Panto is a hit, oh yes it is!

THE last time I went to a panto at the Playhouse, Robin Hood - who happened to be lodging with mates of mine - got his nose broken in a fracas after a visit to a local hostelry. Can you guess which one?
Wiltshire Creative refused to confirm or deny it but I know it for a fact.
Both these things, to me, say a lot about Salisbury which we simply shouldn’t gloss over, even though we might wish we could do so.
We’ve waited through some depressing times since then for the return of the Christmas highlight that our theatre always does so well.
And they didn’t disappoint. Cinderella was a triumph of traditional daftness over the grimness of today’s world.

The sense of anticipation in the audience was palpable. They really wanted this wacky alternative reality – which is in fact so much a part of our national identity – to succeed in taking them to a happier place.
I thought the jokes were more adult than previously. Sometimes I found myself looking at children’s faces in the audience to see what they made of references to things they really shouldn’t have known about. I know double-entendres are a staple ingredient of panto, but looking back on the days when my boys were small, I wouldn’t have wanted to field the inevitable questions. 
In fact, the whole setting was more modern, with the Ugly Sisters as social media influencers and Cinders, while still being a put-upon maid of all work, having a sideline as an  inventor of improbable machines just to show a bit of female empowerment.
Having said which, this was a cracking show. The solo singers all had really strong voices, the costumes were as fantasmagorical as a box of Liquorice Allsorts, the hardworking musicians were great, and it would be wrong to pick out any individual members of such a talented ensemble cast.
I hope it’s the commercial success it deserves to be.
What my Ukrainian guests will make of this stylised lunacy I don’t know, but I’m buying them tickets for Christmas. And telling them that this is what they need to see to understand the English, haha!

Pictures by The Other Richard

Good Luck, Playhouse, with this great new comedy

DAFT, hilarious, a terrific cheerer-upper. That’s Good Luck Studio, on at the Playhouse till November 5. And who doesn’t need to lose themselves in laughter right now amid the encircling gloom?

The set is a children’s TV programme, featuring a singing dragon, a frog puppet and a princess dressed as a pineapple, plus a Brian Blessed-style over-the-top wicked king bellowing atop a castle turret, and there’s plenty of panto-style slapstick. 

But it’s not for the kiddies. There’s a darker side to this farce, involving a rejected actor with a gun. And a lot of the jokes are definitely for adult ears.

It’s from the team behind those ‘Play That Goes Wrong’ comedies – described in the Telegraph as “the funniest theatre troupe in Britain”.

The opening few minutes were a bit slow with the necessary scene-setting but soon calamity started piling on calamity, and it got so silly that the audience were quite carried away with it, and many were on their feet applauding at the end.

I was surprised to find one of my favourite comedians, Tom Walker – better known by millions for his spoof news reports as ranting political correspondent Jonathan Pie – playing the absolutely horrible director, Andy, to perfection. Having loved a couple of his live solo shows, I’d never have expected to see him in an ensemble like this, but this was a real team effort, and it worked brilliantly.

A special mention also for Greg Tannahill as first aider Kevin, and an inspired scene in which he superglues his trousers. Doesn’t sound much when you put it like that, but you have to have been there.

Picture by Pamela Raith

Another little gem from Salisbury playwright Barney Norris

IT’S hard to categorise The Wellspring, and maybe that’s why there was a disappointingly small audience for the beginning of its brief run at the Playhouse yesterday.

Mass entertainment it most certainly isn’t, but this latest offering from Salisbury playwright Barney Norris – described by him as a ‘memory cycle’ - is moving, entertaining and thought-provoking. 
It’s very brave to reveal the vulnerability that Barney in particular shares as he and his dad, pianist and composer David Owen Norris, in turn look back on events either humorous or traumatic from their early lives, revealing how after a family break-up they have managed to create a bond that works for them, and what brought them individually to where they are now. This particular onlooker was completely drawn in.
As always with Barney, there’s a lot about home, the continuing search for it and what it means. His dad seems altogether more comfortable with where he’s at.
The beautiful piano interludes and haunting folk songs, absorbing in their own right, are finely judged to both underline and lighten the intensity of the spoken words, which is just as well or there are points where you might feel close to tears.
Having said which, there are plenty of the self-deprecating, rueful, smiley moments that Barney does so well, and his dad’s a born raconteur.
Cleverly set against a backdrop of ancient family cine film, this was a little gem.

All we need is a person on the end of a phone - is it too much to ask?

