Noye's Fludde, Part One [Walk-Through Rehearsal at Shrewsbury Abbey]

Unless you have some completely water-tight [pun alert] excuse you need to buy a ticket for Benjamin Britten's Noye’s Fludde, to be performed next week in Shrewsbury Abbey. I’ve just been to the walk-through rehearsal and I may have brought back no photographs but I’m telling you, it’s going to be brilliant. 

Shrewsbury Abbey is a big place.  Plenty of room, you’d think, for cast and choir, orchestra and storm-dancers, animals in their twos, drowning housewives, Noye, his kids, his stroppy wife and God. And yet by the end of the afternoon the Abbey was full to the gunwales - to use a suitably nautical term - and captaining proceedings was freelance director/producer/choreographer, Maggie Love, mike in hand, directing children about where to stand, warning visitors to the Abbey, for their health’s sake, to get out of the storm-dancers’ way.

I perched myself half way down the aisle, close enough not to miss anything on stage. Behind me sat a row of storm-dancers who turned out to be High School girls in ordinary life. They were dressed in blue, with silvery-blue faces and diamante hair bands. On stage more schoolgirls stood about, dressed as housewives with handbags on wrists, gin in back pockets [in some cases] and rollers in hair. Amongst them stood a stroppy diva with a lovely voice. All attitude and big hair, she turns out to be Noye’s wife.  

Half way through her solo,  Maggie called a halt.  ‘Bill,’ she called. A man popped up across the aisle from me. ‘Yes, Maggie?’ he said.  Adjustments needed making. Mrs Noye and the schoolgirls stood down from their roles and began to chat.  Noye leant against the pulpit and had a word with God. I recognized this God.  Who else wore rainbow braces over riotously decorated shirts but my dentist, Gareth Jenkins? 

He’s got the voice for God. Deep and rolling, sonorous and Welsh. No sooner did the rehearsal get underway again than he was leaning over the pulpit with God's stern gaze as well. ‘Hear me!’ he demanded, and how could anybody not?  Noye heard him, plainly - and started trembling in his shoes. But Mrs Noye didn’t care a jot.

Even when a roll of drums, which had started quietly, grew in strength, she didn’t look that bothered. ‘Take thou thy company,’ God charged in his Sunday-best voice. By now he'd changed, I noticed, into a golden gown and inverted flowerpot black hat. ‘And beasts and fowl with thee take/he and she, mate to mate...'  God's voice rose in volume. He filled his lungs. 'It is my liking mankind to destroy,’ he roared.

The orchestra trembled in its shoes. I didn’t blame it. Violins were all a-quiver, tympani a-clattering. Noye had his mac on. ‘Kerie Eleison,’ the choir solemnly intoned.  The impending sense of doom was unavoidable. Not even the need for another break could shake it off. This was real drama. It was proper opera, doing what opera is meant to do, getting beneath your rib cage, palpitating your heart and rattling your bones. 

With a fanfare of trumpets, the rehearsal was back on. The housewives didn’t appear to have an umbrella between them, but I knew what was coming next, even if they didn’t - and Noye did too.  He was trying to drag his wife away, but she didn’t want to leave. Watching the two of them caught up by events beyond their understanding, let alone control, I had to remind myself that this was an ordinary Saturday afternoon, that it was sunny outside, that there’d be X-Factor on the telly tonight, and Strictly.  

Another break was called for. Time for Mrs Noye to hoist her dress straight, and for God to come down from his pulpit and stretch his legs. It was nearly four o’clock, and the animals would be turning up soon - one hundred and forty primary school children all needing kitting out in costumes and masks.  

Time to press on.  ‘We’re ready to start the storm,’ called Maggie, and the orchestra struck up. Housewives unfolded see-through plastic rain-hats. Blue-and-silver dancers rushed about waving banners and sheets of midnight blue silk. In the aisle, a dove and a raven, black and white, flexed their wings. Behind the stage, a tall arched screen filled with images of rain. 

‘Go! Go! Go!’ Maggie yelled at her storm-dancers. They weren’t holding their streamers high enough, and God had shed his golden outfit as if he'd had enough of being dressed up, and the back of the Abbey was filling up, and people in the aisles were in danger of being hit by passing waves.   

