Children In Need http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b008dk4b
Friday !5th November 2013 is the BBC Children In Need evening. Ilfracombe Ukulele Club will be touring the pubs,clubs, and hotels of Ilfracombe raising money. Ilfracombe Ukulele Club http://paulclews888.weebly.com/ilfracombe-ukulele-club.html
Children In Need http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b008dk4b
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A few weeks ago, I was invited to attend Hele Mill History Day on the 19th October 2013. David Jones, owner of the mill, had recorded one of my AudioBoo podcasts a couple of years ago, therefore suggested I would be ideal to record interviews with the residents invited to the event. I was happy to get involved with this event. Here are the recordings I made on the day. Here are a few of the photos of Hele shared between the residents. Hele Mill Website
Many thanks to Paul for the invitation to guest blog. I’m Ruth and I live in Ilfracombe, which is why it’s been an expensive week so far. I had to go to a meeting in London yesterday. The meeting lasted less than an hour but it took nine hours, twenty miles of driving and a stonking train fare to get there and home again. Not to mention the cost of the mysterious transformation that yet again took place somewhere between Barnstaple and Paddington. How is it that I get on the train in Devon looking respectable, and when I get off it in London I look like a bag lady? I’m sure I’m not the only person this happens to. Maybe that’s why there’s a branch of Monsoon in Paddington Station. None of the people at the meeting knew where Ilfracombe was. That was interesting, because they’re in the book business, and while most of the trade is mourning the fact that bookshops are closing down all around us, what do we have right here in our own High Street? I suppose its relative remoteness is one reason that Ilfracombe has managed to hang onto all sorts of businesses which, for friends who live in bigger towns with easier communications, are only a fond memory. A proper greengrocer. Two real butchers. Bakeries and a post office that aren’t just add-ins to supermarkets. A fish shop. A local printer. Pedlar’s. Shops that deliver. Shops that don’t charge silly prices. Shops where the staff know what they’re talking about - usually because they’re the owners. That’s not to mention the proper pubs, the farmers who sell locally-raised meat and the places to buy free-range eggs at the front gate. As the daughter and grand-daughter of former Ilfracombe shopkeepers, I listened to the Londoners saying, "Ilfracombe? Where’s that?" and I smiled, and I thought, it’s in a very good place. By Ruth Downie
Website http://www.ruthdownie.com/ Twitter @ruthsdownie Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ruso-and-Tilla/108745675816262 Win a free half hour guitar or ukulele lesson by Skype, FaceTime or google hangouts. During #DevonHour on twitter, this week only (21/82013), 10 questions about me will appear under the hash tag #SoYouThinkYouKnowMe. Simply tweet the answers back to me. All the answers are in my twitter time line and blogs. The winner will be announced shortly after Saturday 6 pm (24/8/2013) when the competition closes, here and on Twitter. In the event of a tie, I will draw a winner from the most correct answers. Anyone is eligible to play, except me. Good luck! You must be able to get your hands on a guitar or ukulele. No cash alternatives. My decision is final. The rain yesterday at Filleigh Fete kept many visitors away. For those That made the effort, there was plenty to do & see. Every time I camp at Tamar Lake, I see a sign at the end of the road saying, 'Wei's Chinese Kitchen'. I always say, 'we'll have to go there sometime'. Well, finally we went and tried it. We followed the sign to another sign pointing into a field. Ahead was caravans and tents, to the right was a smallish wooden building with red Chinese lanterns adorning it. Walking away from the building was a tall slim gentleman, who approached us because we were clearly unsure about where we should park. 'Can I help you'? I replied 'we're looking for the Chinese restaurant'. He told us where to park, and pointed us in the right direction for the entrance. Once inside, the same gentleman introduced us to the menu on the wall above the hot plates. 'This is what we have this evening, Wei changes the menu every day'. We were offered a choice to either eat in or take away. The take away was £4 per punnet, but we chose to eat in, the all you can eat for £9.90 per person. We were offered a table for two, and very quickly a bag of prawn crackers appeared to get us started. We tucked in. Very soon after this, a Chinese lady, who we were later to find out was Wei, offered us a chicken, sweet corn and noodle soup. The main course was a number of dishes, including, egg fried rice, prawn balls, chow mein, sweet and sour, duck and pineapple, and many more. I tried them all except the beef with chilli. I'm not keen on beef, and really dislike chilli, hence the wide berth. Everything I had was unbelievably delicious, causing me to tweet, 'this is one of the best restaurants ever'. We were also offered tea or coffee and apple pie and ice cream. Amazing, and highly recommended. As many of you know, I'm not a fan of open mic nights. You don't need to get ripped off to get your first gigs. http://paulclews888.weebly.com/1/post/2013/03/open-mic-nights-why-you-should-not-play-them.htm You could play at family and friends parties for instance. These kind of events will offer you a supportive audience, and introduce you to other party guests who may never have heard of your band, or if they have, may not know what you