South Milford Fete
Sunday 15th to Saturday 21st July 2007
My Poet of Fete Show Sunday 15th July, 7.30 pm. was a triumph.
The South Milford Fete week opened last Sunday evening with Glyn Watkins' one man show, with musical interludes from Eleanor Spencer.
For a rainy Sunday evening, there was a decent turn out - and those who came certainly seemed to enjoy the show. Youngest of the audience was Verity Walker, aged 9, who came from Sherburn with her mum Lorraine. Lorraine said "I thought it might be over her head but she really enjoyed it, and made me buy lots of books so she could get them signed!".
Glyn is a fluent raconteur, keeping the audience amused with anecdotes about his life as a writer, artist and publisher, as well as reading a number of his poems, enhanced by an equally eclectic range of slides.
Eleanor is a talented young cellist from Ackworth. She played half a dozen or so Bach dances, sprinkled through the show. The rich tones of her cello complemented Glyn's talk, punctuating the show so that it kept coming in 'bite sized chunks.'
The show was arranged by Laura Reilly, Caroline and friends from the South Milford Women's Institute.
"What a way to kick off Fete Week, with Glyn's triumphant Poet in Fete show. I never thought that a poetry show could be so action-packed and so funny. A very enjoyable evening. Special credit also to young cellist Eleanor Spencer who has an obvious talent."
Laura Reilly South Milford Fete Committee
See this South Milford Community site for details of the place.
South Milford is in North Yorkshire, to the east of Leeds and a few miles north of the Ferrybridge junction of the A1(M). All of the events are within a very short distance of the arrow on this
map of South Milford
- My own show, Sunday 15th July, 7.30, W.I. Hall, High St. This will be based on my triumphal West End debut, and feature the charming and talented Eleanor Spencer of cello. There will be alcohol available (Woo-hoo!). It will also be the official launch of the Carr style Fete Map I have produced using the drawings done for me by Year's 3 & 4 of South MIlford Primary School.
- Memorial Gardens.Wednesday 18th July, 6.00. High St. Dedication of the newly refurbished parts of the Memorial Garden to J.L.Carr (who himself served in the RAF in WWII)
- South Milford Memories Evening. Wednesday 18th July 7.00, South Milford Primary School. Stalls and local and national speakers. I will be talking about my work in the scholl, and talking about J.L.carr's life and work with (hopefully) his son Bob Carr and biographer Byron Rogers.
- South Milford Fete. Saturday 21st July, Primary School Grounds, There will be a full programme. I will be doing something, apart from drinking. Possibly a They've been dead a long time and they wrote poems that rhyme one man jukebox.
- South Milford Primary School. I am working with two classes (Year's 3 and 4) telling them my story and the story of Carr, the football, the Fete and their own school. I am aiming to produce multiple copies of one or two A3 sized posters to sell in Fete week, based on Carr's hand drawn maps, and using the children's work.
The Fete is trying to publicise the work of its most famous "son" , the author J.L. Carr, at the Fete and during Fete Week in various events from a garden opening to a historical evening.
The Fete is a revival of an old tradition that was utterly negleceted and died in a ditch 20 years or so ago. The driving force behind the revival is the "Village People", especially the Lady of the Fete Laura.
I got involved with the Fete when Laura contacted me after reading my blog about going to Sherburn and South Milford to seek out places mentioned in the Carr biography (The Last Englishman, by Byron Rogers) and getting blathered in the pubs, especially in the Black Bull, where Carr's team changed.
I am now South Milford Poet of Fete, and managed to persuade the Fete to spread themselves out to a week!
J. L. Carr
Carr was a novelist, map maker and publisher. He won the Guardian Fiction Prize, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, with the novel A Month in the Country. This was made into a film starring Kenneth Branagh, Colin Firth and Natasha Richardson. Both Branagh and Firth have been invited to take part in the JL Carr celebrations.
Carr was a Yorkshireman who grew up in Sherburn-in-Elmet, taught in South Milford Primary School for a pound a week in 1930-31, and played for the South Milford Football team. He based his novel How Steeple Sinderby Wanders Won the F.A. Cup on the experience.
