Sherborne Times May 2021

MAY 2021 | FREE

A MONTHLY CELEBR ATION OF PEOPLE, PLACE AND PURVEYOR

LIGHT RELIEF

with ceramicist Norrie de Montigny

sherbornetimes.co.uk

WELCOME

I

write this watching scruffy young blackbirds bouncing along behind their mother and pastel yellow brimstones being buffeted from garden to garden. A pair of blackcaps belt it out from the comfort of their holiday home hedgerow and a chubby bumble bee hums clumsily into unfamiliar airspace above my desk.

Meanwhile in town, the familiar hustle and bustle returns. Café staff negotiate shoppers and dog walkers, their crockery teetering on trays en route to alfresco diners. The quirky wares of stallholders adorn Cheap Street on market days, and films, festivals and family outings are discussed in optimistic tones.

For May then, in anticipation of the return of Dorset Art Weeks – one of the country’s largest open studio events – we visit ceramicist Norrie Montigny at his Sherborne home studio. Norrie and his wife Jane exude a fittingly colourful charm and youthful curiosity – an energy manifested in his work.

Elsewhere on these pages, Peter Henshaw is all for slowing down, Chris Copson celebrates the opposite and Andy Foster considers his stairs. Mike Burks meanwhile exercises caution, David Copp revisits Hungary and Val Stones bakes a tart.

Have a great month.

Glen Cheyne, Editor glen@homegrown-media.co.uk @sherbornetimes

CONTRIBUTORS Editorial and creative direction Glen Cheyne Design Andy Gerrard @round_studio Sub editor Sadie Wilkins Photography Katharine Davies @Katharine_KDP Feature writer Jo Denbury @jo_denbury Editorial assistant Helen Brown Social media Jenny Dickinson Illustrations Elizabeth Watson elizabethwatsonillustration.com Print Stephens & George Distribution team Barbara and David Elsmore Nancy Henderson The Jackson Family David and Susan Joby Christine Knott Adam May Sarah Morgan Mary and Roger Napper Mark and Miranda Pender Claire Pilley Ionas Tsetikas

Bill Bennette Sherborne Scribblers Elisabeth Bletsoe Sherborne Museum @SherborneMuseum sherbornemuseum.co.uk Richard Bromell ASFAV Charterhouse Auctioneers and Valuers @CharterhouseAV charterhouse-auction.com Anna Bucknall abbarrefitness annabucknall.co.uk Mike Burks The Gardens Group @TheGardensGroup thegardensgroup.co.uk David Burnett The Dovecote Press dovecotepress.com Rob Bygrave & Dr Jeremy Howick BA MSc PhD Sherborne Science Cafe @SherborneSciCaf sherbornesciencecafe.com Paula Carnell @paula.carnell paulacarnell.com Kane & Julie Clements Sherborne Food Bank @FeedSherborne sherbornefoodbank.org Cindy Chant & John Drabik Sherborne Walks @sherbornewalks sherbornewalks.co.uk Malcolm Cockburn Sherborne Literary Society @SherborneLitSoc sherborneliterarysociety.com Ali Cockrean @AliCockrean alicockrean.co.uk David Copp

1 Bretts Yard Digby Road Sherborne Dorset DT9 3NL 01935 315556 @sherbornetimes info@homegrown-media.co.uk sherbornetimes.co.uk Sherborne Times is printed on an FSC® and EU Ecolabel certified paper. It goes without saying that once thoroughly well read, this magazine is easily recycled and we actively encourage you to do so.

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4 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

Chris Copson Haynes International Motor Museum @HaynesMuseum himm.co.uk Rosie Cunningham Jordon Egan MRCVS Kingston Veterinary Group @TheKingstonVets kingstonvets.co.uk James Flynn Milborne Port Computers @MPortComputers computing-mp.co.uk Andrew Fort B.A. (Econ.)

CFPcm Chartered MCSI APFS Fort Financial Planning ffp.org.uk Andy Foster Raise Architects @raisearchitects raisearchitects.com Craig Hardaker Communifit @communifit communifit.co.uk

Andy Hastie Cinematheque cinematheque.org.uk Alex Hennessy Dorset Wildlife Trust @DorsetWildlife dorsetwildlifetrust.org.uk Peter Henshaw 20’s Plenty 20splenty.org David Hill Mogers Drewett Solicitors @mogersdrewett md-solicitors.co.uk James Hull The Story Pig @thestorypig thestorypig.co.uk Cecilia Keedle Isack @cecilia_sunflowersandart Lucy Lewis Dorset Mind @DorsetMind dorsetmind.uk Peter Littlewood BA (Hons), FRSA, Cert Mgmt (Open) Young People’s Trust for the Environment @YPTE ypte.org.uk Massimiliano Mannella The Clockspire @theclockspire theclockspire.com Sasha Matkevich & Jack Smith The Green Restaurant @greensherborne greenrestaurant.co.uk Beth Newton Sherborne Prep School @Sherborneprep sherborneprep.org Mark Newton-Clarke MA VetMB PhD MRCVS Newton Clarke Veterinary Partnership @swanhousevet newtonclarkevet.com Simon Partridge SP Fit @spfitsherborne spfit-sherborne.co.uk Jill Preston @jpdjango jillprestonpainter.co.uk Dr Tim Robinson MB BS MSc MRCGP DRCOG MFHom Glencairn House Clinic glencairnhouse.co.uk doctortwrobinson.com Jonathan Simon Sacred Heart & St Aldhelms Church sherbornecatholicchurch.org.uk Val Stones @valstones bakerval.com Emma Tabor & Paul Newman @paulnewmanart paulnewmanartist.com Kevin & Val Waterfall DWT Sherborne Group @DorsetWildlife dorsetwildlifetrust.org.uk

74 6

Art & Culture

MAY 2021 68 Gardening

120 Finance

22 Community

74 NORRIE DE MONTIGNY

124 Tech

34 Family

82 Dorset Art Weeks Local Guide

124 In Conversation

44 Science & Nature

86 Food & Drink

126 Short Story

58 On Foot

94 Animal Care

128 Crossword

62 History

100 Body & Mind

129 Literature

66 Antiques

112 Home

130 Pause for Thought

118 Legal

DAW_SHERBORNE_TIMES:Layout 1 13/04/2021 22:56 Page 1

the app

22 MAY – 6 JUNE 2021

instagram.com/dorsetartweeks

facebook.com/DorsetArtWeeks

the website twitter.com/dorsetartweeks

sherbornetimes.co.uk | 5

Art & Culture

ARTIST AT WORK

No. 30: Jill Preston, Canopy (no.5) Acrylic on Canvas, 40 x 40 cm, £170

I

have loved painting from early childhood and when I gained a Distinction in A Level Art, many years ago, I vowed that I would take it up seriously when I retired.

This I did – sharpening up my skills by attending courses, workshops and joining local art groups. I increased my confidence by exhibiting locally, in club and open exhibitions, solo shows and with friends.

I now have a studio at home, where I paint mainly in watercolour, acrylics and mixed media. I take my inspiration from the land and seascapes of the British Isles, especially the South West – usually making sketches or taking photographs and then returning to the studio to make the finished painting.

I am currently enjoying exploring impressionistic approaches and abstraction, in order to portray – as best I can – my retrospective and emotional responses to my world.

During the lockdown last year, I used my regular dog walks to slow down and look more closely at my immediate surroundings. This resulted in two new series of paintings: Canopy and The Ground Beneath My Feet. jillprestonpainter.co.uk

6 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

Art & Culture

The Levelling (2010)

The Arbor (2010) 10 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

ON FILM

Andy Hastie, Yeovil Cinematheque

O

ver the past few years, a welcome development in cinema, and particularly British cinema, is the number of female directors breaking through into the mainstream. The prolific film writer, director and producer Mark Cousins has made a supportive documentary Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema (2020), exploring, essentially, the art of femaledirected films, with a compilation of 183 clips to illustrate this from some of the world’s finest films. Coming in at a massive 14-hours-long, this isn’t for the weak-willed, so book some holiday first, and get stuck in.

Yorkshire-born Clio Barnard is probably the leading light in the British cohort. Her breakthrough, The Arbor (2010), is a fascinating fusion of narrative and documentary, telling the story of Bradford playwright Andrea Dunbar, who died tragically at the age of 29. ‘Mesmerising’ The Guardian, ‘Extraordinarily powerful’ Wendy Ide, The Times. The Selfish Giant (2013) followed, then Dark River (2017), both gritty, realist yet lyrical films, with many hailing her the natural successor to Ken Loach. Her latest film Ali and Ava (2020) is an interracial love story and awaiting release.

Lynne Ramsay’s Rat Catcher (1999), her debut feature, won numerous awards. ‘Film of the year’ Daily Telegraph, ‘Spellbinding’ The Guardian, with Morvern Caller (2002), We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011), and You Were Never Really Here (2017) all picking up awards and praise. Her films immerse the viewer into audio-visual depths, combining music with colour and texture, creating dreamlike, other- worldly narratives.

Andrea Arnold broke through with Red Road (2006), then Fish Tank (2009), probably her most successful film. It tells the brutally honest story of a 15-year-old girl on a tough Essex estate she longs to leave. ‘The best British film of the year’ Jonathan Dean, Total Film Magazine. Wuthering Heights (2011) and American Honey (2016) followed. Her films are characterised by themes of deprivation and poverty, and her encouragement of the actors to improvise dialogue.

Joanna Hogg’s first full-length feature film is Unrelated (2007), with Archipelago (2010), Exhibition (2013) and the autobiographical The Souvenir (2019) all growing the critical acclaim being heaped on her now, with The Souvenir 11 awaiting release. Unlike the other three directors, her films are influenced

by European cinema, with a static camera and long takes, and a middle-class ascetic.

A further group of younger women breaking through, many graduates of the NFTS (National Film and Television School), include Carol Morley with The Falling (2014) and Out of Blue (2018); Sarah Gavron’s Suffragette (2015) and Rocks (2019); Hope Dickson Leach’s The Levelling (2016), set on the Somerset Levels; Rose Glass’ St Maud (2019), an extraordinary psychological horror film about a hospice nurse who becomes obsessed with a woman in her care; D R Hood’s Wreckers (2011), and Georgia Parris’ Mari (2019), the story of a dancer returning to Dorset on hearing that her grandmother is dying – much of this excellent film is shot in and around Sherborne.

The Swan Theatre is still on track to have their first show – post lockdown – in July. So, if everything goes to plan, we will be able to have Cinematheque up and running again by around the end of June.

Do keep getting those vaccines! cinematheque.org.uk swan-theatre.co.uk

sherbornetimes.co.uk | 11

Art & Culture

CONFESSIONS OF A THEATRE ADDICT Rosie Cunningham

I

t is wonderful to have real theatre dates back in my diary and I am so looking forward to it. This summer, I am sure, will be a good one with cultural enrichment offerings at home rather than to be found overseas.

Don’t forget the production of Cole Porter and P.G. Wodehouse’s classic musical Anything Goes at the Barbican, starring Robert Lindsay, Megan Mullally, Felicity Kendal and Gary Wilmot. What an amazing cast! It’s fun and it’s saucy and perfect as a release after lockdown.

From 23rd July until 16th October 2021.

The Royal Academy re-opens on 18th May with The Loneliness of the Soul, an exhibition of Tracey Emin’s most recent paintings shown alongside selected masterpieces by Edvard Munch. From 23rd May, David Hockney’s new work can also be seen in The Arrival of Spring, Normandy, 2020. Tickets need to be booked in advance and will, no doubt, sell like hot cakes.

The Death of a Black Man by Alfred Fagon opens at the Hampstead Theatre. This darkly compelling play tells the story of an 18-year-old wheeler-dealer called Shakie and his friend Stumpie, living the high life in a flat in King’s Road, the epicentre of everything that’s cool in 1973. Running from 28th May – 10th July 2021. If you have never been, do visit this theatre which is modern and spacious and always has something cutting-edge to offer.

The Theatre Royal Bath are hosting the world premiere adaptation of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets starring Ralph Fiennes, who is also directing the play, from 25th May. These are four interwoven meditations on the nature of time, faith and the quest for spiritual enlightenment.

I am delighted to say that I am going. See you there.

Anna X is opening at the Harold Pinter Theatre as part of their new RE:EMERGE season from Sonia Friedman. Starring the award-winning actress Emma Corrin (Lady Diana Spencer in Netflix’s The Crown), this play by Joseph Charlton delves into the corruption of truth and reality through the lies that we tell the world about ourselves on social media.

Booking from May 2021.

The West End premiere of Frozen, the Disney musical, will open at the newly refurbished Theatre Royal Drury Lane on 27th August 2021. Tickets are on sale from May. Samantha Barks plays Elsa and Stephanie McKeon, Anna. Keep an eye out for performance dates.

You can sign up to A Night In with Lenny Henry in conversation with Naga Munchetty on Fane. If you thought you knew Lenny Henry, you would be mistaken. There is such a rich background story to this entertainer and many ups and downs along the way. The stream and book ticket costs £13.50 and includes a copy of Lenny’s book Who am I, Again?. This will be broadcast on 4th June 2021.

12 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

Ralph Fiennes in rehearsal for Four Quartets

Image: Matt Humphrey sherbornetimes.co.uk | 13

Art & Culture

THE ARTIST’S PERSONA interviews by Ali Cockrean

CATHY VEALE

T

he Artist’s Persona has now attracted more than a thousand followers and over 500 members, who are currently enjoying our interviews with the UK’s leading artists. Our mission is to ensure that every painter is able to showcase the very best of their portfolio and talk honestly and openly about how they generate and develop ideas, work through their process and deal with the daily challenges of wrestling a painting to a conclusion. They also happily share their advice on techniques and materials with our viewers.

As we build the library of interviews, it’s my ambition to create an important snapshot of contemporary art in the 2020s. Given the start of this decade having proven to be anything but mundane, it seems like the perfect time to focus on what exactly is going on in the thousands of professional artist’s studios up and down the country. It seems I’m not alone in finding this a fascinating project, as our members span the world and continue to join daily from all around the globe.

One of the artists featured recently particularly captured the viewers’ imaginations with her incredible paintings of the Dorset coastline. Based in Swanage, Cathy Veale creates breath-taking watercolours that are not only beautiful, but a reminder that our coastline is changing almost daily and needs to be recorded. Cathy told me, ‘I go to places like the chalk cliffs of Old Harry and there are bits that have fallen off each time I’ve been there, so it changes the picture quite regularly.’

Cathy studied Graphic Design at Bournemouth and Poole College of Art and Design in the late 1970s.

After travelling extensively around Europe, America and New Zealand, undertaking a variety of artwork, she returned to her hometown of Swanage, where she settled and continues to work as a full-time professional artist. Cathy has exhibited at the prestigious Royal West of England Academy, The National Laing Exhibition and is a regular at the Mall Galleries with both the Royal Society of Marine Artists and Royal Institute > 14 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

Evening View, Old Harry sherbornetimes.co.uk | 15

Art & Culture

of Painters in Water Colours.

Her love of the sea developed early in life, when her family moved down to the coast and she was inspired initially by her Great Aunt who lived in Lulworth: ‘I used to go and visit her for tea. She was an artist and musician and, as a youngster, I would wander into her studio to look at her paintings. She had a huge one of Lulworth Cove, I remember – a pastel that she was doing, and it really grabbed me. She gave me an old box of paints, which must be getting on for a 100-years-old now and is still in use. She started me off drawing and 16 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

said just draw all the time and anything you see. So, that’s what I did.’

And Cathy has had plenty of time to study the water as her other great passion is sailing.

‘When I was about twelve a friend dragged me down to the local sailing club. We started dingy sailing and then I gradually worked my way up to bigger boats with my husband and family. We’ve sailed across the Channel, over to the Isle of Wight quite a lot and to the West Country. I just love being on the water.’

Having revealed during the interview that she

Isle of Wight

wished she had trained as a textile artist, it’s not hard to see Cathy’s love of patterns and shapes and the sort of form that comes out of water as it ripples and shifts.

The range of perspective in her work takes the viewer on a different journey in each seascape, from kayak level, looking up at the looming magnificence of the white chalk cliffs, to soaring way up above the water like a seagull riding an air current.

Watercolour is a very tricky medium to master and it’s not an exaggeration to say that Cathy is a master of her craft. Her attention to light and reflection is

stunning, creating a purity and freshness that makes you want to take a big, deep breath of the clear air depicted, as you gaze at her work.

Do take time to look at her website, which you can find at cathyveale.co.uk, and remember you can enjoy her full interview and see a wonderful selection of her paintings by searching for The Artist’s Persona on Facebook. There, you can join our free membership and see all our captivating artist interviews. @theartistspersona sherbornetimes.co.uk | 17

SHERBORNE INDIES BABY STEPS

BEEYOND LAVENDER

GLENHOLME HERBS We are a family-run business located in Sandford Orcas, specialising in growing a huge range of herbs, pelargoniums, salvias and wildflowers.

Come see us at The Sherborne Market

Skincare and Holistic Therapist.

NYR Organics Independent Consultant. Tension and stress releasing range of massage treatments, facials, workshops, parties, Covid safe, essentials oils and diffusers. Click and collect orders.

info@babysteps2018.co.uk BabySteps18 babysteps.2018 babystepschildrensboutique.com

sue@beeyondlavender.co.uk (treatments) nyr@sueadams.net (NYRO) Sue Adams: 07712 590897

01963 220302 / 07855 279072 @glenholmeherbs glenholmeherbs.co.uk

GODDEN & CURTIS

HARLING TAYLOR

KAFE FONTANA

Countryside inspired baby and children’s clothing, gifts, wooden toys and books.

We are very excited to have now launched our very own clothing line “Farm Life”.

Penmore Corner Bungalow, Sandford Orcas, Sherborne, DT9 4SE

Offering hot and cold food + tea and coffee, 7 days a week.

Fully licensed.

Television and audio, sales and repairs.

Greenhill, Sherborne DT9 4EW 07718 253309 / 01935 813451 simon@goddenandcurtis.co.uk goddenandcurtis.co.uk

THE KINGS ARMS A country gastropub, serving a wide range of dishes made using local produce. Fantastic outdoor garden with stunning views of the rolling Dorset countryside.

Charlton Horethorne, Sherborne DT9 4NL 01963 220281 thekingsarms.co.uk

@thekingsarmscharltonhorethorne

admin@thekingsarms.co.uk

Letting and Property Management specialist, based in Sherborne operating across North and West Dorset, and South Somerset.

Birthday cakes, take away and delivery service available.

82 Cheap Street, Sherborne DT9 3BJ

01935 852175 harlingtaylor.co.uk

01935 812180 kafefontana@hotmail.com @kafefontana kafefontana.co.uk

THE PLUME OF FEATHERS

TROUVAILLE GALLERY

5 Hound Street, Sherborne

16th Century pub serving Italian small plates. Authentic homemade dishes using some of the finest Dorset and Italian ingredients.

Half Moon Street, Sherborne DT9 3LN 01935 389709 theplumesherborne.co.uk

@shoplocalinsherborne #shoplocalinsherborne

Discover a wonderful selection of unique handmade cards and gifts and one-off pieces of artwork created by local artists and craftspeople.

