had we suddenly realised that perhaps we should be thinking seriously about this back in 1967, and after years of flattening and mowing over what had gone before, and what had that first job entailed.

It would seem the mid-60s were quite a turning point and when Peter arrived for work on his first day and asked to see the existing conservation files for the county, should any of us be surprised that there were about six very slim ones...and that was it.

It was interesting to compare the new and the old Pevsner guides to Cornwall and ask whether perhaps more buildings had become old enough for this second edition, because there is quite a difference in the volumes as you can see...

And the discussion ranged across preservation and conservation and nostalgia, and must buildings be preserved at all cost, especially in a county like Cornwall that may not be able to afford to do so. It is all a fine balance and often common sense must prevail.

As I read the book I had allowed myself an occasional wry smile at Peter's tactful way of saying that something looked awful..

'It deserves better...'

'It would be better served by...'

But also balanced with high praise where it was due, in this case Mevagissey..

'With little redevelopment and careful conversions of existing buildings, there is still hardly a false note in the core of this engaging place...'

It is all clearly a tricky balance and it was fascinating to listen as Peter talked about working in partnership with the planners and the architects, and home-owners, to achieve the best outcomes. His pragmatic and sympathetic approach must have worked wonders.

Our nearby shopping destination of Launceston (we are right on the Cornish border here, we take our passports and traverse Greystone Bridge on a regular basis) fares exceptionally well in this new Pevsner Guide...who would have thought it.

'Travellers crossing into Cornwall from Devon sense they are in a different county when they reach Launceston. High above the little River Kensey, its buildings gathered tightly around the castle whose motte rises improbably steeply ..it retains the air of the ancient border town that guarded the gateway to medieval Cornwall.'

I want to be fond of a place when it is described like that, yet I must confess we often view Launceston as a bit of a...well dare I say lack-lustre town, with nothing special to commend it beyond a nice old castle, but mea culpa, we have truly failed to look upwards. The wealth of historic buildings and architetural details concealed beneath and above the facades of the many charity shops are there to be discovered, and assisted by one of the regular gems in this book, the Perambulations. Guided walks around some of the towns that reveal all that it is so easy to miss, and in the case of Launceston (pronounced Larnsen to those that lives 'yere) one that has uncovered so much previously ignored. We are now spending so much time looking up we are ripe for a trip over the cobbles, or a twisted ankle on the uneven pavements.

It was however gloves off for the shambles that is Cornwall's capital and only city, Truro, apparently, in places, a sad story of missed opportunities. Oh dear, even Peter Beacham doesn't mince his words and many new developments, such as that at Lemon Quay from the 1970s, do not pass muster..

'The faux industrial style is hopelessly unconvincing, the facades dressed up with flimsy warehouse motifs like the triple shallow gables and the steel-framed bays of the corner building, the latter each incongruously sporting a small first floor bay supported on a spindly colonette...'

The verdict when it comes, on what happens to be the M&S store, is honest and withering...

'Such a prime site so prominent in views across the city towards the cathedral.. deserved far better than this clumsy monolith...'

...and if you have been there, entirely deserved. It has always felt like a souless part of the city that gives nothing back and we rarely loiter there. 

We talked about wind turbines too and if we'd had time I'm sure there would have been some debate about the seemingly unstoppable proliferation of solar panels on just about every roof around us here, and great swathes of them in fields.

But we had to move on because I wanted to talk about another of Peter's books, Down the Deep Lanes which I wrote about last year. More about that (and the Knitsuke of course) in the next and almost final post from this year's festival.

 

 

Related articles

Down the Deep Lanes ~ Peter Beacham with photographs by James Ravilious.

@_RichardBenson & the Knitsuke Farm..

For those who would like to see a close-up of Richard Benson's Knitsuke farm, he has written a wonderful piece mentioning it here and with a great photograph.

 

Martin Parr @PortEliotFest @ParrStudio ~ Sunday

I had apparently met world-famous photographer Martin Parr before, when he accompanied his wife Susie to the dovegreyreader tent at Port Eliot back in 2012 where she was going to talk about her wonderful book The Story of Swimming.

'Oh hi...' I probably said, really not registering and before turning my attentions to Susie who was going to try and persuade me of the joys of wild swimming and also demonstrate (on dry land) the Trudgen, a now defunct swimming stroke which I really feel should make a comeback.

Anyway fast forward to Planning Meeting 2014, and would I like to interview Mr Susie this year.

Cathy St Germans placed a copy of Martin and Susie Parr's latest book The Non-Conformists in my hand, a project based around a methodist chapel in Hebden Bridge in the 1970s, and I was sold...except that I really knew absolutely nothing about Martin Parr, and not a great deal more about the art of photography.

Martin Parr has published over a hundred books, many of them on the expensive side, so I felt sure I would hit the mother lode at Devon Libraries. One book, just the one, so I am thankful to Cornwall Libraries who shipped up a pantechnicon-full from the St Ives Art Collection. My homework began... and I was hooked.

It was odd too because in many ways our early life paths had everso slightly tracked each other. I was born a year later than Martin Parr but we had both grown up in neighbouring leafy Surrey suburbs and attended nearby grammar schools. Martin had moved to Hebden Bridge after college and funnily enough I had spent time there too, and at the same time.

Remember the student nurse flatmate who eventually married the stock-broker and moved to Portobello Road??

Well her family lived in Heptonstall, above Hebden Bridge, and before she deserted our Haringey abode we would go there for days off, wuther around on the moors all Bronte-esquely and wander around the town in shawls and Laura Ashley dresses.

Enough said.

Martin arrived at the tent, camera in hand, sat on the sofa and proceeded to take pictures of the audience as we waited for the off..

Now what follows might not be the fairest way to start a conversation with the UK's top social documentary photographer but in the end, having read this, I just couldn't stop myself...

'He has considerable flair in photography and a certain amount of ability in the art field, but there seems to be little chance of him realising his potential if his attitude to his general work continues to be so poor.'

J. Turner - Surbiton Grammar School

'I wish I could understand his temperamental difficulties.'

Head Master - Surbiton Grammar School.

And so with Martin Parr's school report revealed, where did it all go right I wanted to know, and thus we were launched on possibly the speediest forty-five minutes of my entire life as a what felt like a whirlwind conversation began.

So fast I can barely remember what I asked...what I didn't...what Martin Parr replied.

Early influences and projects certainly...

The way his pictures force us to explore  and confront our own prejudices and hypocrisies...

Often accused of cyncism verging on cruelty in his gaze, I actually sense prejudice in mine and some fondness in Martin Parr's...

I do remember citing a Very Famous photographer who has a rural retreat down here and there is really no mistaking him if he walks through town, yet Martin Parr looks...well quite ordinary and unrecognised, and is that is part of the plan...

The family photo album as a 'lie'...where are all the pics of the bad times, the screaming children...

What makes a postcard boring...

and at this point I did the awful geeky thing of revealing that I too was the proud owner (from my childhood collection) of the very same Boring Postcard as Martin Parr, one of Crawley Town Centre.

But we agreed that boring is in the gaze of the beholder; postcards of motorways would have been the height of class to the residents of Richard Benson's The Valley. New and innovative, and different the motorway service station was the place to go for a night out and a posh dinner, and immediately our own judgements are revealed.

Photographers hold your gaze, this much I discovered as I kept wondering how I was going to avert mine to choose my next question from The Notebook....

Audience question...

Breath...

Squint at notebook...

Can you explain Autoportrait... a series of pictures taken in photographer's studios around the world. You know, the ones where you stick your head through something that bears no resemblance to you just for a laugh (like a great white shark or something) or stand in front of an unreal backdrop (Waikiki Beach at Southend)  

What are the ethics of creeping up behind unsuspecting people and taking their photograph and who does it belong to...

Pictures of children...that can't be legal now...

Do you ever switch off ...

What about this medical camera you use... does it make for a clinical eye.

What about nostalgia and what do you need to be photographing now that in say thirty years time we will look back on and say 'Aaaah bless.'...

Heck, how I wish I could remember all the answers... perhaps some of you who were there can help out.

It all felt like a gallop and one day I promise myself I am going to go and sit in the audience and just listen to Martin Parr talking, without having to ask any questions, because he is utterly fascinating and there is so much more I want to know.

But all too soon it was Knitsuke time...

'Ever used a four ply camera,' I garbled really quickly...

'Woolly logic Martin, surely you've heard of that...'

For the first time he looked a bit confused...even befuddled until he set eyes on his new crocheted camera.

We feel sure he will use nothing else now.

And in his left hand...well how did I have the nerve.

One of the things that happens when you immerse yourself in the photography of Martin Parr is that you start to see the world around you in a similar way... witness the Happy Campers exploits, and a few weeks prior to the festival Bookhound and I had been walking around a garden when I was just gifted a Martin Parr moment.

'Don't...,' whispered Bookhound.

'Martin Parr would,' I said with some glee...

'Don't...' he exclaimed even more urgently once he knew I was going to...

Now I have no idea who they are, and I'm really sorry if it's you, but apparently (so Martin told us) it is entirely legal to take pictures of anything and anyone in public spaces, and think on it, the shrouded couple have gone home with Martin Parr, the nation's most famous social documentary photographer, and in a crocheted frame with doves on at that.

Thank you to Martin Parr for an afternoon I will never forget...

 

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Turkey and Tinsel with Martin Parr & the Happy Campers @PortEliotFest

Susie Parr & outdoor swimming @PortEliotFest

Thank you @LittleToller :: On Silbury Hill ~ Adam Thorpe

I am still sitting here writing up Port Eliot events and thinking of all you still sitting there in your festival gear for the last three weeks, you must be getting fed up with it all but worry not, we are almost done so it can go in the wash soon.