But, with all of that - with all the breaks, and all the bits that needed doing again, and the projection not including everything that it would on the night - I could still feel shivers running down my spine.  It was the music that did that to me, courtesy of Shrewsbury’s choir of schoolgirl housewives, and Musical Director, Maureen Powell-Davies' orchestra, and Noye and his family and Benjamin Britten, of course. There's a man who knew a thing or two about writing a tune.    

Another break and then the rain began again. More animals came piling through the Abbey doors with their mums and dads. Time to leave, I thought. Better save what was coming next to witness for the first time on the night.  At the back of the Abbey, I passed by racks of costumes and piles of bags and coats.  On the screen now were upturned palms holding our world in the form of a globe. It was heaving as if in pain, beating like a heart and changing shape. Outside, instead of sunshine [I'm not making this up] it had turned to rain.  

 Noye's Fludde is part of the celebrations for Benjamin Britten's Centenary.  Tickets are still available HERE - but they're going fast and I'm not surprised. Performances will take place on the evenings of Tuesday 22nd October, Wednesday 23rd and Thursday 24th, at 19.00.

Doreen Woodford, Signal and the Shropshire Deaf Community

Down through the Square, past the stalls of the farmers’ market and round the back of Shrewsbury’s soon-to-be new museum and art gallery, last Friday found me in hot pursuit of a woman called Doreen Woodford. She may not be well known to you or me, but worldwide she’s renown for her work in the deaf community. Or at least she was.  Doreen has been dead now for a couple of years, so I suppose for accuracy’s sake I should say it was her legacy I was in pursuit of, not the woman herself.

The Woodford Foundation has its head office on College Hill.  It’s one of a surprisingly large number of charities based in Shrewsbury. Our town might be tucked away in the rolling border country between England and Wales, but it’s anything but inward looking.  The Woodford Foundation, for example, has for years been working with partners across the world, including in Uganda, Malawi, Zambia and Tanzania, where over the years Doreen had built up direct contacts and strong links.

There's been support for the deaf here in Shrewsbury for well over a century. The Church Mission to the Deaf and Dumb in South Staffordshire and Shropshire was founded in 1856, establishing two small centres in Shropshire as well as working in Wolverhampton. In 1955, that organisation purchased Brierley House in Shrewsbury as a centre for deaf social and church activities. Then in 1963, a local committee -The Shropshire Christian Association With Deaf People (SCAD) - was established to oversee the delivery of services in Shropshire.

In 1993 South Staffs and Shropshire separated, SCAD became an independent charity and the Shropshire Deaf Association took over Brierley House, which it held until 2002.   In 2004, the Woodford Foundation was set up by four retired professionals, including Doreen Woodford, who had worked throughout their careers with sensory-impaired children and their families, in particular overseas. Since then the two organizations continued to operate in tandem until their merger last week.

Interestingly, Doreen never wanted an organization named after her. That was thrust upon her by the Foundation’s other Trustees, in recognition of what her name stood for in the deaf community worldwide.  We’re talking here about a woman whose exploits included sneaking into Afghanistan during the Taliban’s rule, disguised beneath a burka, to bring support to that country’s deaf community; flying fearlessly into the Congo; even taking on Somalia, coercing men with machine guns to allow her to pass through. 

Since last week, however, the name ‘Woodford’ is no longer being used – and my guess is that Doreen would be delighted. A merger has taken place. The Shropshire Deaf Association and the Woodford Foundation have become Signal. Their Chief Executive is Matthew Gilbert, and last Friday I met him along with Rachel Baxter, who’s been in charge of the merger, and James Cousins who until now, working for Shropshire Deaf, has been responsible for building up local relationships. Their offices, overlooking a lovely walled garden [one of those hidden gems that Shrewsbury specializes in], are packed with files, paperwork, bookshelves and computers.  These are busy people. I appreciated them making time for me.

Mat talked about the stigma of deafness, which he said was a massive problem.  Across Africa, courtesy of a wealth of superstitions, the deaf face serious social taboos.  Deafness can be extremely isolating.  Africans often regard the deaf as cursed. Even within the family, the deaf can find themselves excluded.  And where the deaf community forms itself into groups, those groups are still often separate from the rest of society.