WHEN it comes to public services, it seems to me this Conservative government will do absolutely anything except employ people and reward them properly for their work.
We see it with the refusal to train enough doctors, with the devastating shortages of nurses, midwives, teachers, police, with the current bout of nastiness directed at ‘91,000 unnecessary civil servants’ who can’t answer back …
To which I’d reply: “If you think you can do without 91,000 of your staff, why have you done nothing about it in your last 12 years in power?”
It suggests to me that this is softening up the population for more and more privatisation, enabling ministers to argue that our current systems ‘aren’t working’ and could be ‘more efficiently run by the private sector’ when actually the problems are political incompetence and interference, the creation of unnecessary layers of complex management and regulatory structures, and too little trust in professionals.  
We also see it in the nigh-impossibility of actually speaking to an adviser on any of our so-called ‘help lines’.
I’ve been trying (not for the first time) to get through to the Child Benefit number to inform them that the Ukrainian refugee and her young daughter who lived with us for three months or so have now gone back home. Basically because she could see no prospect of them being able to afford to live here independently.
Our former guest is supposed to let them know about her departure, but her computer’s broken (not easy to sort out in wartime) and she can’t get through to a human being on the phone line for callers from abroad. It’s very expensive to spend hours at a time on her mobile in the vain hope of getting an answer.
All she wants to do is stop them paying her money she’s no longer entitled to. UK taxpayers’ money.
She’s increasingly worried that she will be in trouble for not informing them about her change in circumstances. So she asked me to help.
But I can’t get through on the phone either, and I’m not sure ‘data protection’ will allow them to speak to me even if I eventually succeed.
Wiltshire Council’s refugee advisers tell they can’t do anything and she’ll have to contact Child Benefit herself. 
The website does give a postal address, so I’ve advised her to write a letter and hope that will do the trick. She’s been told it could take at least a fortnight to arrive.
A few words with an actual person might have saved all this. 
‘Just because we can’ isn’t a justification for doing anything and that includes removing the human element from essential public services.

A sad farewell to our new Ukrainian friends

OUR Ukrainian guests have gone home. Or at least, my husband’s driving them to Luton airport.  I waved them off an hour ago, biting my lip until they were out of sight. “Don’t cry,” said Mary, “or you’ll make me cry, too.”
So I’ve been walking aimlessly round the house, stumbling across discarded things. A pair of slippers and another of winter boots in the utility room. Kids’ travel sickness pills and an assembled Lego funfair with a big wheel, a reminder of an outing to the London Eye, ready to pass on to some other child, in the dining room. Shampoo and conditioner by the sink in the bathroom, the bottles too bulky for travel.
In the spare room wardrobe, neatly folded clothes – too many to pack without exceeding the baggage allowance, some of them kindly donated by wellwishers, along with Anna’s school uniform. I ought to return it to be used by some other needy family, but I’ll hang on to it for a while, just in case the war takes a turn for the worse and they have to come back. If not, I’ll return it to the school in a term or two. 
Hoping they’ll come back. Hoping they won’t.
I’m going to miss them terribly. We all are, even the dog, who loved her new nine-year-old playmate and is now just lying quietly at my feet, sensing that something’s changed and life won’t revert to the way it was yesterday. 
We’ve told them they’ll always be welcome to come back. But if they do, it’ll mean things in Ukraine have got even worse. It’ll mean failure, not least the failure of world leaders to deal with Vladimir Putin once and for all.
We in Salisbury understood already how little he cares for the suffering of ordinary people. How he feels free to subject innocent civilians to terrifyingly random acts of cruelty. We still can’t make sense of it. And now he’s doing the same thing on a global scale. 
Meanwhile, our would-be leaders faff about pretending to their party members that they have the ability to make everyday British lives better. They don’t actually have the faintest notion of how to deal with a monster holding the Western world to ransom. They don’t even know how to deal with the people who have fled here, seeking sanctuary. Not in the longer term. Housing, jobs – jobs that pay enough for single parents to live independently, I mean – childcare …. Not a clue.
I barely knew, before all this, anything about Ukraine. I’d never needed to know. And as a result I didn’t question the oversimplified way foreign news can be reported to us.
Now I’ve begun to grasp a little about this complicated, divided country. Mary is a native Ukrainian speaker, though she speaks Russian, too. She told us that many Ukrainians actually supported Russia – even some of those who have found their way here, their homes flattened by the dictator they so admire. 
So among her fellow countrymen here in Salisbury she never completely relaxed, never really knew who to trust. 
She trusted us, but there were so many ways in which we couldn’t help. 
For 12 years she taught English in a school in Lviv to children across the primary and secondary age range. But schools here don’t need people, however highly qualified, to teach English as she did, as a foreign language. 
And she didn’t have the right pieces of paper to work in a language school. You have to pay to study for a Celta certificate in Britain. She didn’t have the money. 
She couldn’t even get an interview as a classroom assistant. Mostly, the vacancies were for supermarket cleaners and shelf-stackers, care assistants …. Shiftwork impossible to fit round childcare or school holidays for a lone mother, which is what so many of our Ukrainian guests are, with their other halves forbidden to leave their country.
She’d say: “How will I ever earn enough money for a deposit and rent on a flat?” I had no answer.
I asked Wiltshire Council leader Richard Clewer. Not unreasonably, he told me: “What do you think the people who’ve been on our waiting list for years would say if they saw refugees jumping the housing queue?”
Then came the decider. Her headteacher in Ukraine said she could not hold her job open any longer. 
We’d offered her a home for a year. We couldn’t commit to longer. She stayed for 14 weeks.

NB I wrote this a month ago but waited to post it till I was sure they weren't planning on coming back.

