Author: James Ellis

October, 2018

I’ve had a cold recently and I haven’t been exploring the real world as much as usual. Just hanging around the house drinking lemon and honey and cough medicine. Colds are boring and doing nothing started me thinking about hobbies.

My parents didn’t have any hobbies. They went to work, came home and watched TV. Dad whistled but I don’t think that counts even though it took up a lot of his spare time. Warble, trill, shrill, vibrato, he liked to do it all, all the time, often at the same time. It was like living with R2-D2. My friends’ parents were the same (not the whistling but the no-hobby thing). I didn’t know anybody who had a hobby. And I was the same and so were all my friends. We went to school, came home and watched TV. The whole town was a slumber zone of non-activity. And that got me thinking even more. The whole town was the same.

Hold that thought.

Have you ever noticed how few chain stores there are in Bradford on Avon? There are some but not many. Most of the shops are independent concerns: cakes, vegetables, cheese, coffee, books, dogs, art, gifts, clothes. And there are loads more. That’s a lot of entrepreneurial juice for one small town, don’t you think? And what about all the special interest clubs? If I wanted to take up knitting with fluff, I bet I’d find a local group that’s already doing it. And then there are all the alternative life-style people wearing homemade shoes and dressed in hummus, and the packs of artists and sculptors and writers who haunt the cafés drinking decaf soy lattes with a caramel drizzle. This is a very creative town.

The whole town is the same.

Where I grew up nothing happened outside of work except a localised pocket of whistling. In Bradford on Avon there is a bubbling cauldron of go-getting vim. And consider this: before I came here I sat around and ate biscuits and stared at the wall, now I’m growing vegetables – not on me, I mean in the garden. Admittedly there’s only one cucumber covered in spots and a miniscule butternut squash, but even so. And I’ve also taken up the ukulele. No-one in the history of my family all the way back to Australopithecus Lucy has ever played a musical instrument (no, whistling doesn’t count).

I’ve given this a lot of thought and I’ve come to a shocking conclusion. It’s the government. They’re putting something in the water. I know, it’s unbelievable. But this is what I think happened: at some point in the past, perhaps during the Thatcher years, it looked like we would have to evacuate the planet. I’m hazy on the details but that’s the shape of it. And what they did was create a series of arks, communities with certain specialities, so that when the time came to get going everybody would be organised in the right compartments.

Bradford on Avon is an entrepreneurial and creative ark. The town I grew up in was a TV watching ark. I’m not clear how that would help in colonising a new planet but you have to trust the authorities because they know best. Anyway, that’s what I’ve been thinking about recently. I told Sally and she said I need more fresh air and to stop drinking all the cough medicine. But I’m thinking of setting up a knitting-with-fluff club. I don’t want to but I can’t help myself. Anyone interested?

September, 2018

An English teacher once handed back an essay I’d written by scrunching it into a ball and throwing it at my head. When I unscrunched it (the essay not my head) every page was criss-crossed with creases.

I mention this for two reasons. Firstly, although I didn’t keep the essay (it was rubbish) it still has a role in my life. We’re connected. From that ball of paper came better writing, better stories and who knows, perhaps better Gudgeon articles. Secondly, I’ve noticed my face is starting to look like that essay. Time is marking me in the same eloquent but unsubtle way – with creases.

It was with this cheerful thought that Sally and I went for our daily walk. “What I need,” I said as we approached Barton Grange Farm, “is a James Ellis Preservation Trust. A group of volunteers who are willing to give up their time, restore me and keep me looking great.”

“Or to stuff you,” Sally said. “And put you in a jar.”

“But I’m still alive,” I said. “Anyway, I don’t want to be a museum piece. I’m not talking about conservation. I’m talking about active preservation, of retaining a function, of having an ongoing value and being relevant to the future.”

We looked at the West Barn. Hard to imagine that the grass on which we stood had once been a muddy, puddle-covered car park. Harder still to imagine that this building, which was partially destroyed by fire in 1982, pre-dates the Tithe Barn which itself is about 700 years old. Thank goodness the West Barn was restored and re-opened. It now hosts meetings and private functions and has public open days every week.

“This is what I mean,” I said. “Benefitting from the past by contributing to the collective good.” That’s how I talk sometimes, like a socialist pamphlet. “The key to the future is to keep the past and the present connected,” I droned on. “Did I ever tell you about my scrunched up essay?” But I could see that Sally was still thinking about me being in a glass jar.

Unlike me, Bradford on Avon does have a preservation trust and one of the reasons this town looks so remarkable is because of that trust’s good work. Priory Barn and Priory Barn Cottage, the Pippet Buildings on Market Street, Newtown Sprout, Barton farmyard itself, country park plantings – all these were rescued or created (and in some cases are still run) by the Bradford on Avon Preservation Trust and its volunteers.

