Close up at Café Lento

Sally Bavage writes:

The second event of the fourth Headingley Litfest – A Sense of Self - was held at Café Lento on North Lane.  A well-mixed crowd ranging in age from the teens to the seventies were treated to half a dozen tales.  True or false: you decide.  Autobiography or whimsy? Lost youth - in the tale from one ex-social worker - or lost youth from presenters remembering their glory days?

Café Lento was packed with close to 30 local residents happy to listen to the background jazz (a foretaste of the Music Festival in Headingley from 13 to 19 June this year) and drink in the stories as well as the coffee.  A warm atmosphere as old friends greeted each other and new ones struck up conversations with their neighbours who were, well, close up.

Was a Facebook search for a first, lost love the reminiscences of a man reflecting on the path his romantic life had taken, or the story woven by a talented raconteur and wordsmith?  (Proprietor Richard Lindley)

Did the Revolution (of about  three decades ago) come to a small Pennine town, welcomed in by flyposters who ‘drove their chevy to the levee’ (actually a Morris Minor with a faulty tail light) on the way to the local factory?  (Moira Garland)

Was Pete Townsend really second choice for The Who, supplanting the first choice from the Isle of Man whose drummer friend told the tale?  And what a tale – of stagefright, flying drumsticks and a brief stage appearance with the renowned bandleader Ivy Benson.  (Doug Sandle)

Not a daffodil but a bog asphodel made an appearance, giving us commentary on the booted walkers passing by.  (Mary Mayall)

No boots on the next walkers, just trainers needing repair and a cuppa in a twee teashop on Haworth Main Street as cold rain sheeted down and the lives of the Brontës in the Parsonage Museum prompted debate.  (Lis Bertolla)

Finally, a tale of evacuation – no, not from a war but from a horse called Oliver on a mission to contribute something less than mysterious - and steaming - to a Leeds city centre reading of the banns announcing a production of the Chester Mystery Plays. (Richard Wilcocks)

A mixed bag indeed, and gently enjoyable for the range and scope of the stories.  How much was invention, how much recollection – will we ever know?

Oscar Wilde adds:

A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction. 

Below, Doug Sandle reads:

Gujerat met Sicily

Salvo’s Salumeria is intimate and full of atmosphere – more so yesterday evening, when Hansa came. It was, of course, the first event of the LitFest.....let’s hope they all go as well as this one.

Gip Dammone  introduced Hansa Dabhi, who is quite a storyteller as well as a great authority on cooking and the Hindu Philosophy of Food and Lifestyle: she spoke about her exit from Uganda, just before the dictator Idi Amin got into his stride, and about how she took the first steps towards setting up the now-renowned all-female vegetarian Gujerati restaurant down in the middle of the city, which many of her audience, I suspect, have visited.

We were looking at the starters which had been delivered to our tables as she described them in detail and gave their names and ingredients in both English and Gujerati – Bateta Vada, Pau Bhaji and Patudi. You’ll find the recipes in her second cookbook. She went on to talk about how expensive the medical services were back in Uganda – the Western sort that is. Her family always had the spice box at hand for cuts and colds: a sore throat, for example, could be cured by adding a teaspoon of Cumin seeds (Jeera) and small pieces of dry ginger to a glass of boiling water. After it has cooled down and been strained, it should be taken twice daily.

Sicilian-style pasta with aubergine and tomato was the main course from Gip Dammone. This was followed by a dessert which Hansa said was easy to make. She demonstrated the truth of this in front of us. It was Fruit Shrikhand – her version of a popular Gujarati yoghurt curd dessert with tropical fruit, garnished with cardamom.

There was more on the use of the spice box for the treatment of everyday ailments (from husband Kish) and plenty of copies of the second cookbook (Hansa’s, more than just a restaurant....It’s my life!) to be signed and sold.

Gip Dammone looks rather like Dizzy Gillespie, and he indulged us by playing recordings of sessions by the great jazz trumpeter, along with performances by Louis Jordan dating from the late forties. A man of taste!

Rommi Smith at Heart - evening of 26 March

Richard Wilcocks writes:
Poetry and Jazz is something which brings back memories of the sixties, which immediately dates me, of course. How well I remember my late teenage haunt, the old Peanuts Club, upstairs at the Kings Arms behind Liverpool Street station, where the likes of Mike Westbrook and Mike Osborne played and the likes of Bill Butler, Jeff Nuttall, Mike Horovitz and even myself blasted forth. Blending poetry and music (Coltrane-related Jazz a lot of the time) was a big scene in the sixties - I remember watching Danny Abse doing it with aplomb, and everyone knew that over in the States it happened in every smoky café. But enough of the nostalgia....

It's still going strong, and one of its most stunning practitioners in these parts is Rommi Smith, but to be accurate, we can't just say poetry and jazz in her case. She is a brilliant poet, musician and playwright whose work fuses spoken word and music. She has been performing since the age of fourteen and has achieved a reputation for sharp, socially conscious poetic imagery coupled with astute harmonies and jazz, funk and soul rhythms.

