Billy Jo-King

It's Festival time again in Cheltenham, and given the shortage of parking spaces the tall statue of King William IV in Montpellier Gardens has been appropriately adorned. I went to two Times events, one more enjoyable than the other.

The Leader Conference - for a third year in succession - took place "live" at Midday, half a dozen journalists discussing what should appear in the three slots in tomorrow's paper. Last year, former Ladies' Coll. Head Enid Castle, in the Q&A towards the end of the hour, suggested a topic that hadn't been canvassed - and they went with it. This year, I put in a bid for tomorrow's feast of St Francis and the opening of the Rome Synod on Monday, but Oliver Kamm had other ideas, and he's apparently the one who writes "religious" leaders, despite being by his own admission "devoutly irreligious".

At this very moment he'll be polishing the third leader on the vital question of Um and Er. Can't wait.

Despite this failure, I found the hour's exchange of ideas entertaining and provocative. Is the suggested reform of human rights legislation just a political gesture?  Does it matter that Milliband's Conference speech was much-derided? (What, for that matter, differentiates Cameron's speech from "the old policy of populism" in Venezuela? And don't pledges of tax cuts undermine austerity?) Should we send the army into Sierra Leone to halt the spread of Ebola? What are the knock on consequences of making cycle helmets compulsory, as in Australia and now Jersey? Should they also take the brakes off cars?

The Times, News in pictures event this afternoon was by comparison low key, the star of the show - photographer Jack Hill - not being a naturally-gifted communicator in words. So his narrow escape last year, from capture at the hands of the Syrian man he thought was a friend, didn't register with me as I know it has done with others - an  appalling ordeal.

More people than ever throng Cheltenham for this year's Festival. No doubt it's no longer PC to say that the world and his wife were there.

Freeman of Cheltenham

Bob Freeman's funeral takes place today. Family and friends will meet afterwards at the Gardens Gallery, Montpellier, which Bob did much to help establish and support. Only last October, when few would have known how unwell he was, he exhibited this portrait of Stephen Isserlis there.

Besides his own artistic work, Bob produced a regular monthly round up of exhibitions and events: a large number of those on his mailing list will have shared my sadness at hearing - before Christmas - that he had become too ill to continue this encouraging and enlivening endeavour.

RIP.

Another weekend, another festival

Montpellier Gardens is full of tents once more, this weekend for the Food & Drink Festival. We biked down  in the sunshine this evening, calling first at the Gardens Gallery. It's fun looking round, even though we didn't plan - as others clearly had done - to have supper there. You could spend a fortune if you wanted. Food porn?

The Energy Bill

Friends of the Earth locally arranged a panel discussion on this important topic this afternoon. All four speakers, including the Cheltenham MP Martin Horwood, behaved themselves well, so as to make my task - as chairman - an easy one. FoE secured a display of photographs of "renewables", which cheered up the rather dour surroundings (St Andrew's Church, Montpellier) no end. Their pre-publicity worked well: nearly 100 turned out for it, not bad for a Saturday afternoon.

Montpellier

Having complained about the state of the Gardens at Montpellier a month ago, it's only fair to say that the newly-laid turf seems OK - at least to the eye. Whether or not those who kick balls around there will be satisfied, I rather doubt, but at least the rain seems to have gone away, for the moment anyway. I found myself biking down to St Gregory's, bathed in Winter sunshine!

Whilst at the Presbytery, Canon Bosco shared with me this little gem of surrealism: "What playing cricket looks like to Americans." A Dutch version of Mornington Crescent.

The Montpellier wasteland

Nine days after the end of our ten-day Festival of Literature, this is what Montpellier Gardens looked like at lunchtime. Still, there were people at work from the marquee hire firm - but who's going to restore the messed up park, and how soon?

I'm all in favour of the Festival, but would propose that it concentrates its tents upon Imperial Square, and uses other venues such as the Everyman, the Parabola and the Playhouse - instead of ruining both of our major gardens for what is surely a disproportionate part of the year. I may be repeating myself (as well as the view of others), but it seems to me to be a no-brainer. At present the tail is wagging the dog.

