An entirely different side of Cheddar. Whilst the tourists frequent the numerous coffee shops and visit the caves I was there on other business. Cheddar is only a small town but it punches well above its weight with regard to the presents of creative artists, photographers, sculptors, those with a cultural attitude to life.

I’m ashamed to say that in my 12 to 15 years of visiting Cheddar I never bothered to look at the other side possibly because of lack of incentive and knowledge.

Over this last weekend we have had the Cheddar Arts Fringe Festival 2025 which is optimistically subtitled a Walking Arts Trail around the village. Good luck with that one because the distances are much greater than claimed.

My first two visits  were to Chestnut Farm studio, and the Oak House both in Kent Street. They are not normally open by the way.  These are lovely old properties, some hundreds of years old, with large gardens steeped in history and where any cultural thing that happens is off to a flying start.

At my first visit I bought three books for the grand sum of £1.50:   ” The Gifts of Reading”   essays on the joys of reading, giving and receiving books. The second book by Robert Peston was called rather provocatively WTF, what are they done, why did it happen, how do we take back control.

The third book by Helen Foster was optimistically entitled “ Dejunk Your Life” – reclaim your mind, body, time, finances and love life. Those three titles will keep me going for some time and added to these seven books I obtained on Friday we’ll keep me going for this month at the very least.

I met some interesting people as I always do.

One person was a solicitor specializing it commercial law and she worked in Bristol but finds the working from home although convenient very lonely making. In the Bristol office no one has a desk, it’s called hot desking, and whoever comes in their uses the desks provided.

She said she used to go in twice a week but now it’s once a week and although when she is at home she can collect her child from school after 20 years in the firm there is a feeling of not being part of anything.

I met another lady who suffers from PTSD. Without much prompting she talked about her alcoholic father and said that she became emotional when talking with other people about personal problems. She said she had had £800 worth of therapy from a professional. .

My impression was that the therapist was not free of fear himself. She confirmed this and said that he was going through a divorce so since she wasn’t getting anything from the session she decided to stop.

I’m telling you these things just to show you what a variety of people and situations you can come across especially in events where there is a filter so you can be guaranteed a certain amount of mental acuity, ease of talking about abstract things, and not being seen as intrusive.

At the second venue I met a very personable man who was a photographer and we discussed how to help people change their view with other ways than words for example through images. He specialises in landscape photography. He had a very good ease of manner with regard to social communication so I decided to invite him to my June party.

I also volunteered to sit for a group of portrait artists which involves two sessions of 45 minutes where I’m going to try and achieve the incredible feat of sitting still. What a joke. The plus side is that if I like one of the works of the artists I can negotiate to buy it.

The things I get myself involved in but as someone said today, I will try anything once.

I bought an artwork on spec, actually two artworks one of which  was a composite which showed the ideal mental building elements of a successful life, and the other one was a street in France which went round the corner and I chose this because it represents the fact that you don’t know what is around the corner in life.

We finished off by going to the Cider Barn and then off home to lunch, a very late lunch which we sat down to at 4:30 pm.