Open Monday – Saturday 9.30am – 2.30pm 24c Cheap Street Marianne - 07779788465 marianne@trouvaillegallery.co.uk trouvaillegallery.co.uk

Flying the flag for local

Hand picked & selected artisan market featuring local producers, suppliers, amazing food, arts and crafts.

2021 dates

May 16th June 20th July 18th

September 19th October 17th November 21st

Community

MARKET KNOWLEDGE CECILIA KEEDLE ISACK

Welcome to The Sherborne Market! What brings you here?

I wanted an outlet for selling my art, where I could meet people, as it’s much more personal than selling online. During the last few months, I have really missed selling my art in the ‘real world’. Previously, I have really enjoyed The Sherborne Market and was inspired to want to bring my own art to sell, so it’s lovely to be here.

Where have you travelled from?

I live in Rimpton, so I am very close to Sherborne. I’m so lucky to live there because it is such a pretty and friendly little village. I have got views and wildlife on my own doorstep which act as inspiration for my artwork.

Tell us about what you’re selling?

I love colour, animals and our beautiful countryside, so my paintings and découpaged pieces reflect rural life. I love hares in particular and hedgerows. I am an animal lover and have so many of my own rescue animals including cats, dogs, chickens and miniature ponies, who often feature in my work! I aim to reflect the joy of nature in what I paint and create. I usually paint fairly large canvases using acrylic paint or multimedia. I découpage 3D pieces and love to include paper scraps in my art to produce texture and an abundance of colour.

Where and when did it all begin?

It all began when I studied art at university and then became an art teacher. I have done other things since, including raising my lovely children and working with people with dementia, but I have always gone back to my paintings, using art as therapy for my clients and for my own pleasure. Since lockdown, I have painted every day because it keeps me busy and gives me such satisfaction. I think creating art has a really important place in people’s lives at the moment as it is therapeutic and great for mental health, whether you are making art or experiencing it.

What do you enjoy most about selling at markets?

Markets are colourful and fun. I like meeting like-minded people who enjoy looking at what I’ve created. It is a good opportunity to make new friends as well as to catch up with old ones.

If you get the chance, which fellow stallholders here at Sherborne would you like to visit?

The stalls that I most want to visit are all the other art and creative stalls. It’s all so interesting. My husband likes to look at the cheese and cider, whilst I love the vintage stalls selling clothes and bric-a-brac and enjoy finding unique items which I can use as inspiration for my own creations.

Where can people find you on market day?

My stall is situated in Cheap Street near Parson’s, and I’m really looking forward to the upcoming market days.

20 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

sherbornetimes.co.uk | 21

Community

THANK YOU FROM SHERBORNE FOOD BANK Kane and Julie Clements, Sherborne Food Bank

F

or the Sherborne Food Bank, this has been a year like no other. So, thank you to everyone who has helped in some way to keep the food bank on track.

Thanks to every one of the generous people who have donated goods or cash. Thanks to the businesses providing collection points and other support, and the individuals and groups who have started new collections to support our work.

This is also a chance to update everyone on how we have responded to the recent challenges.

Like many other organisations, we have had to change the way we work to keep the show on the road. When the first lockdown started, many of our volunteers had to stand down from their work at the food bank to self-isolate. This came at a time when we were confronted by a spike in demand – way beyond anything seen before. And changes in working practices had to be made to keep volunteers safe.

By reducing the number of volunteers in the depot at any one time and increasing the number of shifts, we have kept things going. We have had to examine working practices and make some changes to improve our efficiency.

Also, welcome to some of our new drop off points.

There is now a basket in the Co-Op at Milborne Port 22 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

Image: Katharine Davies

and by the time this appears in print, there will be a shiny new collection point in the foyer of Dikes in Stalbridge.

Recently, regular collections have started in Yetminster and Marston Magna, which is good news.

These new locations show just how big an area our food bank covers. Whilst it says Sherborne on the label, we support people in a much wider area.

Perhaps the most ‘stand-out’ thing from the last year has been the continued generosity of you, the people, enabling us to deliver food to those in need.

As for demand? Well, it has been ‘all over the shop’.

More people have needed our support this year, for obvious reasons, and there have been frequent fluctuations.

When we build up reserves of some stock, they can run down very quickly when demand peaks again.

You can help us manage our stock by checking out what we need most via the wipe boards at donation points and by checking the Sherborne Food Bank Facebook page.

And one more thing. We have plenty of tins of baked beans and soup and bags of dried pasta! We really need to reduce stocks of these items as storage is limited. Until we ask specifically for those items, please donate other things we need more urgently. Thank you. sherbornefoodbank.org

THE DORSET OPERA

MMXXI

The home of Country House opera in South West England featuring renowned soloists and orchestra Marquee bar | Picnics | Formal Dining

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

DON GIOVANNI 19, 22, 24 July at 19:00 | Matinée 21 July at 14:00 Sung in Italian with English surtitles

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

COSI FAN TUTTE 20, 21 July at 19:00 | Matinée 24 July at 14:00 Sung in Italian with English surtitles

Händel/Mozart K566

ACIS & GALATEA Semi-staged concert | Friday 23 July at 19:00 Sung in English with surtitles

Coade Theatre, Bryanston, Blandford Forum

Box Office: dorsetopera.com 07570 366 186 Public Booking: 18 May

Community

20’S PLENTY FOR SHERBORNE

I

Peter Henshaw

have always been a petrol head – freely admit it. Dinky toys and Matchbox cars fascinated me from an early age, leading to the real thing and, eventually, a sort-of career in writing about cars, motorcycles and tractors. And I’m still fascinated by the internal combustion engine, in all forms.

And yet, the world is changing all around us. Climate change is real, and combatting it means changing how we live in countless ways, of which transport is one of the most obvious. Reducing car use – while encouraging walking and cycling for short trips – is clearly essential, but how often do you hear people say something like, ‘Well I would cycle, but it’s too dangerous.’ Like it or not, however careful we may be as drivers, our roads are perceived as too dangerous for competent adults to cycle to the shops, let alone kids cycle to school. Fear of traffic doesn’t just limit our transport options either – younger children are forbidden to stray too far from home... because of the traffic.

Of course, most drivers are generally law abiding most of the time, but we have become used to a cardominated culture in which powered vehicles take precedence over everything else. How else can one explain the situation in Long Street, where pedestrians are squeezed onto narrow pavements so that cars can run both ways at up to 30mph or more, a foot or so away from the kerb? Or Cheap Street – rather than allow pedestrians and traffic to mix at walking pace, walkers are expected to hop out of the way so that cars can come down at their ‘natural’ speed.

Thirty miles per hour is fast. If you’re a pedestrian and a car hits you at thirty, you have a 50/50 chance of surviving, albeit seriously injured – at 40mph, your life chance plummets to just 5%. But if the same car hits you at 20mph, there’s a 95% chance you will live to tell the tale. We accept these odds because we’re used to them, but it doesn’t have to be like this. This is why some of us are putting the case for 20mph as the default speed limit across much of Sherborne. It’s actually part 24 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

of a wider campaign for a 20 limit in all Dorset towns and villages. Not that there’s anything new about this – one-third of the UK’s population live in 20mph limits, and we’ve even got a few 20mph streets in Sherborne already – Vernalls Road and the town end of Bradford Road, amongst others.

Twenty limits reduce casualties by around 20% – just as important: the increase in perceived safety encourages pedestrians and cyclists to get out and about, which in turn gets us out in the fresh air and brings physical and mental health benefits, as well as cutting emissions. Slower traffic makes less noise. Life is less intimidating for the vulnerable. According to the Department for Transport, 20mph limits also tend to be self-enforcing – the more it becomes the norm, the more drivers will respect it.

Why an overall 20 limit instead 20 ‘zones’ across a few streets? Blanket limits do not need expensive traffic calming measures, so they are a lot cheaper to

Did You Know?

We’ve all grown up with the 30mph urban speed limit, but it hasn’t always been like this. Until 1930, Britain’s national speed limit was 20mph. Then, it was abolished; collisions and fatalities spiralled, and the Road Traffic

implement, and road users don’t have the confusion of 20, 30, 20...etc. And introducing them is pushing at an open door, with widespread public support. The Department for Transport claim 70% of the public support 20 limits – 10-14% are against.

So, what would this mean for Sherborne?

20splentyfordorset.org is suggesting a blanket 20mph limit to cover the residential north, east and west end, as well as the old town centre. It wouldn’t include the A30, Horsecastles Lane or New Road – all of which are through routes, but it would discourage rat runs, of which Acreman Street is the most obvious.

Like every other town in Britain, Sherborne has become dominated by the car, but an overall 20-limit would make life safer, quieter and more pleasant for all of us. Let’s make it a people first town.

Act was introduced in 1934 as a result. This brought in the 30-limit, not to mention the driving test, compulsory insurance and the ‘Belisha Beacon’ pedestrian crossing. All good stuff, but, after 85 years, the speed limit needs a rethink. _____________________________________

How To Help Dorset Council is currently reviewing its speed limit policy, and it has the power to make 20mph the default urban speed limit across the county. Email John Sellgren, Executive Director of Place – john.sellgren@ dorsetcouncil.gov.uk. For Sherborne, contact your local Town Councillor.

20splenty.org dorset@20splentyforus.org.uk sherbornetimes.co.uk | 25

TRENDLE YARD

Bespoke, contemporary furniture, made to order using timber sourced directly from local estates

Trendle Yard, Trendle Street, Sherborne, Dorset DT9 3NT Tel 07900 645450 www.trendleyard.com

Affordable interior fabrics thefabricbarn.co.uk 26 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

01935 851025

Old Yarn Mills Sherborne Dorset, DT9 3RQ

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22 MAY - 6 JUNE VENUE 230

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sherbornetimes.co.uk | 27

WILLIAMS F1

THE DRIVERS AND THE DRIVEN Chris Copson, Head of Collections, Haynes International Motor Museum

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o anyone with even a slight interest in motor sport, the name Frank Williams will be familiar. He founded the home-grown Formula 1 (F1) team Williams Racing which was, until recently, the last ‘family’ team left in the sport.

As a driver, Sir Frank Williams had a reputation of being lightning fast, but not always staying on the road.

He frequently rolled cars including, on one occasion, his mother’s Morris 1000. Frank stopped racing in 1967 and started his journey to creating a world-renowned F1 team in partnership with engineer Patrick Head.

Over the years, the Williams team has won nine 28 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

constructors’ championships and seven drivers’ titles, with driving legends such as Keke Rosberg, Nelson Piquet, Nigel Mansell, Alain Prost, Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve.

With historical photography and footage from the Williams F1 Heritage collection, paired with research from the museum’s team, our exclusive new exhibition captures the incredible history of Williams and the excitement of the sport in a way that no matter what the visitor’s knowledge of F1 may be, there is something to learn and enjoy throughout.

You can get close to some of the most iconic F1 cars

Drivers walk towards FW35. Image: Williams F1 Heritage Collection

in Williams’ history, such as Nigel Mansell’s FW14 or ‘Red 5’ and Damon Hill’s FW17. One thing that is immediately noticeable is how the cars, which truly are spectacular, have evolved over the years in terms of aerodynamic wonders of technology.

Williams is, of course, part of a wider story. The sport itself has also changed beyond recognition, from a minority interest for the true enthusiasts into a global phenomenon that rivals the Olympics in terms of popularity. In order to give context to the exhibition, dedicated areas explore the wider connected stories such as the history, glamour and culture of F1.

The social history surrounding the sport is fascinating and will be quite a nostalgia kick for some.

We explore back to the days of the 1970s and the boisterous charms of James Hunt, all the way through to the modern day F1 drivers such as Lewis Hamilton with huge salaries, yachts and apartments in Monaco.

It also wouldn’t be a story about F1 if we didn’t look at some of the amazing locations of the tracks, from the glamour of oil-rich Bahrein to Sao Paulo, where multimillion-pound cars race against a background of desperately poor favelas.

Formula 1 racing has also been a soberingly > sherbornetimes.co.uk | 29

1991 FW14 on the Monaco circuit with driver Riccardo Patrese Image: Williams F1 Heritage Collection

Nico Rosberg celebrates a win Image: Williams F1 Heritage Collection 30 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

Ayrton Senna and Frank Williams Image: Williams F1 Heritage Collection

dangerous sport in which numerous drivers have lost their lives. In the years before 1970, there was very little in the way of safety rules. Indeed, fire-resistant clothing was only introduced in the 1970s. The increased focus on safety in the sport can only be appreciated when you look across the decades, where there is a demonstrable correlation between increased safety measures and the decline in fatalities. Racing fatalities went from twentythree recorded deaths before 1970 to just one fatal crash in the last ten years. The Williams team was sadly not a stranger to dangers behind the wheel – off the track, Frank Williams was involved in a road accident in 1986 which left him in a wheelchair after breaking his neck and the Williams F1 suffered a terrible blow in 1994 when Ayrton Senna suffered a fatal crash at the San Marino Grand Prix.

Although the danger still remains today, a crash that would have been fatal in the past is now very much survivable, partly due to regulations and rules but also

because car design and construction is now centred on crash survivability and saving lives. Illustrating this within the exhibition is the original monocoque driver cell of one of Pastor Maldonado’s cars, which was involved in a dramatic crash during the 2013 Monaco Grand Prix. The carbon fibre monocoque is twice as strong as steel, five times lighter and almost indestructible. Maldonado escaped with minor injuries.

Irrespective of whether you are a die-hard F1 fan or not, this exhibition is packed with fascinating stories, facts and figures with something for everyone. himm.co.uk

___________________________________________ Williams F1: The Drivers and The Driven Exhibition Opens Monday 17th May Haynes International Motor Museum, Sparkford, Somerset BA22 7LH. Pre-book at himm.co.uk or 01963 440804.

___________________________________________ sherbornetimes.co.uk | 31

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34 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

UNEARTHED Mollie Morgan, Aged 15 The Gryphon School

D

uring lockdown, Gryphon student Mollie decided to set up her own enterprise – Truly Bee – working from home; she was hoping to get a part-time job but obviously this wasn’t possible, due to Covid 19 restrictions, so she thought producing her own goods would be the next best thing! When she was 14, Mollie came up with the idea of making her own beauty products, using natural ingredients to promote conservation of bees in the county. By selling her products over the course of the last year, Mollie has expanded to five items which include lip balm and hand cream, candles and, most recently, soap. She sells them through her website trulybee.bigcartel.com, as well as on Facebook, Instagram and at local artisan markets.

In the short time of running the business, Mollie’s products have also been sold in newsagents and village shops across the local area. ‘At first, the business was started as a hobby,’ says Mollie, ‘but has gradually expanded into a challenging learning curve and creative outlet. It has also given me a great sense of personal achievement.’

Now in Year 10, Mollie has found it invaluable for her GCSE business studies course. Being the youngest stallholder at The Sherborne Market, she has gained valuable experience in trading and knowledge of how to successfully market a new product. ‘In a post-Covid world, I hope that I can continue to sell my products on a larger scale to new people and places, as I believe that we need markets in local communities.’ The Gryphon School is extremely proud of Mollie’s work ethic, resilience, independence and business acumen, and expect to see Mollie become a very successful business woman. trulybee.bigcartel.com gryphon.dorset.sch.uk

TRULY BEE

Lip balms, hand creams, soaps and candles Handmade locally, by me, using natural organic ingredients FIND ME AT THE SHERBORNE MARKET SUNDAY 16TH MAY Also available online at trulybee.bigcartel.com trulybeebymollie@gmail.com 36 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

WE’RE TO U RET RNINUEGS VEN FROM M!ID APRIL

Hooray! Monkey Music is back!

Try our award-winning music classes for babies & young children!

Come and join us for your FREE first class as we return to venues for the summer term Sherborne

on Tuesday at The Scout Hut Blackberry Lane DT9 4DE

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on Wedensday at The Pointe Durngate Street DT1 1NA

Book your FREE class at bit.ly/monkeymusicclasses or email sherborne.dorchester@monkeymusic.co.uk MonkeyMusicSherborneandDorchester MonkeyMusicSherborneDorchester

Children’s Book Review

by Jennifer Gogoi, aged 11, Leweston Prep

Harklights, by Tim Tilley, (Usborne Publishing), £7.99 Sherborne Times Reader Offer Price of £6.99 from Winstone’s Books

38 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

T

he author of Harklights, Tim Tilley, grew up on the outskirts of Leicester, and spent every Easter, summer, and most half terms at a caravan in Pembrokeshire. He studied Illustration at Anglia Ruskin University and Central Saint Martins. He now runs children’s book illustration courses at City Lit in London.

Harklights is a lovely book; it’s a magical story about orphans who work in a match factory, making amazing matchstick buildings. But it’s not the life Wick, the main character, has planned. He wants to leave the orphanage and start a new life. That chance does come, and it takes you on a journey. With nice illustrations added, and some pages with a black background and white writing, this book is a bit different.

Wick is an orphan who lives in Harklights. He escapes and lives in the forest with the Hobs. He feels bad that he left Petal and wants to rescue her. I found this plot interesting because all he wanted was to find a home and leave the orphanage, but he felt bad that he left his friend, even though he found a home; this shows that leaving friends is not at all easy.

The main characters are Wick, Papa Herne, Nissa, Nox, Petal and Old Ma Boggey. My favourite character is Petal because she helped Wick escape, even if she was to get caught, and she put his safety before her own, which takes a lot of courage.

I love the book and my favourite part is when Old Ma Boggey went down the well and when Wick escaped. I would definitely recommend Harklights. It is very interesting and my friends will love it!

'Independent Bookseller of the Year 2016’ 8 Cheap Street, Sherborne, Dorset DT9 3PX www.winstonebooks.co.uk Tel: 01935 816 128

We are open and full of books to inspire!

Family

FULFILMENT

Beth Newport, Teaching Assistant, Sherborne Prep

40 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

A

s a society, we can become consumed by measures of perceived success such as financial, academic, or appearance, and we may be judged upon them. In my fourteen happy years of working at Sherborne Prep, I have helped several hundred children through the start of their journey in life, enjoying every moment and aspiring to nurture each child in every aspect. A childhood deserves to be rewarding; for this to be, children must be treated as individuals, encouraged to celebrate who they are and each small step they are brave enough to take should be praised.

The role of a teaching assistant is incredibly fulfilling with any perceptions of ‘standing at a photocopier and reading with children’ being far from illustrating the actual day-to-day! There cannot be many roles where the workplace is filled with such a magical buzz every day. Our children arrive in the morning bursting with a sense of life, energy and zest for the day ahead, every day.

Children, of course, are not perfect all of the time and our aspiration is to support pupils through their mistakes; to encourage them to dare to try, to fail and then bounce back to try again; to encourage a growth-mindset where praise targets the efforts made to improve, rather than judging the end result.

Children will be a little loud and be a little too eager; they will use a paintbrush overzealously or launch into the bubble mixture and they absolutely will, at times, eat their morning snack in a cascade of crumbs and/or water!

If we do not allow children to make mistakes, to be – dare I say – a little naughty, how will they know when they are making the right choices?

I firmly believe that learning should be fun and exciting. It is incredibly important to set up the conditions for pupils to thrive and establish secure relationships with each other as well as with the staff. Our aim is to instil a love of learning, to lay foundations for their future.

