Sheffield Adventure Film Festival 2011 - Tunes!

The Sheffield Adventure Film Festival (ShAFF) has now matured into its 6^th successive year and was the biggest and most diverse yet. Set over the weekend of 4-6^th March under the careful management of Heason Events, ShAFF has managed to gain the respect of the festival circuit in a relatively short space of time with 100% of those attending in 2010 asked if they would attend again in 2011 stating they definitely would.

This years event saw event organiser Matt Heason, again adapting very much a team approach via a dedicated band of ‘Heason Events Volunteers’ who were easily recognisable by their ShAFF t-shirts, who toiled away all weekend to create a truly memorable weekend.

Shaff’s films are its staple diet of exciting adventure features showcased in high definition, for a taster of these and more events go to http://www.shaff.co.uk/ to watch the trailer and get the low down.

For the second year running, we had organised live music throughout the weekend and I had volunteered, yet again to organise this. By luck or design, the sets to be played out in the main bar of Sheffield’s Showroom, were timed for audiences before and after the films and speakers (in the end it turned out to be more luck than anything else).

Sheffield, historically, is a musical city, so it shouldn’t have been too hard to track down some acts, who hopefully would play for beer tokens (literally) and a bit of free publicity and after a trawl of local gigs and pubs, we finalised a line up with just days to spare.

Friday kicked off with Velvet Rose, (http://www.myspace.com/velvetrosemusic) Tim on piano and flame-haired Rachel Edmondson on sax/vocals. I timed them starting at 7:20pm and finishing at 8:50pm, playing continuously without stopping! Second on the bill was Showroom local outfit, John T Angle & The Spirit Levels (http://www.myspace.com/johntangleandthespiritlevels) singing about dragons, devils and Greek gods (pictured above).

Closing the set was singer songwriter, Lucy Spraggen, (http://www.myspace.com/lucyspragganmusic) who has toured across the United States, skimming the Mexico borders and California, playing gigs in almost all of the 50 states over a three-month tour. Now Lucy is back home for an explosive summer on the British festival scene with gigs already confirmed.

Saturday afternoon began with an energetic, Open Acoustic Jam Session featuring Liam Walsh, The Felt Tips and myself.

Liam (http://www.myspace.com/walshacoustics) then did a sterling job of playing most of the afternoon away to a packed Showroom bar. Liam is 16 years old and has been playing ukulele, guitar and drums (and also vocals) for 2 years. Liam says, “I play very diverse genres of music which include Reggae, punk, Ska, and everything between really. All in all I'm a growing young man baking with inspiration and the drive to take on any challenge or event in life, and tackle it head on, and just generally enjoy and love music and life.”

Saturday evening kicked off with duo Sophie & Mel from The Felt Tips, (http://www.myspace.com/thefelttips/photos) who played a lively set, before solo guitarist Carl Watkins (http://www.reverbnation.com/carlonfirewatkins) took over, playing a tight set of Electric Blues from Hendrix to Walters.

Local band The Felt Tips finished the night, playing a range of music from the 60's to the present day with some of their own compositions thrown in. Following the live music, there were DJ Sets from Nigel Fisher and Fran Guiton, of Secret Society and Ambrose White and Nick Royles from Na Drove.

Sunday began with the upbeat Sophie and Mel, who play reinterpretations of well-known tracks with a bit of attitude, along with their own compositions. An open mike afternoon followed and songs were jammed out before the last set of the weekend, a certain rambling, journeyman guitarist, and the random chap that is; Simon Jacques.

I placed myself at the end of the sets, on the last day for two good reasons. One that hopefully there audiences of ShAFF will be satisfied that they had got their monies worth from the weekend already and therefore wouldn’t mind some out-of-tunery warbling and two, I needed to fill 3 hours on a lazy Sunday afternoon after an unfortunate couple of no-shows…

The problem was that after practising some new songs and jamming / playing all weekend, my fingertips were literally falling off and I needed to keep going until the awards ceremony and the end of the festival. By now we had got the timings of the sets spot on, and we used this experience to play at strategic times when the bar filled up prior to and at the end of the films.

I ended up playing quite a few blues tunes, amongst some Indie favourites until the end of the festival, when mercifully I gave my poor trashed tips relief from the heavy gauge steel strings.

As ever with these things, not everything goes smoothly, however all in all with teamwork, we managed to pull off a successful weekend of live music to compliment the festival and I have to thank all those who helped with the organising and lending of kit. We managed to again provide a diverse range of music for the ShAFF audience and huge thanks has to go to all those who came to play and perform.

They all proved yet again why Sheffield is THE City of Music and we were all again pleasantly surprised of the outstanding quality of all the musicians, they did us proud and many thanks again.

