Hi Everyone

I expect you are all as confused as I am about where we stand at this moment in time. It is especially hard negotiating Presteigne High St without the ‘Angels in High Vis’ to tell one whether its safe to go into SPAR. However the people I feel most sorry for are the masked robbers. Now everyone is wearing masks it must make their job twice as difficult. Presumably they turn up at the bank, hand over their badly scrawled demands for a bag full of fivers and just get politely treated like all the other customers in masks. In fact if they are at the Leominster Lloyds main branch they probably get led off to a nice sofa where Della will scroll down on her ipad and inform them that sadly they only have £2.70 in their current account.

Anyway you’ll be delighted to hear that I’m not going to bludgeon you with a load of esoteric YouTube vids. This Blogg I’m going seriously mainstream. To start off we have the wonderful Frazey Ford who is my passion of the week. You might know her as a member of that excellent Canadian trio the Be Good Tanyas

But since 2010 she has also been releasing a series of great solo albums with a much more R&B feel. I somehow seem to have missed this stage of her career, unlike Al Green’s Memphis backing band the Hi Rhythm Section who produced and played on her stunning 2014 album ‘Indian Ocean’. This track is off that album and I am especially keen on the rubbish dance interludes (as people who watched One For the Road - Lugg Blogg, Leaving Lockdown will know). However if you would prefer to see Frazey in the Memphis studio, with the aforementioned Hi Rhythm Section then I recommend her video of the song September Fields.

The second vid is properly middle of the road. Yes it’s our old mucker from the Fab Four baby faced Paul McCartney. Yes, he who penned such unforgettables as The Frog Song, Mull of Kintyre, and Obla Di - Obla Da. I think this bit of film from The Late Late show with James Cordon is a simple but inspired idea. You might well have seen it before but if not I highly recommend you skip the first sycophantic portion of the film (Car Pool Karaoke) and start at 15.45 minutes in.

One of the most intriguing things about the film is guessing how much of a put up job it is. At first glance the punters do look genuinely surprised, but as the sequence rolls on and the word goes out about what’s happening there are a few questions that occurred to me. What is the first thing any self-respecting 21st century human does when confronted with a live Beatle? Yes they get out their mobile phones start filming and don’t stop till the parties over. Although there are a few phones visible during the intros once the band starts playing – none.

Are there lots of self-made bits of film of the event on You Tube? No, not one. Isn’t it slightly suspicious that when the filming starts there are exactly the right number of people in the pub to fill all the tables? Hmmmm, oh well it is a laugh and my doubts are probably FAKE NEWS!

Phew I don’t think I can keep this up. I feel myself slipping back to my bad old ways. What I need is a palate cleanser otherwise I’ll find myself humming Na Na Na Na Nana Na Na as I toddle off to bed. I know, how about this vid?

Fulu Miziki, which roughly translates into “music from the garbage”, is the name of a band founded by musical activist Piscko Crane. Members of the band only play instruments that are made from items that have been recycled from the garbage. Piscko’s concern when starting the band was that Kinshasa, formerly known as Léopoldville the capital and the largest city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was becoming very dirty! Piscko thought, “How can I bring attention to this problem”. It was then that the idea for a ‘garbage band’ was born. Fulu Miziki’s artists make their own performance costumes, masks and instruments. For Fulu everything can be reclaimed and re-enchanted. Enjoy, it’s wild.

Pete

TAKE THE WINDMILLS OFF YOUR MIND* by Mark Williams

Re-reading my last contribution to the Glugg Bog written way back in July I was struck by how much has changed since sliding, as we now seem to be, into the ‘new normal’, but conversely how my rather panglossian paean to Presteigne life thankfully, remains relevant. And although the admirable purpose of this newsletter is to provide an uplifting antidote to the gloom and anxiety of this despicable pandemic, I’m going to risk delivering yet more saccharine-coated observations. Well up to a point…

The point, or at least one of them, being that the Marches endures as a refuge for fans of the increasingly disparaged internal combustion engine. Indeed when I first came here in the 1970s it was a joy to find like-minded souls whose first task after – and sometimes before – breakfast was to check whether our motorcycles and cars would start, kick a few tyres, maybe adjust a contact breaker here or a drive-chain there even if we didn’t, or particularly if we didn’t plan to go anywhere that day. I’ve always loved and marveled at the mechanical ingenuity and precision of machinery and have made what I laughingly call a career of writing about it, and with the help of better skilled friends and the many specialist artisans hereabouts I learnt to maintain, repair, modify and yes, even build several cars and motorcycles which whilst often frustrating has ultimately been immensely satisfying.

