46 Tuesday, July 21, 2015 Eastern Daily Press

Like us at: NEWS local www.facebook.com/edp24 Wacky classics get festival off to fun start Richard Batson [email protected] Award for Bruer

Classical music was given a wacky twist to entertain schoolchildren as Holt Festival got into full swing. Three hundred youngsters from primary schools at Holt, Sheringham and Fakenham watched and listened as the Classic Buskers used make- shift and odd instruments to perform well-known symphonies and pieces including the Flight of the I Bumblebee. Bruer Tidman with his portrait of Picture: Nose flutes, rubber ducks and mini Beth Narborough. RODNEY trombones were in the orchestra pit SMITH/PHOTOGRAPHERS GALLERY to amuse the young audience. The show ended explosively with a Norfolk artist Bruer Tidman version of Beethoven’s 1812 Overture has won this year’s Holt featuring a blast of bursting balloons Festival art prize for his at the end. acrylic portrait of partner Festival chairman Adney Payne Beth Narborough. said the show was aimed at getting Norwich-born Mr Tidman youngsters to visit live theatre. now lives in Gorleston and has He was looking forward to a varied a studio in Great Yarmouth. week of events ranging from music He attended Great Yarmouth and drama to star-studded “in conver- Art College from 1957 to 1961 sation” sessions and stand-up before attending the Royal comedy. College of Art from 1961-1964. Several performances have sold He has painted many pictures out, including singer Steve Harley, of Beth, who has suffered from I former MI5 chief Dame Stella The Classic Buskers and Neil Henry, above, entertain Fakenham Junior School pupils Sophie-Anne, Charlie, Jodie, Joe, MS since the age of 17, and in Picture: Rimington, and a première of a new Olivia and Riley at the Auden Theatre in Holt. MARK BULLIMORE 1996 staged an exhibition at musical Hello Mr Gershwin. Norwich’s King of Hearts Mr Payne said he was looking gallery that exclusively toward to tonight’s Flamenco, as he mix which made the festival fun. events visit www.holtfestival.org where you live? Email arts featured portraits of her. geared up to visit more than 20 of correspondent Emma Knights at The judges – Amanda I the main events but said it was the I For more details of upcoming Are you organising an arts event [email protected] Geitner, chief curator at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, art adviser Nic The stuff of dreams as close-part harmony group proves impressive Tyler and Norfolk-based “pop” artist Colin Self – chose the the group’s final frontier. Fortified with all present. Part one finished with winner from 250 entries from Review Cromer crabs they arrived on stage ’ classic, The around the UK. The Puppini Sisters armed to the teeth with accordions, of Company Mr Tidman wins a prize of Auden Theatre, Holt ukuleles and melodeons. B – notoriously hard to sing, but £1,500 and the painting will They also had a rearguard of drum taken at an impressively break-neck also be exhibited at the (Peter Ibbetson), double bass (Henrik speed. Sainsbury Centre for Visual Marcella Puppini dreamed 10 years ago Jensen) and guitar (Blake Wilner). After the interval it was Gershwin’s I Art in the autumn. that she would found the best female Which was just as well, as singer Kate Got Rhythm; and the joy levels went After his success he said: close-part harmony singing group Mullins had come wounded to the field sky high with Judy Garland’s Get “Even after all these years as a around. The singer immediately set to (on crutches with leg in plaster). Happy. Another favourite from her professional artist it’s a real it, and with a winning combination of But they need not have feared. The song book, Just In Time, got the once thrill to win this award.” jazz, swing and three dulcet-toned Auden Theatre held no terrors for over from singer Emma Smith, and divas, she conquered even the trickiest them, and from the first note, the audi- things drew to a close with the group’s I Portrait of Beth Narborough and I In harmony... the Puppini Sisters audiences of Britain. ence was easily won over. own It’s Not Over, So Don’t Give Up The 33 shortlisted works can be viewed take to the stage at the Auden Theatre Even so, it turns out that in all the years Big favourites like Mister Sandman had Fight! – although it seemed to me, that throughout the festival (until July for the Holt Festival. that they have been singing, the troupe everyone tapping their feet and Nina this particular battle had been fought 26) at the Auden Theatre foyer at Picture: RODNEY SMITH/PHOTOGRAPHERS has never visited north Norfolk. Simone’s Cotton Eyed Joe, sung as a and won. Bravo! Gresham’s in Holt, 11am–5pm. GALLERY So the Holt Festival could be seen as solo by Mullins, cast a strong spell on Eve Stebbing I’m laying it on the line – how our language is changing

Our ancestral Anglo-Saxon have lie and lay: to lay means to This process is being helped along language used to perform lots of Peter cause to lie. But we have lost the by the fact that lay is not just the grammatical operations by medieval English word sench, present tense of the verb to lay but alternations between the vowels of which meant to cause to sink – these also the past tense of lie. related words. In modern English Trudgiill days, if you want to a boat to sink, Very many of us these days tell we do this much less, but we still you don’t sench it, you sink it. And the dog to lay down, and then have quite a few traces: foot-feet, nowadays it would occur to only a perhaps go and have a nice lay-down take-took, sing-sang-sung, seat-sit, very few people that drench is ourselves. Some people don’t like stink-stench. derived from drink. this – they think it’s “careless”. [email protected] Another example is this: if you fell email: Even the causatives that we do But I think it’s rather likely that in a tree, it falls down; if you then have are gradually going the way of a couple of hundred years’ time, the raise it up again, it rises. Obviously causatives; and Old English used to sench, and being lost: in our Norfolk verb to lie, in the sense of being in a fall and fell, and rise and raise, are have many pairs like this. dialect it is very normal to say horizontal resting position, will related words. Verbs like fell and But modern English has only a “please set down” when you want probably have disappeared totally in raise are called causatives: to fell very few of these old-style Anglo- someone to take a seat. Nobody favour of lay. No one will I Peter Trudgill thinks the verb to lie means to cause to fall, to raise Saxon causatives left. misunderstands you. misunderstand: after all, if you – as in having a rest in the horizontal means to cause to rise. Lots of the We do still have sit and set: if you And the distinction between lay stand things on the table, they stand position – may be lost over the years in world’s languages have fully set a child down in a chair, you and lie is also being lost in most on the table. And if you lay the favour of the word lay. developed systems of grammatical cause it to sit. And we do also still forms of English. carpet, it will lay on the floor.