Magic Spells to help with performance fees: Night Out Scheme

 

Great News!!

The Tethered Fairy Ring

is now registered with Night Out

 

http://www.nightout.org.uk/default.asp

 

'Night Out is a public service, organised by the Community Touring Unit of the Arts Council of Wales in partnership with NEARLY all of Wales’ local authorities.

 

Night out has been operating throughout Wales

for the past 30 years. 

 

Night Out exists to bring exciting professional performances to community venues, and since its inception has helped thousands of performances in 100’s of venues. By helping local community groups to host live professional performances  without incurring the normal financial risks. 

 

 

IF YOU ARE A COMMUNITY ORGANISATION WITH ACCESS TO A SUITABLE HALL (e.g. Village Hall Committee / Parish Council / Youth club / School PTA etc),

you are ideally suited to use the scheme.

 

You don’t need to have a stage or special lighting but the hall must be wheelchair accessible and friendly to people with disabilities.

 

Night Out pays the performer fees.

 

You get the performer at a standard subsidised

price which is currently 50% of the full fee.

 

 In nearly all cases we can arrange for this to be completely or partially guaranteed by your local authority so that your risk of losing money is either minimised or eliminated.'

 

The full fee for The Tethered Fairy Ring is £150.00 plus travel. So why not register with Night Out and make a booking!

 

 

 

Mermaids, Dragons & Fairy Rings

 

Magpie Fairy by Artist Josephine Wall

www.josephinewall.co.uk

 

The fairy ring started to grow, tethering itself to my every thought ...

I had learnt a lot whilst working on The Dragon Tree. My Individual Mainline Grant from the Arts Council of Wales had enabled me take time out of my crazy work schedule, where ordinarily, I spend my life supporting different communities within the arts, having my own space to create was a rather gorgeous feeling, like coming home to myself.

 

 

Fairy's Fairy By Artist Josephine Wall

 

I decided a good place to start the creative process for The Tethered Fairy Ring would be by looking at the things I had enjoyed the most and thinking about what I would have done differently ... without cramping the flow and excitement of ideas and still allowing the fairy ring in my head, to do its' thing.

 

 

 Oak Fairy by Artist Josephine Wall

 

So, in a way, it felt as though I was letting the fairy ring grow on  her own creative journey, around the roots of my Dragon tree. It felt like a lovely natural way to move into my next story.

When I first started writing The Tethered Fairy Ring, it was very much coming straight off the back of The Dragon Tree. The Dragon Tree ends with a young lad called Hope on the rocks dancing, bit like the red shoes, not able to stop, and the Goddess of All Mermaids, offers him one of her scales, to enable him to go on a journey to find himself ... in The Dragon Tree, he says he's not ready to go on the journey and the book ends with the mermaid telling him to shout to the sea for her should he change his mind.

 

 

Silken Spells by Artist Josephine Wall

 

I knew therefore, that The Tethered Fairy Ring would start with a small boy on the rocks at the seaside in New Quay, West Wales and I knew it would end at the Tethered Fairy Ring, which would be growing around The Dragon Tree .. but as the story took it's own life, the links between the two books became less obvious and merely hinted at, so that if you have read The Dragon Tree book, you will have a few ... Ahhh, Oh, I get it ... moments.

In fact, having written this blog here for you, I have today decided to slip in a few subtle back references. I feel able to play around a bit with the storyline, now that I know it.

I also knew there would be a character called POP (Pockets of Poison: see earlier blog) I  knew how he was dressed, what his voice sounded like and he was the first clear character in my mind.
 

 

I think I saw a Fairy: By Artist Josephine Wall

 

 

 

 

I knew that rosary peas of red and black would feature in the story line, like the ones that Bob Edwards had taken out of his pockets and shown me in the Gallery.

We know how and why the fairies came into the storyline, (probably because they wanted to, fairies can be a bit pushy like that sometimes! wink)

 

... but what about the other characters?

Where did Grandma originate from?

Why dolphins?

and who is The Painted Lady Butterfly?

 

And then today, after posting the blog about Bruce as The Waxcap Wizard, I'm thinking it would be rather cool to make him into a character in the storyline, he needs to be there ... it's like the Wizard in the story has shown himself to me today ...

 

Copyright Source Unknown

 

 

I can visualise him stepping forward in my mind & coughing under his breath, with his hand clenched to his mouth.

 

            'Ha hum ... excuse me, yes, you there! I'm just checking you haven't forgotten about me, The Waxcap Wizard. I should be in the story line, don't you think?

 

           'Oh, yes, off course, sorry Sir. You're absolutely right, but where will I write you in?'

 

           'Well,' he says to me, 'I was rather thinking that the best place for me in the story line would be ...'    

 

But I won't tell you exactly what he said because that would kind of ruin the storyline for you ... but you get the idea!

 

So, you see, I didn't even have to worry about where he would fit into the story (wink) All I had to do was ask him in my mind's eye, and he told me!