I am remembering some wonderful festival moments as I write, and that includes all the people who came to say hello... Sean and Jane Borodale, Edmund de Waal, Zita West, a steady stream of guests from previous years along with writers nipping in to say thank you for writing about my book. Jane Borodale had written something really touching in our guest book back in 2012...much as she would love me to read her book...

' The Knot - only if you have time, my book is long and life is short, I know - is about Henry Lyte of Lytes Cary and is (hopefully) a green and aromatically - textured book about earth and growth...'

and I read The Knot and loved every word about a month later.

One of those lovely moments at this year's festival was the chance to finally meet the couple behind Little Toller Books, Adrian...and...and.. Ms. Adrian (so sorry, it's gone) and two gorgeous but very hot and weary children. The children, clearly fed up with grown-up book talk, had a minor contretemps slightly eased with bribes of homemade pom-poms made by our lovely gaggle of knitters. It all reminded me SO much of those moments with our own children.

We talked about publishing and reviews; good and less good reviews and their impact on a small press, and their beautiful books some of which they have kindly sent me, and others which I have bought, for the past few years. One of you sent me a Book Token for my Big Birthday last year and a Little Toller book seemed the very best way to spend it.

'It's just the two of us, living in a tiny Dorset village,' the couple said, and their commitment to quality and producing exquisite books for us readers was clear, and who could argue but that they have got it right. I could only begin to imagine the hard work that must go into all this but Mr & Ms Little Toller were supremely excited about a new book of theirs, On Silbury Hill by Adam Thorpe which, along with Herbaceous by Paul Evans, was doing very well out there in the big-wide-book-world. There was much delight all round.

On Silbury Hill...

"Silbury Hill in Wiltshire has inspired and perplexed people for generations. Artists and poets have fathomed their deepest thoughts searching for the hill’s hidden meanings, archaeologists have tunneled through earth for fragments that prove its purpose. But for all this human endeavour, Silbury Hill remains a mystery.

We do know it is the largest prehistoric mound in Europe. But was it once an island, moated by water? Was it a place of worship and celebration, perhaps a vast measure of the passing seasons? Along with Stonehenge and Avebury, was it part of a healing landscape or a physical memory of the long-ago dead?

Silbury Hill is the sum of all that we project. A blank screen where human dreams and nightmares flicker. The hill has been part of Adam Thorpe’s own life since his schooldays at Marlborough, which he would often escape in the surrounding downlands. He has carried Silbury ever since, through his teenage years in Cameroon, into his adulthood in southern England and France: its presence fused to each landscape which became his home.

On Silbury Hill is Adam Thorpe’s own projection onto Silbury’s grassy slopes. Twenty years after the publication of his classic novel Ulverton, the acclaimed poet and novelist revisits the landscape which inspired him. It is a chalkland memoir told in fragments and family snapshots, skillfully built, layer on layer, from Britain’s ancient and modern past."

Herbaceous...

"Climate change is eroding the familiar pattern of the seasons, so we turn instinctively to the life cycle of herbaceous plants to guide us through the year. The growing, flowering, seeding and dying back to earth of wild flowers, weeds, herbs and garden perennials sustain and enrich our everyday lives with food, metaphor, joy, anxiety, medicine, stories, beauty and enchantment. Above all, by enabling us to read the changing seasons, plants help us navigate our way in the world." 

We also talked about my recent decision to rewrite the rules about free books that featured on dovegreyreader... but I assured them it didn't involve cutting-off-nose-to-spite-face, there would have to be Notable Exceptions and thankfully my loyalty and love for Little Toller Books remains untainted by corporate shenanigans and kerfuffles. 

As I wandered around Waterstones the following week I spied a single copy of On Silbury Hill. It was a small hardback, part of Little Toller's new Monograph series, and I coveted. 'I'll come back for that in a minute,' I thought, because these are the books I crave, but when I returned it had vanished. The Devon library catalogue drew a blank so I added it to my You Know Where wishlist for the next occasion I was feeling flush.

Well I could have wept with delight, in fact I almost did, when a parcel arrived out of the blue from Adrian at Little Toller last Thursday...


On Silbury Hill will be Book of the Week on Radio 4 this week and I have immersed myself in its many layers over the weekend, finding some of my love for Neolithic Orkney surfacing and migrating to this unexplained man-made hill in Wiltshire. This is a book of layers and sediments, a palimpsest that has tangible analogies with a person's life, built up as it is of experience and events.

'We see everything from our particular hill in time,' says Adam Thorpe, and I suddenly felt the tiny-ness of that hill and the enormity of what has gone before.

Much more about On Silbury Hill soon but my thanks to Mr & Ms A for a parcel of books that has made my August, and how good it was to meet you at last.

Related articles

The Knot ~ Jane Borodale

The Happy Campers stalk Simon Garfield (again) @PortEliotFest

They make a habit of this, the Happy Campers, popping up at Simon Garfield events wherever they may be, but no ambush so special as this one on home turf. My thanks to them as always for really entering into the spirit of this whole thing, and so over to one half of the Happy Campers and the dying art of letter writing...

I wanted Simon Garfield's latest book, 'To The Letter' for Christmas, but it didn't appear, so I treated myself to it when it came out in paperback recently. I hadn't started reading it though and was a bit worried about this event. Would there be spoilers?!

The other Happy Camper had been sent to bag some seats while I grabbed one of the scrumptious ice lollies for sale opposite the crepe stall. The temperature at mid afternoon was soaring and the air inside the tent still and humid. Our seats were in the front and I was somewhat intrigued by what seemed to be a Giant's Causeway constructed from cardboard and brown paper winding its way round the front of the stage. It must have taken someone ages to construct and my first question was 'Why?' but PE is a showcase for the arts, after all...........

Simon Garfield was joined by Simon Chandler and Rebecca (whose surname I did not note, sorry) who were going to help him interpret some of the material in his books.

Letter writing is a dying art, as any postie will tell you; such missives are now far outnumbered by parcels from internet purchases. Yes, we want to communicate, but briefly- tweets, snapchat, Instagram, the younger generation is totally keyed in to the mobile and the instant.  For them, even an email is 'too much faff' as Simon Garfield says. We still write, but we don't wish to express emotion in depth like the letter writers of old. And there are all those problems with confidentiality when emotions are sent off into the ether.

So we need to look back in time to find examples of great correspondence.

Of course, there are famous names in the book; we giggled at the underwritten restraint of some of the Queen Mum's letters, but the most fun was had with some of the unknowns. Step forward Simon Chandler, actor, who alternately read the WW2 letters sent between Chris Barker ( a postman) and his work colleague, Bessie Moore. This was a comic tour de force, how Simon kept it going with the consistent voices I don't know, especially Bessie's falsetto!  More than once I kept thinking Mandy mother of Brian had paid us a visit. There was some pathos too, amongst the laughs, and everyone wanted to know whether Chris and Bessie found happiness in the end.

Next, Rebecca, reading extracts from the journals of Jean Lucy Pratt, who was portrayed in sepia wistfulness on the screen, as she was at the time of writing in 1926 merely fifteen years old.Rebecca conveyed all the earnest self consciousness of youth, as we heard of Jean's hopes and romantic longings. We couldn't imagine a teenager today committing to paper or anything else such lengthy musings upon love and life. Jean remained a spinster all her life, which made her journal entries all the more poignant when we heard her expectations of marriage and a family of her own.

We were going to stay for Andy Miller and his Year of Reading Dangerously, but decided instead to go to the book tent and wait for Simon Garfield so we could have a chat and ask him to sign our copies of 'To The Letter'. He was relaxed and very obliging, saying that he likes Port Eliot as he is given the opportunity to try something different - he doesn't have to do the routine book talk.

We will await  his next venture with interest and hope to catch up with him again before too long. 

Barbara visits The Idler Academy @idleracademy @PortEliotFest

Barbara wanders down to the Idler Academy for some intellectual input on the subject of Portobello Road.

 

And while Barbara ambles down the hill to the tent by the river I can share with you that I once had a student nursing flatmate who, answering the pangs of true love, surrendered the poverty of living off £12 a week in our Haringey abode to give up nursing and move in with a very wealthy (but considerably older) stockbroker who lived in Portobello Road. I have to admit we treated this whole venture with a certain amount of sadness and some disdain, but back in the early 1970s Portobello Road was perhaps the most Bohemian London des-res you could aspire to and I suspect we were all really green with envy....she could now afford to shop at Biba, while we made do with Loon Pants at £1 a pair. We did all go round just to be nosey and that didn't help our envy one bit...she had a fondue set with matching forks. Then in that hot sweltering summer of 1976, by which time our ex-flatmate (to our dismay) had settled for being a housewife with babies in hot pursuit, and we were all doing our finals, the house in Portobello Road suffered considerable subsidence and they decamped out to a mini stately home in the Home Counties where she fell in love with the local vicar and then...but apologies, I digress this is supposed to be Barbara's post I'll save that for another day...over to Barbara...

 

For a long time now I have been a fan of The Idler and the 'fine art of doing nothing'. I subscribe to the weekly email newsletter, 'Hodgkinson's Register', have visited the  shop/cafe at 81, Westbourne Park Road, in Notting Hill, London and used to enjoy Tom Hodgkinson's weekly articles in The Independent on Sunday. Tom Hodgkinson is one of the founders of The Idler which started as a magazine and then added a shop and cafe and now also runs an Academy offering online and real-world courses in such things as handwriting and calligraphy, the ukelele, ancient philosophy and much more. None of which sound remotely idle but very satisfying and refreshing and an escape from the technical and digital world that we inhabit these days.