Opening up children’s imaginations to all the possibilities of what they can make happen: a make-believe journey on the magic carpet, led by the children, to far-off places, encountering new and wonderful worlds where dinosaurs take the Eurostar to visit the moon and eat rainbow-coloured ice- creams all day. The sense of wonder and enquiry amongst children is both remarkable and inspiring and they should be able to thrive as the individuals that they are, within a supportive community. Watching the children grow and seeing them develop is incredibly rewarding and I feel privileged to have supported them through their early years. With many of our pupils going on to local senior schools, I often see ‘old Preppers’ in Sherborne. Watching the children grow, seeing them thrive and grow into adults is an absolute pleasure and one that makes my role as a teaching assistant incredibly special.

I learn, laugh and smile a lot and every day is an adventure. If I can inspire our children to pursue our Dragon values of kindness, perseverance, awareness, generosity, honesty and encourage independence, then, in my eyes, they will be successful, wherever their journey takes them.

Sometimes, I have to pinch myself and say, ‘I am the grown up’. Gosh, who wouldn’t want to be a child again? sherborneprep.org sherbornetimes.co.uk | 41

Our Pupils, seizing the opportunity www.sherborneprep.org

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Go wild this June

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Sign up for your FREE 30 Days Wild pack and plan your wild adventures to help wildlife and your own health and wellbeing this summer. wildlifetrusts.org Visit your local nature reserve

Read a book about nature

42 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

Feed the birds in your garden

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Thank you for your support during this difficult time.

Sherborne Food Bank relies solely on the generous food and cash donations from the community and is in urgent need of your help. Please consider adding the following items to your shopping trolley: • Anti-bac hand gel and wipes • Savoury biscuits • Cereals

(Please no pasta or tinned soups and beans)

Donation points can be easily found at: Thank you.

www.sherbornefoodbank.org

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Enjoy a two course lunch for just £5 Supporting Sherborne’s most vulnerable Enjoy a delicious 2 course lunch delivered fresh to your door

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A big Thank You to our partners

Sherborne Community Kitchen is a charitable incorporated organisation. Charity number 1190451

sherbornetimes.co.uk | 43

elizabethwatsonillustration.com 44 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

D I S C O V E R | E AT | S H O P | S TAY | C E L E B R AT E

Welcome to Symondsbury Estate, set in the beautiful Dorset countryside just a stone’s throw from the Jurassic Coast. Join us for lunch. Browse our shops. Visit the gallery.

Explore our fabulous walks and bike trails. Relax and unwind in our holiday accommodation.

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Science & Nature

EVIDENCED-BASED MEDICINE AND WHY PLACEBOS WORK

This lecture was given to Sherborne Science Café on 26th April 2017

by Dr Jeremy Howick, BA, MSc, PhD, Nuffield Dept. of Primary Care Health Services, University of Oxford.

This aspect of medicine is increasingly relevant today in 2021, as the current global pandemic engulfs the world’s population. Problems affecting the supply and efficacy of the vaccines, especially in the poorest countries, may well lead to the widespread use of placebos.

Rob Bygrave, Chair, Sherborne Science Café

Africa Studio/Shutterstock

P

lacebos (Latin for ‘I shall please’) were first recorded – though no doubt used much earlier – in medical textbooks in the early 19th century ‘… an epithet given to any medicine adapted more to please than to benefit the patient’. A more modern, but less quaint, working definition is ‘… a substance that is objectively without specific activity for the condition being treated’.

One hundred years ago, placebos were part of the usual toolkit of medical practitioners. Pills of bread and sugar were commonly dispensed, as a ‘necessary’ deception, to neurotic and inadequate patients.

Placebos were beneficially used by doctors treating patients in the brutal Japanese PoW camps during WWII and, on occasions when morphine ran out in battlefield hospital conditions, saltwater injections masquerading as opiates were given, achieving the desired effect of deadening pain.

The definition of ‘placebo’ allows a wide variety of things to be considered placebos and thereby to demonstrate the placebo effect. A placebo is not restricted to chemical application – besides being a tablet, a placebo can also be administered by injection or as sham surgery (presented in order of increasing effectiveness). The size of the placebo medicine is also important: the bigger, the better and more tablets have 46 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

a greater effect than fewer. Sham surgery involves apparently performing a surgical procedure.

Jeremy related a story of a doctor with the Houston Rockets, a professional basketball team, a sport where knee injuries are commonplace. The doctor performed sham surgery (by making a physical incision but no further intervention) on knee-injured players as though performing his usual knee operation and followed the cases for 2 years. This follow-up indicated little, if any, benefit of actual surgery compared with the placebo variety. Similar results have been found for back surgery.

Other forms of treatment can qualify as placebos.

For Parkinson’s patients, stimulation with implanted electrodes can have a placebo effect. In fact, the placebo is part of the response to any active medical intervention.

The first major scientific review of the placebo effect was performed by Henry Beecher in 1955. He claimed that, after reviewing several placebo-controlled trials, 35.2% of patients benefited from the placebo effect.

However, he lumped all conditions in together and made the error of considering any improvement in the patients’ conditions as a placebo response, thereby failing to consider improvements patients could attain through no intervention at all. Nor did he account for the so-called ‘Hawthorne effect’ whereby improvements can be obtained by being part of the rigours of the

experiment itself – that is, the self-motivational effect on patients due to interest being shown in them by medical practitioners.

In contrast, in 2001, Asbjom Hrobjartsonn and his team suggested that in most clinical circumstances, the placebo response has a very minimal, if any, effect.

However, recent studies unequivocally indicate that the placebo effect, for some conditions (e.g. ADHD, pain, IBS, depression), is markedly beneficial.

Placebos should be inert chemical substances, but care must be exercised in their selection. A trial looking at the effect of placebos on symptoms of IBS (irritable bowel syndrome) concluded there was a substantial placebo effect. However, the placebo in this case was bran, which, whilst innocuous, may not be entirely inert within the bowel. The conclusions of this trial had to be carefully reconsidered. Alternative therapies also show a placebo response, even though there is no mode of action (e.g. sham acupuncture, by placing needles in non-acupuncture points).

A major question for researchers is, how does a placebo achieve its effect?

There are three influences:

1 Expectation - treatment by a trusted clinician encourages a person to recover. A key point is that the patient knows they are receiving medication or treatment. Research suggests that painkillers such as morphine and tramadol are much less effective, if we don’t know we are taking them.

2 Classical (Pavlovian) conditioning – whereby a biologically potent stimulus is paired with a previously innocuous one. An active medicine could be administered with a highly distinct taste. After several administrations, the active ingredient is removed but the medication is otherwise physically identical and still has the same distinct taste. The body links the distinctive taste with the effects of the active ingredient, thereby conditioning the body.

3 Two further essential components to a positive placebo effect are a strong practitioner-patient confidence and belief in the treatment and an effective and empathetic patient-practitioner communication. Jeremy was critical of current trends in GP/patient relationships for emphasising form filling rather than patient interaction. Even in random controlled trials, there are suggestions that doctors who demonstrate higher levels of empathy elicit an enhanced placebo effect.

Research indicates that the placebo response may not be just psychological. The act of taking a placebo can cause physiological changes. For example, the use of a placebo analgesic can cause the secretion of endogenous opiates. Similarly, placebo medication can increase motor performance in Parkinson’s Disease due to anticipatory release of dopamine and in the depressed, placebo effects are linked to serotonin release. These changes have been physiologically confirmed by brain imaging. Interestingly, because of endogenous releases associated with placebos, the placebo itself can give rise to negative side-effects, the so-called ‘nocebo’ response (‘nocebo’ Latin ‘I will harm’).

The advantage of placebos is that whilst drugs are expensive and have side-effects, a well-directed placebo can lead to a reduction in medication needed to achieve a particular effect with correspondingly fewer sideeffects. Author, Jo Marchant, notes the widespread prescribing of opioid painkillers for conditions such as arthritis and lower back pain. However, such painkillers, because of their potency, also lead to emergency admissions to hospitals. Placebo painkillers – in whole, or in part with the active ingredient – can mimic the effects of the actual painkiller, making them much safer and equally effective, even when dose reduced.

The major disadvantage of placebos is that deception is used in their administration. In consequence, the GMC and NHS disallow their use. There is also concern from the same bodies that placebo use is unreliable and unpredictable and that it may encourage pill popping. A survey of GPs showed that a surprising 97% of doctors have, at some point, administered a placebo, believing it in the patient’s best interest. Clearly, the benefits of a placebo are well appreciated by GPs at primary care level, even if not welcomed by their professional regulators.

In conclusion, Jeremy advocates a paradigm shift in medical practice. The body can produce its own drugs; relaxing, positive thinking and comfortable environments can improve health as much as a blockbuster drug. Doctors should retreat, in part, from their function as drug dispensers, and take time in a healing role. His forthcoming book, ‘Dr You Introducing the Hard Science of Self-Healing’, aims to empower people to make the right choices about their health.

The full report of Dr Howick's lecture is available online at sherbornesciencecafe.co.uk sherbornetimes.co.uk | 47

Science & Nature

Image: Bruce Shortland 48 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

THE SLOW WORM

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Alex Hennessy, Marketing and Communications Officer, Dorset Wildlife Trust

here’s something incredibly special about spotting the shining curves of a slow worm (Anguis fragilis), whether it’s coiled in a tucked-away area near your garden compost heap or basking in the sun on a heath or in grassland. Neither a worm nor a snake, this legless lizard might inspire some trepidation at first, but they are completely harmless for humans.

Adult slow worms can grow to around 50 centimetres long and are greybrown in colour. Females are browner, with darker sides. A slow worm’s body is smooth – much different from the overlapping, ridged scales you’d find on a grass snake or adder.

The mating season for slow worms begins in May, with males courting females by biting on the female’s head or neck, then intertwining bodies.

This courtship can last for around ten hours and, if successful, females incubate their eggs internally. The young then hatch inside the female and stay there, feeding on the yolk of their egg, for a short time. Pregnant females give birth to an average of eight live young in the summer.

Slow worms thrive in tussocky grassland and at the edges of woodland and heathland. They can also be found in mature gardens and on allotments – slow worms enjoy the warmth and fertile hunting ground of the compost heap. Their diet is mostly made up of invertebrates like slugs, snails, spiders and worms.

If you’re visiting a Dorset Wildlife Trust nature reserve and see pieces of tin or roofing felt, please don’t move them as they are likely to be part of our survey work for reptiles. Slow worms will burrow slightly beneath the soil, tuck themselves under rocks and hide out amongst vegetation, so keep this in mind if you’re disturbing these areas of your garden or allotment.

Many things you can do to provide safe areas for slow worms also benefit other wildlife, such as leaving log piles and stretches of long uncut grass. If you are mowing your lawn, walk the area you’re going to cut beforehand to help disperse wildlife to sheltered places. Find more ways to help wildlife from home at dorsetwildlifetrust.org.uk/actions.

Slow worm facts • Blinking with their eyelids and shedding their tails are tell-tale signs that the slow worm is a lizard rather than a snake or worm.

• Slow worms commonly lose their tails as a tactic to deter predators, which inspired the ‘fragilis’ part of their Latin species name.

• They use their tongues to ‘smell’ nearby predators, including snakes, and can tell the difference between a predator snake and one that is harmless from scent alone.

sherbornetimes.co.uk | 49

Science & Nature

THE WISDOM OF YOUTH Peter Littlewood, Young People’s Trust for the Environment

I

was recently asked to give a radio interview about Waitrose’s decision to ban the sale of children’s magazines that had plastic toys on the cover as an inducement to buy. At that point, I hadn’t heard about it – in fact, the story was embargoed until the following day, which excused my ignorance! But when I started doing some research to prepare for the interview, I realised that this wasn’t a decision that had been taken spontaneously by Waitrose.

Rather, the catalyst for Waitrose’s decision was a letter from a ten-year-old girl from Gwynedd, whose name was Skye. Skye had written to ask them to stop allowing magazines for children to be sold if they had, what she described as, ‘plastic tat’ on the covers. She made some very good points in her letter. Anyone who is a parent has no doubt at some point suffered the whining of a small child, desperate – for that moment 50 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

in time, at least – to own the poorly-made, obviously low-quality ‘toy’ of limited or non-existent play value, and with a life expectancy you can count in not even hours, but minutes. In fact, they’re almost like singleuse plastic, but specifically made for children!

As I investigated further, I found that some of the magazines for children have weekly circulations of 150,000 copies or more. So, if they have a plastic toy on the cover as standard every week, that’s potentially almost 8 million pieces of plastic each year. And some titles have up to seven ‘giveaway’ items each week, all wrapped, of course in a non-recyclable plastic bag.

Some estimates would suggest that up to 3,000 tonnes of plastic waste is created each year by the freebies from kids’ magazines here in the UK alone. So, the reality is that it’s a pretty serious issue, and Skye made a very good point!

Romrodphoto/Shutterstock

And it’s not just the amount of magazine-related tat that ends up in landfill, or worse, in the sea, that’s the problem. All of the plastic toys have to be made in factories – probably on the other side of the world. No doubt the manufacturing process has its own carbon footprint. Then they need to be shipped to the UK, causing more unnecessary carbon emissions in the process. When you start to consider the whole picture, you realise how much of an issue a simple toy on the front of a kid’s magazine actually is.

Waitrose has set a great example and hopefully other supermarkets will feel the pressure to follow suit. Waitrose will still allow ‘craft’ items, like colouring pencils and non-plastic toys to be included with children’s magazines, so there will still be options available for magazine publishers. But hopefully, as a result of this ban, which is due to come into force

in the coming weeks, the publishers will start to give greater consideration to the environmental impacts of their magazine giveaways in the future, and maybe get creative with alternatives.

I recorded a podcast last week (bit.ly/3u6KCUV) with actor, DJ and TV presenter Cel Spellman, who is one of the Presidents of the Young People’s Trust for the Environment (YPTE) and a WWF Ambassador.

He was saying that he believed there was nothing more powerful in the world than a young person’s voice. And he has a point. Young people often have a way of asking very sensible and perceptive questions, like, ‘Why does it have to be like this?’ and ‘Why can’t we make it better?’ And if they’re lucky, like Skye was, sometimes they get listened to and, in a small way, the world changes.

In an attempt to give more young people an audience, YPTE has recently created the ‘Young People’s Voices’ section on its website (bit.ly/3dgCxX3).

It’s devoted to articles and video clips, submitted to us by young people about the environmental issues they care passionately about. They show that young people really do care about this planet we all share.

In recent years, we have seen the increasing power young people have to make a difference. When a 15-year-old Greta Thunberg started her Skolstrejk för Klimatet (school strike for climate) in September of 2018, she probably had no idea just how much her voice would be listened to by the world’s leaders and media, or how the School Climate Strike movement would catch on around the world. Such co-ordinated and wellorganised demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of young people around the world reflects their desire for the world to listen to them, to realise that the world has to change in order to ensure that their future is a safe and secure one. The change probably won’t happen as quickly as Greta - and many others - would like.

But there can be no doubt now that change is coming, that increasing numbers of people – young and old – are demanding we treat the environment differently, in ways that will not only benefit the vast array of animals and plants that we share it with, but, ultimately, will create a better planet and a fairer society for us all. ypte.org.uk The opinions expressed here are Peter’s own and don’t represent those of YPTE. sherbornetimes.co.uk | 51

Science & Nature

Images: Dorset Wildlife Trust

HOLWAY WOODS RESERVE

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Kevin & Val Waterfall, Dorset Wildlife Trust Sherborne Group Members

orset Wildlife Trust (DWT) has 42 wildlife reserves ranging from large areas of heathland, to small village orchards. There are a wide variety representing the different habitats across Dorset and depending on the season, there is more or less interest in each. The one that is closest to Sherborne is Holway Woods, which is just a mile or so north of the town and to the east of Sandford Orcas. In 1965, it was the first reserve given to DWT, which at that time was called the Dorset Naturalists’ Trust.

Holway Wood is a 16-hectare area of mixed, mature and recently planted woodland, offering superb views over the surrounding countryside with Glastonbury Tor standing out clearly to the north. It is on a west-facing ridge of underlying Inferior Oolite limestone with a largely sandy soil overlying it but with clay topsoil near 52 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

the bottom of the slope. Although the reserve is a fairly narrow band of woodland, it supports a good variety of birds, plants, insects and mammals. There are circular trails in both halves, but the paths can be narrow and steep in places.

The reserve is a mixture of mature woodland, with a scattering of impressive twisted old sweet chestnuts, and recently planted woodland designed to link the two older woodland blocks. The hawthorn and cherry trees will show us their colours this month. There are some fallen ash trees where you will find the black fungus ‘Arthur’s cakes’ (Daldinia concentrica) growing out of the bark. The fungus gets its name from the traditional tale of King Alfred, taking refuge from the Vikings in a peasant’s home in 878 AD. He forgot to watch some cakes baking on the hearth and was scolded when they

burnt. These black balls can be used as kindling to start a fire, which explains other common names such as ‘carbon balls’ or ‘coal fungus’.

The primroses have been in full bloom since midMarch, with little clumps of blue and white violets tucked in beside them. In May, the woods are carpeted in bluebells and the spires of foxgloves are reaching up ready to burst into colour. The whole understory is full of plants including golden saxifrage, wood speedwell and little mouse ear, which are some of the ‘Dorset Notables’. There are also low flowering plants which include wood anemones and pink purslane and the cowslips, which should now be in flower.

There are a variety of fungi species including a striking example of the Cerrenaceae family – ‘Mossy Maze Polymore’ (Cerena unicolor), which can cause white rot. The spores of the fungus are spread from being carried by a species of wasp which lays its eggs in the fungus.

Tawny owl, song thrush, great spotted woodpecker, treecreeper and nuthatch are present throughout the year. Usually buzzards are soaring over the ridge; you can hear them and their distinctive mewing call before you see them. The chiffchaffs have been singing for several weeks, since they returned from the Mediterranean and West Africa. From May onwards, spotted flycatchers should be around. If you are lucky, you will see willow warblers in the section of the reserve south of the dividing road, or maybe just hear them with their song that starts as a high pitch that falls in steps. They look so much like the chiffchaffs that you really need the song to differentiate between the species.

The rookery at the north-west corner has been busy since early March and the eggs that were laid from then until early April will now be scruffy-looking squabs needing lots of parental feeding trips to help them grow and develop that black sheen on their feathers.

There are lots of hazelnut shells split clean in two by the grey squirrels which are frequently seen. Badgers are sculpting the contours of the hillside as they extend their dens to cater for their growing families. Rabbits are obviously about at night and, in the daytime, you might well see a roe deer moving off silently through the trees.

Summer butterflies include brimstone and speckled wood, but even in March we were seeing red admirals.

The reserve can be accessed from the Monarch’s Way footpath or there are two small parking areas.

You can find out more by visiting the reserve website dorsetwildlifetrust.org.uk/nature-reserves/holway-woods

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Science & Nature

‘NE’ER CAST A CLOUT ‘TIL MAY IS OUT’ Paula Carnell, Beekeeping Consultant, Writer and Speaker

bond.aruke25/Shutterstock

I

t’s funny how you can hear a saying frequently, and yet gain a new interpretation suddenly in your 50s! Being a Dorset lass, this phrase has been in the backdrop of my life along with ‘spring is sprung’, and ‘Dorset born, Dorset bred’. I’ve heard many interpretations relating it to cold weather through May and underwear being stitched on, as well as May blossom, or hawthorn with its distinctive white flowers appearing during May. It suddenly dawned on me that ‘ne’er casting a 54 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

clout…’, could be interpreted that May blossom only comes into bloom when it is warm enough for us to remove our winter vests. This insight opens our eyes to the true wonder of nature – so many hints around us guiding us to make the correct decisions. I was also reminded that, prior to bees and herbal medicine studies, I didn’t really know the difference between blackthorn and hawthorn blossom, or their timing, despite my whole life living in the countryside.