Myself
I am a writer, poet and publisher (see . Carr is a hero of mine. I was personally responsible for Channel 4 releasing the film of A Month in the Country on dvd for the first time. See the following
Daily Telegraph article for background.
Journal of Carr's elder brother.
"Visions Afar"
A Journal of R W Carr
1905 - 2005
Click on the image for more information
On top of the above South Milford farmer Don Bramley is publishing the journal of Carr's elder brother: Visions Afar, The Journal of RW Carr 1905-2005 (The life and times of a Yorkshire Railwayman). The journal formed the basis of the early part of The Last Englishman, and has an extraordinary breadth of detail. It will feature during the Fete. Review copies will be available soon.
Below is the first press/information release for the Ray Carr Journal. You are welcome to use it, but please be aware that most it it may change. I have included a raw e-ddresses for the hotlinks if you wish to cut and paste it.
My name is Glyn Watkins. I am a poet, writer and publisher. I am helping to launch a book of railway reminiscences, published by Don Bramley, a historian, publisher and farmer who lives in South Milford, near Selby. For a previous book by him see In Them Days (http://www.in-them-days.co.uk/)
I have been involved with book launches and other events at: The National Museum of Photography, Film & Television (as was); as well as at the Everyman Hampstead and in the West End.
Glyn Watkins
www,bradwan.com
The new book is entitled:
Visions Afar
The Journal of R.W.Carr 1905-2005
The life and times of a Yorkshire railwayman as told through his writings and journal.
Compiled by J.D.Bramley and A.R.Gamble.
The book contains a mass of details from Ray’s early life. He was the son of a railway man, and the elder brother of the prize winning novelist J.L.Carr.
Ray worked on the railway from 1922 to 1970, either as a Clerk, Relief Clerk, Relief Station Master or Station Master. He lists 50 stations he can clearly recall working at: including Stainton Dale on the Scarborough-Whitby line, which he bought as his retirement home. The Journal is filled with previously unpublished photos and some drawings by Ray, one of a GWR Pacific catching my eye.
The original Journal was extensively quoted in the recent, best selling, J. L. Carr biography: The Last Englishman - The life of J.L.Carr. by Byron Rogers:
...its absolute recall can astonish a stranger...the long past was a corner shop to which he could pop round like a boy sent on an errand, and he enjoyed the remembering.
The stories include the championship cat from Newcastle, that escaped from its box when Ray opened it in the Leeds parcel office. Ray replaced it with one of the station cats, and nobody ever complained. Also how ...they always knew there was to be a hanging anywhere in Britain, for then the package came from the Leeds ropemakers Haigh and Gill, addressed to the hangman Pierrepoint at his private Lancashire address.
I will be trying to push any event to anyone interested in railway or countryside history, and fans of J.L.Carr.
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I am involved with this beacause J.L.Carr was a hero of mine. For detals check the following article from the Daily Telegraph:
How I found Branagh's lost movie
Full list of stations Roy Carr can recall working at
Micklefield, South MIlford, Cross Gates, Leeds New Station, Leeds Central Station, Castleford, Brough, Headingley, Horsforth, Holbeck (High Level), Pannel, Weeton, Pool-in-Wharfdale, Harrogate, Starbeck, Wetherby, Thorner, Collingham Bridge, Thorp Arch, Birstwith, Hessle, North Howden, South Howden, Hemingbrough, Cliff Common, Saltmarsh, Thorpe-in-Baine, Garton-on-the-Wolds, Wetwang, Sledmere, and Fimber, Bainton, Cloughton, Burton Agnes, Flamborough, Skirlaugh, Whitedale, Ellerby, Marfleet, Patrrington, Hambleton, Sherburn-in-Elmet, Stainton Dale, Airmyn and Rawcliffe, Laisterdyke, Scarborough Parcels Office, Ravenscar, Burton Salmon, Knaresborough, Garforth.
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This webpage © Glyn Watkins, 24th March 2007
Web services Roger Beaumont
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