Cumbria's fifth season: Back End

IT’S a revelation to many people that there are actually five seasons in a year, not four.
But it’s such a blindingly obvious fact to most Cumbrians that you really do wonder how the rest of the world copes with a mere four seasons.
We’ve just entered the ‘lost’ season of Back End. It comes between autumn and winter when autumn’s lost its glory but winter is yet to bite. There’s some dispute but most people will place it around the first two weeks in December.
It’s that time when there are few leaves left on the trees, the days are at their shortest and the weather at its darkest. Back End looks like it sounds: the dull, scraggy bits of the year.
“T’ back-end’s ola’s t’ bare-end” goes a famous Cumbrian proverb. Well, it was famous in the mid-19th century when dialect poet Alexander Craig Gibson wrote his classic tome, The Folk-speech of Cumberland and Some Districts Adjacent. He defined it as late autumn. Fellow writer William Dickinson, writing about the same time, defined it in his dialect dictionary as “Back end: the fall of the year” and gave the example “On about t’ back end.”
In the south Cumbrian village of Bouth they even had a Back End Fair each year although it seems to have been held quite early – the end of October. But we want to keep the rest of the world guessing. We’ve revealed there’s a fifth season – now let them work out when it is!

Black-eye Friday

FRIDAY, December 20. Just five days before the big day itself, the start of the weekend and the day Cumbrians term “Black Eye Friday”.
The origin of the name is obvious: it’s the day when – armed with the Christmas pay packet – folk start the celebrations down the pubs and night clubs. Even police know to have extra officers on duty on this last Friday before Christmas.
It’s not to be confused with the American Black Friday where the only black eyes will come from shoppers starting their Christmas shopping. That traditional American date is the Friday after Thanksgiving and – since 2001 – has become the busiest shopping day of the year in the States.
The term Black Eye (or Eyed) Friday is a northern one although South Wales terms it Black Friday. And it’s not all bad news. It’s a time when plenty of money is flowing so pubs, taxis and takeaways can look forward to a pre-Christmas bonus – albeit a noisy one.
The term has even found its way on to the internet with a – very short – page on the online encyclopaedia, Wikipedia. It’s up there with Blue Monday (the most depressing day of the year), Ask A Stupid Question Day, No Pants Day and World UFO Day. It’s perhaps only surprising we don’t yet have “Happy Black Eye Friday” cards on sale.

Christmas magic at Keswick

Swallows and Amazons at Theatre by the Lake, Keswick

Swallows And Amazons, Theatre by the Lake, Keswick until January 18. Box office:  
017687 74411.

OH for those innocent days when children could sail off for two or three days on daddy’s boat (even though the eight-year-old can’t swim) and all the parents are worried about is that they’re careful with the box of matches.
Such is the idyllic 1920s’ world of Arthur Ransome and his classic work, Swallows & Amazons.
It’s been adapted for stage by Helen Edmundson who keeps the archaic ‘jolly hockey-sticks’ language of Ransome. This is nostalgic for adults but will create a barrier for today’s children who will no doubt struggle with duffers, telegrams, barbarians and charcoal-burners. Some modernisation might have been better – particularly changing Titty’s name to Kitty!
It’s a musical show with songs from Neil Hannon but director Stefan Escreet – curiously for a Christmas show with many young people in the audience – studiously avoids audience participation. There’s not one song for families to join in.
At the start Roger (James Hogg) confesses he can’t whistle properly. I’m sure most youngsters in the audience were then desperate to help him by showing off their whistling skills – but no invitation came from the stage. That barrier between stage and audience remained firmly in place until right at the end when Mother (Heather Phoenix) asks the audience if Captain Flint (Martin Fisher) should be made to walk the plank. They were so shocked to realise she was talking to them that they could hardly reply!
The set – designed by Martin Johns – is one of the stars of the show. It starts as the attic of elderly Titty (Frances Marshall) and the old toys take her and the audience back to that summer of 1929 in the Lake District. Upturned tables become boats, brollies become cormorants and dusters become parrots. It’s theatre magic at its best.
Imagination plays a large part in this show and director Stefan Escreet cleverly tells the tale through child’s eyes. I’m sure the decision to leave eight-year-old Roger (James Hogg) with a beard was quite deliberate!
The musicians are ‘on top of the wardrobe’ which also doubles as the rocks and hills of the island on which the children base their summer camp. And when they’re needed, the musicians come down to the stage to play walk-on parts in the show. It’s simple and effective.
This is a tale of childhood adventures, pirates and buried treasure. The overall effect is one of magical delight. It’s just a pity that youngsters – and adults – can’t join in the fun on stage.
 Swallows And Amazons, Theatre by the Lake, Keswick until January 18. Box office:  
017687 74411 or book online at www.theatrebythelake.com

Poisoning pigeons and fishy French

Richard Suart, baritone, at Muncaster Castle. Part of Rosehill Theatre's On The Road programme.