Also deeply satisfying was the ability to take some of those cars and especially the motorcycles off into the hills beyond the constraints of tarmac to enjoy a network of ancient roads – muddy, rocky and often seriously overgrown tracks in fact – and see the countryside from a unique and often breathtaking perspective. The annual vintage car trials based in Presteigne and several motorcycle enduros a little further west still represent the good-naturedly competitive end of this, but new laws governing the use of hitherto legal off-road byways gradually and vastly limited the opportunities to enjoy them if it involved an engine, which is one reason why I hung up my mud-spattered goggles a decade ago.

But of course no such restrictions applied to those of us who also enjoy walking and even pedaling across the wonderful, unspoiled hills and valleys that surround us – indeed our local councils have improved signposting, gates and stiles that make it possible and ever more popular. But, and here’s the other point I was leading up to, if we’re not very careful that enjoyment may soon be coming to an end.

More specifically, the Radnor Forest is under threat from industrial scale windfarm development which will blight the landscape we take for granted if not actually cherish. An Edinburgh-based investment company have been offering cash to landowners in and around the Forest for the rights to build 20–30 massive turbines if the Welsh Government amends their National Development Framework to include areas that are outside those currently designated for wind farm development – which already include some 20% of rural Wales. Now as we who protested again the single wind turbine that scars the Llandegley Valley en route to Llandod (and incidentally ruined the nesting grounds of thousands of starlings) well know, the Welsh Government are willing to cave in to well-funded lobbyists and ignore both their very own and local council planning officers who rejected it.

This is the same Welsh government that has trumpeted the health benefits – physical and mental – of public access to open spaces during lockdown, as evidenced by the ever-increasing numbers of visitors to the Radnor Forest with its inherent tranquility, vast plant, animal and bird life, SSSIs, stunning views and yes, a few trails still open to off-road vehicles. And we should not ignore the benefits of all this to tourism and the small businesses and jobs that depend on it. The irony of bumbling Boris Johnson’s recent claim that all British homes would served by electricity from offshore windfarms by 2030 should not be lost here, and I personally strongly favour offshore energy production.

As things stands, a re-draft of the NDF is being considered by the Senedd until November 27th and I would urge anyone who cares what the Radnor hills will, quite literally look like in decades to come, to contact their local and national Welsh political representatives to ensure that this doesn’t happen again, but on a far larger scale than at Llandegley.

I personally have already expressed my concerns to key political players in this and have already received a detailed and supportive response from our local Senedd member, Kirsty Williams. However the Blugg Log is not really the place for a list of potential addressees nor an outline of what might be written to them, but I would nevertheless ask to you pitch in and to that end fuller details of the threat and how you might help thwart it can be found on my personal blog at www.markswill.wordpress.com.

Further useful info can be found on the Council for Protection of Rural Wales website at www.cprw.org.uk/news-and-events and also on a new, dedicated ‘friends of’ site at www.radnorfforest.co.uk.

* With apologies to Noel Harrison and Dusty Springfield

Dave Luke - A heartfelt plea to the residents of Presteigne

LOCKDOWN DRAWING - Josh Partridge

During lockdown earlier this year I spent weeks walking and drawing outside.

Near Kinsham I found a flock of Suffolk sheep, black faced like the ones we’d had on our Pembrokeshire farm. They were grazing in an abandoned Bulmers cider orchard, where the trees were all gnarled and grey, twisted like old bones. Certainly no hint of sap rising. But when the spring came they suddenly burst into a riot of pink blossom, followed by foliage. Now in autumn their branches are heavy with brilliant glossy red cider apples.

LIFE ON MARS - John Hymas

The third piece in our series of String Quartet and Pedal Steel arrangements is one of David Bowie’s most famous songs.

AN EXTRACT FROM DIGGING DEEPER WITH THE DUCHESS - Sam Llewellyn

Staff wanted

‘If there is one thing I with which I cannot be doing,’ said the Duchess, demonstrating simultaneously her vicelike grip of English grammar, her fluency in the demotic and her ancestral prejudices, ‘it is lack of staff.’ And actually for a change I knew how she felt.

