On Wednesday Alice & I went to Bury St. Edmunds for a light dinner at Carlucchio’s and then an evening of Gypsy music at the Arc.
The star was Tcha Limberger leading his Budapest Gypsy Orchestra. It was fantastic. Not what we were expecting and a tad more artisanal than smooth. Nevertheless it was a enthralling evening and I have cribbed the following comments from various reviews which give the flavour of the evening.
Bursts of soaring musical tragedy and czardas madness delivered with an astounding purity of sound and hardly imaginable depth of musical dialogue. An accomplished multi-instrumentalist, Tcha Limberger is from a famous family of Gypsy musicians growing up with the Gypsy-jazz of Django Reinhardt. Now just 36, he tours with this orchestra of hand-picked Gypsy musicians from Budapest where there is no ‘Primas’ who commands such respect.
The repertoire includes csardas, verbunk and laments from the Budapest ‘Magyar Nota’ Gypsy orchestra tradition of the 19th and early 20th centuries with the beautiful voice and playing of blind violinist Tcha Limberger and his incredible band!
In true Hungarian Gypsy Band style they switch between soaring intensity and smouldering pathos delivering a passion and technical virtuosity that is astounding.
The violin playing of Tcha Limberger showcases specifically the folk music played by Gypsies in a small area of Transylvania called Kalotaszeg. There are three main repertoires played, Hungarian, Romanian, and Gypsy (a mixture of both)
Thanks mostly to Bela Bartok and Kodaly this music was saved from dying out. In the early 1900’s, once Magyar Nota became very popular the locals would prefer to sing Nota tunes than their own folk tunes.
Bartok was just in time to save it and then Kodaly introduced the real Hungarian folklore sounds in Schools. They both realized that this very old traditional local music was historically much more important than Magyar Nota.
And a fascinating evening was had by all. Samples of tcha Limberger’s music can be found on YouTube
Nice Things
My Brother the Playwright
Every year the Southend Playwriting Festival puts on fresh plays for public performance. They were established in 2010 to bring new ‘voices’ to the theatre by presenting the work of new and aspiring playwrights as rehearsed readings by professional actors. Such works and performances it was hoped would bring forth fresh material and would provide exciting and entertaining evenings for their audiences, and in turn inspire others to write and submit their own plays in future years. This year they received over 400 plays from writers in the UK, USA, New Zealand, Australia, Italy, Finland, and Canada. I’m pleased to bask in the glory of my brother (Colin Riley) whose play Remember, Remember, 1605 was performed in Southend and in Chelmsford.
Although only fifteen minutes long, it involved six speaking parts and as you might expect it was thought provoking and excellent focussing on the anti-Catholic sentiments of the day.
I look forward to next year.
Benton Street – No More Excuses
As we finish the year, I thought I would share a success story.
The B1070, Benton Street, Hadleigh, Suffolk is infamous for its road problems. It was not designed for a lot of traffic. It is a classic horse and cart road from Manningtree to Stowmarket and Bury St. Edmunds. The volume of heavy traffic on the road has increased as a result of Felixstowe becoming a major port. We now have over 3,000 vehicle movements a day. Much of this is personal vehicles accessing and exiting the A12. But there is also a significant volume of Heavy Goods Vehicles (HGV’s).
For over twenty years Benton Street has enjoyed a weight restriction due to the number of old buildings – some dating from Tudor times. HGV’s are banned because they damage the old brickwork, overhanging buildings and lime washed walls.
Traffic coming from the West is properly advised that there is a weight restriction on the road into Hadleigh. No such warning was on the road from the East (Ipswich and Felixstowe) only an advice to avoid East Bergholt.
Coming off the A12 on the Eastern side there are now four signs within a hundred yards, pointing out the weight restriction and HGV traffic is now directed back onto the A12 to find a more appropriate route.
Full marks to the County’s , Skills and Environment Department.
There are now no excuses for dragging an HGV through Benton Street.
Eternal vigilance is price of liberty and I fully expect the Benton Street Squeeze supporters to continue monitoring the situation and reporting (a much reduced volume of) incidents to the County’s Trading Standards.