It’s going to be hard to top it all at ShAFF 2012, but we will try…

Travels with my Camera… Derby Cathedral Quarter

I have to admit a certain amount of laziness and a worrying inability to make a decision on this one, as I left it right up to the last minute to go anywhere on a sunny winters day, determined to beat the post Christmas blues.

Having not been out for a while, I had numerous idea’s on where to take the Nikon, yet just couldn’t decide on any one particular destination and so I took the easy option and got the Train to the nearest city to Sheffield.

Having been to Derby many times, I was still pontificating on the short train journey following the river Derwent down the Amber Valley, wondering what the hell I was going to capture in the city with time and light becoming more limited as the day wore on.

In the end, I decided on a good fall back plan and headed to the Cathedral Quarter on Iron Gate, having only ever been there on a typical student night out, fit only for bar flying. For this trip however, I had actually done a modicum amount of homework and knew that there was a dodgy haunted pub with a few tales to tell, nestled under the modest, but charming Cathedral.

After a few wrong turns (never try to memorise a city map), I finally located the quarter with it’s well kept, up market shops away from the soulless Westfield Shopping Centre and enjoyed ten minutes of the last good light to shoot away at the Cathedral and the outside of the adjacent said pub, Ye Olde Blue Dolphin Inne.

Derby’s oldest pub, established in 1530, is made up of 3 rooms of differing odd shapes and sizes, all cut off from each other, connected only by the hub of the multi-inglenooked bar. To gain access from the outside to any of these rooms, one must first enter the cobbled thoroughfare that actually runs right through the centre of The Dolphin, which was once used for access to dwellings, leading to where the car park is now situated.

It was on the cobbles where I met a bemused looking couple, unsure of how to gain entrance to the bar and so buoyed by some fellow self-doubt, I tried a random door of choice, hoped for the best and we entered.

Without knowing it, we had entered the lounge, an oak panelled, cosy room complete with huge fireplace, which took up most of one side of the walls, adjacent to a squeezed in diminutive bar, big enough for two people to stand/serve.

Taking my place at a small table in front of the open fire, under the low ceiling, sporting venerable sunken ebony beams, bowed by the weight of time, it was easy to picture the place as it was in the times of Dirk Turpin around circa 1738.

Nothing much has been altered with the décor of the Inn for many a year it appears, shabby crimson, floral curtains drooped sadly, gathering dust in front of tick-tock frosted windows, keeping out the hustle and bustle of Iron Gate, adding to the historical atmosphere. The remaining walls are interspaced with picture frames of varying sizes and colours filled with historical woodcuts. These range from cheery themes such as Derby Hangings, Derby Courtroom trials, the denizens of Derby Gaol and of course, Master Turpin.

In its colourful history, the Dolphin has acquired its fair share of grisly and grim tales and it is said to have been a stopping-off point for highwaymen, including the notorious Dick Turpin. The Inn billeted a number of Bonnie Prince Charlie's Highland army during their brief stay in 1745 and one of the resident ghosts is claimed to be that of a man in Highland regalia, armed with a sword, running through the passage carrying a woman on his back piggyback style.

Another couplet of ghosts seen frequently, are those of a small girl who sits on the steps leading to the restaurant and a ‘Blue Lady’ which has been seen in most parts of the Inn. She was said to have an affair with Dick Turpin who gave her a blue dress. The landlord at the time, her husband, saw her in the dress and after learning of the affair, made sure she soon disappeared, her corpse concealed in the fabric of the Dolphin after her murder.

After learning of the final, yet most grisly piece of the Dolphin’s history, I decided I would move rooms to the snug. This ultra cosy room was again, entered via the cobbles and had a small fireplace, with room enough for two small tables, its walls bedecked with various ephemera.

The reason for my hastily switch was as follows…The most gruesome story surrounding the Dolphin is that of a young doctor who, in the 18th Century, had a body secretly delivered by two body-snatchers in the dead of night.

The Doctor took the body, that of a young woman, into the cellar under what is now the lounge. In those days that part of the building was a lodging house, in which the doctor had rooms to practice. He began to dissect her by opening up her stomach and pulling out her entrails. It was this moment that she awoke, having been buried alive (probably in a coma). She leapt up from the table and ran round the cellar screaming hysterically, dragging her entrails behind her until she sank to the ground, dead from shock and loss of blood.

The young doctor stood shaking in the corner, splattered in blood and out of his mind; his hair had turned white. His well to do family hushed up the incident and had him put in a lunatic asylum, but the ghost of the girl still screams in the dead of night.