Life has been moving crookedly at the Hope this year. The old plants still do their stuff in their allotted places. But certain things have changed - some for the better, viz. the old asparagus bed, dynamited after last season, is no longer the nomansland of twitch and creeping thistle that used to blight our days; and some for the worse, i.e. the Daphne Cneorum, most splendid of its tribe, which spent years rolling in an odorous red wave towards a sort of ledge at the edge of its bed, now seems to have fallen over it and has vanished without trace. This is a big problem, given the suicidal tendencies of most daphnes, our lack of skill at propagating same, and the fact that fresh supplies of cneorum seem only to be obtainable from the geniuses at Burncoose, where it comes in at thirty-five quid a pop. Still, the Woodland Floor plantings did their stuff in the spring, and now tremulously await the first signs of the last mowing.

Which is where the real difficulties come in. For while the weeds are being weeded and the plants tended with love and affection and all that, the heavier tasks about the place have somewhat fallen into abeyance. This is because Roger, who does the mowing and the chainsawing and annually cuts the 100 yard 15ft beech hedge round the kitchen garden, is not feeling very well, which he has a perfect right not to feel, because the first time he cut the hedge he was something over seventy years old, and that was ten years ago. But his absence, which we hope is strictly temporary, leaves a gap in the horticultural economy.

Actually it is not so much a gap as a thicket, in which brutal and low grade things are overtaking delicate and beauteous things with the remorseless violence of Czech trucks gatecrashing the London to Brighton Vintage Rally. I am not, of course, the only person to recognize this. The other day I was moodily practising croquet approach shots on the hay meadow formerly known as the South Lawn when one of the windows in the Tower flew open. A hand appeared, the forefinger extended, shuddering slightly so the many rubies of its rings took on a sort of migraine shimmer. For a moment my heart plunged, and my hand went to the cellar keys in my pocket, seeking reassurance like a traveller in a haunted glen groping for his St Christopher medal. Still there. The shudder was nervous tension, not, as so often, gin. I relaxed, and asked her what was eating her,

‘Staff,’ she said. ‘Staff, staff, staff, staff, staff.’ My trained senses suggested to me that she was talking about staff. I was not wrong. ‘Staff,’ she said. I was about to mention that it is odd, the way a word can lose its meaning with constant repetition, and that perhaps this is where transcendental meditation, which as far as I can tell involves the repetition of a meaningless mantra, gains its mind-clearing efficacy, when she uttered a low, plaintive cry. ‘The drive,’ she said, her voice tumbling like a cracked bell down the slope of a buttress. ‘When I was a girl the gardeners used to get down on their hands and knees an arm’s length apart and crawl down the gravel of the Long Avenue, removing stray weeds with their little spuds. They were sixty abreast, and they moved at a mile an hour. It took them all day. How we used to laugh at them, the sillies!’

Forbearing to mention that this silliness was all that stood between garden staff, dismissal, eviction and starvation, I affected interest in a plantain of surprising size. I would have to hear her out, in the same way that once you have started pouring treacle from a jug it is folly to stop before the jug is empty, as you get treacle everywhere, and everything is sticky for days.

‘The staff we used to have!’ cried the Duchess. ‘McTavish!’

‘Gesundheit,’ I said.

‘Ah, McTavish!' she said, ignoring the politesse. 'The Head Gardener! What whiskers, white and sweeping as the snowfields of Aviemore! What a suit of thornproof tweed, passed on by Great-Grandpa’s valet! What a watch-chain - ‘

‘And who else?’

‘Under McTavish there were three Heads of Department. There was Enzo, who was foreign but he couldn’t help it I suppose, who did the fruit. There was Nairn, who was a nephew of McTavish, who did the flowers. And there was Cyril Gumption, who did the vegetables. A bad thing happened to Cyril, because if he didn’t win Three Good Turnips every year at the Show he would have been dismissed instantly of course, but he always did, and nobody could understand why until one year he was found suborning Mrs Rigby the Chair of Judges behind the Duck Tent. In Flagrante Suborno, Enzo called it.’

‘What,’ I said, ‘is the Duck Tent?’

‘A tent for ducks,’ said the Duchess.

‘And what was the bad thing?’ I said, bracing myself for the saga of a husband dismissed and a family starving.

‘He had to marry Mrs Rigby,’ said the Duchess. ‘Eighteen stone if she was an ounce. Stop interrupting. He lasted a year. Under the Heads of Departments were the Departments, composed of propagators, and planters, and pruners, and weeders, and diggers, and composters, and apprentices, and O’Riordan who used to put the shoes on the donkey before it mowed the lawn so the croquet balls would run true...’