 

Foto by Paul Schutzer 1962 at The Berlin Wall

 

 

Aside

You know, I am smiling to myself right now. This daydreaming mallarki was exactly the kind of thing that use to get a gal in trouble. When sat in school, I would gaze from the window and imagine all sorts, until a harsh voice reminded me just how important a slide rule was going to be in my life! (If you're a young person, you are now wondering, what is a slide rule! PRECISELY! & If you're my age, you're now smiling too, thinking ... yeah, why did we bother learning how to use that!) But what Maths Teachers need to remember, is that Day Dreaming for some, is the only escape; the only hope left!

 

 

 

 

 

Before telling you about the other characters in The Tethered Fairy Ring & how they popped up, I feel it's right to say a bit about the musical composition & how I came to compose a Symphonic Poem & Overture for my gang of L'il Ol' Ukuleles ... And luckily enough, as if the Wizard himself had planned it, that's exactly what my next blog will be about.

 NB: The beautiful fairy paintings are by an artist called Josephine Wall. I found her work on the internet and went to her website. Under licencing on her site, she very kindly gives people permission to use her work for not for profit websites, blogs etc ...  as long as she is credited and there is a link to her website: www.josephinewall.co.uk 

 

I'm sure you'll agree, her work is absolutely stunning.

 

 

 

A Sprinkling of Fairy Dust!

 

As I say in my last blog, it was very cold in Oriel Gallery. I had on my mittens & scarf & big coat & long johns, but there is nothing quite the tonic on a winter's day, as a nice cuppa.

 

 

Foto by Colin Baglow

 

So, I headed over to the Café for a brew. As I sat down, I glanced at the Garden magazine Y Gardd.

There was a really interesting write up in there about Fairy rings! Seems that there are AMAZING fairy rings at the Garden.

A fairy ring is a complete ring of toadstool/mushrooms.

There is one in the Garden reported to be 150 years old! In fact, it could be the oldest living plant in the Garden!

And I love that!

Mother Nature just doing her thing, while we're digging & pruning & building & being all corporate about it, she's having a little snigger, making magical things happen right under our noses without us realising!

 

Painting by Josephine Forest

 

There are so many fairy ring folk stories but the magazine explained the bio-science bit!

A fairy ring as we know it, grows free, in a field, at random, wherever it likes ... it grows in a circle because each mushroom or toadstool is inter-connected growing from the roots and goodness of the next mushroom and over time, the roots spread into a circle. It's almost like the mushrooms are all holding hands and breathing life into each other

(that's not the science bit, that's my little head ticking!)

 

I thought 'WOW! I never knew mushrooms were so utterly cool!'  I continued to read on ...

 

 

 

It seems there is also another type of Fairy Ring ...

... a Tethered Fairy Ring.

This is a fairy ring that grows from the roots of a tree and consequently, over many years, will co-exist with the tree roots, while it's own roots grow around the trunk, in a complete circle!!

 

'WOWZERS TROUSERS!!!'  I thought, as a I warmed my hands on my cuppa, 'That's just awesome.' And it totally is, don't you think!

Let's face it, it seems that we could
learn a thing or two from mushrooms!!

 

 

 

And then I pootled back over to Oriel Gallery to sit with my Dragon Tree Exhibition and it dawned on me ... there was a fairy ring growing in my mind around the dragon tree .. the dragon tree had been the journey I was on, and growing around that tree, my next creative adventure, a magical, mystical, beautiful, tethered fairy ring!!

 

 

With that, in walked Bob Edwards, my friend, who is a volunteer at the Apothecary. There's nothing he doesn't know about ... well, anything really! He very kindly came to sit with me & we got chatting about fairy rings.

 

 

 

But as we were chatting, he was twiddling with something in his pockets. 'What's in your pockets, Bob?' I asked. He pulled out a bag of red & black rosary peas ... little oval peas that look like rosary beads. Turns out they are horribly poisonous!! 

 

'So, you've got Pockets of Poison,' I said to him ... 'Pockets of Poison ... P.O.P ... Pop ... Mmm ... that could be a character in my new piece ... Pop ... in the Tethered Fairy Ring ... '

 

 

 

Bob had dried peas in a little plastic bag .. but when I looked on the internet for images, this is exactly how I envisaged them in the story line ... as a necklace

 

 

 

Bob got really excited, and he offered to go and ask Bruce if he would come and talk with me about it. Bruce knows just about everything there is to know about fairy rings and runs fairy ring talks at the garden as one of the members of the Education Dept.

He also set up the first Fungi Day at The National Botanic Garden of Wales, which was so successful that it has now become a National Event at all the Botanic Gardens ... Well Done Bruce!

 

And so it began ...

the journey to my Tethered Fairy Ring

 

 

Find out in my next blog, about the magical sprinkling of fairy dust that happened once Bruce & I got chatting about Fairy Rings!!