ANYONE who puts on a programme featuring songs celebrating masochism, telling of poisoning pigeons in the park or warning you There’s Always Something Fishy About the French either likes to live dangerously or is genuinely inspired.
Fortunately, the audience opted for the latter option when they heard baritone Richard Suart perform at Muncaster Castle.
And rather appropriately for the sumptuous setting he included the Noel Coward song, The Stately Homes of England.
Richard demonstrated that Coward’s songs had the timelessness that only works of genius can achieve. Coward never worried about political correctness during his life time and it seems unlikely to stop him now he’s dead.
The first half were almost entirely Coward songs with their delightfully waspish lyrics which, after 100 years, could still evoke great laughter. And anecdotes between the songs from Coward’s diaries and newspaper cuttings generated an atmosphere of warming nostalgia.
The second half of the show – part of Rosehill Theatre’s On The Road programme – included works from America’s answer to Noel Coward: Tom Lehrer. A man of whom the New York Times once said his muse “is not fettered by such inhibiting factors as taste".
Mr Lehrer himself – who is still alive – famously said  of his musical career, “If, after hearing my songs, just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend, or perhaps to strike a loved one, it will all have been worth the while”.
Poisoning Pigeons in the Park was one of his less offensive songs and Richard also performed Lehrer’s Vatican Rag.
It’s good to know that offending people isn’t the sole domain of the young, or wasn’t invented by the Sex Pistols in 1975. But this was also an evening of love songs and bitter sweet songs. And they were all performed with the apparent ease that only a professional of Suart’s experience can achieve. 
- Review by Alan Cleaver

The Magic of Seacross Lonning

WHEN you die, it is said you travel through a tunnel on your way to heaven. I'm fully expecting this tunnel to be Seacross Lonning at Embleton in Cumbria. The hazel and elm form a tunnel-effect for much of this lonning which creates a wonderfully peaceful and other-worldy effect. On our visit today (November 10th 2013) it was extremely wet underfoot; it's fair to say a river now runs through it! But for those of us with proper boots it is still passable and the light from the late afternoon sun reflects on the water to create a sublime green and yellow luminescence. Hopefully the pictures on this page will do some justice to the lonning. I had hoped to give a guided walk along the lonning to those involved in the Lonnings Art Project at Florence Mine, Egremont (see Florence Mine website) but the new river makes that impossible. Something for the new year. In the meantime, enjoy the photos!

Raise your glass to this pub opera

YOU rarely get the chance to see opera in West Cumbria.
And while the knee-jerk reaction of most people is ‘I don’t like opera’, most admit that’s partly because they’ve never seen it!
The revelation this month that the Arts Council spends £69 per head on its London friends and only £4.58 on Cumbrians probably means the chance of seeing opera or any quality arts this far north is remote.
So hats off to Whitehaven’s Rosehill Theatre whose Rosehill on the Road programme brought the Olivier Award winning opera La Boheme to Workington’s Carnegie Theatre.
This production by Opera Up Close originated from a determination to make opera accessible with a capital ‘A’ – by performing it in a pub and in English. It proved such a sensation that it progressed to bigger venues. That’s probably a pity but the performers retained the pub ethos by performing some of the show among the Carnegie audience.
They also modernised Puccini’s 19th century opera with references to Jamie Oliver and Primark! For much of the opera there were plenty of laughs but there’s no escaping this – like most operas – ends badly with Mimi dying from consumption. However, that means some indulgent pathos with delights such as Your Tiny Hand Is Frozen.
To hear such fantastic singing – the only accompaniment was a piano – was a real treat and no doubt left even first-time opera visitors wanting more. Will we see it up north? The odds are probably against it given the Arts Council’s London bias but check out the Rosehill programme for forthcoming visits to the area by Richard Suart, Victoria Simmonds and the Elias String Quartet.
La Boeheme was staged in association with the Carnegie 
Theatre. It was sponsored by Allerdale Borough Council as part of its cultural programme accompanying the Rugby League World Cup.
www.rosehilltheatre.co.uk

First entry for lonnings exhibition

I AM grateful to Egremont historian and poet E Alan Read for contributing the first 'exhibit' for the lonnings exhibition planned for Florence Mine next year. It's a poem based on Lovers' Lonning which can be found in St Bees..

Lovers Lonning, St Bees

Lovers' Lonning

It was in Lovers' Lonning,

A place of tranquillity, peace and calm,

Where the pathway is so narrow,

Only two could walk together

Preferably arm in arm,

An ideal lonning for sweethearts,

To overcome shyness, it is so benign.

Tall hedgerows on either side,

Where in sunshine or in shower,

A perfectly wonderful trysting lane,

Where any twosome can stroll with grace,

In moonlight or 'neath a star-filled sky,

Couples find the joy of Lovers' Lonning,

Where closeness is never out of place.

It was on a balmy summer evening,

In the month of June he met them,

Three lovely buxom young maidens,

All decked out in pretty summer dress,

A blond, a brunette and a raven-haired

Brown-eyed beauty, who immediately

Caught his roving eyes.

They introduced themselves without shyness,

As Madeline, Rosemary and Charlotte,

All such lovely well-befitting names,

So in return he told them he was Ronald,

Known to all his friends as Bing,

From that informal unexpected meeting,

Everything went with a swing.

It was here in this chance meeting of equanimity,

Ron and the raven-haired Charlotte became enamoured,

A word that before that first meeting,

Had never entered their vocabulary,

On a daily basis, tho' now it did,

At every opportunity and always would,

Lovers' Lonning now meant all it should.

Lovers' Lonning from then reached out to them,

It became their special trysting lane,

Walking there regularly entwined,

In each other's arms, they have blest it,

Where they are beyond all others' reach.

E Alan Read