The same can be said of the UK too.  ‘Maybe people don’t see deafness as a matter of being cursed,’ Mat said, ‘but our society isn’t much better at helping the deaf to find their place.’  

Helping the deaf to find that place is what Signal is all about. Its global mission is to integrate deaf people into their families, their communities and their society.  It offers local-to-local assistance both in Africa and here in the UK. ‘This is the slow way of going about things,’ Mat said.  ‘A massive amount of time is spent listening to people, and talking through issues. It would be far quicker to go in saying we know what you need, but then we wouldn’t be half so effective.’

In Tanzania, the Woodford Foundation has done a great deal of work assisting deaf children in their out-of-school lives, which is often when they have nowhere else to go. They’ve worked with parents too, and their first vocational training centre for the deaf was opened in 2010, run by nationally qualified and accredited staff.  Woodford was proud to be involved in that scheme, helping to provide appropriate teaching that was funded by the Tanzanian government. 

In Malawi, the Woodford Foundation recognized that very little aid and support was going to the north of the country.  Sure enough, up there they found a need that wasn’t being addressed. For the last four years, along with the Central African Presbytarian church [who run three quarters of the schools in northern Malawi], they’ve been running awareness communication training and encouraging families to put their deaf children into schools.

The Woodford Foundation, and now Signal, very much see their role as one of project management.  They don’t have staff on the ground working in their name, but work instead with overseas partners.  ‘It’s important to build capacity locally,’ Mat said, ‘so that local people can undertake the training themselves. If we go out, it’s only as observers.  We’re the catalyst, you could say, bringing together money and help, and formulating plans and programmes to be implemented by trained and trusted outreach workers and volunteers from the deaf community.’

Currently Signal has been asked by Comic Relief to create a model that can be replicated elsewhere. This speaks for the success their approach is seen to be achieving.  In order to build that model they have starting up pilot schemes in Malawi and Uganda. ‘In Malawi,’ Mat said, ‘we’re seeing more and more government involvement, but often very little by way of funds.  The Ministry are keen to buy into projects, but often they don’t have the money or resources.  The Millenium Development goals call for the highest number of children possible to be in schools and trained.  But higher numbers of pupils in classes mean that the quality of teaching is reduced and inevitably the hearing impaired miss out. 

‘In a situation like this,’ said Mat, ‘we’ll work with teachers to look at learning methods that improve deaf children’s chances.  Placing them at the front of class, for example, or making sure that teachers talk whilst facing children rather than with their back to them, whilst writing on the board – these simple things don’t cost anything to implement, but they make a great difference.’

Much work is being done in the UK too. Many deaf people end up being completely dependent because not enough thought has gone into what will happen to them post-education.  Making links into the vocational world is of vital importance, as is the need to raise awareness that the deaf can be as productive as anybody else.

This is where James’s work comes into its own.  He’s been busy liaising with hard-of-hearing groups, social workers, councils and other gatekeepers, working towards creating a deaf and hard-of-hearing hub.  Sometimes he’ll sit in on audiology clinics,  other times he'll drop in on the See/Hear van on its regular visits around Shropshire’s care homes, bringing advice to the hard of hearing, including practical help with hearing aids.

James also sets up focus groups. ‘But the deaf are nervous of groups,’ he said. ‘That’s when they notice their impairment most.’  Even so, a number of groups are operating in the region, and James is working with clinical commissioning groups to find a place in Shrewsbury where they can meet - somewhere hopefully that could offer access to a variety of users. ‘Did you know,’ James said, ‘that 43% of people who go to their GP about hearing problems don’t get referred on?’ I didn’t, and I was shocked.  That’s a very high percentage.  

I wanted to know more about the merger between Woodford and Shropshire Deaf.  Rachel’s been working on this since July, concentrating on merging, rebranding and last week’s big launch.  The origin of this merger, she said, came a few years ago when the Shropshire Deaf Association decided it wanted to do more.  That’s when it employed James, and the two organizations have been working side by side ever since.  ‘It was natural for their resources to be pooled,’ Rachel said. ‘Both organizations’ objectives were virtually identical. The only difference was that one  worked in Africa, the other in the UK.’