I learned last year, when emerging queen

bumblebees wake up ahead of their favoured spring bulbs, they start nibbling on the buds and leaves, triggering the plants to bloom. We forget that flowering is a plant’s last call for procreation. As a plant nears death, it knows it needs to bloom to ensure pollination and continuation of the next generation. Science is disproving many things currently, for instance the fungi on old trees isn’t killing the tree; it’s the death of a tree that triggers the fungi to ‘bloom’.

Writing this, with my gloves back on after a week of beautiful, uncharacteristically warm sunny March weather, I am pondering how nature appears to foresee and adapt to changes of environment and connect to the phases of the moon. The next step is to of course ask how far has humanity come away from this connectivity? May is also the time when bees naturally swarm. In 2020, due to the mild winter, swarming began in mid-April – taking some beekeepers by surprise.

Swarming, despite popular misconceptions, is perfectly natural and essential to a colony’s health and wellbeing. A swarm of bees usually consists of around 10,000-20,000 bees, including the queen. The bees will have filled their honey crops, with honey, ready to start making wax in their new home. The first, or prime, swarms of the season contain the ‘old’ queen. This is considered a valuable ‘catch’ – or loss, to beekeepers – due to the fact that the queen will be able to start laying eggs straight away. The bees remaining in the hive will be the young, non-flying bees, eggs and larvae, forcing the worker or maiden bees to select one or more of the eggs to be fed exclusively royal jelly, creating a new queen. Often, the process of preparing for a new queen begins before the old queen departs, ensuring that the colony can survive. Like the dying plants and trees, the old queen leaves, creating the opportunity for a new life and a new cycle to begin.

One of the many great debates amongst beekeeping is ‘condensation verses ventilation’ within beehives.

When faced with any question, I ask myself, what would bees do in the wild? If a colony is living in the hollow of a tree, the most common wild habitat, due to the nature of the hollow, the base would most likely be solid. After extracting colonies of bees from fallen trees, I have noticed how the interior is coated in a layer of propolis, and the base would be a mixture of wood debris and propolis. Modern hives have been built with an open mesh floor. The idea behind this is to allow the pesky varroa mites to drop through onto a removable observation board/tray when chemical treatments have

been added to the hive. It is assumed that the mites are unable to crawl back up into the hive. Some use a sticky board firmly fixing the mites ready to be counted.

Through my own observations, I have seen a large amount of pollen, and small wax cappings on the tray.

The pollen will have dropped off the bee’s pollen sacs as they entered the hive, and the wax is from where the bees nibble the capped cells of honey. The odd dead wasp, and bee parts can also be seen. In the wild, or in my solid floored hives, bees will remove any dead bee parts from the base, keeping their hive hygienic. A mesh floor, without a board, will allow debris and mites to fall through to the ground. I have experimented with hives leaving observation boards in over winter and removing them. Then life, and weather, intervenes, and I had a WBC hive where the observation board was affected by damp and became stuck beneath the mesh floor.

This past week, I moved the hive, meaning that I needed to lift the brood away from the base. I was intrigued to see that the mesh floor had been completely coated in propolis by my bees. Now, if the observation board had been removed, we would assume that the bees didn’t like a draughty floor. With the board remaining in, it indicates that the bees didn’t like debris falling to the board, and not being removed.

By placing a layer of propolis, the bees are ensuring that their hive remains healthy and hygienic, using the antibacterial, anti-septic and anti-viral properties of their magical glue. Naturally, I have been so excited by this observation, excited that this colony are able to produce so much propolis, as well as knowing that they have the freedom to protect themselves as they see fit.

This year, I am ensuring that my bait hives are up in good time and I’ll be keeping a close eye on my colonies. Returning to the month of May and my winter vests (or tights), I will keep them on until after the May blossom is out – just in case! paulacarnell.com

___________________________________________ Bee Safaris Monday-Friday 3pm-4pm The Newt, Castle Cary

Join Paula for a walking tour of The Newt’s rare, native and wild bee colonies. Discover the various hives hidden in the

woodland and learn more about their fascinating behaviours.

Advanced booking is required. £10 per person. 01963 577777 thenewtinsomerset.com

___________________________________________ sherbornetimes.co.uk | 55

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On Foot

58 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

On Foot

CHAMPERNHAYES Emma Tabor and Paul Newman Distance: 2 3/4 miles Time: Approx. 1 1/2 hours Park: Car park to the east of Champernhayes Lane, near Wootton Hill. The starting point is where ‘Forest Walks’ are marked on Ordnance Survey Explorer 116.

Walk Features: An easy walk around the woodlands of Champernhayes. Most of the walk stays in or alongside the woods and is relatively level, apart from a short downhill section where you leave the woods to pass through Spence Farm, and a steady uphill section back towards Champernhayes Lane. The wood has a mixture of beech, oak and conifer and there are some good views across to nearby Coney’s Castle and the coast towards Charmouth, as well as the surrounding hills and valleys which encircle this area.

Refreshments: There are plenty of eateries and pubs to choose from in Lyme Regis >

sherbornetimes.co.uk | 59

E

ach month we devise a walk for you to try with your family and friends (including four-legged members) pointing out a few interesting things along the way, be it flora, fauna, architecture, history, the unusual and sometimes the unfamiliar.

For May we follow a relaxing route around Forestry Commission land at Champernhayes wood, near Monkton Wyld. The Forestry Commission was founded in September 1919 to restore the nation’s woods and forests following the First World War, 60 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

and the passing of the Forestry Act. Directions

Start: SY 355 969 1 From the car park, follow the sign to Fishpond Bottom 1 ¼, heading up a track. The track curves to the left and soon drops down towards a larger track cutting through the woods. Turn left onto this then almost immediately right onto a smaller track. After 100 yards, you soon reach a fence straight ahead of

you - here, turn right, through the beech bank you have been following, onto the lower path which forms the boundary of the wood. There is open pasture now on your left. Ignore any paths or tracks to your right and carry along the wood boundary footpath. In 350 yards, just before the path becomes narrower, a track leads up to the right, before you reach the returning edge of the wood. Take the right fork here, up through the wood, with the wood boundary to your left. Keeping a raised beech bank to your left in sight, you soon come to a crossroads of paths and tracks with a cottage visible to your left.

2 Take the track out of the woods, down the hill, to soon pass a house on your left. There are good views from here towards Charmouth and the sea.

The track bends left and you soon reach Spence Farm and then Wodetone Vineyard. Here, take the footpath right, opposite the farmhouse, through tall metal gates, with vines on your left and a corrugated metal farm building on your right. Do not follow the inviting track around the top edge of the vineyard; instead, look out for a footpath sign on a tall metal gate just past the building on your right, which is not that easy to see. Go through the gate

into a pony paddock. Walk along keeping the metal fence on your left. As the field opens out, walk diagonally across into the far corner; there may be electric fencing in this field. At the far corner, cross over a rather overgrown wooden stile and fence to emerge into an orchard and campsite. Keep along the left hand side of the field until you pass through the entrance to the campsite and some buildings onto a road.

3 Turn right onto the road and walk along for approximately 200 yards, then turn left off the road, up a wider track, signed to Marsh Farm. Keep along this track and after a short while you will pass Marsh Farm and lots of farm buildings on your left.

Soon after Marsh Farm, the track becomes more grassy and you leave the edge of the wood. After the track meanders for 150 yards, it turns right, back up towards the wood, along a field boundary.

Keep going straight up, eventually meeting a track through the woods. You join the track by going slight left to carry on until you meet the road, by a Forestry Commission entrance sign for Champernhayes. Turn sharp right onto the road, and head back towards the car park where you started. sherbornetimes.co.uk | 61

History

ST. OSMUND’S CURSE Cindy Chant & John Drabik

‘Whosoever should take these lands from the Bishopric, or diminish them in great or small, should be accursed, not only in this world, but also in the world to come; unless in his lifetime he made restitution thereof.’

Panglossian/Shutterstock

W

ith this curse, during his declining years at the end of 11th Century, Osmund, relative of William the Conqueror and Bishop of Sarum, gave his lands at Sherborne to the Church.

Today, Sherborne Old Castle is just a picturesque ruin, yet it has had a turbulent history. It was built by Roger of Caen, Chancellor to King Henry I and also Bishop of Salisbury. Building commenced in 1122 and took 15 years to complete. The castle and its estates remained the property of the Bishop of Salisbury until King Stephen ordered their acquisition. Dogged by the Civil War, the King’s wealth soon diminished and, after having to surrender them to Robert of Gloucester in 1143, who soon after lost his life, Stephen lost his crown and his life - dying without an heir. Was this as a result of the curse? We felt a shiver up our spines… as 62 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

we continued our research.

The castle then passed onto the Montague family, and the curse affected them too. One was slain in battle, and another beheaded. They then lost their last remaining son, who, while practising for a jousting tournament, was accidentally pierced by his father’s lance. And so, ended their male line.

The property was then, once more, restored to the Church. But then it came into the hands of Edward Seymour, the Duke of Somerset, who, due to his greed for power, shortly afterwards in 1552, was called to London by the boy King, Edward VI, and decapitated.

The estates then passed to the young King, who died of consumption a year later, at the age of 15 years.

The lands were being passed from one owner to the next, each seemingly succumbed to the curse. Mary

Tudor soon inherited the castle and gave money to the Church. Was this to pacify the dreaded curse?

After a reign of only five years, and after several false pregnancies, she died childless at the age of 42.

Queen Elizabeth later misappropriated the estate when she leased it for a paltry rent, in 1592, to her favourite courtier, Sir Walter Raleigh. He had lusted after the castle ever since he first set eyes on it, while riding past on his way to Plymouth. At that very moment his horse stumbled and he fell to the ground.

Was this a bad omen? Raleigh gained the lease of Sherborne Castle, and he hoped for happiness there.

But it was not to be.

So did this strange curse strike again? He craved for peace in his life, during his last years in Sherborne, and set about building his ‘New Castle’, as the old one was proving to be too expensive to modernise. Raleigh’s downfall began in 1603, with James I accession, and his charge of high treason and consequent imprisonment in the Tower. The attorney general called him ‘A traitor, a monster, a viper, and a spider of hell.’ He did, however, remain a popular hero with the people, and so his sombre walk to the block was delayed, and after many years of lonely imprisonment, Raleigh was sadly executed on 29th October 1618.

It is here in the quiet setting of his lakeside grounds, that he is said to mysteriously appear each year on the eve of the feast of St. Michael – 29th September – dressed in his fineries and quietly walking under the trees, perhaps making his way to his favourite stone garden seat and then, he vanishes.

He had hoped that his son would inherit the lands, but James’ wily lawyers found a flaw in the documents, so they once more, reverted back to the Crown.

Henry Prince of Wales, son of James 1st, was next, seeking to acquire the lands with the intention of returning them to the Church. But he died suddenly, at the youthful age of 18 years. And so the relentless curse mercilessly continued.

James then leased the estate to his favourite, Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset, who held it for a short while, and then he too, accused of murder, was banished to the Tower, losing both the lands and his fortune.

The castle was sold to Sir John Digby in 1617, and as a reward for his services as ambassador to Spain, was created Baron Lord Digby of Sherborne, and later the Earl of Bristol. The Digbys took up residence and hold it still.

It seems that the curse is now satiated, as the lands have remained curse-free for 400 years… or is it?

FREE HOME VISITS Specialist Matthew Denney will be in the Sherborne area on Thursday 27th May to value your objects & antiques

MARY FEDDEN, OBE, RA (1915-2012) STILL LIFE WITH FLOWERS, FRUIT AND A CAKE BOUGHT FOR £12,800

Welcoming Consignments for our Summer Sales FREE VALUATIONS ALSO AVAILABLE

Online | Phone | Email | Whatsapp To make an appointment call or email 01460 73041 matthew.denney@lawrences.co.uk Professional Valuations Available for Probate & Insurance Complete House Contents & Attic Clearances Arranged

lawrences.co.uk sherbornetimes.co.uk | 63

History

LOST DORSET

NO.11 FERNDOWN

M

David Burnett, The Dovecote Press

ay Day at the village school in 1910, a tradition still carried by many primary schools today. Twenty Dorset villages are known to have had maypoles, of which Shillingstone’s was the tallest at 120 feet. May Day celebrations were once far more boisterous. In Wool, the sweep danced with the May Queen. ‘Hallooboys! Hallooboys! Let the bells ring!’ cried the boys in some villages, waking the inhabitants by blowing cows’ horns and ringing hand bells. Along the coast, it was celebrated on ‘Old’ May Day, usually 12th May, with children carrying garlands from house to house, young and old alike later dancing the ‘Dorset Ring Dance’ to the village band. The garlands were then rowed out to sea and thrown overboard to bring luck for the mackerel season ahead. It was the church and school authorities in Victorian times who purged May Day of its rough and tumble. Happily, those staunch defenders of Dorset traditions the Wessex Morris Men still dance on top of Giant Hill, Cerne Abbas, at dawn on May morning, waving green branches to welcome in the spring.

Lost Dorset: The Villages and Countryside 1880-1920, by David Burnett, is a large format paperback, price £12, and is available locally from Winstone’s Books or directly from the publishers. dovecotepress.com

64 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

OBJECT OF THE MONTH

THE VICTORIAN DOLL Elisabeth Bletsoe, Curator, Sherborne Museum

A

t the museum, we have a modest collection of 24 dolls, most of which have been donated by residents of Sherborne.

They range from the more exquisite and expensive, created by wellknown C19th German makers such as Gerbrüder Heubach, Simon & Halbig and Shoenau & Hoffmeister, to the home-made wooden ‘peg doll’. Many have beautifully made hand-sewn clothes, through which the owners or, more likely, their mothers or grandmothers expressed their skills and creativity.

This particularly dainty china shoulder head doll, just 18.5 cm high, has a stuffed calico body and china lower arms and legs. She has a white varnished face with painted brows, nostrils and lips, blue eyes and very rosy cheeks. There are no maker’s marks visible, but these types of doll heads were made in Germany and can be dated by their moulded black hairstyles; this one is known as the ‘covered wagon’ style, which dates the doll to 1850. It has a middle parting and high forehead, being flat on top with vertical sausage curls around the sides and back of the head. The front and back plate have a threading hole at each end by which the head is stitched to the body.

The forearms and hands are moulded of a single piece, without separated fingers, and the lower limbs remain white with black painted ankle boots.

Hidden under her dress are a lawn cotton chemise with a Broderie Anglaise trim around the neck and sleeves, and a long lawn petticoat which falls from under the arms down to the lower calves, with real lacing at the back; the bodice is stitched to the skirt and the whole dress is decorated with bands of horizontal stitching. She also has another waist petticoat in cream

flannel, with a row of feather stitching in satin thread near the hem, and coarse fabric bloomers into which are sewn her legs and lower body.

Her outer garments are the epitome of 1850s fashion; a dress of blue and white silk with a dome shaped skirt, evenly distributed and supported by the multiple petticoats, with bretelles spreading from the centre line to the shoulders creating a V shape that emphasises the waist. The pagoda sleeves are worn with engageantes, or detachable sleeves, made of white lace. The back of the dress fastens with tiny glass bugle beads and loops of gold thread with ties at the nape of the neck. The outfit is embellished with blue ribbons and a blue silk hair band with gold decoration and white thread tying it under the chin.

Although this doll is rather sweet, some that we have are also vaguely sinister with their wax faces, glass eyes, human hair and lips parted to reveal small teeth; en masse they can seem like a miniature Victorian orphanage. And yes, fear of dolls or pediophobia, is a recognised psychological condition. However one feels about them, they all repay research into their provenance; we treat them with equal respect and care because, as their various scuffs and scrapes attest, someone has at one time loved them very much, played with them and derived comfort and companionship from them. sherbornemuseum.co.uk Sherborne Museum is currently closed and looks forward to welcoming back volunteers and visitors when it is safe to do so. sherbornetimes.co.uk | 65

Antiques

PUT AWAY

W

Richard Bromell ASFAV, Charterhouse Auctioneers

e are all prone to putting things away. Here, I’m not talking about tidying up after the kids or emptying the dishwasher but putting away items either given or inherited. It is always nice to be thought of or remembered in a will. Often, this can be as a result of a comment such as ‘oh, that’s a nice pottery vase’ to receive the gift years later. But this can also raise a problem.

The problem can be that our ideas and taste change over time. What we liked some 30 years ago when visiting Granny, such as the Georgian mahogany bureau, does not always transfer into 21st century living. Generally, the computer, smart phone and tablet have killed the value of bureaux, as we no longer deal with our correspondence sitting at a desk. When was the last time you used that special air mail, thin blue paper letter to send to a friend in America?

Probably not recently – you are more prone to using email, WhatsApp, FaceTime, Messenger or a text. You can see when the recipient has looked at the message and get a reply by return; all very quick, easy and convenient.

Recently, a client arranged to meet me at the salerooms with a collection of coins. Those of you who have been following my ramblings here over the past few years will know I have now

66 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

had nearly a 50-year interest in collecting coins – yes, I was very, very young when I started!

During the past few months of Lockdown 3.0, the client, like many others, was at home and took advantage of some spare time to look through items which he had put away. Most of the items put away were given to him by his late father. Having had the items for many years, he decided to adopt the 5-year rule – if he had not seen or used them for the past five years, then he was unlikely to use them again, so time to take action and send them to auction.

Many of the coins I see are what I lovingly refer to as ‘shrapnel’. These coins are of little or low value. More often than not, they are old pennies (with a few exceptions such as the 1933 penny, one of which recently sold for £72,000!) and change from travels abroad, including Francs and Pesetas, which are now defunct due to the Euro.

However, the coins which the owner had put away, after being given to him by his late father, did not include any shrapnel. The coins were carefully curated in two ‘coin library’ books.

The majority of the coins are milled rather than hammered with crowns, half crowns, florins, shillings and other denominations dating from Queen Elizabeth I through to Queen Elizabeth II, thereby covering over 450 years of coinage.

The owner, who has little interest in coin collecting, was most pleased to hear his late father’s collection could sell for over £3,000 and immediately entered them into our next specialist coins, medals and stamp auction in June.

Now our salerooms doors are open again for regular specialist valuation days, it would not surprise me if more clients bring in their lockdown discoveries. charterhouse-auction.com

CHARTERHOUSE Auctioneers & Valuers

Forthcoming Auction Programme

Coins, Medals & Stamps Thursday 10th June Clocks, Antiques & Interiors Friday 11th June Classic & Vintage Motorcycles Wednesday 30th June Classic & Vintage Cars Wednesday 14th July Further Entries Invited

Totally restored 1965 Mini Countryman £13,000-15,000

Contact Richard Bromell for advice on single items and complete collections Valuations for Probate and Insurance

The Long Street Salerooms, Sherborne DT9 3BS 01935 812277 www.charterhouse-auction.com sherbornetimes.co.uk | 67

elizabethwatsonillustration.com 68 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

Co.ofLandscapers GARDEN DESIGN STUDIO

Planting for colour With spring in full swing, it’s time to get the garden bursting with colour.

