Hey folks, after a slow Mayoral start to 2022 things are picking up and the chains are starting to become glued to my hands or shoulders again. A local election brewing as well and I intend to stand for the position of town councillor again, so things are about to get mad busy!
On top of that, production of season 4 of my podcast ‘The Giant Pod with Andy Wrintmore’ is well underway, so momentum should kick in soon and I’ll feel unstoppable again. Talking of the Podcast, I’ve just put a conversation in the can with Thomas Sheppard – the current High Sheriff of Somerset – where we talk about the history of this almost ancient role and how it’s evolved and modernised throughout the centuries, how the selection process works and the Adventures of a High Sheriff in 2022. This episode will be released in March, I highly recommend you check this episode out when it’s released as Thomas is such an engaging, knowledgeable, charming and articulate guest with bags of knowledge and wisdom to enjoy.
I recently attended a Frome Town Football match at the Football Club between Frome and Totton (honestly never heard of them) and enjoyed soaking up the atmosphere and watching the boys get stuck in, unfortunately we lost, but the upside is we are sitting in a very good position in the league so it’s still very much for the taking. Hopefully I’ll be invited back to sink a few pints and destroy a couple of hot dogs.
After my sporting afternoon I had the pleasure of being invited to the beautiful Merlin Theatre to see “Phantoms” the latest offering from the world famous (and Frome based) multi-award-winning Mark Bruce Company. I’ve never been to a production solely about dance before and wondered, although I was completely open to it, whether I would “Get it” and I’m pleased to say I found it to be very thought provoking. Because there is little to no exposition in the story the dancers are telling, this leaves you analysing and interpreting the expressive and dramatic scenes and it’s pretty compelling stuff. For me it was an entirely new language and the beauty of it was that it’s a universal language, you could fill a theatre with people from all over the world and I believe we’d all be able to enjoy and understand this “Cinematic” dance experience. A thing of beauty I’m sure you’d agree. A huge shout out to all the performers and crew, nailed it!
In closing I’d like to give praise to the emergency services that dealt with the situation in the town centre on a recent Sunday afternoon which saw the main road through the town centre closed while Police, Firefighters, Paramedics and my man Tim Fielding from the Westway security team were on standby or carrying out their duties. I’m not going into details here about the incident, but I was watching from my flat (The Crow’s Nest) and they did such a great job of keeping everybody safe and were on their A-game. The best result we could have hoped for happened and it was business as usual very soon afterwards. Great stuff.