Both organizations were dealing with the same issues, raising awareness and working against stigma and isolation.  Everybody agreed they were a ‘good fit’.  It was healthy for a Shropshire-based organization to have an international dimension, and for an international organization to have a base back in the UK, working as part of a localized community, gave it a rootedness it wouldn’t otherwise have had.

Whether her name has gone or not, Doreen Woodford won’t be forgotten.  If you want to read the fascinating interview Mat conducted with her in September 2010, I can't recommend it highly enough. If you want to know more about Signal, here's their website, and here's the Shropshire Star article about their launch.  Or, if you want, you can still see the old Woodford Foundation website and read some of their back newsletters.

Oh, and one final word.  I’ve been using this phrase ‘the deaf community’, however, according to Mat, it’s not just one community but a series of them, all under the one banner.  There are the sign language users [‘the noisiest language in the world’ somebody once said, and having witnessed a group of deaf teenagers exuberantly signing on a train, I know what they meant].  There are those who lip read – and historically speaking Shropshire has always been a lip-reading county.  There are those who use hearing aids, whose deafness most probably is the result of a loss of hearing at some point in their lives. And there those of us who struggle with the effects of tinatus. 

As I write this, I can hear a swishing noise in my ears.  First time I realized this was happening, I was in a hammock, in a Welsh wood, beside the sea.  It was the middle of the night. Half way through telling myself how much I was enjoying the silence, I realized a] that it wasn’t silent – I could hear the sea – and b] it wasn’t the sea; it was me.   Since then the swishing has upped the ante. Now I hear a giddying roar of static every time a bus goes by.  Sometime I’ll have to go to the doctor.  Hopefully I won’t be one of James’s 43%.  I only tell you this, not to garner sympathy, but to make the point that deafness isn’t ‘out there’ happening to ‘someone else’.  It can happen to any of us.

A Birthday Present To Myself

I’ve written a lot over the last nine months about other people, other Shrewsbury lives, other facets of Shrewsbury’s 2013.  This time though, because yesterday was my birthday and it was one of those dates that has a sense of significance about it, I’ve decided to write about myself. I hope this isn’t too self-indulgent of me, but here I go:

Q. So, what’s it like, Pauline, having a birthday in Shrewsbury?

A. So far so good.  Thanks for asking.

Q. Is that all – can’t you say a bit more?

A. Like what? What more do you want to know?

Q. Well, how many Shrewsbury birthdays have you had - in other words, how long have you lived here? What brought you to Shrewsbury? How old are you? Why do you write about Shrewsbury?  What else do you write? How have you spent your day? Why the sudden decision to do a post on yourself? Why…

A. Whoa there - like they say on the Caribbean island of Caye Caulker - GO SLOW! Here are a few answers.  I hope they’ll do:

HOW LONG HAVE I LIVED IN SHREWSBURY? Sixteen years next month, though before that I lived in Worthen for a further twenty-four, moving there from London, which is where I was born.

WHAT BROUGHT ME TO SHREWSBURY?  A mixture of things.  Back in the days when I lived in London, I remember driving home through Shropshire from a weekend in north Wales and thinking how much I preferred Shropshire’s green rolling hills to the more dramatic mountains of the Snowdonia range.  I’d felt enclosed amongst the mountains, spectacular though they were, but the more open views of Shropshire and its softer hues enchanted me.

Again, a summer spent on a farm in Worcestershire, within striking distance of Ludlow, warmed me towards the rural life, in particular the Marches region on the border of Shropshire, Worcestershire and Herefordshire. My husband and I brought up our family of five children in Worthen, and loved our life out there.  What brought us to Shrewsbury, though, was a recognition that the family was growing up and that the patterns of our lives were changing. My husband was commuting too far for comfort by train every day. Our children’s lives were very Shrewsbury-based. Worthen, sadly, was no longer ‘working’, much as we loved it there. In addition, a very special house in Shrewsbury town centre was on the market at a price we could afford.  It was the house as much as anything that brought us here.  I love living where I do.

