Betjeman Cabaret at the Fring All Saints Parish Lunch

In celebration of Harvest Festival, National Poetry Day and the joys of feasting, friendship and community, here is Peacock Gaz dressed as a mouse and reading Betjeman's "Diary of a Church Mouse" to kick off our after-mains cabaret. Your After Dinner Squeaker as it were. The cabaret then continues and concludes with Corrine Tereszczuk's rendition of Betjeman's Hymn, after which she was told she'd passed the audition for the Fring Singers. Filmed at Sedgeford Village Hall Oct 5 2025 by Peacock Maz. We leave you to imagine the running about and squeaking at every table by the mouse before the reading (which did happen) and the ladies standing on chairs during it (which actually didn't.) The three carved church mice in whose honour all this occurred may be viewed behind the pulpit in All Saints Church Fring. Diary of a Church Mouse Here among long-discarded cassocks, Damp stools, and half-split open hassocks, Here where the vicar never looks I nibble through old service books. Lean and alone I spend my days Behind this Church of England baize. I share my dark forgotten room With two oil-lamps and half a broom. The cleaner never bothers me, So here I eat my frugal tea. My bread is sawdust mixed with straw; My jam is polish for the floor. Christmas and Easter may be feasts For congregations and for priests, And so may Whitsun. All the same, They do not fill my meagre frame. For me the only feast at all Is Autumn's Harvest Festival, When I can satisfy my want With ears of corn around the font. I climb the eagle's brazen head To burrow through a loaf of bread. I scramble up the pulpit stair And gnaw the marrows hanging there. It is enjoyable to taste These items ere they go to waste, But how annoying when one finds That other mice with pagan minds Come into church my food to share Who have no proper business there. Two field mice who have no desire To be baptized, invade the choir. A large and most unfriendly rat Comes in to see what we are at. He says he thinks there is no God And yet he comes ... it's rather odd. This year he stole a sheaf of wheat (It screened our special preacher's seat), And prosperous mice from fields away Come in to hear our organ play, And under cover of its notes Ate through the altar's sheaf of oats. A Low Church mouse, who thinks that I Am too papistical, and High, Yet somehow doesn't think it wrong To munch through Harvest Evensong, While I, who starve the whole year through, Must share my food with rodents who Except at this time of the year Not once inside the church appear. Within the human world I know Such goings-on could not be so, For human beings only do What their religion tells them to. They read the Bible every day And always, night and morning, pray, And just like me, the good church mouse, Worship each week in God's own house, But all the same it's strange to me How very full the church can be With people I don't see at all Except at Harvest Festival. -- John Betjeman The Church's Restoration In eighteen-eighty-three Has left for contemplation Not what there used to be. How well the ancient woodwork Looks round the Rect'ry hall, Memorial of the good work Of him who plann'd it all. ... Of marble brown and veinéd He did the pulpit make; He order'd windows stainéd Light red and crimson lake. Sing on, with hymns uproarious, Ye humble and aloof, Look up! and oh how glorious He has restored the roof!

The Penland Phezant's Tale (Goodbye Cruel World) - Live at SHARP July 5 2019 FAREWELL SHOW/REVIEW

A folk music/ storytelling concert in a boneyard in Norfolk prefaced by a radio interview about it in Cambridge

Review: It’s not all that often that a band can say that they played an Anglo-Saxon cemetery but last Friday the Penland Phezants added Boneyard Field, Sedgeford (summer home to the Sedgeford Historical & Archaeological Research Project) to their list. In fact there is a motif that brought the group of local folk/storytellers to the historic site. Friday 5th July marked the bicentenary of the remarkable death of Sedgeford resident Susan Nobes, who was killed by a lightning bolt in the vestry of St. Mary’s Church, Sedgeford; part of the band’s set was dedicated to commemorating her death with The Ballad of Susan Nobes.

The Penland Phezants, comprising of poet and percussionist Gareth Calway, Andy Wall (lead vocals & guitar) Vanessa Wood-Davies (harp & backing vocals) and Melanie Calway (vocals) have for the past few years been performing a lively set of musical local histories. What the Phezants have managed to achieve through their well-researched and finely crafted songs and poems is the voice of the ‘Commoner’; words from those who were at the sharp end of history and in many cases have had their voices erased. 

