BIFOCALS / RITUAL EXCHANGES

  https://anchor.fm/28daleslater/episodes/Ep-15-Three-Tides-Yorkshire-Coast-en45h6    This is another angle on the Horngarth, featured on  the podcast 28 Dales Later, which looks at events and features in the northern landscape. I did  a voice over on this one, drawing on what I wrote for the Flypaper Holiday Special, and some music which sees the piece out. "This piece is a part of a small body of work from John Hall on the Whitby Horngarth ,or Penny Hedge service, which takes place on Ascension Eve and dates back to the 12th  century and probably further back than that. Right... ,  Hornblower Tim Osborne with   Lol Hodgsons predecessor as Court Leet Bailiff Harry Green, and below, Harry's predecessor  Harold Hartland. It is tempting to explain , and so in an attempt to resist a single p.o.v, the work circles around the Service. "The Tide Will Turn" - which featured in the Broadcast Arts Festival Radiophrenia - draws on interviews and donated recordings from memb

https://vimeo.com/461636449 Me and my pal JD in Sheffield have played music of one sort and another for most of our lives, at least until this part of them when we havn't at all. Having put a song together using toy keyboards and drum machines it struck me as good idea to send it to him for a bit of  distanced collaboration. What came back was great, he surrounded my track with some things that provided good  options and others that once you heard them were instantly right and part of the thing. Jim Alexander is a pal from Ulverston, we seem to have done a fair bit of work together without really meaning to,,,either for his Fine Art degree or on community drama projects for Dalton Litfest and  Kate Davis. Jim told me of his new animation figures and showed me some exercises and lighting tests he'd done with them.  I was struck by how closely they seemed to follow the narrative of the song, and so I cut the files to fit the first couple of verses, using the same few frames sever

  The full Radiophrenia Broadcast of  "The Tide Will Turn":  https://soundcloud.com/bifocals-2013 About a year ago I was heading over the North York moors to talk to Margaret Noble, nee Hutton, whose family planted the Whitby Horngarth for the best part of a century in the muck of the North Harbour.   Margaret lives in Fylingthorpe, where I'd just spoken to Lol Hodgson, Court Leet Bailiff and the current custodian of the service since the turn of the century, the Court Leet having taken it on in the 80's. Lol talked me through the routine I'd seen him undertake earlier in the  year ; the finding and cutting of the hazel, the meeting with Hornblower Tim Osbourne on the harbour wall, and the planting and the hornblast and  the chanting. He talked around the service; you saw him as a kid bemused by it, and felt it arrive in his life through his office and grow into him, he carries his  care for it and his commitment to it like muck on his boots that never gets remove

 There is something to be said for pulling an  event before someone else tells you have to.   The Hallowe'en Candlelit Walk looked do-able for a while..the will was there...a fewer tickets, groups of 6 and under, more space . ..all options were explored  but it became hard to imagine the bustle of a mustering crowd without also seeing the possible cost. But the will was still there, and The Walk became a welcoming and responsible shuffle around the Gill, with throbbing LED mushrooms, music and projections , fire dancers,  displays like bright shrines in front of houses near the Mill, and  waxy sentinels watching from the trees.    I took the big witch for a cackling walk around town, provoking screams  from Chippy Bank Customers huddling in front of the carpet shop and an attempted good-natured piggyback launched from the alley at the side of Tesco. There were people around; I danced in Market Street with kids and parents and, at the bottom end of town, visited a circle of shadow