She has done so much that it is difficult to do her justice in a few paragraphs. My most recent view of her (through a camera lens) was in Leeds Civic Hall at the awards ceremony last October for the 2010 Leeds Peace Poetry Competition. For the second year running, she was the chief judge. After insightful and sympathetic comments, she called each winner in the primary and secondary school categories individually from the audience, and each one stepped forward bravely to read. Applause swelled, cameras flashed, smiles spread. If only all teachers (and judges) were like that...

Rommi performs her work regularly, both nationally and internationally at arts, music and literature festivals.  Rommi’s work has been broadcast on various media, including the BBC - print and audio versions of Rommi’s work are featured on the BBC website. Google her now!

During the bicentenary celebrations for the abolition of the slave trade, she was Poet in Residence at the Houses of Parliament, and she is currently in residence at John Keats's house in London. Use the link on the right to read more about her - there's plenty.

And if you haven't done so already,  get your ticket for the evening of  Saturday, 26 March, when she performs with the excellent Fruit Tree Project in the Shire Oak Room at Heart in Bennett Road. It is going to be something which will be remembered for a long time, so make sure you are there!

The Girl in the Polkadot Dress

Richard Wilcocks writes:

When Beryl Bainbridge (who sadly died last July) spoke in the New Headingley Club in 2009 (second Headingley LitFest, click on the link on your right), she read from her novel in progress The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress. She dwelled at length on the assassination of Bobby Kennedy in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on 5 June, 1968, a key part of the plot. He had just won the California primary election for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States, and investigators later tried to identify a mysterious young woman seen in the hotel pantry, wearing a polka dot dress. In the book, her name is Rose.

This is now just about published, to be released at the beginning of June this year close to the anniversary of the shooting by Sirhan Sirhan. It can be ordered from Radish Books in advance if you want to be the first on your street to have read it. Reference is ISBN-13: 978-0316728485

Strangely, the official blurb does not mention the assassination. It reads as follows:

In the rainswept summer of 1968, Rose sets off for the United States from Kentish Town to meet a man she knows as Washington Harold, in her suitcase a polka-dot dress and a one-way ticket. In a country rocked by the assassination of Martin Luther King and a rising groundswell of violence, they are to join forces in search of the charismatic and elusive Dr Wheeler - oracle, guru and redeemer - whom Rose credits with rescuing her from a terrible childhood, and against whom Harold nurses a silent grudge. As they trail their quarry, zigzagging through America in a camper van, the odd couple - Rose, damaged child of grey postwar Britain, and nervous, obsessive, driven Harold - encounter a ragged counter-cultural army of Wheeler's acolytes, eddying among dangerous currents of obscure dissent and rage. But somewhere in the wide American darkness, Dr Wheeler is waiting.

 

Thanks, Radish

Headingley has still got a library, but no real bookshop since Bookz closed down a few years ago (no offence, Oxfam Books...) so it is wonderful to be attended upon by the excellent Radish bookshop, which is situated far from the delights of God's Own Suburb in the alternative universe of Chapel Allerton. The Alan Bennett freebies which we were given by the World Book people arrived there, along with several cardboard boxes containing other titles. Apparently, Nigel Slater's Toast is popular in those parts.

Prominently displayed near the checkout desk this afternoon was The Battersea Park Road To Enlightenment, by Isabel Losada, who will be speaking/performing at the Headingley Heart Centre on Wednesday 16 March on How to get published, and who intends to sign copies of her best-seller not only at the event but also the following morning at Radish.

Remember Bookz? It was piled high with cheapo and remaindered tomes, but there was also plenty of good stuff. Pity it foundered. All the more reason to have a LitFest in the area. Let's fly the flag!

Below, Sally Thums at Radish:

When the Wind Changed

The excellent Leeds-based Theatre Company BlahBlahBlah  took part in the second Headingley LitFest in 2009, premiering their show When the Wind Changed to delighted parents and children in the library. It's still going strong:

Throughout March the Blahs will be spending a day at a time in schools across Yorkshire, performing When the Wind Changed four times in the morning for Reception children, each performance lasting half an hour. In the afternoon they will do two performances of their show Max for Yr 1 / Yr 2 children, each show lasting forty-five minutes.

When the Wind Changed is a story about a girl whose face gets stuck by the wind when it changes. All manner of people's faces have been stuck by this mysterious wind. When Gran realises that wiping that look off her granddaughter's face isn't going to work, her only advice is to "wait for the wind to change again". They wait... and they wait... and they wait. And then the wind begins to blow...

Max is based on the Maurice Sendak picture book Where the Wild Things Are. Max has been up to mischief and is sent to his room without any supper. We sit with the children around a blank canvas which becomes Max's bedroom that turns into a forest. They travel with him in and out of weeks to Where the Wild Things Are. The children meet Wild Things seven times bigger than themselves and must help Max find ways to tame them without hurting them.

If you can make it, you are invited to dip into the day and see the participatory work in action. Visitor places are limited to three a day. You can book your place by contacting Cas Bulmer on 0113 274 0030 or at cas@blahs.co.uk. Please give plenty of notice so that the necessary arrangements with the schools can be made.