HOW OLD AM I?  A few months ago, the film company R & A Collaborations made a film[http://vimeo.com/55155636] about me to celebrate the relaunch as an e-book of my novel, 'Telling the Sea'. Seen in close-up on the beach, lit by sea-light, the lines were all there, plain to see on my face, and I felt affection for them. I felt as if I’d earned them. They were as much a part of my life as the books I’ve written, the children I’ve raised and the husband who today put himself in my good books by buying me an ice-cream making machine.  I’ll never stretch and tuck and lipo-suck and dye. I’m proud of who I am – and I’m proud of my age. I’m still running round, bright-eyed at the world around me, ears pricked up at sixty-five.

WHY DO I WRITE ABOUT SHREWSBURY? A year ago, my daughter Beulah lent me a book called ‘The Gift’ by the writer Lewis Hyde.  It explored the concept of giving from early days to the present age, looking at the value and purpose of gifts in differing cultures around the world.  Time and again, as I read, I found the idea cropping up of giving back to the source that has nurtured one’s gift [be it food on the table, or the ability to write, paint or make music etc], thereby ensuring the fertility of that gift and its enrichment and continuance.

I was thinking about this one night, returning to Shrewsbury by train after a day visiting publishing friends in London.  I arrived in town late at night and began to walk up Castle Gates. The air was fresh and crisp.  It had been raining and the streets and pavements shone.  The sky was clear though - no more clouds, and ahead of me I could see the great bulk of the library and, after that, the Darwin statue in the library garden. Where else would I ever want to live?  Words and phrases rolled through my head.  My Shrewsbury… Tonight in Shrewsbury… My Tonight in Shrewsbury… and out of them an idea was born.

SO, WHAT ELSE HAVE I WRITTEN? Eleven published novels for children and young adults, one of which won the Smarties Book Prize, and the latest of which was set in the jungles of Belize, which I visited a few years ago courtesy of an Arts Council grant. Also some poetry, a few short stories, a blog and a lifetime’s worth of what I think of as ‘bits and pieces’.  Some of my novels are set in Shropshire, a couple in Shrewsbury. A few have come out as ebooks, a couple of which have been reissued by me, If you want to know more about my books, go to my website. Here’s the link: www.paulinefisk.co.uk/books

 WHY TODAY HAVE I DECIDED TO WRITE ABOUT MYSELF?  Despite the ‘my’ in the title of this blog, the intention has always been to shine the light fair and square on Shrewsbury.  That’s still an objective I adhere to, but I do live in Shrewsbury too; I’m a part of whatever our town is all about in the year 2013, and so I reckon this has its place. You could also say this is a bit of a birthday present to myself. 

WHAT HAVE I DONE ON MY BIRTHDAY?  

The highlights have been family, old friends, vanilla ice-cream and the Golden Cross.  Probably in that order.  Oh, and good books too.

Q. So, Pauline, you had a good day?

A. Yes.

Q. Is that all you’re going to say?

A. That’s all I’m going to say.

Q. Couldn't we just have a couple more pics?

A. Here's me trekking in the Belizean jungle [and feeling very hot], and underneath it me, aged three, all those years ago, telling stories to the big kids next door.

Shrewsbury's Flaxmill Maltings

A year in the life of our town can’t not include [double negative, I know] Shrewsbury's Flaxmill Maltings.  Its location out at Ditherington is slightly outside the boundary of this blog, but it’s such an important building, of international significance, that it would be a crime against Shrewsbury not to include it.  Especially as, equipped with a hard hat, I visited it yesterday.

The Flaxmill Maltings was having an Open Weekend, providing a last chance to see it before multi-million pound redevelopment work begins.  In particular, I wanted to see the South Silo before it’s blown up. A laser show was on in the main body of the Silo, with music, dancing and fluid light.  The Silo’s stairs were open to the public, so it was possible to climb to the top floor and view the spires of Shrewsbury and the outskirts of town. 

The windows at the top were netted and barred, but it was still a good view.  My companion complained all the way upstairs and down again about the Silo being blown up on the thin excuse of concrete cancer. This was easily treatable, he said, and the Silo should be turned into flats, their rents helping pay for the upkeep of the rest of the Flaxmill Maltings. To many people, however, the Silo is just a massive concrete box taking up land that could be put to better use. It may be part of the Flaxmill Maltings complex, but has nothing like the merit of the other buildings on site.