 

 

 

So I was delighted to read in the Festival Programme that The Idler would have a tent and presence throughout the weekend at Port Eliot. Most of the Idler events that I'd have liked to attend coincided with our guests' appearances in the Doevgreyreader Tent. The Bacon Butties and Bloody Marys each day from 9am sounded good but I'd already filled up with breakfast at my B&B each morning. I did however manage to attend one 'conversation' on Friday (25 July) at 10am: Julian Mash on Portobello Road: Lives of a Neighbourhood.

 

About 70 of us took our seats in the Idler tent at 10am on Friday morning and Tom introduced himself and the Idler concept and then his 'guest' Julian Mash who is actually the manager of the Idler Bookshop. Julian was once a member of a struggling Indie Band and to make ends meet got himself a part-time job at the now famous Travel Bookshop in Notting Hill. He then told us more about the very small part that the shop played in the film "Notting Hill" (just the frontage was used the rest of the shop was filmed in the studio) but which made it known throughout the world. Eventually and sadly, as many independent bookshops have in recent years, the shop closed.Julian was then inspired to investigate the area and search out the origins and past history of the Notting Hill neighbourhood  mainly through interviews with residents and traders.

 

 

Julian was then inspired to investigate the area and search out the origins and past history of the Notting Hill neighbourhood  mainly through interviews with residents and traders.

 

The original large houses were built in the 1840s for single families with servants but this was not a success and soon they were split into flats. Interestingly, over the last 15-20 years many houses have reverted back to being single family homes.

In the 1950s and 1960s it had been a rough area with many West Indian families living several families to a room. Tom reminisced about the years when he worked, in the pre-iTunes, days at the record shop "Rough Trade" which, amazingly, is still going strong today. The area evolved into a 'cradle of Bohemianism' with many independent shops. With huge hikes in rents  many have closed and Portobello's 'edgy' atmosphere has now gone.

Read more about Julian's book here.

It's sad to think that the area has lost much of its identity but this happened to so many places in the last decade or so with the advance of the corporate and the upmarket moves by property owners. Hooray for The Idler, Daunt's Books and The London Review of Books Shop and all independent bookshops!

 

 

 

The Farm & The Valley @_RichardBenson ~ Sunday @PortEliotFest

I knew very little about journalist Richard Benson or his books before we invited him to converse in the dovegreyreader tent, and it was the same for several of my guests, yet by the time they arrive and sit down I feel as if I could do Mastermind on them, in fact I probably know more about them than they know about themselves, and it is true that reading both of Richard Benson's books took up about 750 pages of reading time prior to the festival, but what intensely pleasurable and well-spent time it was.

I had somehow missed The Farm when it was published and won the Guardian First Book Award in 2005. It is Richard Benson's account of the loss of his family's farm near Doncaster where he had been born in 1966. Richard by now a journalist living in London travels home to help his parents Gordon and Pauline and brother Guy with the sale of the farm. By his own admission Richard had been 'the village idiot with O Levels,' and it is this self-effacing approach that makes every page of his two books such worthwhile and pleasurable reading. Whilst his brother Guy, now a man of few words and many grunts, proved to be  'a sort of child prodigy' where farming was concerned, Richard was the torch-shiner, the gate-opener, the maggot-scraper, leaving everyone else to get on with the real jobs, but family love and loyalty compel him to return and support through such tough times.

We talked about The Farm, and the family, and how you can possibly make your own family of such sustained interest to others, because this is exactly what Richard achieves in The Valley, an in depth look over the last century at the lives and times of his mother Pauline's family. Now I'll admit that sounds a bit...well dry and dusty, but think again because I was transfixed by The Valley.

Part biography, part novel, part social history, somehow Richard Benson creates something revealing and intimate yet set against the vast backdrop of some the twentieth century's defining moments...the wars, National Service, the Suez Crisis, the Coronation, the miner's strikes, giving, via a century of history, a resounding and highly entertaining voice to the ordinary people. There will be none of Rachel Cooke's brilliant careers for the women of the family as they fight their way, against the odds, towards freedom and feminism... some are the doormats, the betrayed, the victims of domestic abuse and their children, trapped and disempowered by the ne'er-do-well men. And whilst the world out there is changing, and education and choices and options are ever-increasing, back in the Dearne valley change is slow and perfunctory if it happens at all.

Richard Benson bravely doesn't flinch from telling it like it was, admitting that he had had some incredibly moving interviews with members of his family who were speaking about some of the toughest moments of their lives, and perhaps for the first time. If you have ever wondered about domestic violence back in the day , and why women stayed in seemingly intolerable situations it becomes crystal clear in Richard Benson's account...no options, no sympathy, no money, no home and almost an accepted part of life. And then from the child's perspective, I defy anyone not to be moved by Gary's life and his story, and the importance of his extended family (especially his grandparents)  who gave him that indentity with which to explain himself, making a lonely person feel wanted, and by listening to him and taking him seriously giving him a base line to work from into adulthood. The individual stories shine out around The Valley; a galaxy of them like a constellation waiting to be joined up, and it is this mapping and linking that Richard Benson creates so superbly in this memorable book.

Like most families' lives it is not all doom and gloom, far from it, there is hilarity and high jinks here too and Richard had us in hysterics about his aunt Juggler Jane pushing a pram through the village and receiving congratulations on the new birth when in fact the pram housed a dead sheep destined for many ovens and Sunday roasts.

One of the joys of the book was that I came to know the family. If I am ever invited to a party I would have plenty to talk about that's for sure, and how sorry we were when our time was up.

The Knitsuke was easy really (well easy for me to suggest, less easy to make unless you are the Knit Angel of course). Still upset about one of the biggest losses in the lives of Richard and his immediate family I sent the message across...can you please knit a farm.

Lynne lent me a copy of The Farm to read, before I went on to read The Valley, and she suggested that I doodle and scrumble a picture of ‘the farm’. This was another delightful challenge, and again no pattern to follow. I tried to add in the little bits and pieces mentioned in the book such as the tractor, the flowers, the farmhouse, the dry stone walls and hedgerows. I then also knitted a pig!

With thanks to Richard for a great book and a wonderful event. 

 

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The Happy Campers Channel Their Inner Martin Parr @PortEliotFest ~ Sunday

SUNDAY

 

True to form the cushion was left behind – again – this time at the Happy Campers’ tent, to be reclaimed at the end of the day...

Another foray into Fortnum and Mason for breakfast at the kind invitation of DGR and Bookhound, and a chance to sample another option from the menu – this is Welsh rarebit –

before another day in the DGR tent with, firstly, Richard Benson, author of The Farm and The Valley, who we were pleased to see looked more like the Yorkshire farmer’s son he is than the London journalist he has become.  Not that you can tell – it could be anyone behind that foliage!  I think I got a bit carried away by the “it doesn’t have to be perfect” ethos… 

And then Martin Parr, who drew the biggest crowd of the weekend, once we could get him to stop photographing the audience.

As it was Sunday, a trip to church was in order.  The church on the estate was open to visitors and one Happy Camper, a Pre-Raphaelite fan, was delighted to discover that the windows are from Morris & Co, designed by Burne-Jones. Fellow team dovegrey member Barbara has done a full account of all that so we will leave that lovely surprise for her to share with you. 

With time to spare before the final event, it was back to the elephant to spend some time covering one of his ears with the fabric provided...

And finally, Peter Beacham, a lovely way to round off a wonderful weekend. 

Peter was Devon’s first Conservation Officer, and is the author of the new Pevsner’s Guide to Cornwall.  He also wrote, in collaboration with James Ravilious, Down the Deep Lanes, a series of essays on Devon, illustrated by photos from the vast Ravilious archive.

As the weekend progressed some odd figures gradually appeared near the main entrance to the house, fanciful interpretations of 'Infamy, Infamy, they've all got it Infamy!'  

Yes it was the Port Eliot scarecrow competition, and the Happy Campers assessed all the entries with their usual discrimination and artistic knowledge... ahem ahem I do not think. There were some amazing figures (one seemed to be made of small inflated metallic pillows attached to a stake with brushwood hair atop) and some clever use of ordinary materials to maintain the traditional eclectic approach to construction. We strolled past the Big Bad Wolf from Red Riding Hood, some sly interpretations of a favourite Chancellor and Education Minister, The Hound of the Baskervilles made from flowers and greenery, the Kiddycatcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Dr Octopus from Spider-Man (although the latter was more  octopus from Holby rather than Alfred Molina in a tentacley cloak, as you can see from the picture).

However, our two favourites were Marie Antoinette – her outfit made from transparent plastic complete with a stunning headdress adorned with toy cows...

and Crowzilla. This much maligned bird was a marvel, who would have thought black bin bags could achieve such a great effect?

When the judging was complete, we were gratified to see that the expert Scarecrow assessors agreed with us and placed them first and second respectively.

The whole episode was a lot more satisfactory than our comical visit to the flower show, after we had been told that Fran from DGR had won a second prize.

First problem was actually gaining access to the house at the right time, which seemed to take us two days at least.

Then on Saturday afternoon we were finally there, eager to see 'our' entry.

After tramping impatiently round and round the different exhibits, we had to retire to the DGR tent, confused.

We hadn't found anything with Fran's name on, or that of Hatwell, or Rocky - only a Jane Churchill, who seemed to have scooped quite a few prizes...... 

Imagine our embarrassment when we were told that the successful Jane was the judge, that all entries are anonymous, and that we were total chumps who knew nothing about the arcane arts of flower arranging competitions.

Clearly, the HCs need to join the WI to learn some proper skills.

 

Her Brilliant Career - Rachel Cooke ~ Saturday @PortEliotFest

Her Brilliant Career - Ten Extraordinary Women of the Fifties had been one of my most enjoyable reads of 2013 so I was delighted to learn, when I met Cathy St Germans for a very early tent-planning meeting last November, that Rachel would be attending the festival and would be happy to converse in the tent.