Summer bedding plants, such as Begonias, Sweets Peas and Petunias, can add scent and colour to your flower beds and borders, while hanging baskets can bring a whole new level of interest to your garden, however large or small.

With our social distancing measures in place, you can pick up your seeds, plants and hanging baskets any day of the week: Monday to Saturday: 9am – 6pm Sunday: 10am – 4:30pm For those still stuck at home, you can place your orders by telephone or via our brand-new Online Store and we’ll deliver free within 25 miles.

Castle Gardens, New Road, Sherborne, Dorset DT9 5NR www.thegardensgroup.co.uk

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sherbornetimes.co.uk | 69

Gardening

BEWARE THE LATE FROST Mike Burks, Managing Director, The Gardens Group

‘N

e’er cast a clout until May is out’ is a phrase describing how there is still a chance of a frost until the end of May and so, gardeners should beware of putting tender plants out too early without some form of protection.

The end of May rule is interesting in that when I lived in mid Devon, the rule we followed was that tender bedding plants would be fine outside after the second week in May, whereas in Sherborne, we usually say the end of May. But in Epsom, the rule for pruning box plants was Derby Day – the first week of June! (Box plants, when pruned, put on lush young growth that is very tender and frost-susceptible.)

Apparently, the frost-free line through the UK takes 84 days to go from the most south-westerly point on the islands to the most north-easterly point, which 70 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

seems to me to mean that summer hasn’t yet started in North Scotland, before the autumn has set in, which may well be what it feels like. Some Scottish colleagues of mine in the garden centre industry told me that the only frost-free month in 2019 was August!

But what does this mean for us in the Sherborne area?

Young growth on plants can be at its most vigorous in May and yet because of that is most susceptible to frost.

The temperature changes can also go from being very warm to darn chilly in the same 24-hour period. Often, the frost happens very early in the morning and by the time many are up and about there is no sign. So, it’s best to be prepared and keep an eye on the weather forecast.

If the facilities are available, put tender plants out in the day and then back inside at night, but if that sounds too tedious or hard work, then the use of horticultural

Martha Almeyda/Shutterstock

fleece will help you out. This lightweight white material, if draped over your plants, will keep them a few degrees warmer than the temperature above and plants will be well protected.

We grow in low-tech conditions within polytunnels in our nursery and so, on cold nights in April and May, we cover plants with fleece. In addition to that though, we grow on the ground rather than on benches. The floor of the polytunnel is warmer during the day and acts like a storage heater overnight. In fact, we don’t use any artificial heat at all, and this creates the right conditions for plants to grow. High light levels and relatively low temperatures create tough and compact plants that will romp away once planted out.

With some help from protection, when necessary, it’s a great month in the garden with a vast array of plants

that can be planted out to give a rainbow of colour, a nose-full of scent and a source of food for pollinating insects to enjoy. Such plants can be used in the border or in pots or hanging baskets.

All of these will need to be watered regularly and not allowed to dry out. Regular feeding too with a flowerpromoting fertiliser will keep them flowering and as the flowers begin to go over, they should be picked off (dead heading) and so more will be provided by the plants.

Soon, frost will become a memory, long lazy days of sunshine can be looked forward to and all will be right with the world.

Mind you, come to think of it, I remember a frost on the 5th June one year! thegardensgroup.co.uk sherbornetimes.co.uk | 71

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For more information visit our website or come down to the showroom.

Unit 1a > South Western Business Pk > Sherborne > Dorset > DT9 3PS billbutterswindows.co.uk 01935 816 168

NORRIE DE MONTIGNY Words Jo Denbury Photography Katharine Davies

I

arrive at the home of ceramicist Norrie de Montigny and am waved cheerfully onto the drive by his wife Jane. The couple have recently moved to Sherborne from Duntish where Norrie had long been opening his studio to the public as part of Dorset Art Weeks. 2021 sees the welcome return of this lauded event with Norrie making an exciting new addition to Sherborne’s growing community of artists.

We enjoy a coffee in the garden before heading into Norrie’s new studio. It’s a most orderly place – freshly painted white walls and neat shelves stacked with labelled pots, powders, tiles and research material.

From within this tidy space pop Norrie’s vibrant candy-like ceramic reliefs. Their levity of colour and technique striking. The purity of line, lightness of touch and abstract patterns in his work offer a disruptive, playful alternative to the medium of paint or print. >

74 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

sherbornetimes.co.uk | 75

76 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

‘Dorset Art Weeks is good fun for the simple reason that I am usually working on my own and have very little contact with other people’, says Norrie perched on a stool at his workbench. ‘It’s a lonely existence really, though I cope very well with it and I have so many things that I want to do. I am pretty absorbed by my work.’

It hasn’t always been like this and Norrie hasn’t always been a potter. He came to it in his early 30s. ‘I became involved in 1974,’ he says ‘it was through lucky conditions. In fact, I wanted to do photography at first.’

Norrie grew up in Luxembourg during the Second World War and remained there in the years that followed. ‘From the ages of 21 to 32, I worked in a commercial company in Luxembourg,’ he explains ‘It was a very successful company, and I did very well. But after 12 years, I got bored. At 33 I couldn’t see my whole life going on this way, so I took the year off and went to Spain.’

In 1973 Norrie’s life took an unexpected and serendipitous turn. At the time, he was living in Nerja, a town in Andalucia. ‘As it happened, Jane had just arrived in the region with a friend and was waiting at a bus stop to get to the next village.’ He recalls, ‘On realising there were no buses on a Sunday they had just started to hitchhike when I drove by. I offered them a lift and the rest is history’.

Norrie eventually went to live in London and was pondering a future as a photographer as well as exploring the idea of becoming an architect. He had always had an interest in the subject and at that time, Jane lived close to the Architectural Association. This pursuit however, was short-lived… ‘Jane had enrolled in evening ceramics classes and she took me along,’ he explains ‘and, suddenly, I was doing four evenings a week. I learned very quickly and felt comfortable with it.’ He muses, ‘If you compare clay and architecture – the latter takes years before you see the result whereas with ceramics, you can see the result in a fortnight. In architecture, if you have a terrible building it doesn’t go away – you can put a tree in front of it, but it doesn’t go away.’ The immediacy and modesty of ceramics appealed to Norrie and with that withered thoughts of photography and architecture.

It was now a matter of how to become a ceramicist.

Norrie recalls, ‘I could have done a course at University which would’ve probably relied more on the art side over technical elements. So, instead, Jane and I got a little booklet from the Potters Association on Marchmont Street; it had a list of around 100 practicing potters. We took the booklet jumped in

the car and visited them all – it took three weeks!’

Eventually, Alan Wallwork, a potter based in Marnhull accepted Norrie. ‘He thankfully offered me a job, helping to pack the kiln and so on. So, we moved to Marnhull.’ Jane already had family roots in Dorset so moving here wasn’t too much of a culture shock.

Norrie was also very interested at that time in the work of Michael Cardew in Cornwall and Ray Finch at Winchcombe in Gloucestershire. Both of these potters had been heavily influenced by Bernard Leach, one of the grandfathers of British pottery. As luck would have it, during this period Ray Finch offered him a 6-week placement and Norrie ended up staying there for 5 years. ‘When I left, I could do everything that anybody else could do there. I had learned to make pots to a very technical standard – the Winchcombe way.’

Norrie began his own journey as a potter, playing with shape and colour in a bid to develop his own style.

One day, a friend visiting Norrie’s studio, liked one of his experimental pieces so much he offered to buy it – a colour test glaze on a flat piece of fired clay. ‘Take it, I said. Later when I visited his home, I noticed he had the piece hanging as a relief ceramic on his wall. That got me thinking. I started moving very slowly from domestic ware to working on these slabs.’

Over time, Norrie has developed an intimate knowledge of glazes which he uses like paint on the slabs. He uses many different glaze formulas (his brother, perhaps unsurprisingly, was a research chemist) and his work is intriguingly innovative. ‘But with it comes enormous problems,’ says Norrie ‘because to paint on ceramic, is like taking a brush onto the beach and painting on sand. At the time, it was an enormous moment of movement away for me.’

‘What I was looking for was a glaze mixture with the same characteristics as the painter’s acrylic (which easily flow and cover well),’ he explains. ‘With glaze chemical additives I came very close but for some time I had a disappointing amount of failures. If you want to get really bright colours, the difficulty is in achieving the matt effect on the slabs and that took me a couple of years – literally trying to get the colour right. So this is the fun, frustration and reward at times, of researching and continually trying new things.’

Norrie created his first successful ‘cut-out’ glaze on a ceramic slab in 2012. These patterns appear random but of course are not. ‘If you had to paint it, it would be impossible,’ says Norrie ‘suddenly I was able to produce these patterns full of surprises and complications.’ > sherbornetimes.co.uk | 77

78 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

sherbornetimes.co.uk | 79

80 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

So how much of the process is down to luck and how much is intentional? ‘Colours are playing a big part,’ he explains, ‘I can control the colour itself, but I can’t control how the colour will shrink when it is fired.’ His interest lies in the combination of method and medium, ‘the challenge is the medium, and that is what I am interested in. For me, it is about exploring results from the risk and the work that I put in. Some items I like that I didn’t expect to like and vice versa.’

Norrie counts the painter Howard Hodgkin and mid-century architect Frank Lloyd Wright among his influences. Norrie’s use of colour is almost raw and experimental. ‘It’s like everything else; if you are long enough involved in something, you get a feeling for it,’ says Norrie ‘and it can depend on your cultural background – from being a child onwards, what you see around you, where you grow up etc. I am certain that influences you. If you go back to my childhood in 1946, Luxembourg was flattened, so what do you do? Luckily, we could rebuild, and it basically became a new country.

For example, when they built the new roads, they put the telephone wires underground – why not in the ground, if you are building new roads? If you grow up with that [attitude] it’s easy to move forward.’

‘I don’t have many years left in me – I am pretty sure of that. So, I am excited that Jem Main and Dorset Visual Arts has come to The Glove Factory.’ In another coup for Sherborne and its credentials as a centre for the arts, Dorset Visual Arts – the parent company behind Dorset Art Weeks – has set up shop at The Glove Factory on Newland in anticipation of moving to Sherborne House in late 2023, under the remit of the new Cannon Foundation. It is still at planning stage

but as DVA Creative Director Jem Main says, ‘DVA has been identified as the preferred organisation to run the arts at Sherborne House. We are very excited that there will be a dedicated gallery space on the first floor as well as a larger open area on the ground floor, which can be used at times for visual arts events such as talks and screenings.’

Norrie is a long-time and much-loved exhibitor with Dorset Art Weeks. ‘What he does is remarkable,’ enthuses Jem ‘the fact that he uses a sketchbook and translates his work into a batch of ceramics is very pictorial.’ As Norrie says, ‘everything is about how I can achieve colour and texture… it is all experiment.’

So as we welcome back Dorset Art Weeks we also warmly welcome Norrie, Jane and the team at Dorset Visual Arts to Sherborne. Our town becomes more colourful by the day. dorsetartweeks.co.uk dorsetvisualarts.org

___________________________________________ Saturday 22nd May - Sunday 6th June Dorset Art Weeks 2021 The return of one of the largest open studio events in the

country. Artists, designers and makers will be inviting visitors to explore their work, process and unique creative spaces at

venues across Dorset. Download the digital app for up-to-date venue information and details of how this year’s event will be more flexible and safe for both artists and visitors. Look out

too for a special edition Evolver magazine featuring all artists taking part this year in whatever format! dorsetartweeks.co.uk

___________________________________________ sherbornetimes.co.uk | 81

DAW2021

Sherborne Artist Guide

Mark Pender

D

AW Producer, Megan Dunford offers here a small selection of participating artists local to Sherborne. With the ups and downs, lefts and rights, changing moods and rules, it is well worth checking the DAW website or app for the latest opening information before travelling to any venues.

oils and acrylics, inspired by music, myth

Venue 186

of cards for sale.

____________________________ Mark and Miranda Pender An airy studio tucked away in a delightful walled garden.

Mark offers an eclectic selection of

82 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

and fairy-tale.

Miranda works in a variety of

media to create lively, colourful

07896 354616

info@mirandapender.com mirandapender.com

____________________________

collage paintings: quirkily stylised

Venue 31

and labyrinths, brilliantly embellished

Artist’s working studio with gallery

representations of animals, plants, fossils

Pearl Gatehouse

with metallics and gems.

exhibiting paintings in oil and

Both artists put an emphasis on fun

in their work. They have framed and

unframed originals, plus a great selection

Abbots Fee, Greenhill, Sherborne, Dorset DT9 4EP 01935 815497

multimedia with drawing studies.

Seascapes and wide Dorset landscapes with a feel of fresh air and sense of

freedom. Recent restrictions have led to a discovery of new sources for inspiration; a desire to celebrate the rich colour of a briefly flowering peony, pops of colour

in a winter garden and the poetic, fragile

Pearl Gatehouse

Miranda Pender

Martin Dickson

beauty of imperfections. Much to see.

Anne-Louise Bellis

Martin: Unique ceramics for

albellis@btinternet.com

delicate, polished porcelain, through

Martin 07732 601086

Wide range of prices and sizes.

interiors and gardens, ranging from

Moreys, Melbury Road, Yetminster,

hand-built sculptural vessels, to planters,

near Sherborne, Dorset DT9 6LX 01935 873888

sundials and fountains.

Pieces are made from a range of

theoldcowshedstudio.co.uk martindicksonceramics@gmail.com martindicksonceramics.co.uk

____________________________

07901 734330

variously-textured, high-fired clay

Venue 116

pearlgatehouse.co.uk

geometric, emphasising the interplay of

Martin’s Elm Yard Gallery has evolved

Beautiful period barn studio and

World War I soldier, created from scrap

Pearlgatehouse@yahoo.com ____________________________ Venue 57 Anne-Louise Bellis and Martin Dickson

bodies and are most often angular and

Martin Galbavy

form and surface.

from the initial interest of a 6-metre

exhibition space.

Anne-Louise: Landscape, seascape

The Old Cow Shed Studio, Manor Farm,

coastline, skies and countryside of Dorset.

Anne-Louise 07970 797748

and abstract paintings inspired by the

Glanvilles Wootton, Dorset DT9 5PZ

metal, to a great interest in many of his

sculptures. Dorset Forge and Fabrication have regularly featured on the TV programme Scrap Kings.

sherbornetimes.co.uk | 83

Pickle & Stitch

Martin Galbavy

Victoria Jardine

Mark Megilley

Elm Yard, Three Elms, North Wootton,

weather permitting, offering half hour

A fascination with the reflective, the

01935 508281

Instagram page @glenwood_studios.

the ocean, nature, eternity, and unity to

Sherborne, Dorset DT9 5JW 07950 337576

portrait sessions in the gardens. Visit

elmyardgallery@gmail.com

Glenwood Studios, Glenwood House,

Venue 48

01963 210211

____________________________ Glenwood Studios Established Dorset makers, Liz Walsh and Victoria Jardine have teamed up

with portrait and lifestyle photographer,

Longburton, Sherborne, Dorset DT9 5PG

shiny and the sparkly enables links to be explored. The ‘circle’ or ‘the round’ and its interlocking potential feature heavily in his work.

07812 952691

Format Print Studio, Unit 5, Higher

victoriajardine.com

Dorset DT2 0XL

victoriajardine@hotmail.co.uk ____________________________

Barn, Holt Mill, Melbury Osmond, 07377 262025

Katharine Davies, and figurative painter,

Venue 254

markmegilley@gmail.com

woven display of willow sculpture,

and Pickle & Stitch

life. Against a backdrop of their work

between autobiography and fiction,

Venue 169

family and history. His work considers

From a mind a little off-centre of

the narrative potential of objects.

rustic designs, sculptures and practical

Rebecca Stanley, to produce an artfully

Mark Megilley

studio ceramics, portraiture and still

Mark Megilley’s photography meanders

throughout the studios and garden,

subtly exploring notions of memory,

Graham Church

the fragility of life, the flow of time and

predictable comes a wealth of unique

Victoria will be demonstrating how she makes her hand-built ceramics, while

Liz will be showing visitors the willow

weaving techniques she has developed.

Katharine will be exhibiting her

portraits of local artists and makers and, 84 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

Pickle and Stitch jewellery pieces

are mostly multi-sensory; they

incorporate touch, sight and sound.

pickleandstitchhandmade@gmail.com markmegilley.viewbook.com

____________________________

items for home and garden. Driftwood, copper, twisted branches, rusty metal, found objects – reused and recycled,

James Budden

Graham Church

Corrina Cooper

cards and paintings.

Providence Place, Holnest, Sherborne, Dorset DT9 6HA 01963 210579

church938@btinternet.com

93 Cheap Street, Sherborne, Dorset DT9 3LS

07887 538313

jamesbudden@btinternet.com

____________________________

jamesbudden.co.uk

____________________________

Venue 50

Venue 287

James Budden

Corrina Cooper

Portraits, figures, still-life and Combining lockdown-restrictions and EVOLVER_SHERBORNE_TIMES:Layout 1the16/04/2021 1 landscape in oils, pastel and charcoal. confines of a21:12 flat; an Page unintentional

creative bubble has formed. One that grasps the concept of ‘the everyday’,

fractures thought geometrically but still clutches to reality. O’Keefe meeting Gilbert & George and creating a Vorticist offshoot.

The Artist Studio, Sherborne, Dorset DT9 3AA

corrinacooper@outlook.com corrinacooper.co.uk

EVOLVER

THE FREE WESSEX ARTS AND CULTURE GUIDE Returning in May alongside our new initiative the DORSET ART WEEKS MAGAZINE 2021 to arts venues, galleries, art shops, cafés, libraries and tourist information centres (etc) throughout Bristol, Bath, Dorset, East Devon, Somerset and West Wiltshire evolver.org.uk

sherbornetimes.co.uk | 85

elizabethwatsonillustration.com

FROM FIELD

TO TABLE

Order our homegrown Tamworth produce from the fields outside Sherborne - Buy Local!

The finest Tamworth quality and flavour, a taste of the past!

POP-UP SHOP

Open Every Saturday 10am - 2pm

Lavender Keepers, Great Pitt Lane, Sandford Orcas, Sherborne DT9 4FG Please contact James and Charlotte Tel 07802 443905 | info@thestorypig.co.uk See more at www.thestorypig.co.uk 86 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

A THIRD HELPING

Massimiliano Mannella, General Manager, The Clockspire Image: Food Story Media

R

ight now, our main focus is recovery. We simply want to get back to the position we were at the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020, which was a very successful moment for us, and we’re aiming to bounce back to this as soon as physically possible.

Like many in a variety of sectors, but particularly in hospitality, we will continue to adapt to whatever is thrown at us – like we did in March 2020 – even more so now with an impending third reopening. We’ll be opening our arms and doors, once more, with enhanced safety measures to ensure guests can feel safe whilst with us – whether for a cocktail in the mezzanine bar or dining in our award-winning restaurant, your comfort and safety is paramount and important to us. We appreciate that, for many, learning to socialise happily again, is a big step after such a year, so we have done our utmost to consider the whole guest experience.