From the 1816 Littleport and Ely Bread Riots, Hereward the Wake and Margery Kempe of Lynn, the songs and poems of the group display a sensitive and well-researched retelling of local history from the ground up. A fact that I am sure that the Anglo-Saxons (who loved a good story themselves) buried nearby would have no doubt appreciated as well.

Gary Rossin, Sedgeford Archaeological and Historical Research Project

A Happy Christmas and A Lynn Carol from the Penland Phezants

As we reach the end of our hectic first year,  may I on behalf of the Penland Phezants wish all our listeners (including the 70 more lovely people who helped bring alive our True Story of Hereward the Wake at Elmswell History group at our last gig of the year last night!)  A Very Happy Christmas and a Brand New Year. 

Press Release: A Lynn Carol

Sedgeford folk music-storytelling combo The Penland Phezants have released a Christmas carol especially for and about Lynn.  The carol embraces the timeless message of Christmas by linking Lynn across 600 years. 

The writer of the first autobiography in English the mystic Margery Kempe lived all her life on the Lynn waterfront at the turn of the 15C. In her "Book of Margery Kempe", she describes many extraordinary visions of love and joy including one in which she hears the Holy Ghost as a robin redbreast singing merrily in her right ear!

Hear it here- https://thepenlandphezants.bandcamp.com/album/the-penland-phezants-christmas-single

The Phezants bring this story timelessly into the present amid the Christmas rush as follows. 

Now starry angels on the tree 
Grow larger in the dusk 
To heaven-blue and Eden-green 
And gold and reindeer-musk. 

And what was heard by Margery, 
The Visionary of Lynn, 
Rings out on tills for checkout girls 
Who hear that robin sing. 

The only gift left on the shelf, 
That nothing else can rise above, 
Includes all treasures, lasts forever, 
And grows when shared with others: love. 

The carol was enjoyed by a packed Lynn Minster when it was performed by a full cast as part of "Skirting Heresy: The Life and Times of Margery Kempe" last September.

The CD "Songs for Skirting Heresy" with songs (including the two featured here) about Lynn through the ages is on sale at True's Yard fisherfolk museum or online at:

https://thepenlandphezants.bandcamp.com/album/songs-for-skirting-heresy-the-life-and-times-of-margery-kempe

Vardy up front for England v France?

Fenland storytelling combo the Penland Phezants are conjuring up the spirit of '66 as their Hereward the Wake tour comes to All Saints Church Fring (9 July) and the Ely Folk Festival (July 14) next week.

That's 1066 and the English defeat at Hastings, folks, not the 1966 victory at Wembley, but there are hopeful parallels across (almost) a thousand years.

The title song - https://soundcloud.com/gaz29-1/for-the-soul-of-england-by-the-penland-phezants

Herwardi Saxonis (Hereward the Saxon)  - 'Vardy' for short - is the original English underdog who won his day, in the wake of a crushing English defeat that seemed like the end of the world at the time. 

As every English schoolchild knows, after an exhausting victory at Stamford Bridge in 1066, King Harold, the last Saxon king of England, fought bravely and his defenders were well on top at Hastings until tactically outwitted.  Harold's Saxons thought they had won the game when the Norman French dropped deep into their own half only to be caught by a devastating counter attack. A speculative arrow through the air into the penalty area hit Harold in the eye and the rest (including Saxon England as we knew it) is history.

Hereward (of Bourne in Lincolnshire) was in Belgium at the time - adding to his international reputation as a brilliant mercenary general - but returned in September 1067 to join and swiftly to lead the growing English resistance to William the Conqueror's harrowing invasion. Hereward did so most famously at Ely, leading a solid defensive formation of mighty Saxon warriors and monks and Danish diehards, all secure in local knowledge and the impregnable native fen and forest, soaking up wave after wave of attack on a waterlogged fenland pitch, then catching those offensive Normans napping on the break. Not even the services of a French witch deployed on a wooden tower could shift Hereward and his men from their fastness and the Conqueror was losing heavily and on the verge of giving up when, alas, the Abbot of Ely betrayed the secret paths through the fens to the invaders.

One loyal monk warned Hereward just in time and the great Saxon hero escaped with his men to fight (and win) many another day - in a series of madcap adventures in the greenwoods of Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and Warwickshire, and at Peterborough Abbey, many of which are the real originals of Robin Hood legend.