Being a Primary Source for the fifties, had made the book something of a revelation for me. Who knew all this was going on while I was happily gunning around Woolworth's in my roller skates because the wooden floors made just the right sort of noise. My friend Ann and I could usually manage one complete circuit before we were evicted, but I doubt we gave much thought to the world inhabited by our mothers who were likely to be spending 60-70 hours a week doing housework. It is quite a startling and eye-opening realisation when part of your life becomes history in this way.

I started our conversation with two quotes from two of you on here quite recently which gave an Ameriacan perspective on the decade and which I hoped would allow some comparsions with the UK...thank you Shelley and Susan...

Shelley had suggested that the 1950s were the hardest decade of the twentieth century to survive. No powerhouse Eleanor Roosevelt in the White House, no Rosie the Riveter (the wartime cultural icon) and Gloria Steinem had yet to arrive on the scene. Life was a stifling conformity meant to tamp down all the agony and random loss of the war, a grey fog.

Susan disagreed remembering the 1960s as far more frightening than the 1950s, with scandals and assassinations and Vietnam, arguing that with all that made life for women less than ideal there was at least stability, hope and peace much of which came to a brutal end with the assassination of JFK.

I wondered how Rachel Cooke felt all this compared with life here in the UK...

Was it all stifling conformity or was it stability and hope...

And do you know what..I can't for the life of me remember the exact answer.

But I think we did agree that life for women was dependent on many things, not least social class, education, what sort of a war they had encountered, financial resources and more. Ultimately the women that Rachel Cooke chose had been written out of history, and though artist and designer Peggy Angus wasn't included I did cite her as an interesting subject. 

Peggy Angus currently the subject of an exhibition at the Towner Gallery in Eastbourne, studied at the Royal College of Art with Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden but achieved nothing like their fame. Her professional life was a struggle and she needed to be tough, verging on rude, in order to be heard, and we had an interesting discussion about whether this needed to be part of the armour for these 'warrior' women...and were they nice to know...and why did this 'niceness' matter when for men it didn't.

Margarete had mentioned (in comments) the slow fading of that unquestioned admiration for those in authority... doctors, priests, the local gentry and we talked around this, and also in relation to Richard Benson's book The Valley (he would be visiting the tent on Sunday) where he cites the arrival of television as key to this shift. People no longer looked to the Big House for a lead or to doff their caps, now it was the TV stars and presenters who held sway.

We ended by sparing a thought for the millions like my mum for whom the war had been so traumatic both educationally, emotionally and socially, and for whom the 1950s had been all about having children and being aspirational for them. Ensuring that, whilst their own ambitions may have been thwarted, nothing wouldn't stop them raising children who would be able to achieve something different, to have choices, and for girls especially...to have that Brilliant Career.

It is something I have only really come to understand clearly since reading Rachel's book so thanks mum x

As always there was a Quiltsuke and a Knitsuke to come.

I chose a block which I called Margery's Choice and based it on the gardener Margery Fish, one of Rachel's extraordinary women. Margery married the tyrranical Walter Fish, editor of the Daily Mail, some years her senior and a tyrant in every respect. Walter hated yellow flowers in the garden so I made this block using as little yellow as possible...as you can see...


and the Knitsuke.

Well the book all began with an Ercol sideboard and we thought and then quickly unthought that idea deciding instead to focus on one of the women and in the end it was Sheila van Damm's sports car for Rachel...

And here is the Knit Angel's account of the making of...

"This turned out to be the most challenging book to interpret, partly because of the subject content and partly because I was so challenged by the approach to motherhood that some of the women took. Lynne suggested I do a “Shelia Van Damme in her racing car” – so I managed to find a suitable pattern via the internet and adapted it to suit Sheila’s persona. You can imagine our delight when Lynne asked Rachel which of the women she had liked the most, and she said Sheila..."

Thank you for a memorable event Rachel.

And that was the end of Big Saturday, three more events to come on Sunday.

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Benjamin Ranyard ~ @higgledygarden @PortEliotFest

Picture it if you will... a terrified gardener quaking in his boots for the last four months at the thought of interrogation by dovegreyreader.

The poor thing, I felt dreadful to have caused such fear for the man who has single-handedly carpeted our garden with flowers this year.

There was Mr Higgledy Garden with his minder steering him away from the Sipsmith gin tent in the neighbouring walled garden as he was dragged coaxed around the corner with little words of encouragement from our side... 'She's loooooovely..she won't eat you...' (thank you to Alice from The Sight of Morning for this) and what did he do...

Sat on the sofa and took to it all as if born to such gardening greatness and we had a whale of a time...apart from the moment when my potted cobaea scandens was declared a disgrace...

'It should be eight feet tall by now...in fact I wish you hadn't brought it...'

'They're everso much bigger up the side of my greenhouse,' I stuttered before moving swiftly on....and they really nearly are.

Benjamin Ranyard, cut-flower guru, plantsman, hilarious blog-writer, the man who makes a Gertrude Jekyll border entirely possible with £10's worth of seeds, and the creator with Cathy St Germans of one of the most visited and talked-about corners of Port Eliot Festival this year...the walled garden border.

In the light of those pictures my first question seemed a really obvious one...

'Why did you send Cathy St Germans seeds that have grown four feet high whilst my identical ones have barely made it to one?'

The answer of course may lie in the ten foot wall.


We covered the lot...

Challenges (weather)

Favourites (cornflowers),

Lunar gardening (no, no and thrice no apparently) ,

The hand-written letters that come with each seed order (quicker than a printer)

Watering (envy about my spring supply)

Feeding (soil does the job & plants know what to do)

Thinning (be ruthless and ignore the piercing scream from each little seedling)

Weeding (try your best)

Will there be a book (probably not) 

What can we so now (plenty)

..and plenty more, and we laughed and generally it was all not even the least bit terrifying for Mr Higgledy in the end and a huge pleasure for the rest of us.

Everyone left with a packet of free seeds and plenty of people bought the collections, whilst Mr H left with a weight off his shoulders, a knitted gnome and some Knitsuke flowers of his own just in case of sudden crop failure or something...


Thank you Ben for facing down the fear, we loved you.

 

 

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Gardenitis...

Hannah Rothschild & The Baroness ~ Saturday @ PortEliotFest

It is lunchtime on Saturday and can this really be two weeks ago already...where on earth is the time going. But at this point I still had my glasses so all is well, and what a great time we had talking with Hannah Rothschild about Nica her Jazz Baroness aunt.


We all absolutely adored that necklace by the way...

I keep saying 'great' and 'fascinating' about these events because it seemed like it from where I was sitting, a gift to have such interesting speakers, so much so that I kept having to remind myself that whilst it is fine to listen and be engrossed I am also supposed to be coming up with the next question. 

We coped and I started by asking Hannah to give us a potted history of the Rothschild banking family from its beginnings in the ghettos and the establishment of the banking business from there in the 1760s. Five sons sent out to the principal financial centres of Europe...London, Paris, Frankfurt, Naples and Vienna and from such humble but prescient origins was the empire built.

Hannah did that and more so it was good to get a sense of the world into which her aunt Nica was born; a world where the role of women was to entertain and to breed, but never to set foot in the bank, and to hear from Hannah her own sense of excitement as a teenager about 'owning' such an interesting and dare we say 'edgy' relative.

Nica's interesting war changed everything, and her escape to New York and the jazz scene, from that life of dependence and privilege and being pampered to the point of infantilism, gave us much fruitful and fascinating discussion, especially around the subject of the children that were left behind. 

Once Hannah had explained so clearly the attractions of Thelonious Monk, the jazz scene on 52nd Street, Nica's hair-raising driving around the city, the freedom and the cats...let's not forget the 360-something cats...well I think we all understood a great deal more. Whilst one Rothschild man had once said...

' For every Rothschild who made money there were a dozen who spent it...'

Here was Nica making her sliver of a great fortune go a little further, and in return making a difference and perhaps gaining something that her life had never been able to offer her before, the gift of friendship.

We touched too on the Rothschild family's losses during the Second World War.

The family had been in possession of 3978 pictures most of which were confiscated by the Nazis, and Hannah's next book, a novel, will touch on this subject. Hannah is a trustee of the National Gallery and the book, due out in May 2015, will tell the stories of the journeys that a painting makes in its lifetime. It is a fascinating premise and I for one can't wait to read it. You might also be interested to read this article by Hannah, The Art of War.  

All too soon our time was up and it was Knitsuke and Quiltsuke time.

The Quiltsuke a version of Cat's Cradle which I had called Jazz Cat's Cradle. Cats abound on the orange fabric, and the stars and the music meant to evoke that first piece of music, Round Midnight, that convinced Nica to change the direction of her life.

And the Knitsuke... well here's the Knit Angel's account... you might laugh but the pair of us had a nao-second of horror that we had got it wrong...

I dismissed trying to make a Thelonius Monk, or a piano or a Bentley, and was grateful when Lynne suggested a cat. I settled on a ‘British Shorthair’ from my ‘Best in Show’ book – this was a tad complicated and did require special yarn, but it all turned out well until it was time to actually present it to Hannah. She had by now confirmed that she personally detested cats, but when Hannah realised it was a small ‘knitted cat’ she fortunately recovered the situation and declared “she loved it”.

We all heaved a collective sigh, and thank you to Hannah Rothschild for a great event.

 

 

 

Spot Your Tea Cosy ~ Part Two

Spot Your Tea Cosy ~ Part One

Honestly, we were so PROUD of you all.

For taking the time and being bothered to enter, and make and post your teacosies for the competition, and I can tell you that Lord & Lady St Germans sent grateful thanks to all of you for taking part...your entries really were wonderful.