We’ve tried to be creative in staying connected with our customers and balancing the mental well-being of our team as much as possible. The novelty of staying at home was short-lived for many and we wanted to fill the ‘social void’ caused by lockdown. So, we launched a ‘finish-at-home’ dining concept, Clockspire at Home, and, after a successful response to the initial Valentine’s menu, we offered weekly changing menus to bring a taste of the Clockspire to our guests and the local community but also to motivate and support our team, giving them something to focus on besides the pandemic. The response was really encouraging, and the support shown filled us with positive energy, which we could all use a bit of right now.

Luke’s spring menu will be full of vibrant ingredients, interesting combinations and deep flavours.

In fact, he has spent a lot of time with his team foraging from the Jurassic coast to the surrounding areas, gathering many seasonal ingredients that help to make up the Clockspire experience.

The pandemic has given us time to reflect on the importance of the entire Clockspire ‘network’, which includes the owners of the business, our team, the suppliers, and our guests. It is important we communicate and support each other. We are very focused on our team members – engaging with them and checking in on them, the importance of mental health is paramount.

It has been a while since the whole team has been together in one place. Although, we’ve have used the time ‘behind closed doors’ to organise virtual wine, beer and spirits training to feed their minds and the teams have been busy producing ideas for dishes and drinks that we can’t wait for you to try. This creative connection has been an important part of our ‘road to recovery’.

Great food and attentive service will be the most important factors to help us recover post-COVID; we are all social animals and gathering is part of our nature.

It is now our job to deliver what we have been working towards, all our training and new ideas, to do what we do best.

We can’t wait to start the journey, together, and share more memorable moments. theclockspire.com sherbornetimes.co.uk | 87

Food and Drink

THE CAKE WHISPERER Val Stones

CHEESE AND ONION TARTS

Image: Katharine Davies

T

his is a recipe that didn’t exist until 7th April 2021, not because I have never made it before, but because I have never written down the recipe – it has simply been in my head for fifty years.

I learned to make this recipe from my mum-in-law, more than 50 years ago, it was called ‘cheese flan’, as in Yorkshire we made flans not quiches, but I prefer to call them tarts. This pastry can be made ahead of time and keeps in the fridge for a week or in the freezer for up to 3 months. The tarts are ideal served hot or cold and are 88 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

particularly good to take on a picnic.

This recipe makes one large family tart serves 8, or 6 individual tartlets.

Preparation time 1 hour Baking time 25-40 min What you will need

Either a large flan/quiche tin or 6 individual flan/quiche tins – greased well. If making the individual tartlets, use a large, round pastry cutter. Finally, a baking sheet.

Ingredients

For the pastry 250g plain flour 125g butter, cubed ¼ tsp fine sea salt 1 medium egg, lightly beaten 40-50ml chilled water For the filling 250g cheddar cheese, grated 2 medium onions, finely chopped 2 shallots, finely chopped 1 garlic clove, finely chopped 1 tbsp olive oil A knob of butter – the size of a walnut 1 tbsp fresh chives, finely chopped 3 tbsp cold mashed potato 6 medium eggs, lightly beaten ¼ tsp pimento (red pepper powder) ½ tsp powdered English mustard ½ tsp fine sea salt 6-12 twists of freshly ground black pepper 8 fl oz fresh cream 12-15 cherry tomatoes, cut in half to decorate Method

1 Set the oven for 190C fan, 230C, 450F, gas 7-8 2 To make the pastry, place the flour and salt in a large bowl, add the cubed butter and lightly rub the butter into the mixture, until it resembles breadcrumbs.

3 Make a well in the middle of the mixture, then pour in the egg and 40ml water – sufficient to bind the pastry into a firm dough. Add a little more water, if needed.

4 Turn onto a lightly floured surface and lightly knead for 20 turns to make smooth. Flatten the pastry to the size of a saucer, wrap in film and chill for 20 minutes.

5 Add the oil and butter to a frying pan, along with the finely chopped onions, shallots and garlic.

Gently heat and stir the mixture until the onions are translucent. Set aside and allow to cool slightly.

6 Grease the flan tins of choice.

7 Remove the pastry from the fridge, allow it to come to room temperature for about 5 minutes.

8 Lightly flour a work surface and roll out the pastry to the thickness of a pound coin (either roll out one large circle or 6 smaller ones).

Tip - If making the large flan, fold the circle of pastry in half and then quarters. Place the folded pastry into the flan

tin and open out carefully and press gently into the tin.

9 With a fork, mark the base(s) evenly as this will help the pastry to remain flat. Place in the fridge to chill for 20 minutes.

10 Using the rolling pin on the edge of the flan tin(s), roll across the top to trim away the spare pastry.

11 Place the baking sheet in the oven to heat up, whilst you make the filling.

12 To make the filling, place the potato in a bowl and break up. Add the eggs, cheese, pimento, mustard, salt, pepper, cream and chives. Stir well, and add the onion mixture. Stir well again, until all combined.

13 Pour the mixture into the flan tin(s).

14 Decorate the tops with the cherry tomatoes.

15 Place the flans on the pre-heated baking sheet and bake, on the middle shelf, for 15 minutes, then turn down to 160C, until golden on the top – usually about a further 10-15 minutes for the individual tarts and 25 minutes for a large tart.

16 The cheese mixture should be firm and set when taken out of the oven and a little risen. As they cool, they will settle down a little.

17 Leave for 10 minutes, before removing from the flan tins, and place on a cooling rack.

18 When cool, these tarts can be stored for up to 5 days in the fridge, or frozen for up to 3 months.

You can serve hot, if you wish. bakerval.com sherbornetimes.co.uk | 89

Food and Drink

FORCED RHUBARB FRANGIPANE TARTLET WITH CRÈME ANGLAISE Sasha Matkevich & Jack Smith, The Green

W

e love rhubarb at The Green and especially towards the end of season, when it becomes more affordable and more pungent in flavour. The tartness from the rhubarb balances well with the sweetness of the frangipane, making for a very tasty dessert.

Ingredients

For the pastry 15g icing sugar 200g plain flour 100g unsalted butter (cubed & cold) 1 egg For the frangipane 175g unsalted butter 6 eggs 200g caster sugar 150g ground almonds 40g cornflour 1tsp baking powder 250g rhubarb For the crème anglaise 3 egg yolks 60g caster sugar 1 vanilla pod 700ml whipping cream 700ml milk Method

1 For the pastry, sift the flour, icing sugar and a pinch of salt into a mixing bowl, then add the butter and 90 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

Image: Clint Randall

begin mixing with your hands, until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Crack the egg and knead until you have a cohesive dough. Clingfilm it and set aside in the fridge for half an hour.

2 To make the frangipane, beat the butter and sugar together in a mixer until smooth, continue mixing and add the eggs. Sift in the remaining dry ingredients and fold until incorporated.

3 Lightly butter your tartlet cases. Remove the dough from the fridge and roll it on a floured work surface until it’s 3cm thick. Line your pastry cases with the pastry dough, cover with parchment and baking beans, then cook for 15 minutes at 180 degrees.

While the pastry is cooking, cut your rhubarb into 1cm thick pieces.

4 Once the pastry is out of the oven, remove the baking beans and parchment, then evenly distribute the frangipane mixture into the pastries. Arrange the rhubarb on top of the frangipane tarts and return to the oven for a further 25 minutes at 180 degrees. Once cooked, set aside.

5 Whilst the pastries are resting, make the crème anglaise. Add the milk, cream and vanilla to a heavy-based pan and bring to 90 degrees. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks and sugar together until pale. Slowly add the liquid to the egg yolks and then return the custard to the pan and cook on a low heat until thick.

6 Remove pastries from their cases and serve immediately with the crème anglaise.

Enjoy! greenrestaurant.co.uk

A MONTH ON THE PIG FARM

I

James Hull, The Story Pig

t’s been a month of dry weather. No rain, of any consequence, has fallen on us for weeks now; it’s cold but it’s dry. The pigs are happy outside – grazing or rooting. The ground has not a puddle anywhere to be seen. As I drive around, dust is flying again. For me, this is absolutely the best time of year.

Our garden is bursting into life, held back somewhat by the arctic cold winds that are blowing day after day, but I won’t complain about that. The little lavenders in their own field are showing signs of new life; tiny, new, dark green tips have appeared on the end of the silvery grey foliage of last year. Our Indian runner ducks spend a lot of their time racing up and down the rows looking for slugs on the grass, doing a good job for us. They have not read the rules on crossing the rows and race in between the plants – me watching, willing them not to tread on them and mostly they don’t.

We have re-seeded our grass field down at the farm; that’s the only thing that really needs the rain to help the seeds germinate. We have sown a pollen and nectar mix – not grown for high yields, but beauty. In high summer, it should be a heady mass of flowers and bees. We are going to cut winding paths through it for our café/shop visitors to wander through and enjoy.

Talking of our café… the plans are coming to fruition – slightly slower than we would like (that’s normal). Our tipi is now up – it’s a thing of absolute beauty – sitting majestically on the edge of our garden, waiting patiently for me to get the other bits finished. Today’s job is to build the toilets, a necessary part of having a cafe… apparently! The tipi has winged its way to us all the way from Sweden, so Charlotte is pleased with that!

So that we can record this time in our lives exactly in all our history, Charlotte is – today – going to get her haircut, for the first time in nearly a year, and the pubs have reopened – albeit outdoors only, so we’re shivering to the bone with a freezing cold pint of Guinness, wondering how much stamina we have to endure this new level of enjoyment we have only been able to dream of ! But, a year on, and things seem to be better than this time a year ago, when we first entered this nightmare.

We are preparing for the first Sherborne market of the year and will surely see many of you that read this every month. It’s going to be exciting to be out and about and see lots of our customers again.

We can’t give an exact date for when we will be open here at the farm; it’s so close, but we are doing all the work ourselves, so, please, if you are on Instagram or Facebook, follow us to keep up with our news. Until then though, we are open every Saturday here, at Charlotte’s pop-up shop. We have our pork for sale and also do amazing coffee, courtesy of Paul at Off Grid Espresso, so come and say hello and see our progress! thestorypig.co.uk

sherbornetimes.co.uk | 91

Food and Drink

FURMINT

A VARIETY FULL OF SURPRISES David Copp

Istvan Szepsy (left) and David Copp in the Uragya vineyard, Tokaj

N

o-one seems to be absolutely sure about the origins of Furmint, the main variety used in making the great aszu wines of Tokaj. I have consulted Hungarian sources, Jancis Robinson’s Vines Grapes and Wines, The Oxford Companion to Wine, and also Dr Caroline Gilby MW, our leading expert on Hungarian wines. What follows is a short summary of my learning.

Istvan Szepsy thought it belonged to the Pontica group. Pontica is the Greek name that was once used to refer to the Black Sea, and since the Magyars lived in this region for some time before they finally settled in the Carpathian Basin, it is quite possible that they brought the variety with them. Others have suggested that the linguistic heritage of Furmint is Italian: ‘frumentum’ meant wheat – to which the golden Furmint grapes were likened.

Other sources tell me that the Walloons, nomadic pastoralists living in northern Italy, introduced Furmint 92 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

to Tokaj when they helped to repopulate the region after the Mongol invasions of 1241-2. What is certain, however, is that over the centuries Furmint made its home in Tokaji’s volcanic soils. It clearly likes the warmth generated by the Great Hungarian Plain and the protection from cold northerly winds offered by the mighty Carpathians.

It was interesting to learn from Istvan Szepsy how Furmint established itself as the backbone for the aszu wines that brought Tokaji world renown: ‘It is a thin-skinned variety. Late autumn mists, followed by warm sunshine, create humidity, causing the skins to split, allowing grape juice to seep out. Then noble rot, which I can only describe as a miracle of nature, closes the breach and concentrates the sugars and fine organic acids within the grapes.’

The wonder of Tokaji Aszu is the superb balance of sugar and acidity which makes for long-lived wines of astonishing depth of flavour and concentration. No

wonder kings, queens, czars and princes loved its rich and subtle flavours, its balance and harmony, its healthgiving properties and, quite probably, its reputation as an aphrodisiac.

The London wine merchants Berry Brothers still hold a letter from one of their customers who, on his deathbed, had been given a glass of Tokaji Essencia, and recovered sufficiently to write to the company ordering a dozen more bottles of ‘the wine that unscrewed the nails from my coffin lid.’

Istvan Szepsy and Zoltan Demeter were the first modern Tokaji vintners to make a really fine Tokaji dry Furmint in 2000, when they produced a stunning wine from Kiralyudvar’s Uragya vineyard in Mád. My tasting notes at the time recorded: ‘Vibrant acidity, opulent pear and red apple flavours: rich mineral background. Length, intensity and complexity. Quite different from any other dry white wine I have ever tasted.’ . When I got back to the UK I poured it blind to a group of fellow wine writers. All conversation dried up. The look of concentration on my friends faces was memorable. Unsurprisingly, no-one could identify the grape or the source.

Word went around quickly and the wine sold out at the price of Premier Cru white burgundy. Yet there were critical voices in Tokaj: ‘We are famous for our aszu wines and we should stick to producing them.’

Twenty years on, the disapproving voices have been stilled and now all the major producers, as well as some influential smaller ones, produce fine dry Furmints.

Istvan Szepsy managed the Mád co-operative vineyards during the communist period and knows almost every inch of prime vineyard in the region. He considers the best sites for making dry Furmint are on the higher slopes. ‘Botrytis spreads upwards from the bottom of the hill,’ he says, ‘and grapes at the top of the slope do not achieve the same level of botrytisaiton as those on the lower slopes.’

Szepsy is a world class wine maker and his wines are not cheap. But if you wish to start at the top have a look at his website (rather unhelpfully, a solid grasp of Hungarian is required). His son, also named Istvan, is a real chip off the old block with the same approach as his father. His superb wines from the St Tamas estate in Mád are available through Vineyards of Sherborne.

Szepsy has always been a leader by example: a humble and modest one but he has reason to be proud of the result of his encouragement to others, particularly in his own village of Mád. There are now several superb

winemakers producing dry Furmint, but I have restricted mention to a few that I know to be available in the UK. For those new to the variety, I recommend starting with Sainsbury‘s Taste the Difference dry Furmint, made by Royal Tokaj at around £10, or Nobilis from the Wine Society at the same price. Nobilis is made by Sarolta Bardos, one of the very top women winemakers who, together with Judit Bott and Stephanie Berecz of Kikelet, combine to make 3Gracia, a superbly delicate yet magnificent variation on the theme. Zoltan Demeter, Attila Homonna and Samuel Tinon are three other smaller growers who make really distinctive world class dry Furmint.

Terroir has always been king in Tokaj. That’s why, in 1700, when demand for aszu wines was at its height, the leading Tokaji growers led by Prince Rakoczi classified their vineyards by their propensity to produce top quality botrytised grapes consistently. Since 2006, the Tokaji Wine Artisans Society has classified the best vineyards producing very fine dry wines. Each vineyard has its own personality and trying to express its personality is a demanding but immensely satisfying exercise. Tokaji dry Furmint is really worth trying, if you have not already done so…

LOCAL KNOWLEDGE Weingut Günter & Regina Triebaumer Dry Furmint, Austria 750ml £16.75 Vineyards

As a contrast to the original Hungarian

style, you could try a dry Furmint from a top-class Austrian winery. Regina,

who makes this wine with her husband

Günter, is heavily involved in the official regulatory decision-making for Austrian wine, which has the strictest standards.

Furmint was approved to be used for quality wine in Austria in 1987.

Weingut Günter & Regina Triebaumer dry Furmint

is bright, fresh and aromatic – think ripe Williams

pears, juicy pineapple and a bouquet of white blossom on the nose and palate. An interesting grape from a region that is a little different to the norm. vineyardsofsherborne.co.uk

sherbornetimes.co.uk | 93

elizabethwatsonillustration.com

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Animal Care

THE CIRCLE OF LIFE Mark Newton-Clarke, MAVetMB PhD MRCVS, Newton Clarke Veterinary Surgeon

O

h, the Merry Month of May is here, and the world is full of new life – much of it in the form of small canines. Over the last few months, tummies have been swelling and preparations made for the arrival of the next generation. Nervous owners have been checking their lists, making sure all is ready for whelping day, or more likely, whelping night.

Just before sitting down to write this article, I attended the first born to a family of working cocker spaniels who live nearby. I expect to make several more visits over the next few hours!

For those of you with experience of dog breeding, you will know it can be quite stressful. The humans involved automatically take on the responsibility of the welfare of the puppies – not an easy task as inexperienced bitches seem to pace and circle around in the whelping box, oblivious of the precious little 96 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

packages crawling around at their feet. The attending humans are aghast when a clumsy mum sits on a puppy, but rarely does this cause serious injury. I’m amazed how quickly a puppy – no more than an hour old – is able to use its voice in protest at too much pressure.

It’s not uncommon for new mothers to be shocked at the sight of their newborn and to try to get away, at least until maternal hormones and natural instinct take over. Some reassurance is usually all that’s needed.

Just occasionally, a new mother will become aggressive towards some, or all, of her litter and this situation needs careful handling. Mild sedation with anxietyrelieving drugs can help in the short term, combined with supervised feeding and then separation of mother and puppies. Happily, most of the time this unfortunate phase is short-lived and normal family life is resumed.

Having spent quite a lot of time with pigs – clearly

ROOMPHOTO/Shutterstock

one of the smartest and most entertaining of animals – I’m struck by the similarity between a whelping bitch and a farrowing sow. When everything’s gone according to plan, an exhausted mother is laying on her side, while a swarm of hungry offspring compete for the milk. The rhythmic grunts of the nursing and contented sow or bitch, the warmth of the environment and the vigour of the newborn make for a very satisfying sight. However, the situation is rather different between those two species if problems during the birth occur. Apart from giant breeds of dog, helping to get a puppy out into this world is limited to gentle traction on exposed legs and wrapping a towel around mum’s abdomen, squeezing it like a corset in time to contractions. This simple manoeuvre increases abdominal pressure and helps to pop out the pup. When it comes to assisting

at a farrowing, a more hands-on approach is needed, or rather, an arm-up. Having long arms and small hands, I was a popular choice. I smile at the memory of reaching ever further into a sow, feeling a little snout with my fingertips, only for it to wriggle backwards out of my reach. This meant a caterpillar-like body move over the bare floor, inching my arm even further in, hoping to hook fingers behind the head of the reluctant piglet and bring it into this world. It also meant pressing my face against the sow’s rear end, trying to get the last few millimetres of reach. All very James Herriot and quite a long time ago now.

Puppies, like piglets, need regular feeding and plenty of warmth. Hungry offspring don’t settle and are constantly pestering mum, who may have a problem with milk supply. Cold puppies and piglets huddle together in a heap, trying to preserve body heat; warm babies spread themselves out, luxuriating in the ambient warmth. Cold and hungry go together and are a very bad combination. Newborn animals have very little in the way of energy reserves, being dependent entirely on the last milk meal to maintain body temperature and activity, most importantly, the ability to suckle. So, a hungry baby quickly gets cold and weak, making it more difficult to get to that critical milk bar and a life-saving drink. First milk has much more than energy to offer; it holds the magical ingredient of antibodies, specifically directed at the diseases the mother has recently fought off (or been vaccinated against). Antibodies, being fairly large proteins, can only be absorbed by the neonatal intestines in the first 24 hrs of life, highlighting the importance of the early feeds. This protection lasts for a few weeks before the young start building their own immune defences, stimulated by vaccines and natural exposure to environmental viruses and bacteria.

