Monday Miscellany

For this Monday's Miscellany here are a few things we have seen and heard over the last week or two.

Watching

 

 Recently we went to see a play called 'The Gift of Stones'.  Set in the Neolithic period it was adapted by Nobby Dimon for The North Country Theatre from the novel by Jim Crace.  This was a wonderful performance and tells the tale of 'the stonies', one of whom loses an arm as a child and unable to knapp flint to make tools for bartering with other tribes becomes the community story teller.  Apparently the actors took instruction in flint knapping from the expert John Lord, whom I featured in a post a few years ago - here.  The stonies are safe for a while but soon a ship comes from over the sea with shiny arrows made from a strange new material called copper which will eventually sound the death knell of flint and stone working and change lives and communities forever. I thoroughly enjoyed the play but it wasn't without its strange moments.  Firstly, I hope the person who fainted towards the end of the first half of the play wasn't hurt.  There was such a big bump from the back of the room and the actors one by one stopped as the lights came on;  the director went to the back of the hall to see what was amiss and then uttered those immortal lines 'is there a doctor in the house' and indeed there was and she ministered to whoever was ill.  The show carried on about twenty minutes later.  During the second half someones mobile phone went off, someone else dropped something with another thud - not as loud as the fainting thud though - and just towards the end I heard a glass break.  I felt sorry for the  actors but being a community theatre they interact with the audience before and after the performance selling programmes and walking around and chatting to you as you take yours seats so they dealt with all these distractions with great aplomb, a case of keep calm and carry on I think.

We also went to see the film Suffragette, which was an amazing and very moving with wonderful performances from a talented and powerful cast.  It is quite bleak and shocking too in the way the women were treated both at home and in the workplace and the violence they put up with during their struggle to be heard was vividly depicted and the end moved me to tears.  What did surprise me though was, given that it was an afternoon rather than an evening showing, there were only seven of us in the auditorium.  I didn't expect it to be full but I did think there might have been  quite a few more folks in there, it seems such a shame as I think it should be seen by far more people.  Above a bit of memorabilia that I have collected from various exhibitions over the years.


Viewing

The Saturday before last we went to the old Spode Factory, in the heart of the town of Stoke which is one of the six towns which make up the city of Stoke-on-Trent.  When we first moved here nearly twenty years ago this factory was still a going concern now it is closed.  Portmeirion took on the Spode name and the echoes of former pottery workers are heard all over the open spaces and empty units.  I remember going on a factory tour here, there was a wonderful Museum and cafe.  There is still a small Visitor Centre and the staff there are enthusiastic and helpful.  The real reason for our visit was to see an exhibition which has, for just a few short weeks, brought the old factory back to life again.

Advertised as '1 Festival, 6 weeks, over 75 artists, free' the British Ceramics Biennial is well worth a visit.  We arrived just after 11a.m. and headed straight for coffee first.  
 

This was provided by 'Bread in Common', a community bakery served under yurt type structures.  There was plenty of choice and we chose coffee and fruit cake.  We were given an African animal (a zebra) to take to our table instead of a number.  I noticed the people close by us had a tiger and later visitors an elephant.  Both coffee and cake were delicious.  Suitably refreshed we started on our way around the large open plan area of the exhibition.

Bread in Common to the left, exhibition shop to the right

Plenty of space for people to wander.

The Campanologist's Tea Cup a sound sculpture by Ingrid Murphy - you are asked to flick the tea cup quite hard with your fingers and the sound resonates through each funnel.  This link will show you how it works and what it sounds like.

 

'Life, Death and that moment in between' by James Duck, a ceramics vending machine which dispenses pottery rather than chocolate bars - the pottery can break as it is dispensed of course.

Resonate by Stephen Dixon and Johnny Magee a clay and sound installation which commemorates WWI.  You can add a china flower and message into the exhibition in remembrance of lost ancestors.

A few more of the exhibits on display, I could do with visiting again before the exhibition closes on the 8th November.

Reading

 

A couple of books by Kate Ellis.  I always enjoy her Wesley Peterson Murder Mysteries as, like the novels of Elly Griffiths, they combine archaeology and history with the who done it side of the book and the past always intertwines with the present to solve the mystery.  Kate Ellis also writes the DI Joe Plantagenet series too, again history is the key to the modern day mysteries.  The Wesley Peterson books are set in and around the fictional town of Tradmouth which is loosely based on Dartmouth in Devon and the DI Joe Plantagenet novels are set in the historic Yorkshire town of Eborby which is very like the city of York. 

Thank you all very much for your comments on my last post and I will get round to answering them later today.....I hope!