He smiles without judgement. I even have a vague sense that when I am next walking under these rails and rivets, I might see him photographing the progress of nature on this Victorian clay.
Last night, I met the librarians and archivists of Keele University and Lisa told me about bringing the history of the miners’ wives and the strikes that achieved so much of what Margaret Thatcher wanted, in terms of bringing working people to their knees and destroying communities. All these years on, I hear centrists talk almost admiringly of this prime minister who was such an architect of what we see in the broken streets and the rise of the far right.
Lisa Blower has been an important part of the working-class women’s writers’ movement with books such as Sitting Ducks and It’s Gone Dark Over Bill’s Mother’s. She tells me of going to the Durham Miners’ Gala and seeing the rage that still erupts and pulsates at the damage done to areas ground down by the destruction of industry.
At the end of our gig, I talk to Shiv. She is part of B Arts (formerly beaver arts), originally set up as a feminist art collective but filled with all sorts of progressiveness and community endeavours (you failed here, Margaret).
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It was founded by Gill Gill, Hilary Hughes, Yvon Male and, shortly after, Susan Clarke, who began as fire-eating, stilt-walking, bicycle-riding street performers. Their work has always been about connecting with people, the people left behind and maligned. Their desire has been not to be encased in theatres or galleries, but working “on the water, on the beach, in woods, in schools, youth clubs and village halls, up mountains and alongside canals, with people of all ages”.
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I am taken into a building that once fixed clutches, then sold phones, but is now emblazoned with the words “the wild sky calls at the edge of the city”.
We pass through a magnificent muddle of costume store rooms, archaic technology reborn for artistic endeavours, rooms where people can craft and communicate and shake off their loneliness for a while, and far more. They show me their book archive of wonderful feminist texts and a 1950s paperback of Simone De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex with a naked lady on the cover and the tag line “the subject is woman in all her aspects…”. Obviously the publisher was hoping to lure men in with the promise of Lady Chatterley-like shenanigans as opposed to a call for elevation, emancipation and freedom.
In every corner there is puppetry, papier mâché, an occasional tightrope, and many possibilities. They make sure they get out into the streets and draw people to the possible spectacles that can be created. In one corner is Madres Buscadoras, a Mexican symbol for the searching mother, those women whose children are lost; who have become “disappeared”.
These mothers risk their lives questioning the oppressive and cruel systems where their children are stolen away. They will not be quiet. This work is dedicated to all the mothers who died without finding out the truth of what happened to their children.
As I look, I think of where the last nine days of touring began. In Falmouth’s Rubicund bookshop, I got talking to Jaye. She is a pensioner waiting for her trial for peaceful protest against the actions of Israel in Gaza. She was beaming and funny and brimful of love.
These are the joys that remove the exhaustion of touring.
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Robin Ince is a broadcaster and poet.
Ice Cream for a Broken Tooth: Poems about life, death, and the odd bits in between by Robin Ince is out now (Flapjack Press, £12).
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