The history of the Flaxmill Maltings is an interesting one. In 1796, two Shrewsbury men, Thomas and Benjamin Benyon, joined forces with John Marshall of Leeds to construct a flaxmill.  After extensive tests on the structural properties of iron, Charles Bage [recognized as one of the pioneers of structural engineering], designed them an entirely new type of mill.  Mills at that time were highly dangerous, built of brick and stone, with wooden floors. The dust from the spinning process, along with the volatility of lubricants for machinery and the use of candlelight to work by meant that it was easy for them to burn down. Charles Bage’s Flaxmill, however, built of brick and iron, was completely fireproof.

The Flaxmill was built at a time when the woollen trade in Shrewsbury was in decline, which meant that as well as offering good transport links and a ready market for the mill’s products, Shrewsbury also was able to offer the new enterprise skilled workers.  The building remained a mill for over a hundred years. In 1897 it was adapted by William Jones Maltsters, for use as a maltings, and it remained a maltings until the company’s bankruptcy in 1934.  In World War II the building was used as a barracks, but in 1948 it was taken on as a maltings again by Ansells. So it remained until 1987, which means that, more likely than not, there are people in our town who remember working there.

The value of the Flaxmill Maltings, however, isn’t just its history, or the fact that it’s an attractive building, which would enhance its surroundings if restored.  Its value lies in its innovative design - and that in turn owes everything to its iron frame.  

The Main Mill, which now faces regeneration, is the oldest iron-framed building in the world. This means that New York and every other city that has ever put up a skyscraper owes a debt of gratitude to the Ditherington Flaxmill Maltings, still standing here in Shrewsbury 217 years after it was first conceived, courtesy of its iron frame. Not only that, but together with the Cross Mill and Warehouse, the complex has three of the ten oldest iron-framed buildings in the world, and the design of the Flaxmill by Charles Bage is of international significance for its use of structural engineering within building design.

In other words, every way you look at it, the Ditherington Flaxmill Maltings is of international importance. The site in its entirety is a virtually complete surviving example of a major textile mill, and the Cross Mill is believed to be the only surviving example of a hackling shop built for a textile mill.

Interestingly, John Marshall of Leeds is the person who purchased the rights to the flax-spinning machine when it was first invented, bringing cutting-edge manufacturing technology to Shrewsbury.  And as well as designing the Flaxmill and playing his part in the history of structural engineering, Charles Bage also became Mayor of Shrewsbury. Both were important men in their day.  

Here in Shrewsbury, the fight has been on for years to save the Flaxmill Maltings. Open Weekends like the one I’ve just been to have been held to raise public awareness.  The history of the building has been celebrated with spinners in costume weaving flax. Exhibitions have been put on. Tours around the building have been available.  This last weekend alone has had guided tours, a family trail and family activities, a film room, live music, a photography exhibition and installation, flax demonstrations and an interpretation and discovery area.

It might have been raining, and the building might have been swathed in scaffolding, but there was a distinct buzz about the place. Smiles were on the faces of the volunteers, and the Heritage Lottery logo – proudly places everywhere - was smiling too.  Back in July, the Heritage Lottery fund granted Shrewsbury £12.8 for the Flaxmill Malting’s regeneration. After years of struggling to save it, the future of this world class site, an important part of Shrewsbury life and a first-class tourist asset too, is now assured. 

  

Work will start on the Flaxmill Maltings almost straight away, with a view to the site being open to business and the public by April 2016.  The injection of cash will pay for the Flaxmill’s first phase of redevelopment, which will also see the Kiln, Dye and Stove House, and offices and stables, being restored. This will be a major project, one that Shrewsbury is rightly excited about.  Last autumn, whilst in Toronto, I visited the Distillery District, a part of that very modern city’s preserved past. Housed in a massive old distillery and accompanying outbuildings and warehouses are craft shops, high-end jewellers, boutiques, bars, restaurants and exhibition spaces.  This is a quality destination full of interest and charm, away from Toronto’s skyscrapers and reminiscent of the city’s industrial past. People flock to it. They love it. If you’re coming to Toronto, you’ve got to see it, they say.