Now of course I can only hope that we managed to photograph them all (click on the picture for a larger version and then save if you want to) Bookhound and I went around several times with two cameras so hopefully we didn't miss any dovegreyreader entries. If we did then our huge apologies, but here they are spread over several posts this weekend...

 

Louise Carpenter and An Unlikely Countess ~ Saturday @PortEliotFest

A big day on Saturday, and having worried myself stupid about losing my notebook this was not the best day to eventually lose my glasses and therefore not really be able to read the notebook...no not good at all.

Our first guest was Louise Carpenter, author of the book so many of us had discovered for the first time and read in preparation for this event, An Unlikely Countess - Lily Budge and the 13th Earl of Galloway which I wrote about here.

It was good to be able to hear Louise's account of the book and its origins from that Telegraph obituary which hinted at a such a fascinating story waiting to be told. As we all agreed, so much sadness but moments of real happiness for them both, and it was interesting to discuss Randolph's lobotomy. Louise didn't spare us the details (one or two breakfasts looked like they might reappear) but in the context of medical recommendation at the time we felt we understood the family's fears about the son and heir, and their decision to proceed.

All of this and what followed only served to increase our astonishment that Randolph is still alive, and though Louise had sadly had to cancel her visit to Randolph (due to serious illness in her own family), she had contacted his carers and was able to give us up to date news of his life. How poignant to hear that he hadn't really understood the fact that Louise couldn't visit and on the appointed day was sitting ready in his kilt and best highland dress. 

More of that will emerge in an article to be published when the Kindle version of the book is ready (I will give you the heads up on that) but what a wonderful and relaxed conversation we had as we ranged across the lives of Lily and Randolph, these two opposites whose planets would eventually align, before bouncing off again in opposite directions.

Each time I glanced upwards there was Louise's husband, poet Tom Payne, beaming smiles at us and clearly equally delighted that Lily and Randolph's story was being heard again (see the Happy Campers picture here) and all delight was compounded when we presented Louise with her Knitsuke...

A knitted Lily Budge and the Galloway ring encrusted with diamonds...


and here is the Knit Angel's account about the making of...

I loved the book and decided that I would reconstruct the Galloway ring that Lily was entitled to on her marriage to Randolph. I found a ring box pattern, but then had to make up a ring in lurex – constructing it around an old curtain ring and gluing on the three diamonds. I also knew Lily had collected dolls and when I realised I wanted to make a ‘Lily doll’ of my own I set about creating a look-a-like doll, complete with her beloved cream suit, black boots and distinctive black hair. Then I made second one, just for fun and gave this one to Louise for her daughter.

My contribution, the Quiltsuke, wasn't difficult, Steps to the Altar an obvious choice and pieced in pretty fabrics which I thought Lily would have loved. More hand quilting with the Aurifil 12, this one done to the dulcet background tones of the World Cup and I have no idea what Lily Budge would have made of that...

Thank you for a great event Louise.

 

The Happy Campers Channel Their Inner Martin Parr @PortEliotFest ~ Saturday

SATURDAY

 

Quelle horreur! 

The bunting was missing from the DGR tent.

The perpetrators had untied one end and, unable to untie the rather better knot at the other end, had simply broken the twine, leaving just a remnant dangling.  Determined not to let this get us down, we took it to the Plymouth College of Art stand, where there was a lifesize mesh elephant waiting to be covered with fabric, and donated it to his tail.

A full day of events in the DGR tent followed, starting with Louise Carpenter, author of An Unlikely Countess, whose husband, poet Tom Payne, did a bit of knitting whilst he waited for the event to start...

Then Hannah Rothschild, who was welcomed by Cathy St Germans.  Hannah was talking about her book The Baroness, about her rebellious aunt Nica, who ran away to America in pursuit of her first love – jazz.   We wondered if her fabulous necklace was real gold … 

and finally Ben Ranyard (the Higgledy Gardener), who doesn’t like formal gardens – according to the Festival programme, he grows flowers to save the world and impress girls.  During his inspiring talk one of the Happy Campers, now bitten by the craft bug as well as horse flies, made some pom poms.

“I will pay you one pound (£1.00) for your story” read the poster.  Intrigued, we went over to chat to Michelle, telling her our sob story about the stolen bunting (a pound’s a pound, after all!) and getting her story in return...

I Will Pay You One Pound For Your Story is Michelle’s project documenting, sharing and celebrating the ordinary and extraordinary human experience.  You can read selected stories at

www.iwillpayonepoundforyourstory.blogspot.uk

Then it was off to the Library of Unread Books for a chance to confess which book(s) you have never managed to finish and why, to donate an unread book, and to take someone else’s failure home with you.  My favourite said “Of Mice and Men and To Kill A Mockingbird (but I’m not Michael Gove – promise!)”

The final DGR event of the day was Rachel Cooke, author of Her Brilliant Career: Ten Extraordinary Women of the Fifties, and one Happy Camper was very pleased to discover that they agreed on a favourite personality from her book – Sheila Van Damm, the rally driver.  Here’s another Sheila from the 1950s – the mum of one of the Happy Campers on her wedding day.  (We forgot to take a photo of Rachel – sorry…)

Dinner tonight was cooked by Dick Strawbridge, who was helping in son Glen’s fish restaurant...

That’s a smoke haddock fishcake in a ciabatta roll, with a side order of samphire and cherry tomatoes – the Happy Campers do like their food…..

After that, a trip to the pictures was in order, and what better than that premiere of Martin Parr’s film Turkey and Tinsel and we laughed until we cried.

One Happy Camper had been given a special outdoor waterproof cushion, made with love by her mother-in-law, which had already been left at one venue and successfully reclaimed, only for it to be left behind at the film venue. 

In fact, we spent quite a lot of the weekend going back to places we’d just left in order to see if it was still there.

 

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@PortEliotFest 2014 ~ The dovegreyreader tent guest list ~ Part One

Helen Rappaport brings Four Sisters to @PortEliotFest

Heavens above, over a week later and we are still only on Friday...

Our second event and one of the most relaxed for me, because Helen Rappaport and I had already talked a great deal about her book Four Sisters and before that Ekaterinburg, so this really could be conversation over a cup of tea...except by now it was clear we were in for such a scorcher of a weekend it was pints of water all round.

We agreed that Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia would have adored the festival, probably heading straight for the Wardrobe Department in the walled garden behind us for some costume frivolity and some whacky eye shadow effects.

Helen was cool and collected and as always completely in command of her information and her audience...

We ranged across many aspects of the lives of the girls, and how they coped with teenage-dom when their world was so restricted, along with the freedoms that suddenly became apparent when World War One broke out and they could fufill a more public role as nurses. This gave them much-wanted contact with men, albeit in tragic circumstances, but how well they coped with it all....and plenty of discussion about the impact of the haemophilia on their marriage prospects too and how wary this may have made other royal families around Europe, as well as the role and influence of their ailing mother and adoring father in their short lives.

Throughout it all I was sitting on my hands with excitement knowing that we had a very special Knitsuke to give to Helen at the end...

Four immaculate knitted Grand Duchesses and of course a Faberge egg,,,


Here is the Knit Angel's report on the making of...

"I decided that I needed a doll that would be the sort of thing a child might have made; not too sophisticated and it needed to be small. I duly knitted one, and when I showed it to Lynne she said the obvious “...but there were four sisters...”. Fortunately, having made the pattern up, I had written down what I had done along the way and so could replicate the first doll. With four dolls made, they were popped in a small box like sardines, together with 4 white hearts and a spare dress and sash. Finally, a knitted Faberge egg, complete with the finest plastic jewels.

How clever is that Knit Angel.

I had made a 9" square Quiltsuke for Helen too; Sister's Choice in a selection of lilac-coloured fabrics and hand quilted using my new best quilting thread friend, Aurifil No 12, a slightly thicker cotton available in a great raft of colours that creates a nice even visible stitch...

There is as much pleasure in the making of these as in the giving, that much I know, and the delight on Helen's face said it all, a really wonderful event.

Thank you Helen.

 

The Happy Campers Channel Their Inner Martin Parr @PortEliotFest ~ Friday

FRIDAY

After an early start to be first in the queue for the showers...

...it was off to the first of two breakfasts in the Orangery, which had been taken over by Fortnum and Mason



...after which we spent a happy hour in the Badger’s Sett making bunting, which was soon adorning the back of the DGR tent.  (It’s the lower one, made with strips of vintage scarves, rather than DGR’s more professional looking traditional triangles.)  The brainchild of Ros Badger, the Badger’s Sett was the place to be for all things craft, running workshops on headdresses and garlands as well as three sorts of bunting.

The first DGR event was a return visit by Brian Selznick – no wonderful orange trousers this time, but a pretty amazing hat...

Then we met our favourite stalkee – of whom more in a later report...

...had tea in the DGR tent...

...and were papped by Martin Parr in Sipsmith before rounding off the afternoon pebble painting in the Plymouth College of Art & Design tent...

Now, here’s the fundamental difference between the two Happy Campers. 

One is patient and methodical and spent her time crafting a beautiful scene of mountains in the snow, their tips touched by a sunrise glow; while the other just wanted to produce as much as possible in the allotted time.  The spotty one turned out to be a pretty good representation of the number of horsefly bites collected over the weekend…

We rounded off a good first day with a visit to Mik Artistik, “a strange and wonderful beast of a band who effortlessly juggle stand-up, rock and performance art”, seen here clutching his plastic fox, a present from a fan to commemorate his song about garden ornaments.

They say revenge is sweet, and we got ours when we spotted Martin Parr – without his camera!  It turns out he’s a big fan of Mik and was later to be seen boogying on down, but we caught him relaxing before the gig...

DGR Footnote : For obvious reasons Bookhound and I miss a great deal of the festival going on elsewhere but we did catch a snippet of Mik Artistic over the weekend and we absolutely loved him. Don't miss if he is doing a gig near you, it is hilarious.