Cashmobs Suffolk 2
Nominations for businesses to be visited by Cashmobs has now closed.
The chosen business is The Idler which was established over 30 years ago. They sell new and secondhand books, Book Tokens, artists materials, greetings cards and Naxos CDs.
They also sell leading makes of art materials including canvases, mountboard, and a range of water colour papers and modestly priced paints and brushes for the craftworker. They operate a book search service for out of print books and can supply new books to order.
They have the best selection of greetings cards in Hadleigh. Their range of Art Angel greetings cards feature works of well-known printmakers, many of them local artists,and is perhaps the most popular selection of greetings cards they have ever stocked.
The new electronic Book Tokens are now available. These have the advantage of being obtainable in any value rather than the five pound increments of the old Voucher scheme. They are, of course, accepted in most bookshops through the UK. (The old paper vouchers are still valid)
I always find their stock most interesting. This includes:
“Suffolk Coast from the Air”. and its companion volume
“Suffolk Coast from the Air 2”,
the story of the Hadleigh Branch Line,
Suffolk Ghosts and Legends and
Ordnance Survey Maps of the local area,
George Ewart Evans’s Ask The Fellows Who Cut the Hay in an exciting new edition illustrated by David Gentleman,
David Kindred’s Hadleigh, a portrait of a Suffolk Town, which is a selection of photographs taken over the years by the late Peter Boulton .
Michael Portillo’s television series based on Bradshaw’s Railway Guide has prompted a reprint of the book first published in the 1860s. They stock this edition together with a range of other railway books both new and secondhand.
The success of the children’s book “War Horse” which is a best seller nationally has prompted Halsgrove, to publish “War Horses” which tells the true story of horses used in various conflicts around the world. It is lavishly illustrated and presented as are all the Halsgrove publications.
They also hold a large stock of publisher’s remainder books. These are books which are sold off by the publishers at roughly half-price in order to clear their warehouses.
They have a large stock of second-hand books on the Second World War and a recent purchase has widened their stock of Giles Annuals, several early volumes are now available. They have a poetry section which is very popular and as they sell Art Materials they have a great number of Art Books including art instruction books.
James Chambury was one of Hadleigh’s leading artists and a customer at The Idler. His daughters have recently edited a book containing a selection of his work, many of East Anglia and some of the work he did in The Oman.
I look forward to being in the shop on the 4th.
Cashmobs Suffolk
On Saturday, January 4th 2014 Cashmobs Suffolk – a new community initiative to stimulate our flagging High Streets – is coming to Hadleigh.
Struggling shops get our sympathy. Huge multinationals moving into our local area raises our ire and anger at the destruction of the local economy. We complain on social media and decry the decline to our friends. But what do we actually DO about it?
Cash mobs actually go beyond our online complaints. Cash mobs use actual hard cash, spent in a local shop.
So how does it work?
It is all done through the local community grouping together and using their combined networks to spread the word about the local shop that needs support. It generates real cash for bricks and mortar businesses in the local community. The community gets together and decides to spend £10 or thereabouts in a local shop on a designated day. The local shop gets business that would have otherwise gone to a multinational chain of shops and the local community is energised.
It is a simple concept. Shop locally. Buy from local shops to keep the local economy alive. Cashmobs aim is not just about bringing the community together but also about supporting Suffolk¹s independent shops and boosting the local economy.
It’s a concept that has been highly successful in America and has been set up in Suffolk by two local business women, Sue Hall and Eileen Brown, and they are running it on an entirely voluntary basis.
Their message, to spend at the nominated shop in Hadleigh, is being spread through social media particularly through the Facebook page at http://facebook.com/CashMobSuffolk
Other UK towns ¬ including Hadleigh have had Cash Mob events in the past, but Sue and Eileen are planning to take this right across Suffolk visiting different towns across the country on a monthly basis.
Hadleigh and Felixstowe have been selected for January 4th and February 1st respectively but there are plans to go to Lowestoft and west Suffolk later in the year. In time we would like to introduce this initiative across Norfolk and Essex too as well.