sound like. This could lead to another gig. Another simple way to get a gig is to book yourself. Hire a pub or hotel room, or even a village hall or similar and sell tickets. In the old days in Ilfracombe, all the bands used to hire the Vaults Bar. Advertise your gig with posters in local shop windows. Many shop owners are happy to do this for free. These days it is much easier to make your own posters and tickets with computers and printers. They were just not available to me. Advertise your gig on gig web sites and of course on social media. Twitter being the best way to get your word out because of its size and the fact you can reach many people with no followers what so ever, with clever use of hash tags. Always include the name of the town or city where you are going to play, and including the surrounding towns is a good idea too. Facebook is important but difficult, in comparison. You need to actively collect 'likes' on you page, which for an unknown band is not easy. But you can advertise in local and other type specific groups. It is also well worth having a Google+ page to promote your gigs, because it is searchable on Google. Gigs can also be promoted, often for free in local news papers, and on local radio. Just be creative. Sell as many tickets as you can, and don't forget you can charge on the door too. It's a good idea to charge a little more on the door to encourage ticket sales. Get all your family and friends to buy tickets too, and you will make a profit from your gig. What if you don't have enough songs? Well set up the gig as a double or triple bill with other local bands in a similar position to you. Split the overheads, split the profits. More bands promoting, means more advertising, bigger audiences, and more exposure for your band. A word of warning before you start gigging. It's a little boring, and not very rock 'n' roll, but you need to get public liability insurance to protect yourself, your audience, and the venue you are playing at. The best way to get this in my opinion is to join the Musicians Union. Good luck and get gigging. Well, Paul can't get much further North in Devon and We can't get much further South. Paul asked on Twitter during DevonHour, a weekly spot where Devonian Twits get together and tweet the bejasus out of a #hashtag (don't ask, either you know or you don't) if anyone would like to write a guest post for his blog. I volunteered. I'm involved with tourism. I thought I'd nail my colours to my mast at once, but the mast is stainless steel. No, really, it is. I run a tourist based business in Dartmouth with a lovely charter boat. Paul and I chatted about the topic, and I suggested tourism and Dartmouth rather before I realised what I was suggesting! Do I do a catalogue of all the tourist attractions in Dartmouth? Pretty obviously no, I do not. We have an excellent Tourist Information Centre for that. I'm not going to bang my own trumpet nor blow my own drum much, either. After all, you'll visit my web site and make your own decision about whether to come out on Alucia or not. I'd like you to, of course I would, but that's up to you. In Dartmouth we depend on tourism. That's fine, because we're a great town to visit. We have some of the best eateries, drinkeries and shops in South Hams. We're a destination town with a great quayside to catch crabs from, river boats of all shapes and sizes for river trips, glorious floral displays, a food festival, a wonderful , the views of Kingswear across the river, ice cream fish and chips, the lot. We have broad vistas, sea air, easy access to the wilderness of Dartmoor, and wonderful places to stay. The part that saddens me is that many of our tourists arrive by coach and, because they are not always in the first flush of mobility, don't find our beautiful places in the town. Often they leave the coach and manage only to reach the town pontoon before boarding an excellent river boat and being given a lovely tour up the river Dart to Totnes before being met by their driver and whisked away. They bypass our fleshpots entirely. How do we attract them to spend time with us? Don't they know that much of The Onedin Line was filmed here? Do they know that the huge area around Slapton Sands was evacuated in the second World War to provide a training ground for our US allies, or anything about the enormous training disasterExercise Tiger, some of which happened on the beach at Slapton, some of which in Lyme Bay, and which was the single largest disaster in loss of life of the war, a mixture of bureaucratic incompetence, friendly fire and enemy action? Do they know that the French 'General with the Big 'Ooter' ('Allo 'Allo, do keep up) de Gaulle, was stationed here with the Free French Forces, and that we can show them the house, or that HMS Cicala couldn't be sunk because it's the Royal Dart Hotel? Honestly, we'd love to tell them that and have them explore. There are folk who are pretty much the last generation directly affected by that war, and they need more stories to pass on to their kids and grandkids. We also would dearly love more younger folk. It's term time still and the 'happily child free' are with us at present, but this really is a town for the kids, too. It isn't a bucket and spade holiday town, it's a town to do stuff, visit castles. We have, well, at least three! We even have a Palmerston Fort. Dartmouth was invaded by the Brittany French, but we repulsed them. Find that in your history books. They were sent packing at Blackpool Sands. There's stuff to find out about pirates. Politely we call them 'privateers', but we had 'em. The tugs for the Lower Ferry are named after one of them. We were also involved in the Triangular Trade, but not the one with slaves. Hmm, where