The 'overdog' Norman conquerors brought many positives into English culture but love of the underdog was not one of them. Our  enduring love of an underdog defying the odds plus the sturdy survival of English rather than Norman French as our national language can both be traced to Hereward's timely resistance.

The Penland Phezants  90 minute musical show "A Very English Resistance: The True Story of Hereward the Wake" words written and narrated by poet Gareth Calway, music by Andy Wall and Vanessa Wood Davies, the whole performed by the trio on guitar, harp and drum, plays Fring and Ely Folk Festival as the World Cup enters its Final week. If France and England are still contenders by then, it might make an interesting replay!  

Advance tickets for Fring here http://www.wegottickets.com/event/443249

 or on the door. £10 incl. glass of wine/ light refreshments.

Ely Folk Festival bookings -http://elyfolkfestival.co.uk/tickets/

1966 and all that - https://soundcloud.com/gaz29-1/1966-england-win-the-world-cup

The Full Phezants Phirst Phlight! - photo gallery (part of the Cambridgeshire Libraries Presents Arts Alive project)

THE PENLAND PHEZANTS AT WISBECH LIBRARY SAT. 24 FEBRUARY 2018

TELLING THE STORY OF THE 1816 LITTLEPORT AND ELY RIOTS

(OUR FIRST GIG AS A THREE PIECE)

Foisting the Hezant! Pholk tales and music.



Phirst night! Looks like a phull house!



Show them the instruments!



Once upon a time, when people might as well be hanged as starved...

Our mime section. Upwardly mobile farmer's daughter Mary Martin plays bad harpsichord.

There's a riot going on around here. (But I don't think it's going to end well, Jack...)

Told you!


That's all pholks!

JINGLE JINGLE THE PENLAND PHEZANTS CHRISTMAS SINGLE!

The recently formed East Anglian folk trio the Penland Phezants have released an online Christmas single inspired by the Lynn mystic Margery Kempe. The song,  'A Lynn Carol' has a happy Christmas message and a strong local connection.

Margery Kempe of Lynn was not your average mediaeval woman. She wrote the first autobiography in English, 'The Book of Margery Kempe.' It begins with an account of her traumatic first pregnancy (she went on to have 14 children) and what we would call a 'post-partum psychosis' during which she received visions of heaven and hell. Her 'Book' describes visions of devils, Jesus, God, the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary and how her spiritual experiences were regarded by the authorities of the time. In a revolutionary (and at the time heretical) direct personal address to God, she requested that the Holy Spirit she heard like thunder in her right ear be changed to something more homely, merry and English: a robin singing. God obliged! 

 
The idea behind the lyric is that while 'Mystic Margery' and a young modern Lynn shopgirl would probably gape at each other's lives in astonishment, they would both understand and share the experience of love. The moment in the song where the girl falls in love is as much a vision as Margery's.

Now starry angels on the tree
Grow larger in the dusk
To heaven-blue and Eden-green
And gold and reindeer-musk.

And what was heard by Margery,
The Visionary of Lynn,
Rings out on tills for checkout girls
Who hear that robin sing. 

The only gift left on the shelf
That nothing else can rise above
Includes all treasure, lasts forever,
And grows when shared with others: love. 

The Penland Phezants are a combination of Ely folk musician Andy Wall and Waywood, the Sedgeford storytelling duo made up of harpist Vanessa Wood Davies and poet Gareth Calway. They are currently seeking to add further engagements to their Hereward the Wake tour next year, which already includes two nationally acclaimed folk festivals.  The Phezants' Christmas single may be heard via the trio's Bandcamp site, from which listeners can add it to their Christmas playlists or purchase a digital download. https://thepenlandphezants.bandcamp.com

And a little robin also tells us that Margery Kempe's extraordinary story may be coming home to Lynn in 2018, 600 years after she wrote her Book there, with some musical assistance from The Phezants. Watch this space.

The Phezants' next appearance is at Wisbech Library in February, where they will perform "Bread or Blood" the story of the Littleport and Ely Riots of 1816.  (part of the Cambridgeshire Library Presents series) Album sampler here  
Phezant photoshoot by Bhas Allan

The Ballad of Hereward The Wake by Waywood - World Premiere

Welcome -you are the 100+ reader of this post.

Published below for the first time the full text of our new ballad "Hereward The Wake."

SPOKEN INTRO…

Twilight in the greenwood, is Hereward  awake?