Here I must confess I tuned out, because my attention had been caught by the Trachelospermum jasminoides, which seemed to be practically leaping up the wall. I had tripped over one of these ordinary but terrifically sweet-smelling climbers in one of the quads at Univ during a recent meander round Oxford. It is a couple of doors away from the odd but affecting memorial to Shelley, in this rendition hovering somewhere pretty central on the trans spectrum, by Edward Onslow Ford; and the combination is hard to forget. I was dimly aware of the Duchess’s voice quacking away in the background as I meditated on the death of the poet, who as you will know drowned off Italy after refusing to reef his grossly overcanvassed boat, thanks, it is said by some, to the bad advice of Trelawny, a faux-pirate otherwise known as Lord Byron’s Jackal; and contrasting it with the extreme civility of the gardener at Univ, who, when I enquired about the beautiful glossiness of the trachelospermum in the quad, offered me a cutting thereof so the true line could continue...

‘So,’ said the Duchess, counting on her fingers. ‘That, with Mrs Maggs who made the tea, makes sixty-one in the garden.’

‘I thought you said sixty.’

‘McTavish never did any actual gardening.’

‘So what did he do?

‘Sat at a desk in a potting shed and drank tea. At least he said it was tea,’ said the Duchess. ‘Though I always thought it smelled like whisky. Well, can’t stand here talking all day. Time to get on with it.’

‘Get on with what?’ I said, realising with what you might call a sick apprehension that during the wanderings of my mind I had missed a significant remark. But too late, for the window had slammed, and she was gone.

The next thing I heard was the wheeze of a starter motor and the putter of an engine, increasing to a thunder as an unseen hand jammed the throttle on to the stops. Two minutes later a ride-on lawnmower hurtled round the corner on two wheels, the Duchess wild-eyed at the helm. She roared past me, spewing cut grass and shouting words that I construed as follows: ‘If a job’s worth doing it’s worth doing yourself!’ So crying she carved a green trench across the South Lawn and smacked into an apple tree. Smoke began to rise, quickly followed by the discreet orange lick of flame.

I had already filled the fire buckets. Picking up one in each hand, I began to stroll towards the wreckage. Staff, I was thinking. Staff required.

GARDEN @ No 3 - Sabina Rüber

October - The shorter days and cooler nights are putting an end to the abundance. The dahlias are still going but are losing their fizz and it's become time to think about which to keep and which to lose. Thoughts start to turn to next year.

The ebullience of seeing all those plants - from seeds, tubers, corms and bulbs - fulfilling their promise, is diminishing. We are preparing to move on. It is a month of starting to clear but also of planning and anticipation.

Which brings me to one of my all-time favourite indulgences : Spring bulbs!

This is the time to imagine the garden anew and look forward to the promise of Spring. I love putting thought into colour and colour combinations, preparing the pallet for inspiration and experimentation, imagining freshness and renewal - anticipating the fragrances to come!

For now, along with the “Last of the Summer" blooms, there are Autumn starlets looking for sunny days to sparkle.

Our October stars include...

Colchicum ‘Waterlily’ and Tulbaghia 'John May Special’.

Eucomis comosa and Pennisetum villosum ‘Cream Falls’, grown from seed this grass flowers in its first year.

Beautiful soft pink of Hesperantha coccinea 'Jennifer' and Anemone x hybridus ‘Montrose’ - a new acquisition which has been on my wish list for a while.

Cobaea scandens, a vigorous annual climber with beautiful foliage is always late flowering in my garden.

A herald of Autumn : ground covering Cyclamen hederifolium and the last of Gladiolus murielae.

Our tomatoes did very well for the first year - possibly because they got some proper TLC …

And to the promise of Spring…

A selection of small Spring bulbs and Erythronium dens canis - dog's tooth violet - it's in the shape of it's bulbs.

Hyacinths:

… And yes! I’m imagining the scent…

THE RIVER WYE - Kate Bull

As full lockdown restrictions eased in the early summer, I started to go swimming in the River Wye, at The Warren in Hay, with our youngest son Wilf who was locked down with us. We had some lovely early mornings, surrounded by birdsong, with just the occasional dog-walker for company, little fish nibbling at our toes and herons standing in the stillness upstream. One day I even saw a kingfisher flash by - I'd never seen one before. So when I came across a report by the Wye and Usk Foundation saying that the rich life in the river was being suffocated by algal blooms - thought to be exacerbated by phosphate run-off from the many Industrial Poultry Units (IPUs) in Powys and Herefordshire - I felt it intensely personally. On the spur of the moment, I set up a petition on change.org, asking Powys County Council to institute an immediate moratorium on planning permissions for all new or extended IPUs until further research can be undertaken into the accumulative effect of phosphates on the Wye.