The Happy Campers Channel Their Inner Martin Parr @PortEliotFest ~ Thursday

Here the first of the 'Happy Campers Channel Their Inner Martin Parr' reports...huge thanks to them both for masses of hard work and laughter, not only before and during the festival but afterwards too as they spend time sorting photos and writing reports. And thanks to them for...well, for camping and seeing what it's like so that the rest of us didn't have to...

 

The Happy Campers were very pleased to return for their third Port Eliot Festival.  The highlight of the weekend for us was meeting Martin Parr, a social documentary photographer who firmly believes that photos should tell the truth, not be cropped and photoshopped into something else.  In homage to what was a lightbulb moment to this very amateur photographer, here is the Happy Campers’ photographic Port Eliot experience, day by day.

THURSDAY

It was lovely to arrive a day earlier than usual and have the whole field to ourselves.

The tent was up and habitable in under half an hour, not bad considering it’s two years since we last saw it.  In the meantime, the rightful owners had used it, and inadvertently left us a gift in one of the sleeping compartments…

 … a favourite pair of socks, whose loss was much mourned at the time.

 After sheltering with a cup of tea from the obligatory welcoming thunder and a rain shower that couldn’t really be bothered to come to anything, we set off to explore the site and sights.



...before showing our faces at the DGR tent, and discovering that they were conveniently situated close to Sipsmith Sipping Corner, purveyors of gin and Summer Cup, a sort of gin-based Pimms, which quickly became our beverage of choice for the weekend.  Thanks to friend Brian for his photo...I think...and there we are centre and right..maybe

Adjacent to this marvellous emporium was the walled flower garden, grown from seeds provided by the Higgledy Gardener, who DGR would be interviewing later in the weekend...

A lovely gentleman started talking to us while we were admiring the flowers, and during the course of the conversation it suddenly dawned on us, he owned it all, this was the Earl of St Germans...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brian Selznick @PortEliotFest

In retrospect it was very sensible to start events in the tent with an afternoon of guests that I had met before.

I really do look on all forms of interviewing with a sense of renewed admiration when I have done a little session of it for myself, especially since I have 'retired' from the cut and thrust of work and thus spend much less time out there talking with people professionally. I'd like to say 'Oh yes, it all comes easy,' but vast acres of contentment in my life these days are less conducive to it all, so there has been some 'digging deep' in recent months along with a massive amount of homework. Of my nine guests in three days I had only met two of them before, Brian Selznick and Helen Rappaport... with the others we would have to hit the ground running, slip into relaxed conversation as if we had known each other for ever, and I am grateful to them all for making that possible.

So first up a return visit from the amazing Brian Selznick talking about The Invention of Hugo Cabret and Wonderstruck, and we had a ball...

I could listen all day to Brian talking about his books and I don't think I was alone. The creative process, where the stories come from, how he creates the dual narratives which eventually merge, how he draws, how those drawings then shape up into a book, how unknown and unpredictable it can all be...

...and we had a wonderful moment talking about book into film, Hugo, and how costume designer Sandy Powell had taken all his drawings and done completely the opposite, when who should pop up with a lovely heckle from the back but...

...you guessed it, Sandy Powell.

We roared and of course, as Brian then went on to explain, her interpretations were exactly right for the screen version.

Now then, the new book...

We wheedled and we delved, we took the oath of secrecy but to little avail...Scholastic publishing house let me tell you Brian stuck to the brief, we are absolutely none the wiser beyond the fact this will make up the trilogy, and now can't wait for the Fall of 2015 when the book will be published.

Meanwhile, you might recall that last festival we gave Brian a replica Hugo Cabret mouse as his Knitsuke...and there was all that trouble over trying to felt them down to size in the wash and one emerged the size of a rat. Anyway they all made it safely into the US via customs but this year we decided to make it even more difficult and I am guessing that Brian Selznick is, as you read this, busy queuing for a passport for Mini Brian, here sitting in his pocket...


Brian so taken with his Mini Brian that he plans to buy a shirt to match. The Knit Angel added in a turtle and a book mark too, which will both make sense if you have read Wonderstruck and the applause was heartfelt...

And then one of the loveliest things happened the day after this event...

I was drifting around with my brain divided into four compartments with questions for four new speakers I had yet to meet, so yes, a little pre-occupied was I, when a woman came up to me...

'I can't thank you enough for that event with Brian Selznick yesterday,' she said...

''My son absolutely did not want to be there but I dragged him along and he was spellbound. We went straight next door to the bookshop and bought Wonderstruck, Brian talked to him and signed the book and he has had his nose in it ever since...'

We had talked with Brian about the excitement of the accessibility of a weighty 600 page book for children, especially perhaps the reluctant readers out there, and the way that the pictures tell and are integral to so much of the story, often saying what can't be said in words, and with such clarity and immediacy and with a depth of detail that children adore, and unlike adults, don't by-pass. So how wonderful for that child to have that life-long memory of reading such a brilliant book over such an amazing weekend. 

Thank you to whoever it was because that's what it's all about, and I made myself remember that each time I settled down to host another event.

Next up would be Helen Rappaport...

Turkey and Tinsel with Martin Parr & the Happy Campers @PortEliotFest

Team dovegrey are starting to file their reports and I have to say how sorry I was to miss social documentary photographer Martin Parr's 'Turkey and Tinsel' film premiere, so thank goodness the Happy Campers were there...

No tickets because this event involved queuing, and there are very strict rules about Port Eliot queuing...you absolutely don't save a place in the queue for a friend to join you at the last minute to save themselves the bother. I was still recovering from the day's interviews and so decided to give the whole thing a miss, and I am very sorry I did now because the reports the next morning, over that Fortnum & Mason's breakfast, were absolutely hilarious, but now you can read it for yourself...

and here's Martin Parr himself looking very smiley at the dovegreyreader tent on Sunday too...

The Happy Campers' night out at the cinema

Saturday 7.30pm

 

The Round Room only accommodates about seventy people, so we were determined to be at the front of the queue to ensure that we were able to see the premiere of Martin Parr's documentary film, 'Turkey and Tinsel.' We hadn't been able to attend the Q and A session Martin had hosted that morning, which meant that I had very little knowledge of the subject.  'What are Turkey and Tinsel trips anyway?' I enquired of my more worldly wise companion. Linda replied that they are coach trips taken in the Autumn to places like seaside resorts, which would otherwise be very quiet in the off season. Older folk seem to be the target audience; Linda's mum has been on one of these, and provided useful inside information.

'So you mean the bus is full of Christmas decorations and the hotel pretends it is Christmas and they have a Christmas dinner and entertainments then they go home again and it is still November?'

'Yup.'

If you are going to an event in the Round Room you are asked to take your shoes off so not to ruin the Aubusson carpet. After walking up and down the PE tracks all day my feet in their sandals were very dusty; I couldn't help thinking it would have been better for the carpet to keep my footwear on. I had my trusty cushion and a superior arm rest- one of those Grand Tour tables with the different coloured stone inserts on the top- and mused about the difference in comfort levels from our last cinematic experience here, watching The Leopard outdoors under a woolly blanket.

The film was laugh a minute. We were behind the camera with Martin Parr as we met the coach driver (a lovely man.......Christmas Day every Tuesday) and followed him around as he switched on his fairy lights and arranged various seasonal gonks on the dashboard. Pick -ups were next, stops around Walsall to collect those who would become our companions for the next hour. Very soon we became aware of a feisty old lady who would become the star of the show; full of life and mischief, she reminded us that these were people who were expecting a jolly good time, and would ensure that they had it! Later in the DGR tent Martin Parr told us that he knew almost immediately which characters on the trip would yield up the most entertainment and who would become the protagonists, so to speak. It was a story, after all.

Weston Super Mare. Rain. Tide out on a flat, grey shore. But tomorrow is Christmas Eve! The hotel staff welcome the guests with enthusiasm and affectionate banter. The evening kicks off with bingo and some ribald humour from the compere. He says to camera that he uses this gathering to assess how lively the punters are going to be that week.

When placed under a spotlight like this, you become aware of how strange some of the Christmas rituals are.....boisterous party games, turkey and the trimmings, a visit from Father Christmas (requires considerable suspension of disbelief), the Queen, dressing up, alarming kitsch decorations... There was a particularly scary automaton singing Santa that flailed its arms and fixed you with a gimlet eye. Martin Parr gave us rather too much of him, I thought.

But it's not all indoor fun on the Turkey and Tinsel trail. A trip to Sanders' Christmas emporium was organised where festive items could be purchased, presumably for the real Christmas yet to come. On Boxing Day, the crowd went to Clarks' Village, but this was a disappointment for some. ' We're staying on the coach', announced an unimpressed lady, staring bleakly out of the window at the persistent rain.

As we joined those who were now our friends for New Year's Eve, I began to reflect, as Martin Parr surely intended his audience to do, upon my own prejudices.

Who are we to judge what others find fun?

Why do we assume old people only want to knit, sleep and watch TV?

Incidentally, the film does not show a single person watching the box, the T and T crowd are there to chat, drink, explore, sing, dance. There was a lot of dancing, with one eighty year old lady becoming our very own Dancing Queen. Her energy would have put me to shame.

Martin Parr achieved a rare thing - a real connection between the viewer and those at the other end of the camera. We felt that we were laughing with, not at, his subjects.  We were still smiling broadly as we filed out, suddenly emerging into strong evening sunlight.

Halfway down the hill I stopped. The cushion had gone AWOL again....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Breakfast and Tea @PortEliotFest

...chaos reigns and I really don't know what day it is, but I have at least retrieved the kitchen from the brink after four days of dashing in and out and hoping it would miraculously sort itself out.