And so, the circle of life completes another lap.

The new generation must find their way in this often-challenging world and for our companion and domestic animals, with the help of we humans. For wild animals, they have to do it all on their own, although we can help by providing and preserving the right habitats that our wildlife need. Hopefully, the planned changes in agricultural subsidies will give a much needed boost to the countryside in this respect, balancing farmers’ needs to be productive with our wild animals’ needs to survive. newtonclarkevet.com sherbornetimes.co.uk | 97

Animal Care

WALKING YOUR DOG DURING LAMBING SEASON Jordon Egan MRCVS, Kingston Vets

thka/shutterstock

98 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

T

his past year, we have all found a lot more time to spend with our animals and have been able to enjoy long walks along footpaths and farmers’ land. With the days getting longer and weather getting warmer, there are a few things to bear in mind.

As we know, spring is the busiest time of year for farmers, with a lot of new life being brought into the world. Many of the fields will be filled with ewes and their offspring or ewes waiting to lamb. However, farmers have an ongoing battle due to sheep worrying.

Over recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in attacks on livestock with sheep being the most common victims. The term sheep worrying means chasing or attacking livestock, which could result in ewes aborting lambs as well as injury, suffering or death.

All dogs inherit a natural predatory drive and no matter how domesticated or well-trained your dog is, they may still have the instinct to chase sheep, even if it is only playfully. It is still enough to cause serious problems, not only putting livestock at risk but also themselves.

Here are some tips to keep both your dog and livestock safe this spring: • Where livestock is present, keep all dogs on the lead.

• Stick to the footpaths.

• Always give livestock plenty of space, when walking in the same field.

• Think ahead: do not let your dog stray too far in front – they may enter a livestock field without you knowing.

• Teach your dog to remain calm in the presence of livestock to reduce their interest of the animals.

• Where possible take an alternative route to avoid areas livestock are grazing.

• Clean up after your dog and always carry a bag.

Having an excitable dog is normal and, by following these simple steps, you can continue to enjoy our local countryside and keep stress at bay for both yourself and the farmers whose land we are privileged to use.

Livestock worrying is a criminal offence; if you see it happening, call 999. If you know of someone putting livestock at risk, call 101, or if you wish to remain anonymous, you can contact Crimestoppers. The penalty for livestock worrying can be six months’ imprisonment and/or a fine of up to £1,000.

In the unfortunate event your dog injures any sheep, or you come across an injured sheep, please contact your local farm vets and try to get in contact with the farmer.

Don’t be an irresponsible dog owner: Think dog, Think livestock welfare, Think lead. kingstonvets.co.uk

sherbornetimes.co.uk | 99

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Branch and Root Therapy and Supervision

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I work with young people and adults using creative and talking therapies.

For more information visit www.branchandroot.co.uk or email karenbranchandroot@gmail.com 100 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

YogaSherborne Classes on-line, outdoors and inside (subject to guidelines) • Hatha Yoga • Relaxation and guided meditation Contact Dawn for more details 07817 624081 @yogasherborne hello@yogasherborne.co.uk Yoga Alliance qualified teacher

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Body and Mind

Jacob Lund/Shutterstock

102 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

NATURE AND MENTAL HEALTH Lucy Lewis, Dorset Mind Ambassador

T

he 10th-16th May is Mental Health Awareness Week and, this year, the theme is nature. As the days get longer and life begins to brighten, now is the perfect time to enjoy the many benefits of being outdoors. Spending time in nature can provide a whole host of benefits to both your physical and mental health, including reduced stress and anger, boosted confidence and self-esteem, increased relaxation, and improved fitness. Additionally, a study by the Wildlife Trust found that 95% of their participants with mild mental health difficulties experienced improved wellbeing after just six weeks of volunteering outside. Time outside provides ample opportunity to improve your physical health, connect with friends and give back to nature.

Top tips and ideas for getting back to nature: Work with your interests

Don’t force yourself to do something you don’t enjoy.

Take some time to try different activities and see what works for you.

Mind deliver an ecotherapy group at The GAP Project in Dorchester. The service offers two weekly sessions, on Monday and Thursday mornings, to those with mild to moderate mental health and wellbeing challenges. These sessions run all year and involve a range of outside activities, including planting fruit and vegetables, planning outdoor spaces, upcycling, and creating wildlife habitats. If you are interested in taking part, please email thegap@dorsetmind.uk.

Try volunteering

The Five Ways to Wellbeing is an evidence-based approach that anyone can use to improve their mental health. By volunteering in nature, you can experience all five ways in one go: by getting active, learning new skills, giving back to nature, connecting with other volunteers, and taking notice of nature’s beauty. Keep checking our volunteer vacancies at dorsetmind.uk for new opportunities with The GAP Project or other roles.

Experiment with a range of activities

Make sure to keep up to date with current restrictions whilst taking advantage of the social activities that are allowed. Try visiting a duckpond with a member of your household or meeting friends for a walk and a catch up.

Whilst walking or jogging in the park is enjoyable for many, don’t forget to try other activities in nature. You could watch the stars, draw or paint outside, eat meals outdoors, walk a friend’s dog, or listen to a mindfulness podcast. There are many different ways to take advantage of nature’s benefits.

Plan ahead

Be kind to yourself

Research local beauty spots and check out the weather forecasts beforehand for the best results.

Chose a time of day to go for a walk when you usually feel most energised.

If you are struggling with your mental health, it can sometimes be difficult to motivate yourself. Take small steps and work towards your wellbeing goals. Always talk to your GP if you have a concern about your physical or mental health.

Spend time with others

The GAP Project

In partnership with Meyers Estate Agents, Dorset

dorsetmind.uk

sherbornetimes.co.uk | 103

Body & Mind

Image: Clare Garrard 104 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

GET FIT THE FUN WAY

Barrecore and Cardio Barre Anna Bucknall

T

he way we work out has changed. Everything has changed. Going to the gym and sharing sweat and germs with everyone else is not allowed – for now. But do we want to go back to how it was before?

Many people have used this enforced time at home to really think about their fitness routine whereas others have overindulged and let it slip. Feeling sluggish and lethargic has not helped with work, relationships, home school or mental health. But some have figured out how to stay motivated and have used the time to find something they enjoy at home alone, or with a partner, to help keep a positive mindset as well as prevent the lockdown pounds from piling on.

The good news is that it’s never too late and you are never too old! The key is to find fitness fun, which, in turn, will increase your heart rate and boost your mood. The best way to feel happier and more motivated is to dance, which is why I do barrecore and cardio barre to improve my mental health as well as my fitness.

The workouts include ballet-inspired exercises, which help tone and strengthen as well as improve posture and general fitness. It targets an array of muscle groups whilst promoting the lean physique of a dancer and has recently become a really popular way to exercise at home, as all you need is a bit of space and the back of a sturdy chair or a kitchen worktop instead of a barre for stability. By following routines online, you can do it when you want and wear what you want.

I make it part of my day, by getting up in the morning and putting on my workout gear as soon as I wake up. The thought of doing a backbreaking, muscle-pumping, cortisol-raising workout for an hour would reduce me to tears. Exercise should not be intimidating; it should be fun.

Workouts only need to be half an hour, so it’s not daunting and you can get it done. A great playlist helps, so that it feels more like a party with all the benefits of exercise thrown in.

Barrecore and cardio barre are suitable for all fitness levels and abilities and you can progress as you go along. You can go at your own pace and do what you can, without anyone watching or judging. As long as you keep moving to the music, you will improve as you go. The secret is to start. So, put your trainers on, kick everyone out of the kitchen and enjoy getting fit at home. annabucknall.co.uk sherbornetimes.co.uk | 105

Body & Mind

STRETCHING

Image: Stuart Brill

Craig Hardaker BSc (Hons), Communifit

S

peaking to people of all age groups, about their exercise habits, throughout the last year has produced two clear yet very different responses.

People have either excelled by exercising regularly, whether that be daily walks or structured training routines, or conversely have really struggled to create any form of routine and now need to rediscover a determination to get exercising again.

I want to discuss stretching and how it could help you. Stretching is a great way to start moving the body after being sedentary for any length of time. If you feel nervous about restarting regular exercise, take the initial step of stretching to loosen tight muscle groups, increase blood flow and release endorphins – which in turn make us feel good. If you already exercise regularly, continue to stretch both prior to and following exercise, using potentially different methods.

The benefits of stretching are in abundance. Do it regularly and you will loosen tight muscles. This will make everyday activities much easier, and when you take on more gruelling challenges you will be better prepared. Increased flexibility also assists in reducing the negatives of the ageing process.

The probability of getting injured is also reduced by stretching and, as a consequence, spending lengthy periods of time in discomfort is also minimised.

With the possibility of injury decreasing, you can be 106 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

more confident in completing your training routines successfully.

It is amazing how many people have tight muscles, aches and pains. This can, in turn, reduce an individual’s range of motion leading to even more muscle tightness.

Regular stretching is proven to help increase the range of motion in joints. Whether it’s because you are now working from home or you have been watching too much TV, back pain is on the rise. If this is you, let’s start stretching! Making sure you regularly stretch all joints and connecting muscle tissue is proven to not only to help cure, but also prevent back pain. Need some guidance? We are ready to help.

It is also fair to say that it has been a stressful twelve months for most, if not all of us! Take a moment out of your day to find some silence, close your eyes and stretch. It is so incredibly empowering, relaxing and mentally beneficial. Work towards alleviating stress and anxiety by finding the time to stretch today. It will be worth the effort.

There are many different types of stretching techniques: static; dynamic; passive; active; ballistic and PNF – but we’ll save that exploration for another day.

Wishing everyone a very happy May and we look forward to seeing you all soon! communifit.co.uk

We’re back!

Swimming pool, Swim School and Fitness Suite now open.

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sherbornetimes.co.uk | 107

Body & Mind

STRENGTH STRATEGIES Simon Partridge BSc (Sports Science), Personal Trainer SPFit Flamingo Images/Shutterstock

I

t has been so exciting to be able to re-open our small private gym again. Seeing smiling faces, once more, has been such a great tonic for everyone. We moved all our 1:1, small group training and yoga online, which will no doubt continue as many people’s lifestyles have now changed, but we now have the opportunity to provide hybrid training individually, in groups, online, in our gym or outside, all at the same time. As we spring into summer and with the easing of lockdown, it is a truly exciting time to get fit, strong and more flexible.

When you return to your ‘gym’, make sure you have a training plan and give yourself structure. But be kind to yourself. It may sound obvious but depending on what you have been doing during the pandemic, do not expect to be as strong, fit, fast, mobile or flexible as you were before.

My biggest tip is simply to make sure your first training programme is for a specific number of weeks and know exactly when you will change it. Don’t keep repeating the same sessions week after week, hoping to keep progressing.

This is the law of diminishing returns: doing the same workouts and wondering why, after all your hard work, you see fewer and fewer gains over time. This is because your body adapts and gets used to changes within six to eight weeks. So, the solution lies in variety - change your programmes after specific periods.

Here are 3 possibly unusual tips to have fun with: Isometric holds

These are static holds. Everyone knows the plank. We 108 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

use them in switching up strength mechanisms in other body parts, then just the core. Take the bench press, for example. Use 110-115% max load, simply lift the weight off the rack – don’t try to press it – just hold it steady for ten seconds, or as long as you can, then put it back on the rack.

Test your instinct

Your body is much stronger than you think. We can temporarily override our evolutionary instincts to protect ourselves by putting ourselves in an unstable environment. Try standing on a step, on one leg, and close your eyes; this stimulates your survival reflex. Step off, open your eyes and perform a squat. How does the squat feel?

Work on your weaknesses

We all like to do what we are good at. But we are only as strong as our weakest link, so activating those muscles prior to heavy lifts can increase joint stabilisation and strength output.

Many of us neglect our neck, so use a bench, lie on the floor with knees bent, feet flat on the floor and both your head and neck on the bench. Push through your heels to lift your body up into a tabletop position, letting your neck take the strain. Hold for as long as you can.

Getting stronger has so many benefits for us all.

It is also fun and rewarding, so good luck trying out different exercises, programmes and strategies. spfit-sherborne.co.uk

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Body & Mind

LONG COVID

HOW TO GO FORWARD? Dr Tim Robinson MB BS MSc MRCGP DRCOG MFHom GP & Complementary Practitioner

Cristina Conti/Shutterstock

A

s we all know, COVID-19 and the ensuing pandemic is a global tragedy. Its effects are felt on so many levels: unexpected and untimely fatalities; physical and mental health issues, compromised family and social relationships, not to mention livelihoods and society. And, for many, the effects continue… a cruel ongoing aftermath. Patients were initially called ‘long term’, then ‘long haul’ but now ‘long COVID’. It is more than a year since the virus first hit and many victims of the acute COVID illness are still suffering.

Long COVID manifested with a variety of symptoms, like the illness itself. Fatigue, shortness of 110 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

breath and ‘brain fog’ are the most frequent. Others are pains in the chest and limbs, fevers, headaches, gut and skin problems, as well as more strange ones like limb tingling, eye disturbance, persisting taste and smell problems.

As long COVID is a new illness, it is still poorly understood. It is thought that it results from one or more of the following: damage caused by the coronavirus to organs themselves; an overactive inflammatory response; immune system disorder in which antibodies can start attacking our normal cells; persisting low grade viral levels, and reactivation of dormant virus like in shingles. Investigations are usually

negative but need to be performed to exclude any permanent lung and heart damage.

Once the condition has been diagnosed on the patient’s story and physical findings being present for more than 12 weeks, thereafter the recovery is dependent on time and the management of lifestyle. This will facilitate the natural healing processes of the body.

In order to repair the damage to the tissues and immune system caused by the virus, the body needs to receive all the components for cellular repair and physiological balance. A mixed balanced diet of protein, carbohydrates and fats – contained in non-fatty meat, fish, vegetables and fruit – is needed. They will provide all the necessary micronutrients, vitamins and trace elements as well as prebiotic materials to nourish the gut micro-bacteria. This is so important in supporting the immune system as well as production of our mental health hormones.

Much has said been said about the effect of Vitamin D on COVID regarding prevention and recovery; a recent article in the British Medical Journal is circumspect but supportive of taking ‘over the counter’ supplements as a general health measure in view of its support of the immune system.

Multivitamins are probably not necessary, but they won’t do any harm. Probiotics are also used to assist the ‘gut-friendly’ bacteria. Again, their effectiveness is debatable but there is no harm in taking them, as long as they are not too expensive!

The measures outlined above will help restore and repair the COVID damage to the body. An equally important aspect of long COVID repair is the focus on energy and its management, especially as fatigue is the commonest symptom. The two objectives are conservation of current energy reserves, as well as measures to slowly rebuild energy supplies.

We have learnt from our management of patients with chronic fatigue syndrome the importance of pacing, planning and prioritisation. These are all measures that will prevent unnecessary loss of energy. Pacing is basically the moderation and limitation of the amount of energy expended; being ever cautious of conserving energy, breaking tasks into small manageable portions and not pushing yourself too hard. To achieve this, you must plan your time; this is best done by structuring your day and incorporating two 30-minute periods of rest per day.

Some Long COVID patients have found ‘brain rest’ using mindfulness meditation especially helpful during these rest times. And finally, prioritisation – disregard

unimportant, less necessary tasks and delegate to family members or willing friends. And so, keep in mind, pace, plan and prioritise to conserve energy – always try to keep some energy in the bank!

Besides saving energy, of equal importance to tackling fatigue is energy building, but only when the body is ready for it. Having had months of inactivity, the muscles have lost condition, become shortened and tighter. To tackle these aspects, the cells in the muscles need to be gently exercised to stimulate mitochondrial ‘power battery’ function. A short walk initially in the house, then around the garden is needed – and then slowly built up over weeks, as long as this does not cause an energy relapse. To help loosen tight muscles gentle stretching is needed; long COVID sufferers have found yoga and tai chi helpful.

Another essential ‘energy builder’ is good quality sleep – for cellular repair, mental thought processing and immune system support. Part of the structured day mentioned above is adherence to a strict waking and bedtime routine, as well as avoidance of daytime naps. Other sleep hygiene measures are as follows: caffeine avoidance, no ‘blue light’ iPad screens at bedtime, eye visors to ensure blackout (to support the production of the circadian rhythm hormone Melatonin). Use herbal night sleepers such as Nytol or antihistamine such as Piriton that have no side-effects and are non-addictive, unlike prescription sleeping tablets such as Zopiclone and Temazepam. Some patients also purchase Melatonin from the internet and health food stores, in the short term. Whilst all these measures will help with the long COVID sleep disturbance, they will not help with its underlying causes namely anxiety, panic, frustration, despair, as well as concerns about the future. However, with a full understanding of the condition and a structured plan for recovery, hopefully those factors will be less troublesome and sleep-interfering.

And finally, to bring some reassurance to those unfortunate patients who are still battling with long COVID - the collective experience thus far from specialist clinics, including our newly formed one here in Dorset, is that the fatigue, shortness of breath and ‘brain fog’ will all slowly resolve with time. Meanwhile our objective is to reassure our patients, advise and guide to facilitate the natural cure of this hideous disease. doctortwrobinson.com glencairnhouse.co.uk sherbornetimes.co.uk | 111

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THE PITCH OF MY STAIR Andy Foster, Raise Architects

114 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

E

arly evening drinks, at home, with friends.

Outside, the temperature drops as the sun descends behind a distant oak. In our firstfloor sitting room, the conversation warms up nicely, and everyone’s face reflects the sun’s deepening glow.

Laughter. Chat. Good wine. It’s going to be an enjoyable night.

Despite the convivial atmosphere, the re-filling of glasses and enjoyment of the conversation, I can’t help thinking about the stair we all ascended a few moments earlier. You see, my stair acts as a trigger to memories of me designing the house, to the many decisions made, and the reasons why things turned out as they did. It’s strange how these involuntary associations in buildings occur. You walk into a room familiar from childhood and are immediately transported back to that time. You grasp a door handle and instantly recall a momentous event that happened beyond that threshold.

It happens with me and my stair every time, and the first thing that springs to mind is that its pitch is precisely 40 degrees. Most domestic staircases have a pitch of between 37 and 42 degrees. Why did I choose 40? That’s largely down to the aesthetics of numbers. The round number 40 is more pleasing than its near neighbours, 39 and 41. And infinitely better than the ugly 39.5 or 40.5. This preference may seem odd given that you would never know, but I have to insert the number in a small box in the computer programme. And I have to write it on the drawings and in the specification. I feel happier when typing out ‘40’ than I do any of its approximate alternatives.

The rise and going of each step of the stair is 197mm and 235mm, respectively. This geometry conforms to a relationship worked out by a 17thcentury French architect-engineer named Francois Blondel. Most people think that steepness is critical for a satisfactory stair design, but this is only partially true. Blondel established that walking cadence is also important and his equation, which appears in most building codes worldwide, also keeps stride length within a comfortable range.

I wanted the diagonal line of the stair’s stringer, the top edge of the glass balustrade and the handrail fixed to the wall to follow the line of the vaulted ceiling above. The ceiling follows the roof ’s pitch, and it is no coincidence that this is also 40 degrees. Internally, the ceiling line needs to allow for adequate headroom over the stair and be proportionate to the size of the rooms

elsewhere. I also needed to consider what to do with the volume of space below the usable height.