Grey and ghostly shadows are gliding through the brake,

Shadows of the dappled deer, dreaming of the morn,

Dreaming of a hooded man that winds a shadowy horn.

HARP MUSIC STARTS

In the Lincoln greenwood,

In the Bruneswald,

Yellow-haired, sky-eyed,

Great-hearted and bold,

For the soul of England;

For your own spirit's sake,

Lift your heart and voice up

For Hereward the Wake!

A wild swan, a curlew,

A fen-son, a tiger;

His high blood-tide exiled

By Edward the Confessor.

Performs magic deeds

In Cornwall and Ireland;

Fights fearless and feared

For Flanders, his wife-land.

Family home 'Normaned'

With his brother's severed head;

Returns, puts the murderers'

14 heads there instead.

In the Lincoln greenwood,

In the Bruneswald,

Yellow-haired, sky-eyed,

Great-hearted and bold,

For the soul of England;

For your own spirit's sake,

Lift your heart and voice up

For Hereward the Wake!

As free as the waters

That flow through the fen,

As the wide heaven-skies

In the eyes of good men,

To the Saxon Abbot

Of Ely he speeds;

Lords, with King Sweyn of Denmark,

Its marsh, mere and reeds.

Raids Peterborough Abbey,

Frees God's Saxon gold

From the thief-Norman grip

Of the tyrant monk Turold.

In the Lincoln greenwood,

In the Bruneswald,

Yellow-haired, sky-eyed,

Great-hearted and bold,

For the soul of England;

For your own spirit's sake,

Lift your heart and voice up

For Hereward the Wake!

From the Normans learns war,

From Flems love, bonds with Danes

But when King Sweyn makes peace,

Stays true to the thanes.

With Saxon Earl Morca

Defends Ely Isle

Fights war-craft and witch-fire

With fire, bow and guile.

The Norman machine

Cannot conquer that fastness;

Greed's causeway sinks

In full armour and harness.

In the Lincoln greenwood,

In the Bruneswald,

Yellow-haired, sky-eyed,

Great-hearted and bold,

For the soul of England;

For your own spirit's sake,

Lift your heart and voice up

For Hereward the Wake!

His wood-spirit leaves-drops

The Conqueror's hush-biz

Then is gone like a breeze

Through the secret rushes.

Though our monks will give up,

Afraid for their lands,

Their arms and his paths,

He will slip through their hands.

As free as the waters

That flow through the fens,

As the wide heaven-skies

In the eyes of good men.

In the Lincoln greenwood,

In the Bruneswald,

Yellow-haired, sky-eyed,

Great-hearted and bold,

For the soul of England;

For your own spirit's sake,

Lift your heart and voice up

For Hereward the Wake!

© Gareth Calway 2017

This celebration of Hereward is folk duo Waywood's latest. The world premiere as performed by the poet with harpist Vanessa Wood-Davies' latest melody was performed  at Hereward's birth-place of Bourne, Lincolnshire on Thursday 7 September, the 950th anniversary of the great Saxon's homecoming.  It tells the famous (and truer than you might think) story of how Hereward - delinquent son of Leofric Lord of Bourne and (some say) Lady Godiva - came to lead the English resistance to William the Conqueror from the woods and the fens, with star turns in the years 1067-72 for Bourne, Peterborough and Ely. The timeless style of Waywood's performance art -  ballad verse and harp as the days of the mead hall - is a perfect fit for this hero tale. Waywood will also be performing homages to Robin Hood and Wicken Fen. And that's only our bit - there's a Bayeux tapestry to see, Hereward scholarship for a popular audience, storytelling, film and much else besides.

Waywood harpist Vanessa Wood-Davie spreparing for action in  Hunstanton last June, 

paying homage to a local Norfolk hero. Pic by Elaine Bird. 

Wolf Folk Club, Sandringham Woods, Norfolk, bite sized previews of the film of the film of the anthem

If you go down to the woods.

Ginsberg, Howl your heart out! The Silver Fox leads the Pack...

  

Never mind Frozen. Never mind Jaws. Here's three John MacLennan hand-cam previews of a film of Howl (a poem what I wrote) - as lupine ear-marked by pack-leader Roger as a Wolf Folk Club anthem - performed live by the Pack. (And we do have a big good time down in those big bad woods.)

 

here

here

and here

Note also the film of the film of the film being made by musician-visitors from the Deep American South. The man making notes is my therapist.