I barely promoted the petition at all - a couple of posts on my Facebook page, and a tweet or two - and kind of forgot about it. A few weeks later, my son drew my attention to it. "Mum, have you looked at your petition?" he called. Expecting it to have an embarrassing 37 or so signatures, I went to look. It had 20,000. It had clearly been shared and signed, quite organically by people who care about this wonderful river, and was spreading like... well, like algal blooms? Or ripples on water.

Even then, I was so busy I let it lie. Every week 'petition' was at the top of my to-do list, and every week I didn't quite get round to doing anything about it. Then suddenly at the end of August, there was a huge interest in it, as it was nearing 75,000 signatures. I was interviewed on BBC Hereford & Worcester one morning (the excitement!) and then it was taken up by BBC Wales who came to Hay to film an interview and mercifully modest footage of me swimming in the river. Meanwhile, two other local campaign groups got in touch with me, energised by the number of people clearly concerned about the state of the river and demanding action. As I write, the petition is up to an astonishing 76,932 signatures - more than double the number of people who voted in the last Powys CC elections.

I have 'presented' the petition to the Council which has yet to get back to me - but I have heard that it has made waves with councillors and officers, and is amplifying the clamour for action to save the Wye.

Let's scroll back to the summer again. Our Wilf was so fired up by the Black Lives Matter movement that he decided to make a banner and put it up in the middle of Gladestry, where we live. He attached it to the railings outside the school (which was closed at the time, due to Covid), as that's the only place he could hang it, practically. Less than a day later it had disappeared. We feared the worst: it had been taken down by a racist, or an 'all lives matter' exponent - but through a bit of canny detective work, we found out it had been removed by the overly conscientious school caretaker who'd decided it was not appropriate to be on school property. This led to us writing to the headteacher and chair of governors to explain Wilf's action, which led to an "interesting" discussion of the whole topic at a governor's meeting, we heard; but the banner stayed down. However, then Wilf had an email from the head, saying that she'd discussed the message of the banner with a group of year 5 pupils who had then expressed their wish to create posters inspired by BLM. She ended her email: "When we are back in school they have decided this topic will continue and that the results will appear on the school fence, facing outwards to educate the passers-by. I thank you for providing the challenge and the purpose to make the most of the last few weeks of my career."

Unintended consequences ripple out from positive action. Never think that "it's not worth doing something", however small. It always is.

If you haven't done so already, you can sign the petition here

Get in touch with Friends of the Upper Wye, a new campaign group based in Hay: richard.s.greatrex@gmail.com

Contribute to the fund fighting a legal battle against the expansion of an industrial-scale livestock farming unit in the Golden Valley, which will potentially cause huge damage to the Wye here

BRECON BAROQUE FESTIVAL

Alison Giles Brecon Baroque Festival Producer

Brecon Baroque Festival will première its 2020 Online programme of events from October 23 to 25. There's a preview of the 'main event', a new arrangement for nine instruments of one of the world's most celebrated keyboard works, Bach's Goldberg Variations. www.breconbaroquefestival.com/2020

Chad Kelly’s new arrangement of the Goldberg Variations was rehearsed and filmed in the sun-drenched south transept of Brecon Cathedral, between August 10 and 12 2020. It was very important to us to film this in Wales, and to have one of the festival's home venues as a backdrop. The Artistic Director, Rachel Podger, is a local as are all of us who make up the festival team.

The transept dates from the 13th Century. Its magnificent stone walls are adorned with 18th Century memorials, a fitting backdrop for this reimagining of JS Bach’s 1741 Goldberg Variations. The 32-movement work and the setting of Brecon Cathedral sit well together, with the fabulous energy of the musicians and the backdrop of Brecon and the Beacons.

Despite great uncertainty about whether the project could go ahead, and a constant need to monitor and assess its feasibility in the light of Covid-19, we gathered nine superb Brecon Baroque musicians in the Cathedral. They and the Festival team worked tirelessly to film a recreation of the Goldbergs that the musicians described as “genius” and “quite extraordinary”.

The filming was carried out by a crew of recent graduates from the Creative Industries Faculty at the University of South Wales. During a summer that should have seen their degree shows and launch into the professional world, they came together to work on this project and under the direction of two of their course tutors, Lyndon Jones and Viv Mainwaring. We were also delighted to have input to our short documentary film from writer and broadcaster Horatio Clare, who was brought up in the Black Mountains.