to find out about that. Ah yes, the museum! And how about those Pilgrim Fathers, the Mayflower and Speedwell lot? Left from Plymouth, did they? Have a look in Bayards Cove and see how correct that is. Come to that they didn;t arrive in Plymouth on the other side either. They anchored of Provincetown on Cape Cod. The wonderful irony is that Provincetown is now a major gay resort!. As my US friends say, “Go figure!” I keep apologising for the Mayflower lot. I keep explaining that the boat was meant to sink, but that's a whole other story! How was Dartmouth defended from invasion from the sea over the years? It wasn't the big guns of the Brownstone Battery, they had a different job. What to know what? Easy, take a walk on the South West Coast Path, and visit it and find out. Chat toCoastwatch volunteers there, at Inner Froward Point. I volunteer for them can can spin quite a yarn if I'm there when you drop in. Did you know that Dartmouth was on the Front Line in WW2? Have you ever knowingly been to a front line town? Looking at the peace and quiet today you;d never realise the vast invasion forces assembled here. It was bombed, too. The bombing almost ruined the unique plaster ceiling of the Tree of Jesse, something you can see by appointment with the museum, but it was recovered, all bit one bit. You see it ain't just the stuff you expect. Dartmouth isn't just one of the most beautiful little towns on the face of the earth. It has a military history, a social history and a whole industrial history I haven't even touched on! Have I even scratched the surface? Seriously, I have no idea. I know there were slums, social deprivation, a jail whose last tenant was a friend's grandfather, stocks, shambles (meat market), a mill, limekilns, one of which claimed the life of a young lad who fell asleep at the top and rolled in to be incinerated, poor kid. There's a powerful river that claims two lives a year, and we have the Navy training baby officers in and around the harbour. And that's without even thinking of listing eateries, drinkeries, our wonderful local theatre and social centre, glorious and quirky shops, the best cream teas in Devon and so much else.
I bet you just thought we were good for crabbing on the quayside!
We are. But we're a whole lot more, too.
So tell me, did anything catch your eye? Tim Trent runs a private skippered charter boat, Alucia, in Dartmouth, Devon, and wishes he'd been born and raised in Dartmouth, but has to confess that he is an incomer who adores the place. We are coming to the end of another school year, they just seem to fly by! This year I have been teaching guitar and ukulele at Ilfracombe Junior School, Ilfracombe Infant School, Berrynarbor School, Filleigh School, Chittlehampton School, and new to this year Chulmleigh School. Due to many children moving up to their senior schools and colleges, I will have space for new students in all the above schools. Places will be limited, but I can take your booking now by calling 07866 650015. If you already have lessons with me and intend to carry on, there is no need to contact me. If your school is not on the above list, you could ask your school to contact me, to arrange for me to teach in your school, or you could simply have lessons after school in you own home. Hope you all have a great summer holiday, let's hope for some sun this year. As an actor, I sometimes feel a little useless in the context of the Big Society. There are so many worthy professions that people prize more highly. Don’t get me wrong, I love what I do, and I value it but acting is hardly comparable to, I don’t know, creating a cure for a fatal disease.
But every now and again, I’m thrown by the power of acting; it’s power to unite disparatepeople, to express ideas, to represent unheard voices. The strength of imagination at work.
I feel the last few weeks of work with tidy carnage have thrown me, in a good way. And the lynch-pin?
Trust.
There can be no other profession that asks you to arrive on day 1 of your new job and be quite so available, so exposed. I show up for the first rehearsal on Monday morning, knowing that by the end of the week, my co-performer Neil and I will have touched, kissed, danced, laughed, just as if we were a real husband and wife. As it turns out, I had to learn to trust him to take my whole weight and I his. Quite an ask of someone you have met twice before! But we did it, on day 2 of rehearsals we lifted each other clear of the ground and trusted the other could hold fast.
I feel so privileged to work in a profession that asks for that level of commitment. It is a pleasure to put aside all the niceties, the awkward chit-chat and wavering eye contact of normal opening interactions. Neil and I bypassed that, cheated history by making up detailed back-stories and interweaving lives. In faking closeness, we found genuine companionship.
We are making a show about Motor Neuron Disease affecting the lives of a young couple, so we have to trust that we are representing the lives of people who are affected by this, and other fatal diseases. As actors, we might not be finding the cure for MND, but we are fighting the same cause by telling it’s story. Helen Cuinn performs alongside Neil John Gibson in dance theatre piece dream//life. Theatre collective tidy carnage are the visiting company in residence at theBike Shed Theatre, Exeter between the 2nd and the 20thof July. You can find out more and book tickets for the show, or the other events through the Bike Shed website: http://www.bikeshedtheatre.co.uk/whats-on/dreamlife/ Keep up-to-date with daily news through Twitter (@tidycarnage) or on Facebook (www.facebook.com:tidycarnage) |
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