It was much more than that. For three weeks in September The Tale took its mobile audience through memorabilia, sea trips, promenade and venue based performance art, sound installations and the spoken word provided by the young people of Torbay. Martyn and I were privileged to be part of it. This is a link to the Guardian review:
My particular favourites were The Alphington Ponies – a representation of two sisters who lived in Torquay in the 1840s and promenaded in identical costume and exaggerated make up every day at 3 pm, weather permitting. They had moved from Alphington, an Exeter suburb, with their mother as a comfortable middle class family whose head of the family was in the military. When their father died, the money ran out and the ponies and trap had to be sold. But the name ‘Alphington Ponies’ stuck. They were figures of interest, ridicule and some sympathy. In their later years, they returned to Exeter and, when one sister died, the other was to be seen, promenading alone. It was fortunate, perhaps, that her loneliness did not endure too long.:
And the seascape sound installation at Berry Head by Chris Watson, an experienced and highly skilled sound recordist known best, perhaps, for his work on the many David Attenborough series of wildlife programmes. The range of sound and setting engulfed and moved the listener, from sea birds to cetaceans, cliffs to coral life. Chris Watson’s website:
Lynne McVernon 