How saving nature can save money for councils too

WHEN I volunteered to attend the Wiltshire Council Environment Summit on Friday I feared that a lot of what was said might go over my head. 
But I wanted to represent our city council, and I’m glad I did. Listening to Dr Phil Sterling – now of Butterfly Conservation, previously of Dorset Council – was inspiring. 
I hadn’t heard of him before, but on regular family visits to Dorset I’ve seen the results of this ecologist’s work. The household recycling centre at Bridport is a revelation. Yes, a tip can be a revelation! 
In summer its central reservation and the perimeter planting are a mass of wildflowers, seeded several years ago as part of a roadside verge trial. They always make me smile. (Not to mention the fact that you can leave your unwanted goods there and anyone can help themselves for a token sum. I got an ironing board for £1. Proper recycling. NB Wiltshire Council!)
Dr Sterling is also the man behind the lovely chalk wildflower banks that line the Weymouth relief road. Thirty species of butterfly have been recorded there. Yes. 30! On the side of a busy road!
And you don’t get to that point just by chucking a few packs of seeds about.
First, as he explained, we’ve got to forget our ideas about the desirability of neatly-mown lush green grass everywhere and persuade our communities to trust us on this journey and not moan about short-term ‘untidiness’. So, work with schools, with wildlife groups, put up explanatory signs …
Because the best grasslands for bees, butterflies and wildflowers develop on the poorest soils.
You cut back on mowing. And use ‘cut and collect’ machines that pick up the mown grass, which you take away for composting. Don’t leave it lying there to enrich the soil.
Do these things and coarse grasses won’t thrive and choke out everything else. So, you will need to mow less. Think of the savings in manpower and fuel!
Sow a wildflower seed mix including things like kidney vetch and yellow rattle, bird’s foot trefoil, field scabious, bee orchid ….. not just poppies and cornflowers! And start counting the creatures that visit these food-rich sites. 
Dr Sterling showed us how under this regime the money spent on highway verge management in Dorset reduced from £927,000 in 2014/15 to £650,000 in 2018/19 – and it’s even lower now.
I could see the enthusiasm shining on Wiltshire faces at the prospect of savings like that. So maybe the prospect of healthier finances will speed the unitary juggernaut’s conversion to a healthier environment.
And as someone muttered … Stonehenge tunnel, new road cuttings! I’m not getting into the rights and wrongs of that project here, but if ever it does go ahead – and that’s a big if - let’s take our lead from Dorset and make it as beautiful and as wildlife-friendly as we can.
PS Our city council recently sent one of our officers on a wildflower training course to give us in-house expertise, and we are working hard on our tree and eco strategy for Salisbury, which you will hear more about in September.

The Salisbury lesson: Fight for local democracy

IT’S easy once you’re elected as a councillor to get bogged down in detail.
Whether that’s discussing how quickly we can afford to switch our grounds team to electric vehicles, or poring over planning applications to do what little we can to protect our environment. Debating how to spend the public art budget, whether or not we spend people’s taxes lighting a Jubilee beacon, refurbishing public toilets … whatever. 
I’m not saying these details aren’t important. They are. They affect all our day-to-day lives. And I get heavily involved.
Let’s face it, Salisbury’s is only a parish council, not a strategic authority. What did I expect? To be changing the world?
Well, of course not. I didn’t expect anything other than what I’ve got, and I am exceptionally lucky to have been given a leadership role in working for the benefit of our lovely city.
BUT. And there is a big BUT. It’s also easy amid all this detail to lose sight of what persuaded me to put myself up for this job in the first place, and to do it the hard way, as an Independent, rather than joining a party and sharing the load.
And this was it. Salisbury gets a crap deal out of the current local government setup.
It has lost so much since the creation of the unitary authority at Trowbridge. Nobody in their right mind could argue otherwise.
Demotion, crucially, has cost us our role as a planning authority with a say over how our area will develop in future. We are struggling to finalise a Neighbourhood Plan that will give us a very limited input into the process. I’m not saying we shouldn’t do that. We should.
But we need to take a long, hard look at where we stand. What we shouldn’t have to do is to put up with this third-class status. Why aren’t people up in arms?
I was driven to these reflections by an article headlined The Salisbury Lesson, which I’m attaching to this post. Its theme? “Protect Democracy: Keep It Local”.
It was written by Richard Pavitt, an Independent councillor in Uttlesford, Essex – a community that’s threatened with a similar fate to ours by government bean-counters who know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
He draws on the invaluable experience of our former MP Rob Key to warn Essex voters not to take it lying down.
For anyone interested in the future of democracy, and concerned about the drift towards ever more centralised decision-making, it’s a thought-provoking read, pointing out that as the organisations running our lives get larger and larger, people are more and more inclined to vote for a party rather than an individual, because they don’t know the candidates.
And that means we get candidates whose loyalty is to voting along party lines regardless of what might be best for us peasants. Independents get squeezed out.
I’m not directing this at any elected individuals in particular. And I suspect that those who can be bothered to read it will be the ones who already share my views.
But hey ho, I feel obliged to keep telling people: “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” Get involved.