After a quick visit to the main bar, I retraced my steps back to the lounge. The room was now empty, except for the popping, dying embers of the fire. I started taking a few pictures when all of a sudden I head dragging noises from down below in the cellar. I froze for a moment until I realised it was just the draymen delivering barrels of Black Sheep. Still, I decided that this was a good time to leave, lest I saw or heard any of the real horrifying legacies of the Dolphin.

As I headed back out into the waning daylight on to Iron Gate, the last of the sun burning over the city tops, I felt rather relieved to be back in the crisp winter air. I took one last glance of the Dolphin and smiled as I recalled the last story I read before leaving. This involved a spectacular ‘fly-by’ in 1732, when an intrepid aviator fastened one end of a rope to the tower of All Saints church and the other end to St Michael’s. He then slid down the rope with the aid of a wooden breastplate: the flight took eight seconds during which he fired a pistol and blew a trumpet, celebrating his feat with a few pints of Derby Ale.

These days you don’t have to go to such extremes to get a pint at the Dolphin, the friendly bar staff will happily serve you and I thoroughly recommend a visit if you find yourself in the city looking for a place soaked in history. Just remember to listen carefully if you visit the lounge, you may just be able to hear the spirits tortured screams of an awakening, disembowelled corpse…

Travels with my Camera… Brean Down Fortress

As you breathe a sigh of relief, having made the perilous journey through Bristol en-route to the South-West, you may be forgiven for wanting to get some distance on the M5 corridor through the Mendips and therefore in the process ignoring what may lie on the coast to your right (perhaps apart from Weston Supernightmare).

However if you have time to spare, a small gem lies up the coast from the charming seaside town of Burnham on Sea (off Junction 22, more of which in a later blog) on a spit of land, thrusting out into the muddy waters of the Bristol Channel. Its furthest point, Howe Rock pointing towards the isle of Steep Holm.

Composed of a mile and a quarter chunk of Carboniferous Limestone, Brean Down marks the furthest western tip of the Mendip hill range, the Down itself being a SSSI, home to rare plants such as the inconspicuous Dwarf Sedge existing alongside a variety of wildlife including Meadow Brown butterflies.

First thought to have settlers about half a million years ago, the Down has a rich history, the defences of the first Hill Fort being constructed about 300 BC with the Roman Armies taking over in Britain in AD 43.

Throughout the Middle Ages, little changed on the Down however in the mid 1800’s there had been talk of a harbour being built at Brean to act as a port for crossing the Atlantic, but the scheme was abandoned in 1868 after much wrangling and expense.

The main interest however on the Down is the derelict Victorian Fort. Nestling on the Southern-Westerly tip of the peninsula, the Fort was built alongside numerous other stations around the south coast as the naval military strength of France grew in the late 1850s under Napoleon III. These Forts were known as Palmerston Forts the name coming from their association with Lord Palmerston, Prime Minister at the time who promoted the idea.

However the works were also known as Palmerston's Follies as, by the time they were completed, the threat (if it had ever existed) had passed, largely due to the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, and furthermore the technology of the guns had become out-of-date. They were the most costly and extensive system of fixed defences undertaken in Britain in peacetime.

After a short ramble over the down, we approached the Fort over a dry moat on the landward side, noting the barrack quarters on the left, which could hold 50 men while the officers' quarters and admin offices were to the right. We made good use of their privacy, as my trousers were falling down and I needed the loan of my girlfriends (pink) belt.

One clothing malfunction and repair later, we made our way over to the barracks, where a scared looking woman stood at the head of darkened stairwell, frightened to proceed into the Stygian gloom. Well I couldn’t turn chicken in front of a couple of spooked ladies could I? So fag lighter in hand, the three of us proceeded down the tight stairwell, into the dark for which seemed like ages until we reached an underground bunker, full of clutter. Unfortunately at that point my lighter had enough and packed up and we were left in the pitch-black underground room.

Trying to get back up the stairs in total darkness with two hysterical women clinging to you is no laughing matter I can tell you!

Back in the light, I left my partner to calm down and relax in the spring sunshine while I went round the Fort merrily snapping away, trying to capture the mood of the place. I hope I managed this, to a certain degree, as although in all seriousness the place was built with intentions to defend and enter conflict, even see loss of lives, there is a lighter side to Brean Down Fort, more of which later.

I managed to locate the three main gun positions, three guns faced West, three faced Northwest and one faced North, yet no shots were ever fired in action, but regular drill and gunnery practice was part of the regular routine. The garrisons were part of the Coast Brigade, Royal Artillery and could be enforced with volunteer’s forces from both sides of the Bristol Channel. On the whole, though, life was very quiet at the Fort.