Retailers selected for the Cashmob, obviously get a one-off boost but in the US it’s been found to have a positive long term spin-off for other local businesses too as consumers visit other local shops in the town.
So nominate a local Hadleigh business on the Facebook page at http://facebook.com/CashMobSuffolk, look out for the nominated business and spend that tenner in the shop on Saturday January 4th 2014.
Happy Cash mobbing!
Blog courtesy of the Hadleigh Chamber of Commerce
Internships up for grabs
Over 20 internship placements are available in councils across Suffolk starting in the summer of 2014, but interested parties need to get their applications in by Tuesday 28 January 2014.
There is also an information session to which interested candidates are invited to learn more about the application process, meet members and heads of departments and hear what past interns got out of the experience. The session is being held at Endeavour House, Ipswich between 11am and 1pm tomorrow. Anyone interested in attending should email risinghigh@suffolk.gov.uk
The internship programme is designed to encourage young people to take up careers in the public sector and to provide paid opportunities for undergraduates (or graduates) to experience working for us during their summer break from university. It consists of a 12 week paid work placement supported by group development opportunities.
A paid 12 month Industrial Placement is also available at Suffolk County Council which will put the successful candidate at the forefront of innovative and exciting developments in economic development and skills policy. This placement must form part of the applicant’s university course.
Details of the internship opportunities can be found on the Rising High website via: www.risinghighsuffolk.org.uk
No Woman’s Christmas Morning
…is enhanced by a man saying “Thus cream is brilliant for crow’s-feet”
– India Knight writing in The Sunday Times Style Supplement 8th December 2013
Happiness is
Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family — in another city – George Burns
Tesco – The Fall Out
The following appears in the November edition of the Hadleigh Community News under the heading “Towards the Deep End”.
“Damian Thompson in The Daily Telegraph on October 9th commented that being bonkers is no longer a bar to political advancement.
Well anyone who watched Councillors support the proposition in September that the Brett Works site should be developed by Tesco would not be strangers to this idea.
Reasons advanced in favour of the development included:
The development of the site as a supermarket would be a long term benefit for our town.
There are no shops in Polstead.
It will raise the profile of Hadleigh.
The introduction of Tesco into the town will benefit out of town residents (especially those from Polstead).
The development will bring people into the town.
There are no good reasons for rejection.
Some councillors once again demonstrated that every time they speak they put the cause of local democracy back by at least five years. It became embarrassing to hear some of the speeches of support for the proposed Brett Works site development.
That being said, the Planning Committee meeting was a very interesting day and brought about a satisfactory outcome. I was glad that I was able to cancel and re-jig my holiday arrangements joining my wife and her cousins a few days late in Croatia.”
The Brett Works Site/Tesco discussion continues with people in Hadleigh grateful for their escape from Tesco but bemused that the margin for victory was so slender.
Plans to mark World War 1 in Suffolk
My good friend Jenny Antill posted the following on her blog yesterday morning:
How is Suffolk County Council going to mark the centenary of the outbreak of World War One in 2014?
This was a question put to the Leader of the Council at Thursday’s Council Meeting. He responded that events would be planned not just for next year, but during the three that follow.
Some 10,000 men from Suffolk died in the Great War, and six men born in Suffolk were awarded the Victoria Cross. Included in their number was Skipper Thomas Crisp, pictured here, Crisp was born in Lowestoft, and he received the award posthumously for his brave defence of his small armed fishing boat against a German submarine. The full story can be read on Wikipedia.
The County Council is working with the Military Covenant Group and the Suffolk Strategic Heritage Forum to plan a range of commemorative events across the county. It is hoped that the community will be closely involved and that the events will be informed by research that is being carried out at the Suffolk Record Office. The archive of the Suffolk Regiment, held in Bury St Edmunds, is likely to be of importance. There will also be projects to raise awareness in schools and colleges, a touring exhibition, and the display of newly digitised material on the SCC website.
Incidentally, Jenny has posted 900 items on her blog since she started in 2007. See http://jennyantillsblog.blogspot.com/
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