But a person can only be allowed so many miracles in a weekend and we consider up there with the best was the little Panda-sized all-day parking space that appeared near the St German's village entrance to Port Eliot, each and every morning, as Bookhound pulled up thinking he would only be able to drop me off with all the clutter for the day. This back gate is only a few minutes walk from the walled garden and the tent, compared to the very long slog up a steep hill from the car parks we have used in previous years.

Our feet and arms feet felt blessed I can tell you.

Margarete's comment on the last post was spot on too...

"Phew, that was it. Three days "Trubel", hurl-burly, with yarn and books and people. Once you trusty correspondents are home and unpacked and once you've caught your breath I am looking forward to your reports....'

I have told team dovegrey not to rush...me included. Everyone worked incredibly hard in really challenging heat and I am so very grateful to all of them. They give up time, drive down here and then to and fro, check in at their B&Bs, or pitch tents and brave the shower queue at 7am and the music all night-long, so the reports and the pictures will arrive dreckly; everyone was clicking away and the Kayaker took some amazing pictures over the three days, and I hardly took any so busy was I with events.

But while we await news and pictures you will be pleased to know that in true Martin Parr fashion I did at least take my camera into our last day Fortnum & Mason's breakfast treat with the Happy Campers at 8.30am on Sunday morning...



Bookhound set too crunching the granola and yoghourt...

While the Happy Campers had Welsh Rarebit..

I settled for avocado and what looks like cream...


But no, that is a poached egg of the most extraordinary shade of yellowness that I have ever seen...

It was all enough to set us up for our final day.

After several attempts I also managed to get away from the tent long enough to walk down to the Flower & Fodder Show to see Fran's wonderful second place entry...

...and I am so pleased I took these photos because an hour later someone had swiped the rosette and card (whoever you are that's not Port Eliot cricket) and poor Fran, almost weeping in the arms of the steward, was very kindly given a replacement...though that card with judge designer Jane Churchill's name on it sadly irreplaceable.

And more very good news.

We saw and were allowed to photograph all your tea cosies (no other photos were allowed) and I will get permission to post them all on here before I do so, but hang it all publish and be damned, clever Anne Skene from Coventry...you won a Highly Commended rosette you very clever knitter you...

 

Oh yes and of course we had our final day team cream tea with Maggie and John's very wonderful cake too...

That's Becky our lovely jolly team dovegrey knitting guru, and Curzon wielding the knife...

Scorchio Day Two @PortEliotFest

Sorry I seem to have missed Day One, but Oh My Goodness...did we ever believe the sun would shine quite like this...

and it has felt way hotter than 20 degrees...then add in the insulating properties of being under canvas and I tell you every little hint of breeze and pint of water has been welcomed, but what a glorious treat it all is.

Here we are ( Barbara, Me, Two Happy Campers) having arrived at the tent at 9am to get ready for today's events. I slipped into my flip flops very quickly and what a wonderful day we have had.

...and that GDSB dress saved my bacon from frying today.

Lots of reports and pictures to come over the next week or so but we must say HUGE congratulations to Fran H-B who, after she had sat and done all the flowers for the tent, then went off and won us SECOND PRIZE in our Flower Show class (out of eleven entries) for the 'More Tea Vicar' arrangement in a tea pot (pics to follow)

Final day tomorrow, we have booked an 8.30am breakfast treat at Fortnum & Masons who are doing the most magnificent on-site catering, so I must away to my bed to be ready for another early start, and if the person who may have accidentally picked my glasses up off the table finds them it would be lovely to have them back...bit of a blurry afternoon.

Lots more soon.

 

@PortEliotFest ~ Thursday

The bunting has been untangled...

and we have moved in and made ourselves at home...

The board since corrected to say Four Sisters.

Had a wander around the bookshop next door (convenient) already and bought a book which I have been wanting for ages and Booker longlisting makes no difference...I still wanted to tackle The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth, who by coincidence will be doing an event at the festival over the weekend.

I have also started to adorn my festival hat with frivols...

Team dovegrey are gathering, Fran H-B and Barbara arrived today and Curzon arrives with us tomorrow. Becky and her seven-year old daughter Evie will take on the knitting, the Happy Campers are tent-pitched, kitted out and running round already, and the Knit Angel and the Weatherman are installed and keeping busy.

We are ready.

Preparations for @PortEliotFest 2014

It's started...

Across the land I imagine people packing up cars and vans ready for the trek west this week, so how lucky are we to have just a thirtyish minute drive up and over Kit Hill (that's it in the distance) into Cornwall and along the narrow twisty lanes to Port Eliot.

We've made a start to this whole business of bringing dovegreyreader scribbles to life...piling up the bags of quilts and other bits and pieces that will soon adorn the tent, finding deckchairs, wellies, the cool box, vases, insect repellent, Factor 30...you name it, never knowingly under-prepared is us (and if we've forgotten it Fran and the Knit Angel won't have done) and not forgetting Rocky of course...

...as well as sorting myself out a bag per day with all the books I will need if I am to talk to eight authors and one gardener over the three days...

It seems like weeks since this planning meeting with Cathy St Germans...
and this has been my very pleasurable homework ever since. Six weeks of getting to know some fascinating people on paper who I can't wait to meet and talk to and about for real. I feel ready to take a very nice relaxing exam...

My entire brain meanwhile is located in this notebook (Stanley Spencer my choice for the cover pic this year. Helter Skelter painted in 1937 and in the collections at Sheffield Museum) should I lose it...well I would have to wing it, and we do a lot of that anyway because this is conversation, not interrogation, but some notes do help.

Team dovegrey will be gathering on Thursday and Friday and as always I am so grateful to them for their hard work and help. If you could know what I have asked the Knit Angel to conjure up in the last few weeks...well just wait until you see this year's Knitsuke gifts for the guests.

More soon but meanwhile here's the schedule for the weekend again...

Friday July 25th

2pm Brian Selznick

4pm Helen Rappaport

Saturday July 26th

10.30am Louise Carpenter

12md Hannah Rothschild

2pm Benjamin Ranyard (Mr Higgledy)

4pm Rachel Cooke

Sunday July 27th

11am Richard Benson

1pm Martin Parr

3pm Peter Beacham

 

 

An Unlikely Countess ~ Louise Carpenter

One of the most exciting aspects of any Port Eliot Festival line-up for the dovegreyreader tent is the book that has completely passed me by...and I hope Louise Carpenter won't mind me saying that about hers. 

Published in 2004, An Unlikely Countess Lily Budge and the 13th Earl of Galloway...my sort of book exactly and yet somehow I had missed it. In fact this 'missing the good books' was one of the reasons I started writing dovegreyreader scribbles in the first place. I was struggling to find them and this was a chance to start exploring and sharing it all, because how exactly was a person to know what was out there.

Catherine St Germans suggested I might like to talk to Louise, so I scurried off to buy the book and see what I thought.

Over two lovely long and relaxing reading days in the garden I met Lily May Miller, born to a working-class family in 1916 in the Borders town of Duns. Life was tough and uncompromising and a life in service beckoned for Lily until she met and married Jock Millar in 1936. Jock a wayward philanderer, and it was never going to end well; two babies later and he was off leaving Lily penniless and eventually homeless.

Meanwhile on October 14th 1928, to the Count and Countess of Galloway, a first-born son Randolph Keith Reginald Stewart. Important enough to receive a mention in The Times Court Circular the next day...

The Court Circular interesting in itself for its relentless tracking of the whereabouts of the aristocracy, and when Randolph is taken back to the family seat at Cumloden (I kept reading that as Culloden, with good reason in the end...battles will follow) in Kircudbrightshire (ker-koo-bree-shire for anyone not from these shores) in Scotland, hopes were high for the future of this son and heir. Imagine his parents horror when Randolph emerges as an eccentric and wayward child ill-suited to the conformities of aristocratic life. I suspect we would now place him somewhere on the autistic spectrum, but with no knowledge of how best to help him, and eventually at their wit's end and fearful of their difficult son, his family pursue some drastic and brutal treatments for him culminating in a lobotomy.

It is hard to countenance now but Louise Carpenter explores this very evenly, placing it in the context of the times... Randolph a tragedy to be managed not spoken of, but I wanted to weep for him all the same.

As the chapters in the book alternate between the lives of Lily, now Mrs Budge and married to Jimmy, a man who 'looked like Fred Astaire only after too much dancing,' and Randolph's prolonged incarceration with the monks in the Monastrey of the Transfiguration in Roslin... I kept turning the pages on these lives that would eventually converge.

Lily along the way to that first meeting with Randolph on a Church pilgrimage in 1976 will have been variously the owner of a children's nursery and animal sanctuary, a relief bar manager, an antique dealer, she will have adopted a child with learning difficulties, turned her house into a hotel and proved herself to be indomitable, fearless, feisty, kind-hearted, caring, good to a fault perhaps, surprisingly sensible and pragmatic, and always capable of brushing herself off and starting over, but Lily is emotionally needy too and her need to be needed will be forever apparent.

When Lily meets Randolph and sees him as a 'bird with a broken wing,'...well can you see what will happen next...

And can you see why I was riveted to the garden chair.

I really don't want to tell you any more because to do so would be to recount some of the best bits of the book, about Lily and Randolph's life together...

And Lord Galloway, Randolph's father's reaction to the union...

And the complex and tortuous paths that all these intertwined lives will take...

And will Randolph ever take his seat in the House of Lords with Lily in the wings...