The only tragic loss of life occurred at 5am on July 6, 1900 when the Fort was rocked by a huge explosion causing the death of one soldier, Gunner Haines, who had fired his carbine down the shaft of a ventilator into No. 3 magazine, beneath the western gun positions. Huge damage was done, with the wall separating the Fort from the moat on the south-west corner being demolished and wreckage thrown up to 200 yards. No one knew why the gunner had blown up the Fort. But it was a fatal blow as it was quickly closed down and the cannons hauled away by traction engines.

Following this terminal act, between 1905 and 1939 the Fort became a cafe but at the start of World War II it was re-armed with two 6-inch naval guns from Cardiff and two searchlight batteries.

The best stories however are saved for last and trump anything Captain Mainwaring and Company could ever mess up, as even Dad’s Army had nothing on the bonkers shenanigans that proved to be the Forts last hurrah…

The Directorate of Miscellaneous Weapons Development (DMWD), known colloquially as the Wheezers and Dodgers, was a department of the Admiralty responsible for the development of various unconventional weapons during World War II. They were responsible for a number of devices of varying practicality and success, many of which were based on solid fuel rocket propulsion.

Several experimental weapons were trialled at Brean Down Fort, some of the better known weapons trialled being the seaborne Bouncing bomb designed specifically to bounce to a target such as across water to avoid, Anti-submarine missile AMUCK and the expendable acoustic emitter (designed to confuse noise seeking torpedoes).

Perhaps the most infamous experiment however involved a short rail track, which was built pointing out towards sea and ending at a set of buffers (see last picture)

A so-called bomb was mounted on a six-hundredweight trolley propelled at 200mph along the track by 12 powerful rockets. The aim was to propel the trolley at high speed into buffers with the impact having the effect of flinging the bomb far out to sea. However the whole lot, trolley, buffers and all, actually went flying off into the Channel, then did a sharp right and came back inland into a local farmer's chicken run!

Although I can’t really say that there is much to actually do there apart from explore the former garrison, the views over the Bristol Channel more than make up for this. Be sure to walk back to the beach on the northern side of the Down to take in the wind swept Hawthorn trees, hopefully illuminated by the setting sun as you head off for a well deserved ice cream. Brean Down Fort, as craptastic as you are, we salute you!

B******s to Alton Towers

One of my mates has one of those perfect “toilet books for blokes” (it is only men who read on the bog isn’t it?) called Bollocks to Alton Towers. A guide to British funny, nay quirky places that one should visit. The understated, should be classic, esoteric, un-romantic (for some) honey pots of this land.

The little towns and the unknown villages, places like Barometer World, Great Torrington in Devon and Blackgang Chine on the Isle of White (yes I have been to both). The former probably the finest collection of barometers in the country and the latter a return to one’s childhood as you explore giant toadstools sitting alongside Sherman tanks to play in.

Inspired by this marvellous alternative travel guide, I decided to string together my own travelogue outside of the theme parks and the glamorous locations in search of my own set of mini miscreants, all with their own unique charm, sticking two fingers up at Chatsworth House, Madam Tussards and indeed Alton Towers.

I decided 3 rules for this malarkey:

1) Find a place with historical stuff in it. But nowhere that pulls in hoards of loud, bulging Americans or chubby School kids.

2) Go to a Heritage site. A bit like number one, but maybe something like a steam train ride or a place that it might be a good idea to read up about first, lest the disappointment is too crushing…

3) Go to the seaside. This could be a lottery. I am still amazed that I actually uttered the words “day return to Cleethorpes please”.

4) Go to a random town or City that’s got all or some of the above with stuff off the beaten track. Just be careful of the local’s, mentioning no names Lincoln.

Oops that was four, but you get my drift. Oh and no matter how bad the day out, I must at least take one picture for prosperity, even if it’s only of the train ticket for proof or a local branch of Greggs.

In no particular order, first off will be Brean Down Fortress, Somerset. The question now being should these tales now be called travelblogs? Whatever, just be sure if you are ever travelling through Devon and are near Great Torrington, do not hesitate to visit Barometer World, a troubadour amongst those telling Alton Towers where to get off…

Music at Sheffield Adventure Film Festival (ShAFF)

ABC are playing the Rotherham’s Women’s institute, Richard Hawley’s putting up shelves, Joe Cocker’s off surfing and the Artic Monkeys are washing their hair...

However if you want to catch some of Sheffield’s other great artists, they will all be down at the Showroom from Friday 4^th – 6^th March at The Sheffield Adventure Film Festival.

Full line up is here:

http://www.shaff.co.uk/other-stuff/live-music/

Please come along and show your support, bring an instrument, play and jam, sing if you want to, you never know we may find another Jarvis…

…or Tony Christie…

See you there