And the same could go for the Flaxmill Maltings. People could flock to it as well, locals and tourists alike, making it not only a commercial destination, but a significant destination on the tourist trail around the British Isles. Shrewsbury is a great destination anyway, with a wealth of old buildings, beautiful riverside parkland, quiet squares, old shuts and passageways and a wealthy of tiny, independent shops. A massive amount of work has gone into saving the Flaxmill Maltings and securing Lottery funding. Now we need to be imaginative in terms of putting the site to good use, casting our net wide, looking to other places who’ve gone before us, and learning from them.   

If you’d like to get involved in the future of Ditherington Flaxmill Maltings as one of its Friends, here’s the link:

info@flaxmill-maltings.co.uk.

If you’d like to visit the website for the Flaxmill Maltings, here’s the link:  www.flaxmill-maltings.co.uk

The Shrewsbury Flower Show

An important event in the town’s annual calendar - the most important event, some might say – is the good ol’ Shrewsbury Carnation & Gooseberry Show, as it used to be called back in 1836 when the first Show was held in the Frankwell area of town. 

In 1857, the 'gooseberries and carnations' bit was dropped and the Show became known as ‘The Flower Show’.  It was held in a marquee in the town centre and by 1874 was making a profit of one shilling and ten pence [about 10p today].  In 1881, the entertainment is recorded as including Bon Bon the tightrope walker with his 150ft long tightrope, standing at 40 feet above the ground.

The Flower Show continued yearly until the First World War.  Its revival in 1920 was attended by people from across the UK.  By the Second World War, it was being held in the Quarry, Shrewsbury’s main park. Except for the years when the Quarry was dug over for allotments as part of Shrewsbury’s war effort, it’s been there ever since. 

And now here we are again – August, and it’s Flower Show time. All the usual pageantry of military band and Mayor and entourage has taken place, and down at the Quarry gates, people are jostling to get in to the strains of a steel band playing ‘You Are My Sunshine’. 

There’s a sameness about the Flower Show. Same marquees, same trophies, same sorts of events, same showground, same time of year, heralding the end of summer with the evenings closing in and the skies dark enough for fireworks by 9.45pm.  But I wouldn’t have it any other way. One of the biggest events of its type in the UK - until recently its longest-running - Shrewsbury’s Flower Show is an institution. 

It’s also a great place for meeting people. Before I’m even through the gates I bump into Karen Higgins of The Big Busk.  Then, inside the Showground, the first person I meet is Bill Morris, who used to be a Town Councillor, and is the person who first told me about the Shrewsbury Fragment [something I’ve yet to write about but, believe me, you’ll be fascinated when I do]. 

Then the next person I meet is Helen Ball, Town Clerk, in a big pink flowery hat that looks very fetching.  Then down the central avenue of the Quarry, amongst its cheek-by-jowl stalls and hospitality suites, I find my old friend, the artist Penny Timmis, and some of her paintings.

We stop to chat in the Brewin Dolphin hospitality suite, where the paintings are hanging, then I leave Penny holding court and head down to the river. Here I find that railway tracks have been lain, and the oldest still working narrow-gauge steam engine is huffing up and down.  There’s a real mix of stuff down here - fluffy toys, garden furniture, a distant voice attempting to sell the Light n’ Easy Eco Deluxe Steam Mop [‘I’ll be honest with you,’ the sales patter goes], even a stall promoting Orthotic Works, whatever they might be, and another one selling Gnu Airers. What are they?

When I get hungry [which hasn't happened yet]  there are stalls selling everything from carvery and grill to a mountain of meringues. In the Food Marquee, a TV chef is demonstrating how to cook before a capacity audience, but I  don’t stay, lured away by the irresistible sound of a male voice choir performing Men of Harlech on the bandstand outside.

By the bandstand I meet my Welsh friend, Dai, who’s no mean singer himself.  Then I’m off again, heading for the main marquees, which are what  the Show is all about.  In the first of them I encounter the smoothest potatoes I’ve ever seen in my life, followed by the biggest onions and carrots so exquisitely tapered that it’s hard to believe they haven’t been sculpted.  These are  competition-class vegetables.

And these are the trophies waiting to be won.