Externally, the pitch of the roof has a significant impact on the appearance of the house. This is most apparent in the gable elevations, whose proportions result partly from the roof pitch, but also from the height of the walls and the building’s overall width.

The issue of proportion is an interesting one. Steeper pitched roofs are more elegant than shallower ones, but historical style is important too. The roofs of Georgian houses are frequently shallow, whereas Victorian and Edwardian houses can be relatively steep. The roofs of suburban housing of the twentieth century are varied. Often, they are shallow, as is the case in many bungalows. But if the chosen design has a Scandinavian influence, the roof may be very steep.

Hence the choice of roof pitch cannot be disassociated from historical trends. The same goes for national and regional patterns.

The location of my house is on the edge of a traditional village. The roofs of the original houses are finished in slate and have roof pitches of 50 to 55 degrees. Initially constructed with thatch, these roofs are relatively steep to shed rainwater. I had to decide what was appropriate in a location away from the village centre and closer to agricultural buildings with varied roof materials and shallower pitches. I chose to be sympathetic with the village by finishing the roof in slate but felt no need to replicate the angle.

By now, the sun has long since disappeared below the horizon, and with its descent, the conversation has descended too. Meanwhile, I’m still thinking about my stair. The story of which turns out to be intimately related to that of my roof. Which, in turn, is linked to the rest of the house design and its village location. But underpinning everything is the elusive question of aesthetics and this depends, to a large extent, on your frame of reference. And I can’t help thinking that had I switched to measuring the pitch of my stair in radians rather than degrees, my pleasing round number 40 would become the unsightly 0.698132. And, consequently, I would be compelled to start over again.

Further reading: practicalarchitecture.com/blog/the-geometry-of-acomfortable-staircase raisearchitects.com sherbornetimes.co.uk | 115

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116 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

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Legal

THE IMPORTANCE OF APPOINTING A GUARDIAN FOR YOUR CHILDREN David Hill, Private Client Partner & Head of Department, Mogers Drewett

B

ecoming a parent is life-changing and with so much excitement and planning involved along the way, it is hardly surprising that most people do not consider drafting a will and appointing a guardian, at what is a very important stage of their lives.

If the worst was to happen, and both you and your partner pass away, leaving children under the age of 18 (minor children), it can be for the court to decide who should bring up your child – up to the age of 18 – if you have not appointed a guardian.

No one wants to think about not being around for their children but incorporating a ‘guardianship clause’ into your will now would give you peace of mind that your children will be looked after by someone you, and importantly they, trust.

Why appoint a guardian?

If there was one person in the world you would trust to bring up your child, who would it be? This is a difficult question, and one which can prevent people from finalising their wills. Making a will allows you to take control over your affairs and specify who you would like to bring up your child; the alternative is leaving it to the court to decide.

Appointing a guardian does not mean that the person you appoint will have any control or influence over your child during your lifetime, as the appointment 118 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

only takes effect on your death and only when there is no-one else alive with parental responsibility.

Your appointed guardian isn’t bound to accept the appointment and forewarning your appointed guardian could reassure you that your appointee is willing to take parental responsibility.

Should I make a will?

A guardianship appointment only needs to be in writing and signed and dated to be valid. It can be a letter of wishes, setting out how you would like your child to be brought up. This can include a range of different things, from the kind of education you would like them to have, to sports, activities or hobbies you would like them to take part in. You can even specify which family members and friends you would like your child to be kept in touch with.

It is a very personal letter and, although not legally binding, it can be very useful for the person responsible for bringing up your child. However, it is worth thinking about including this in your will as this also takes into account other aspects of the administration of your estate, such as who your executors/trustees will be as they will be responsible for dealing with the estate funds and releasing money to the guardian. mogersdrewett.com

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Finance

RETIRED AND WORRIED ABOUT SPENDING TOO MUCH

B

Andrew Fort B.A. (Econ.) CFPcm Chartered MCSI APFS, Certified and Chartered Financial Planner, Fort Financial Planning

ob and Alice Can-We-Spend-It had been retired for a couple of years. They had always dreamed of retirement: the things they’d do together and the places they would see. The trouble was, they were worried about spending too much, too early, and not having enough for the future. Bob and Alice enjoyed retirement, but when it came to the ‘big ticket’ items such as having that extra holiday in the sun (remember those days?), staying in a better hotel, or taking the family away on holiday, they somehow held back.

Although deep down they knew that they were financially comfortable, they had this nagging doubt about running out of money later in life.

Like many people, they had scrimped and saved to give themselves a comfortable retirement. They owned their own home, had an investment property worth £300,000 and pensions/investments/savings of £450,000. All in all, a tidy sum. But, still, Bob and Alice were concerned they didn’t have enough.

Sitting down with a real financial planner, they were able to establish how much the life of their dreams would actually cost. Then, using powerful financial planning software, they were able to identify how much capital they needed. It turns out that it is a lot less than they thought. In fact, based on prudent and realistic assumptions and allowing for inflation and the potential cost of future nursing care, Bob and Alice were never going to run out of money.

Agreeing prudent and realistic assumptions is one of the key issues in painting a picture of Bob and Alice’s financial future. Not every item of income or expenditure will, for example, increase in line with inflation – indeed, which measure of inflation is most appropriate to someone in retirement? Further aspects to consider include the number of years Bob and Alice anticipate being active; at a certain point, older age will arrive, and many items of discretionary expenditure are likely to reduce.

Something also key is establishing the rate of return that is needed for their investments to be able to meet the level of expenditure. It is necessary to identify the level of risk that Bob and Alice would be comfortable with. Then, it is important to develop an investment strategy that can deliver the required returns.

They meet annually with their financial planner to make sure everything stays on track.

Part of the need for a regular annual review is to make sure that they can stick to their plan.

As the current pandemic serves to remind us, future events can often be unpredictable and Bob and Alice might be blown off course. Minor amendments to bring them back on track should help to smooth their journey.

Already, they have a big trip organised for the whole family. ffp.org.uk

120 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

Your Life, Your Money, Your Future Trusted, professional, fee based advice We live in a complex world. At FFP we aim to remove complexity, replacing it with simplicity and clarity so that our clients can enjoy their lives without worry

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sherbornetimes.co.uk | 121

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122 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

Successful investment management is about effective risk management

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At Church House Investment Management, we only make recommendations from our range of portfolio services and associated investment accounts. Full details of the nature of our service can be found at www.ch-investments.co.uk/important-information. Please note the value of investments and the income you get from them may fall as well as rise and there is no certainty that you will get back the amount of your original investment. You should also be aware that past performance may not be a reliable guide to future performance. Church House Investment Management is a trading name of Church House Investments Limited, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.

Tech

FAKE OR REAL EMAILS AND HOW TO TELL THE DIFFERENCE! James Flynn, Milborne Port Computers

T

his month, I have seen a big increase in scam emails circulating and feel it’s a good time to dig into the archives of Jimmy’s blogs to revisit something he wrote a while ago, which is still very relevant today.

Email fraud is intentional deception made for personal gain, or to damage another individual through sending fraudulent and misleading emails. The purpose is usually to get you to send them money or to give them enough personal detail for them to defraud you.

Fake emails often – but not always – display some familiar characteristics: the sender’s email address doesn’t tally with the trusted organisation’s website address; the email is sent from a completely different address or a free webmail address (gmail.com, outlook.com, hotmail. com); the email does not use your proper name but uses a non-specific greeting like ‘dear customer’; a sense of urgency is imposed: for example, the threat that unless you act immediately, your account may be closed or they may send revealing pictures to your friends and family, and the use of a prominent website link, which can be forged or seem very similar to the proper address, but even a single character difference means a different website (barlcays.co.uk, nawtest.com).

A request for personal information such as username, password or bank details is also something that is often seen, alongside a multitude of spelling and grammatical errors, plus phrases that a Standard English speaker would never use. Another clear indicator is receiving unexpected communications from a company that you are not familiar with, or a begging 124 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

email purporting to be from somebody you know.

How many times do I get asked if I think an email is fake? I recently received a call from somebody that received an email saying that their PayPal account had been hacked. I asked if they even had a PayPal account, and they said, NO! I then asked them how they thought that their non-existent account could have been hacked … and the penny dropped!

So, what should you do if you’ve received a scam email? Delete the email! Do not click on any links in the scam email. Do not reply to the email or contact the senders in any way. If you have clicked on a link in the email, do not supply any information on the website that may open, just close your browser and restart your computer. Do not open any attachments that arrive with the email. If you think you may have compromised the safety of your bank details and/or have lost money due to fraudulent misuse of your cards, you should immediately contact your bank.

Sometimes, following a link in an email takes you to a fake website that tells you that your computer has been infected and instructs you to call the number on the screen. No matter how dire the consequences might seem – without even trying to close the browser – just shut your computer down and start again. 99% of the time you’ll be back to normal and you can go back to your emails and delete the offending item.

As always, if in doubt or if you need help, you know where to come. computing-mp.co.uk

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7 Cheap St, Sherborne, Dorset DT9 3PT david@muntanya.co.uk 01935 389484 • 07875 465218 www.muntanya.co.uk sherbornetimes.co.uk | 125

Short Story

AN INNER ODYSSEY

‘A

Bill Bennette, Sherborne Scribblers

bdullah! Please come and have your breakfast at once,’ Mother called from the next room in the tiny cottage we shared in Kabul. She has been so stressed since my father and elder brother were killed in a horrific explosion, which demolished our lovely family home that had served many generations. It was only two months ago, and I have not been sleeping well, imagining – in a recurring nightmare of great clarity – the devastation and shock of what had happened. I still felt guilty for leaving the house to help Mum instead of staying to help Dad. I could only imagine what nightmares my poor mother Amara suffered.

We had gone to our local market to collect the meat, fruit and vegetables for the celebrations of my parent’s silver wedding anniversary and needed masses of everything for the spectacular lunch Mum would cook. Whatever she made, it was always the best anyone had ever tasted.

Dad and Tariq had been arranging the large garden balcony, where the table for twenty people would have been. Most of the street was destroyed by a huge bomb planted in an oil tanker outside the German Embassy. It was assumed by the authorities to have been carried out by the Taliban or Isis.

Having dressed hurriedly, I went into the kitchen – which was our only other room. We shared a bedroom that had two narrow beds, which we were grateful to have. Dad’s cousin Fatima had invited us to stay in this tiny space behind her house, when we had been left penniless. Mum was in a hurry to leave to get to one of the big houses in a good residential area, where she had found employment for the first time in her life and was practically in tears.

She was trying so hard to be sure I was cared for before leaving to arrive at work at 6.30am. She was head cook and prepared breakfast for the family and stayed on all day to make lunch and an evening meal, as well as baking tasty cakes and biscuits for tea.

I hugged her, as I said, ‘I am only 14 years old but can look after myself Mama and promise to take care of you as soon as possible, so you won’t have to go out to work.’ I cannot remember whose eyes had the most tears at that moment. I vowed, there and then, that I would follow my dream to own the best restaurant in the city and have Mum in charge of all the cooks, who would work to her instructions. I had no doubt whatsoever that we would always be full, with people enjoying her scrumptious food.

A few days later, Mum asked me if I would help her as a waiter at the big house. The family were having a party and she had been asked if she could find someone to supplement the serving staff. I had been trained by my father how to wait a table and to make sure that no one lacked anything. I had to be aware so that their cups were always filled with fresh sweet

126 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

tea and their glasses with chilled water, served with a slice of orange and a leaf or two of mint.

I brushed up well, wearing black trousers, well-polished shoes and a fresh white shirt, all borrowed from Auntie Fatima’s son – I made a good first impression at the party.

The master of the house, Sami Hussein, and his delightful wife, Maha, were so supportive of Mum and raved about her food. They were intrigued by the attention I paid to them and all their guests and expressed an interest in our family.

When I told them about the bombing where we lived, they were sympathetic. They had known some people who perished on the other side of the Embassy, which had been the main target of the ambush. That started a close friendship, with me working alongside my mother as often as my schooling would permit. My mentor assumed a paternal role and would often talk with me about my dreams and ambitions and encouraged me to work hard at my studies. He was fascinated by my wishing to own a beautiful restaurant in the city where Mum would reign supreme.

He guided me through a sea of opportunities to gain knowledge and experience working in the many eateries and cafes in Kabul as well as arranging for me to work in Beirut, where some of the finest French cuisine existed. The years flew by, as I matured and opened our first restaurant. My mother worked tirelessly with me to get it off the ground and make it a huge success. We later opened, under the direction and financial support of Sami Hussein, the same style establishments in several cities in the Muslim world. Mum’s amazing recipes and home cooking seemed to have hit the spot. We named our group simply Amara’s Table.

I was so grateful for having achieved my goal and was able to take care of my mother.

We now had several restaurants in partnership with the wonderful Sami. I even married his beautiful daughter Khadiga and bought a lovely, large house for my family. Mother has her own wing and rules the roost, directing her kitchen staff with so much love, and enjoying her grandchildren. Our home smells delicious and warming like it always did before our lives were changed that dreadful day.

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sherbornetimes.co.uk | 127

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APRIL SOLUTIONS

ACROSS

DOWN

1. Experts on a subject (11)

2. Possessed (5)

9. Pot (3)

3. Attractively stylish (5)

10. Fall heavily (5)

4. Steam rooms (6)

11. Assumed proposition (5)

5. Look into (7)

12. Container for storing items (5)

6. Highest (7)

13. Strong type of coffee (8)

7. Attentive; ultra-careful (11)

16. Scope for freedom (8)

8. Pun (4,2,5)

18. Lover of Juliet (5)

14. Devoted time to learning (7)

20. More mature (5)

15. Endless (7)

21. The Norwegian language (5)

17. Trash (6)

22. Deranged (3)

18. Pass a rope through (5)

23. Youth (11)

19. Impersonator (5)

128 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

Literature

LITERARY REVIEW Malcolm Cockburn, Sherborne Literary Society

Victoire: A Wartime Story of Resistance, Collaboration and Betrayal

by Roland Philipps, (Vintage Publishing) £20 (Hardback)

‘E

Sherborne Times Reader Offer Price of £18 from Winstone’s Books

very choice made by the inhabitants of an occupied country will eventually be a bad choice.’ – J. P. Sartre This, undoubtedly, was the fate of Mathilde Carré, who took the Resistance code name ‘Victoire’. The author tells of her hopes, disappointments and final imprisonment; he describes a messy conflict of personalities in the French Resistance and German counterResistance. At times, the book reads like an episode of the sitcom, ‘Allo ‘Allo!

Born Marie Belard in the Jura region of France in 1908, her parents moved to Paris when Mathilde was sixteen; there she went to a lycée and the Sorbonne.

The book is much concerned with her introspective mind and her visions of emulating Joan of Arc. It is not apparent, until the end of the book, as to how the author became aware of these feelings.

When France declares war on Germany in September 1939, Mathilde flees to Paris; she is thrilled at the prospect of a life of adventure and danger when she joins with a Polish refugee, Roman Czerniawski.

They plan a Resistance network. Mathilde takes the name ‘La Chatte’ and Roman re-names himself Armand Borni; they become lovers.

By the end of 1940, a Resistance network, Interallié, is in place with agents covering all of occupied France.

Communication with London could only be by dangerous night flights to remote fields or by small

'Independent Bookseller of the Year 2016’ 8 Cheap Street, Sherborne, Dorset DT9 3PX www.winstonebooks.co.uk Tel: 01935 816 128

boats crossing the Channel. When radio contact with London is achieved by the autumn of 1941, a highly successful network of espionage and consequent sabotage is in place. Then comes catastrophe. The Abwehr traps ‘La Chatte’ entering a cafe in Paris and soon, many of Interallié personnel are uncovered. Roman is imprisoned and likely to be shot, while Mathilde is kept by Abwehr sergeant Bleicher, who seems to be the most intelligent of the rather incompetent local intelligence.

She willingly becomes his lover.

Bleicher encourages Mathilde (renamed ‘Victoire’) to become a double agent and arranges for her to go to England along with a French Resistance captive, Pierre de Vomécourt. A crazy journey to Brittany is followed by a cold, wet Channel crossing to Dartmouth by motor torpedo boat. Mathilde spends the next year living in a London flat provided by MI5. ‘Victoire’ makes the most of her social life in London until a disillusioned MI5 decides to intern her in Holloway Prison. ‘Victoire’ was repatriated after the war and remained in French prisons until 1953. She died in 2007 aged ninety-nine.

The author’s undoubted deep research is led by Mathilde Carré’s personal journals – written during those years in prison. Philipps’ resulting book brought to me an entirely new view of French wartime Resistance. sherborneliterarysociety.com

WE ARE OPEN! Spring Cannot be Cancelled: David Hockney in Normandy

by Martin Gayford

PAUSE FOR THOUGHT

P

Jonathan Simon, Church of the Sacred Heart and St Aldhelm, Sherborne

eople like anniversaries. We remember, and celebrate, weddings, birthdays, religious festivals, mothers, fathers, and more. We remember when our loved ones died, and when wars ended. And for most of these occasions, we contact each other; making phone calls, sending cards, visiting. Often, we celebrate together with parties – big parties, small parties, or a quiet meal together. Everywhere in the world, this is what people do. Partly, of course, the purpose is to remember an event, but we are also building and strengthening and remembering that we are a community. We don’t consciously think let’s strengthen our family with a wedding anniversary party, but having the party does bring us together, strengthening the bonds between us. Whatever sort of communities we are part of, they are all built on shared experiences.

Whether it’s a family, sports club, reading group, a church, or our workplace: we human beings want, and need, to build friendly relationships with each other.

As we celebrate an event again and again throughout our lives, the community we celebrate with changes: some die, or move away, or are unable to be with us – for all sorts of reasons – or we move to another place, or another country. We meet others who we invite into our lives; others invite us into their lives. All community groups change because people change and grow; but we still join and celebrate together because that’s what human beings are like; that is part of what it means to be human.

At the beginning of the Bible, after the story of God creating the universe, the world, the plants, the animals, and mankind, God says, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone’. As it does so often, the wisdom in the Bible uses very simple words to convey essential truths about us, and about our relationships.

One of the standard punishments used throughout the world from time immemorial has been ostracism, banishment, or solitary confinement. Over the time of this pandemic, many people have had to live in isolation, and we know that many have suffered mentally as a result.

Those of us who have not been living alone have still been affected by feeling cut off from many of the contacts with family, friends, or just other people in general.

We can’t change what’s happened in this pandemic, and we can’t be sure that it won’t happen again. And anyway, there are always going to be people whose circumstances mean that they are lonely. Our hearts are touched by the suffering of others because we are human, and throughout this time, we have seen more than we want to of the suffering of isolation. I know that I am not the only person who finds it difficult to reach out to those that we don’t know yet. But if I don’t make contact, and build a relationship with someone, how could I ever become their friend?

So, if I am really concerned about the isolation and suffering of other people, can I be brave enough to do something about it for a few of those around me? sherbornecatholicchurch.org.uk

130 | Sherborne Times | May 2021

Boys 13-18 Boarding and day

A very warm welcome awaits you at Sherborne.

Please contact our Admissions team for a virtual visit.

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Green by name and nature

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