The festival will remain online to view again or for later viewing until the end of January 2021. I hope you enjoy the trailer below, and might be able to watch more online at some point over the next 3 months. A Festival Pass or individual event ticket can be booked at www.breconbaroquefestival.com/2020.

The first trailer of Chad’s arrangement - a snippet from Variation 4:

HOUSE ON FIRE - Lois Hopwood

What happened when I invited myself to submit a piece of work to the new exhibition ‘Standing Together’ at the Oriel Bleddfa.

As a middle aged white woman living in a predominantly white county, I found it a challenge to think of something to make for this exhibition, what to do, where to begin, where to tread.

So I went to the teenagers.

And they said,

‘What about the analogy of the house on fire Mum’

So having a literal mind, I made a simple card model of a house (flat packed) and we took it to the top of the hill and set it on fire*. It made so much smoke that I had to put it out again and make a fast exit**. But not before we got it in the can.

As it turned out putting the model on water was a good move for health and safety reasons, but it also gave it an unlikely environment to sucker you in, but the real gift we got in filming was the movement on water.

I wondered while cooking tea to Sam Cook about what sound track I should use and put my recorder next to Alexa and boom it was done!***

Amongst the work we have in the exhibition in the Oriel Bleddfa is Jane Thomas’s collection of Brexit signs and her story of that year of protest at Westminster, a case of wooden cameras by Andy Hazell with work from Hereford and Ludlow Sixth Form Colleges. Do come along and visit the exhibition, open until 23rd October (Thursdays-Sundays 11- 4).

And thankyou to all those people who came to see us for the Made in Knucklas weekend, it wouldn’t have been the same without you xx

*It had been raining for months.

** My Guerrilla cinematographer (who is quite good at running downhill holding a tripod) was seriously cross.

*** No I don’t have permission but I do have his album on vinyl which I believe counts.

The Sidney Nolan Trust

Although we’ve not been able to open to the public this year, due to Covid-19, we have still been busy behind the scenes – like many arts organisations, preparing applications to emergency grant funds as well as adapting the plans we had in place pre-lockdown and then, once staff were able to return to full complement from furlough we were able to shift some of our focus and time to our internationally important collection and archive. We were very grateful to receive funding from the National Lottery Heritage Emergency Fund, some of which enabled us to continue the work on the photographic archive, already started under a National Archive Scoping Grant. There are many thousands of photographs which Sidney Nolan took during his extensive travels, as inspiration for later paintings, of his personal life and family, and to document his artworks. Although we’ve only touched the surface, we can already see that it’s going to be an exciting exploration, giving us a comprehensive record of the artist's life and works which the photos capture.

Being closed, however, we have greatly missed our many visitors, school groups and artists in residence during the summer, who bring so much energy and vitality to The Rodd. Yet, that does not mean that the Gardens don’t still need much tending. Our resident Groundsperson, with the support of our invaluable volunteers, has been kept well occupied managing the gardens of Rodd Court and the wider estate. Particular attention was paid to making the Dutch Barn and surrounding area more suitable for learning groups, so we can be ready to welcome them back. In addition the gardens of Orchard Cottage, our onsite holiday accommodation, have also been closely tended – this has proved to be a welcome haven for our holiday guests from the craziness of the Covid-19 world and, of course, all the bookings have made a valuable financial contribution!. The recent storms caused some damage in Rodd Wood so a concerted effort is being made to keep access and footpaths clear. It’s such a beautiful peaceful area for walking through while the main site in closed.

We are sad though to announce that our Director, Andrew Craven, will be leaving the Trust at the end of November for personal reasons. During his two years in the post, Andrew has built a new team and successfully led the Trust through a number of key projects, including, following its acquisition in 2018, opening Rodd Court to the public; launching a local schools visits programme; curating Nolan’s Time at The Rodd exhibition and, more recently, contending with the very profound impact of the Coronavirus pandemic.

TINS - Noreen Davies

I painted these tins from my collection as I didn’t have to go far - just put them on the table, switch Radio 4 on and off you go. I’m going to be doing some more soon, and some wine bottles (painting not drinking…)

And finally - THE QUIZ!

And just a reminder, if you would like to contribute something to this ‘not so lockdowned for the moment’ blog in the form of art, photography, music, travel, Presteigne history, literature, local lore, gardens, food which you think might fit into future issues, please send your stuff to luggblogg@outlook.com. We’ll keep it going through the shorter days of winter.