I walk past cabbages that look like green elephants with waggling ears, cauliflowers with white hearts as big as dining-plates and gooseberries as big as apples, I swear [well, maybe crabapples].

After them I find rows of flowers, and fruit & vegetables, arranged in displays.

 Some of the marquees celebrate what local gardeners and gardening clubs have produced, others showcase what the market leaders in the horticultural industry have to show.  Between the marquees I find a series of small gardens, my favourite being this one by the Dingle Nurseries near Welshpool.  

I come across a scarecrow competition, where the best man, most definitely I reckon, has won. 

Then, back inside again, I find banks of feathery grasses...

...a riot of sarracenias [a fancy word for carnivorous plants]...

...and a display of different types of  bougainvillea.  People go on about the Dingle in the Quarry being a riot of colour, but this riot of softer, more subtle hues is more my cup of tea.

 The day wends on.  I stop to watch a falcon settle on a man’s wrist. I linger by the showground where white-helmeted motorbike riders have recently come off.  It’s show-jumping time. Riders on twitchy horses are limbering up, awaiting their turns. ‘It’s Tim Davies on Salome II,’ a voice announces over the sound system, to be greeted by a smattering of polite applause.  ‘Smack on the time,' I hear as I walk away.  'That’s a clean round…. Tim Davies on Salome II… leading by five seconds ex-act-ly…’ 

In the evening, I’m back again.  Bellowhead’s playing, and the arena is divided in two.  Either you’re sitting beneath your blanket behind the arena's outer rim looking as if the cold is getting to you, or you’re on the hallowed turf, bobbing up and down, waving your arms in the air as the bass goes through you, connecting you to everybody else.

Bellowhead’s an eleven-piece outfit of electric-folk musicians belting out traditional tunes and numbers of their own with a mix of fiddles, big-band brass and lots of attitude.  Definitely the best fun’s to be had right in front of the stage within breathing distance of the band.  These boys and girls certainly know how to work a crowd.

Eventually they’re gone, however, and people move back behind the barriers. The sky darkens, the spotlights come on and the marching band reappears, creating a sea of red and gold against the green of the turf.   It plays all the old numbers that come out every year, and people are instantly out of their seats, on their feet and singing along. 'Land of Hope And Glory'. 'Jerusalem'. 'Rule Britannia'.  'Mae Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau' [Land of My Father’s to anyone non-Welsh -  I love it that at this Flower Show, here in the Northern Marches between England and Wales, we respect the Welsh Anthem as well as the English one]. 

And then here it comes, of course, 'God Save The Queen', after which it’s time for the bands to march away - and for the fireworks to begin.

What can I say about the fireworks?  Even more than the Flower Show, they’re a Shrewsbury institution.  Never mind the 50,000 people who over two days will be watching from inside the Show – on the bridges, in pub gardens all over town, on the far shore of the River Severn, and up on Beck’s Field with its view of fireworks reflected in the water [and of smoke drifting away between the trees], it’s party time.   

Everybody in Shrewsbury loves the two nights of the Flower Show when the Reverend Ron Lancaster’s Kimbolton Fireworks [they of London’s New Year celebrations and many of our royal pageants] illuminate our town.  For a moment in time we’re all lit up, faces raised before a night sky full of exploding stars - little kids again, gasping and wowing as the band plays Holst’s Planets [Mars, I think], Bizet’s Carmen, the William Tell Overture and Porgy and Bess, fireworks going off in time to them, carefully choreographed, bang, bang, bang.   

Then it’s darkness again. For fifteen dazzling minutes we’ve been drawn together by a bit of magic, courtesy of gunpowder and fire.  Now we draw apart again, heading for the exits, the Flower Show over for another year. At the main gate, a lone piper pipes us out to Scotland the Brave. The man at the gate says, ‘Thank you,’ and ‘Goodnight’ to everyone passing him by, as if each us had been his own personal guest. A typical Shrewsbury touch, that.

At the bottom of Claremont Bank, a fleet of Park & Ride buses are waiting to carry people away. You’d never think so many people could just disappear, but they do. Like the smoke between the trees they’re suddenly gone, and then Shrewsbury falls quiet, nothing left but to clear up those abandoned marquees.