Volunteers are the lifeblood of any community. They can’t be praised enough. They pick up litter and look after swans’ eggs and manage historic barns and run fund-raising events and write in The Gudgeon about the climate and sustainability. They get things done and they care. We need that in this world and we also need a regular churn of volunteers to keep that vital link to the future. Their voices with new ideas and different perspectives can answer the existential question that plagues all successful charities: what should we do next?

We walked to the river and watched the water drift by. I said, “You know, it’s not about preserving the past at all, is it? It’s about preserving the future.” But Sally just gazed at me with a faraway look and said, “I might go on a taxidermy course.”

You can read more about the Bradford on Avon Preservation Trust at www.bradfordheritage.co.uk. And if you’re interested in setting up an organisation devoted to my restoration that doesn’t involve glass jars, do let me know.

August, 2018

As I sit down in my garden preparing to write this month’s article for The Gudgeon, I can hear a Sunday morning church congregation. Their collective larynx rises in adoration and prayer, and I’m reminded that the human voice is the greatest of all musical instruments – apart from mine which sounds like a rusty hinge.

Listening to their hymns floating in the air causes me to ponder on the extent to which, in Bradford on Avon, religious life is all around us and for many, within.

At article-writing-school there was a sign that read: ‘Beware Writing About Religion’. The gnarled old hacks who tutored us would wag their nicotine-stained fingers and wheeze: “Find another subject unless you know what you’re talking about.” And they taught us to write about bridges and dogs and railway stations instead.

But it’s hard not to touch on the subject of religion when you live here. Especially for an inquisitive agnostic like me. Take bell-ringing. I stand in my garden watering my cucumber on a Monday morning and I hear the distant peal of church bells. Sally and I go for a late walk on a Wednesday night and we hear another distant peal. Why are bells ringing at all these random times?

Of course, I’m sure they’re not random. I just have no idea what’s going on (which, to be fair, is the natural state of an agnostic). I sometimes wonder if the bells are talking to each other and then I wonder if anyone is pulling their ropes. And then I lock all the doors.

But I do find the peal of bells comforting. Perhaps because I associate the word ‘peal’ with a positive, joyous mood – as in, ‘peals of laughter’. Interestingly, we have a friend coming to stay who has a phobia of bells – Kampanaphobia (that’s the fear, not his name). He’s going to have a great time especially when we show him around all the churches.

That will be quite a task. During my daily walks I’ve counted fourteen places of worship and I’m sure there must be more. They’re part of the fabric of the town. Part of its shape, its sound, its substance.

Some are more famous than others. The Anglo-Saxon church of St Laurence is the ecclesiastical town celebrity, appearing in both Simon Jenkins’s Great English Churches and Betjeman’s Best British Churches. St Laurence was a tough cookie. He was martyred on a gridiron with hot coals but allegedly called out, “I’m well done on this side. Turn me over.” He’s now the patron saint of chefs and comedians.

What also blows my mind is that this church contains a piece of fossilised tree thought to have been shaped 150 million years ago. That’s insane. Whenever I see that piece of ancient tree my brain stops working and I have to be taken outside and sat down.

My favourite place is the Chapel of St Mary Tory. Perhaps because it was once a hermitage and a pilgrim chapel on the route between Glastonbury and Malmesbury, it fosters in me a sense of quiet contemplation. I could sit there for hours, still and silent, and think of nothing and anything. Which, coincidentally, is how I write articles.

And that reminds me: I have a deadline to meet. I should stop pondering and start writing. The old hacks at article-writing-school were very firm on that. They had another sign that read: ‘Always Hit Your Deadline’. I suppose if I’ve ignored one diktat then the least I can do is follow the other. The question is, what shall I write about?

July, 2018

Nature hurts and nature heals – that’s my observation. Take stinging nettles. Whenever Sally and I walk along a country path a group of stinging nettles will look up, notice I’m wearing shorts, nudge each other and lean in to give me a good stinging. Every single time.

But I don’t mind because there’s always a clump of dock leaves waiting with their soothing sap. Gardeners call them weeds, I call them heroes. Pain and relief in close proximity – that’s how nature works. It’s the same with bee stings and honey; minor accidents and injury claim lawyers. Left alone, ecosystems balance themselves out.

And it’s the same with the BoA ecosystem. Example: whenever I catch a train to Bath it’s delayed. I don’t know why, it must be something to do with me. But the disappointment stings like a nettle. The antidote to this is the perfectly packaged place of well-being that is Bradford-on-Avon Railway Station – a place I would go to even if I wasn’t expecting to catch a train (which is, in effect, what I actually do).