You are the 100+ reader of this post!

I Feel Fine

Yes, I still do. 50 years ago today (on Thursday 10 Dec) 'I Feel Fine' replaced the Stones' one-week number one 'Little Red Rooster' at the top of the Christmas charts and stayed there for five weeks. It was like the party would never stop.

Another significant date is December 12 1965, the night the Beatles played their last ever live concert gig in mainland Britain- at the Capital Cinema Cardiff.

Hear Brian Matthews of Radio 2's Sounds of the Sixties trail the celebration show created by guitarist John William and I , 'It Was 50 Years Ago Today':

https://soundcloud.com/gaz29-1/brian-matthews-trails-it-was-50-years-ago-today-on-r2

And if that whets your appetite, hear John and I performing the whole show live and on air at http://www.folkspot.co.uk/, -  here


The show and the novel imagines Factory Girl Cindy meeting her Beatle Prince backstage at this final concert, escaping a blind alley with her real-life boyfriend. It's magical mystery realism.

Here's the Christmas 1964 section of Beat music, the novel, narrated by Cindy's little brother James Spectre:

"Dad is home. A Labour Party report on a proposed Open University of the Air, designed to extend Higher Education to lower income groups, a three pipe problem solved in full by Harold Wilson on the back of some election posters between church and lunch on Easter Sunday 1963, and done up in crimson ribbon, is trailing in the silver jet-stream behind Santa’s sleigh. Stepmother magicks back into Mother Mary and brings all her gift-wrapped summer of loving down from the always winter loft. Both parents are as wide-eyed and excited as their children, and everything is lying before us like an unopened gift. And, away from ‘Wanger’ Wheeler’s football field, where I’m always at the back, in goal, I’m John at Christmas Number 1, miming electric razor feedback on Pop of the Tops, airing George n John lead guitar on Fairy godmother Mary’s laundry-slat wand and being Ringo. I FEEL FINE."

Lovehearts and red wine

Lovehearts and red wine: maiden recording session -

Hear the Christmas single here

A Sedgeford Christmas Card

The elements of Christmas -

Fire and ice -

In this tempered Arctic sun

That burns in the trees.

In these pools like skating rinks

Deep and dark and even.

Ice

In the flinty ground

And the bitter Easterly.

Fire

In the solstice sunset

Bleeding the black woods

And its ice-pink afterglow

And its fire-blue areola.

Ice

In the barn-wide rising moon.

Ice

In my soul as I'm turned

To the unlit wings

That cradle and grave

The sunset's light show.

Fire

In my soul

At a rising star

Burning like ice

In the polar blue.Fire

In my hearth at home

(Crackling through logs),

In the farmer's field

(Roaring through twigs),

Red-raw and orange

Tongues of life-lust:

The vital, stripped down

Simplicities of winter.

Sedgeford druids Vanessa Wood-Davies and Goliath Dylan-Calway performed http://garethcalway.blogspot.co.uk/p/poem-of-month.html (November 2014) together at the Wolf Folk Club on 30 Oct and (with amplification and as part of Bob Bones' undercover Beautiful Days event at which Julie Bones and her band of bears and cardinals divinely regaled) at the Lynn Arms, Syderstone on Halloween itself.

Bats and spiders, witches and ghouls, Werewolf ale and some rather persistent  cobwebs prevailed. That pub is going places and it was a privilege to broomstick-ride with them for the evening.  Pictures and further details of the general event in companion blog post here

Lovehearts and Red Wine step out

 Nuclear fusion

A duet has been born, premiered and named at the Wolf Folk Club on Oct 30 (someone mentioned Dylan - not sure if it's Thomas or Bob) and love-labouring into the world like a bat out of heaven on Hammereen. We shall return and see if the accident can be conjured again.

Vanessa provided the devilish fiddle interruptions on 'Fiddler's Hill 'and a heavenly tune ('Snow') and performance on harp behind the words on 'Susan Nobes'. Helped by three bottles of red wine I Hamm(er-House of Horror)ed up the spooky verbals . It's not easy to hold the attention of a pub audience, especially one drinking shots, but we did it. 'Fiddler's Hill' recounts a famous Norfolk legend- read about the legend here; Susan Nobes is a true Sedgeford tragedy I unearthed in the British Library by mistake while failing to trace the history of our own cottage. It deserves to be better known. Read Lynn News item about it here.