Suffice to say Lily, twelve years older than Randolph, died in 1999 as perhaps the most unlikely Countess of Galloway there could ever have been, Randolph lives on in sheltered accommodation and Louise plans to visit him again before the event at Port Eliot so will be able to update us. But what a superb story this is and with what skill has Louise Carpenter told it. Quite a few of Team dovegrey have now read and absolutely loved the book prior to Louise's visit to the tent (Happy Campers, Fran H-B and Knit Angel all in rave mode over this one) and we are all bursting with questions. It should be a great event (Saturday July 26th 10.30am) and of course we will report back in full...with pictures.

Footnote : Good news. Though the book had been out of print for some time there are now (or were!) a good number of copies on You Know Where. But even more exciting...my suggestion to Louise that An Unlikely Countess most certainly deserved a second outing, and could we please have a Kindle version, has not fallen on deaf ears. Kindle version in the pipeline and ready soon.

 

 

 

The Port Eliot Flower & Fodder Show @PortEliotFestival

One last request at the end of Port Eliot intro week...

If you will be at the Festival don't forget to check out the Flower and Fodder show schedule...this is the first year for food entries, and the winning jam will be made and sold in Fortnum & Mason's in London so this could be your chance to be a jam star...or a pasty champ. Everything will be exhibited in the quad in front of the house so it promises to be a real draw.

I hope the tea cosies are going well...and it isn't too late to enter and have your work of art displayed at Fortnum & Mason in London prior to the charity auction.

I hear the dovegreyreader entries have started to arrive at Port Eliot and they have been beyond excited to receive them, and meanwhile, as if I haven't given you all enough to do, could you also be thinking about our Flower Show entry.

The judges this year will be Jasper Conran, Candida Lycett-Green and Kitty Arden so if they happen to have found their names here via google alert please could they move along quickly and go and look somewhere else....thank you.

Right...carrying on..

Our entry is more of an installation than anything else...usually completely over the top, and we try and incorporate as many of your suggestions as we can no matter how whacky... as you can see with our winning Sound of Music entry...

Flowers are the least of it where we are concerned, the fun is putting the things together, it's hilarious and of course it's the taking part that counts, not the winning (not much it isn't) 

Fran H-B masterminds the whole thing with superb resourcefulness and imagination and assistance from other Team dgr members and this year I may actually have decent flowers in the garden to adorn our entry. I think we have decided that this will be the main class for our extravaganza entry this year and we have one or two ideas already but would welcome more suggestions...

MRS PEACOCK IN THE LIBRARY
An arrangement depicting a fictitious character.
24 inches by 24 inches. To be viewed from the front

and Fran may flaunt the oasis and the proper spiky things and enter this class for us too...

ONE LUMP OR TWO?
An arrangement in a tea pot for tea when the Vicar Calls.
12 inches by 12 inches. To be viewed from the front

So which fictitious character could we depict and how??

All suggestions very welcome in comments...and thank you, what would I do without you all.

@PortEliotFest 2014 ~ dovegreyreader tent guest list ~ Part Two

Continuing with news of the line up for the dovegreyreader tent at this year's Port Eliot Festival, we have been able to schedule in four events based on books about women's lives, all of which I have thoroughly enjoyed reading, and three of which have already written about on here (stand by for news of the fourth in the next post on Friday) all by authors I now can't wait to talk with...

Rachel Cooke

Her Brilliant Career, the book about ten women of the 1950s which I enjoyed so much and wrote about on here, and I am delighted that Rachel will be coming to the tent to talk about those lives which proved so enlightening to me and to many about the era in which we grew up and now available in paperback.

Of the cohort of notable women featured in Her Brilliant Career, eventually selected from a cast of many who all popped their heads up once Rachel Cooke started looking for them, I had heard of a few but knew very little about any of them...

Patience Gray, Nancy Spain, Joan Werner-Laurie, Sheila van Damm, Alison Smithson, Margery Fish, Muriel and Betty Box, Jacquetta Hawkes and Rose Heilbron.

Chefs, racing car drivers, architects, film directors, archaeologists, barristers all swimming against the tide of convention and assumption to achieve...

I can see we are going to have much to talk about.

 

Helen Rappaport

Helen needs no introduction here, I am delighted that she will be bringing Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia,  Four Sisters to the tent and I expect a wonderful event. The conversation should flow and we can all give these young women a breath of festival air (they would have loved it all) and expound our pet theories on Alexandra's debilitating health issues, you may remember mine...

'Girl upon girl born to a couple who had to produce a son, but that is giving birth to nigh on 52lb of baby in less than ten years, often with difficulty and all at the end of the nineteenth century when... well I will leave it to your imagination. Helen Rappaport is a historian, thus speculation is not the done thing, but I can speculate wildly, and I would hazard a guess that Alexandra was left with some fairly traumatic physical sequalae to all that....maybe even sufficient to limit her lifestyle, who can know.'

As the book is read by an increasingly wider audience around the world even more theories are coming to light so it all promises some great discussion. News of the documentary, not yet screened, is that the BBC don't want it so disappear amongst the summer sporting schedule (World Cup anyone...*sigh* ) so it is now set for the autumn.

Hannah Rothschild

It is almost two years since I met Hannah Rothschild very briefly at the last Port Eliot Festival before heading home to read The Baroness, Hannah's book about the search for her rebellious ancestor Nica, and another book now available in paperback.

Hearing 'Round Midnight' played by Thelonious Monk, Nica abandoned her marriage, her children and her home and headed to New York to find Monk, eventually caring for him until his death in 1982. In Nica's own words...

'I'd never heard anything remotely like it. I must have played it twenty times in a row. Missed my plane. In fact I never went home. I got the message I belonged where that music was. I was supposed to be involved in some way

A sign of a great book is always that much of the detail is still incredibly vivid in my mind, so yet another event that I am really looking forward to...here's a snippet of my thoughts at the time...

 

And so to Nica, the wonderful, free-spirited rebellious Nica and with a tension built up by Hannah Rothschild as the fate of the women within this patriarchally dominant family is gradually revealed, and to the point where I would have been seriously disappointed if Nica hadn't done a runner, because in the end I was willing her to escape. Suffering a form of de-oxygenated entrapment from real life, and of the highest order, Nica was never cut out for the rarifed atmosphere in which she found herself, something had to give.

It was the Second World War that did it. Nica's life until that one of dependence and moneyed privilege, pampered to the point of infantilism within a rule-bound, class-obsessed society, but with the war came Nica's chance. She took it and capitalised on it, dutifully travelling to the U.S. for the safety of herself and her children, as instructed by her French husband Jules, but then leaving to return to Europe to join the Free French Army. Nica had a busy and exciting war and as I read of her exploits it became obvious that she would never settle back into life as Rothschild woman... there to 'entertain, inform and breed.'

So how lucky is that; three books that I have invested a huge amount of pleasurable reading and writing time with, and now I am going to be able to chat with the authors on the sofa while the sun shines (it WILL) and Bookhound and the Weatherman make six hundred cups of tea, and everyone sits around on the grass knitting and listening and joining in with questions. 

And of course full reports and pictures for all of you festivalling away at home.

Now jazz might not be your thing but here's the music that captured Nica's heart and soul so completely, and maybe we'll have it playing softly in the background before Hannah's event..

 

 

Related articles

The Baroness... the search for Waddesdon Manor

Her Brilliant Career - Ten Extraordinary Women of the Fifties ~ Rachel Cooke

Port Eliot 2014 ~ Make a Tea Cosy

I have been over to Port Eliot for the planning meeting to sort out the line-up and running order for the dovegreyreader tent at this year's festival, and after a year off with no festival last year I had wondered whether the old buzz would return.

Could the old tent magic still be there...

Can we still bring the blog to life for a weekend...

Well all affirmative, we are good to go.

The gorgeous thirty minute cross country drive over the border into Cornwall, the lanes awash with droves of red campions and the last of the bluebells, great froths of hawthorn blossom, enough to make your heart sing until you remember you are supposed to be looking at the road and concentrating. Even though I drive a little Fiat Panda, which takes up no space at all, it is all narrow twisty-turny bends and perilously tiny stone bridges.

And the minute I walked into the library at Port Eliot and sat down in the chair Cathy St Germans and I were off..

Cathy has flying touch typists fingers ( which I envy...every word on this entire blog is written with two fingers...shame on me for never learning) and the emails were flying off all over the place...

' Please...we would love you to... sofa...conversation...dovegreyreader tent... informal...tea...knitting...'

and as we put together the running order it all started to look really interesting and exciting and I could feel my enthusiasm soaring at the prospect of some new books and authors (for me) as well as welcoming back some 'old' friends. Once everyone has confirmed I will share it all with you because as you know the dovegreyreader team will be reporting back on here as usual...so even if you can't be there for real you can enjoy it all virtually, and I will be canvassing for questions to ask beforehand too.

But that leads me onto something that you CAN all join in with from afar, in fact from anywhere in the world where there is a post box, and with eight weeks to go plenty of time to plan and execute ...

The Tea Cosy competition...

Anyone can enter...knit, crochet, stitch...in fact make a tea cosy out of anything (yes really...) and send it into the festival where it will be displayed and judged over the weekend, before being carefully transported for further display at Fortnum & Mason in London (how famous is that) prior to being auctioned in aid of The Royal Brompton and Harefield Trust in the autumn.

Now then... it has been agreed that if you put a little note on your tea cosy saying 'dovegreyreader' those entries will be grouped in a cosy huddle all of their own, each robing their Brown betty teapot so that I can take a picture of them and post it here.

The thing is that having made this rash and wild suggestion I am going to look a super nitwit if there aren't any...so what do you think...

Are there any tea cosy makers out there...

Do you have friends who might want to enter...

Do they have more friends who might want to enter...

Do those friends of the friends...etc

Could you give the heads up to any local knitting groups...

Maybe let your local knitting shop in on the excitement...

Please spread the word if you can...it is for a really good cause after all....me not looking an idiot The Royal Brompton and Harefield Trust.