For a start, the station’s name has hyphens (come on, we all know that’s how it should be), and there are plants and gardens to look at maintained by volunteers from Friends of Bradford-On Avon Station – which shows how nice this station is, it has friends. I can relax in the shrubbery or run up and down the zig-zag slope, or calm down in one of the waiting rooms.

The waiting rooms are cleaner than my house and they have interesting information on their walls such as the station’s history, framed posters from bygone times, and a plaque thanking the local community for its input to the station’s improvements. There are also special thanks to the Heart of Wessex Rail Partnership and the West Wiltshire Rail Users Group. I’d like to thank them too.

In the ticket office, Sandy, one of the front-line staff who are there between 06.30 and 13.30, six days a week, gives a regular masterclass in friendly, professional and informed customer care, fielding questions about train times, connections, best routes, facilities in Bradford on Avon, what the weather might be like next year and how to cure the common cold. Okay, maybe not those last two but pretty much everything else.

The pub cats, Cheese and Onion (do you know which is which?) show up to take the heat out of the morning commuter queue and everyone knows that stroking animals is therapeutic – unless it’s a bee or an angry rhinoceros in which case you mustn’t stroke them at all, ever (see my note on honey and injury claim lawyers).

Coffee can be bought from The Coffee Girl, the mobile barista who is normally outside the station in the mornings, and if necessary there is fast access to the river in case I decide to swim to Bath.

Looking west from the station towards Avoncliff, I can just see the two open crossings which form part of our walks and where I usually get attacked by those darn stinging nettles. I wouldn’t stop taking those walks for the world, nettles or not, just as I wouldn’t stop travelling by train, delays or not. Pain and relief in close proximity, that’s how it works. And as I wait for my train I’m reminded that there are worse ways of passing the time. I could stand there all day. Sometimes I have to.

(The Gudgeon features an excellent regular column, Railway Tales, which offers far more knowledge on all things railway-related than I ever could.)

June, 2018

As usual, we’ve left it late to book our summer holiday. Every year Sally and I promise ourselves that next year we’ll be more organised; that in February we’ll do some research, make decisions and get everything booked in plenty of time. In my mind’s eye I’ll be like Matt Damon playing Jason Bourne – travelling light with a backpack and a good book.

But that never happens. Every year spring arrives and we’ve not even begun to think about summer and in the end we book something last minute in late autumn. And I look like Captain Mainwaring from Dad’s Army, not Jason Bourne.

When I was young we holidayed in Cornwall every year in August. That was before there were fast roads or direct routes; when travelling from London to Penzance took us two days. Mum, Dad, my sister, my Nan and I would squeeze into the family Fiat 125 which was essentially a small and unreliable oven, and amuse ourselves with travel games and summer specials and packets of Spangles while Dad shouted at all the other cars. I still feign sleep whenever I hear the phrase, ‘Exeter bypass’.

Happy days.

For me ‘Summer holiday’ conjures up images of sunny skies and balmy breezes and being away and carefree, and waiting for the AA on a grassy verge next to an overheating Fiat.

I was musing on this as I cut through from Westbury Gardens into St Margaret’s Hall car park and I saw the Octagonal Twinning Garden. I’d not noticed it before but there it was (and still is): a beautiful stone mosaic; a piece of public art celebrating Bradford on Avon’s twinning with Sully sur Loire (another town with an ambivalent approach to hyphens) and Norden, and West Wiltshire’s twin, Elblag.

Perhaps it was because I was thinking about summer holidays but the colours in the mosaic reminded me of warm seas and Cornish rock pools; and the images of butterflies, birds and fish made me want to go on a picnic and fall asleep by a river.

Were the Fates intervening, I wondered? Should we go on holiday to Sully sur Loire or Norden or Elblag – or all three? I rushed to the library to check them out but it was Tuesday and the doors were locked, so I rushed to Uncle Google instead.

I discovered that Elblag is in northern Poland and has a canal that was named one of the Seven Wonders of Poland – that must be the over-achieving twin. Sully sur Loire is in north-central France, sits sur Loire and dates back to medieval times just like Bradford on Avon. We’ve been its twin for over 25 years. Norden is in Lower Saxony in Northern Germany, on the shores of the North Sea. We twinned with it in 1969 – which was the same year that our Fiat blew up on the Exeter bypass.

Friendship and understanding between the municipal siblings is promoted by local twinning associations that also facilitate visits, arrange social events, publish newsletters and generally keep the connections alive. And in a world of shifting politics I think that is a very important function.

All this talk of twinning has got me thinking. What if, in each of these other towns, there is an author who looks like Captain Mainwaring, and one writes for a magazine called Le Gudgeon, one for Der Gudgeon and one for Ryba. Wouldn’t that be great?

Only one way to find out. Time to book a holiday.

(Apologies to all if my translations fall short of accurate.)