Nor is our gargantuan event pleasing to all the publishers who come. I was chatting with a representative of one well-known international firm on Saturday last: "How does Cheltenham rate amongst all the literary festivals you must go to?" I asked. "It's too commercial, too impersonal," she replied, without missing a beat.

Gardens Gallery Quinquennial

Caroline's been involved in the Cheltenham Montpellier Gardens Gallery since its inception. This explains my presence there this evening for the second time in a week, for the party to mark its fifth birthday, as it were. The great and the good were present: not just our new Mayor, photographed here with Mini, but sundry other illuminati/ae, including our MP. (I forbore from berating him again for his support for the idea of gay marriage, as I had done when last we met in the Gallery.) Speeches were spoken about the blessings the Gallery has brought for the artistic life of the town, and fizzy wine flowed, while the wind howled outside. And the best news of all: my picture has been sold!

Cheltenham's Summer Exhibition

It's hardly on the Burlington House scale, but our very own Montpellier Gardens Gallery currently has its first Summer Exhibition: it opened tonight - here (in my snap) is Catherine Stuart, the organiser, being bunched. And the really exciting news for me is that at last I have a photograph up in the gallery - my debut appearance there as a selling artist. You can just see it - the portrait-style window fourth from the right on the far wall. I chose this one as it looks (to me) quite painterly, and I knew there wouldn't be many photographers exhibiting. There are two or three red stickers already - not on mine though. Ah well. It was an enjoyable party anyway.

Rupert Aker

For this next seven days, our Gardens Gallery, Montpellier has a one-man show on: I called in this afternoon, between the showers.

Rupert Aker works for the Soil Association: that charity is lucky to have on the staff someone who can record so vividly (and beautifully) the variety of landscapes within which its members operate. An illustrated book is available to purchase, as well as Rupert's pictures: some are Cheltenham scenes, but for the most part they are very attractive Gloucestershire/Oxfordshire landscapes, a few quite abstract. All in all, a credit to the Gallery.

Cheltenham Festival of Literature

The Festival - it starts today - has taken a giant leap forward: not only Imperial Gardens, but Montpellier Gardens too has this year become a tented city for the duration. Indeed, the construction process began weeks ago, causing noise and traffic sufficient to upset everyone within a wide radius no doubt. Pity those who have hired the Gardens Gallery during those weeks! Indeed, the Gallery isn't even marked on the Festival map!

My lack of sympathy for the scale of this hyper-festival has been made plain in previous years: expansion into Montpellier runs parallel with withdrawal from the Everyman Theatre and the Parabola Arts Centre. What will hostelries and shops near those two sites make of the non-passing trade? This morning, I toured the campuses on my bike: the only people I saw around were yellow-coated security guards and minions from sponsors such as The Times and Sky. Coming away, I saw an elderly gentleman emerge from a car and fiddle with his pipe: Tony Benn it was, taller than I expected. (Though he didn't refuse to have his photograph taken, he seemed a little taken aback with the speed at which I produced my camera.)

Student unrest - in Cheltenham

"Hundreds of students are gathering in Cheltenham to stage a protest against a planned rise in tuition fees" - so promised the press release issued first thing this morning. The police turned out in force. Bus routes were diverted, and not just because of the snow.

The water froze before reaching the taps in my Oxford rooms in 1962. Surely students today are not put off from marching by a little cold? In a place where the annual GCHQ rallies used to witness thousands coming together, just a few tens ambled in after midday today - shepherded by as many (if not more) of the boys and girls in yellow jackets, their kettling skills unneeded. William IV looked down scornfully from his plinth.

Birds of passage

Nicki Gwynn-Jones ARPS has a new exhibition of her photographs in Cheltenham: it opened this evening, "A bird's eye view". Her stunning ornithological treatments are shot in Florida, whither she commutes along with her husband. ("How long, O Lord?" It's all very well dedicating your show to those rescuing sea birds on the Gulf of Mexico's shores, but don't airoplanes run on... oil?)

Nicki is sharing the Gardens Gallery this week with Helen Dewbery LRPS, whose photography is less spectacular, but in a way more coherent. Both shows are worth a visit, I'd say. Especially on an evening like tonight, when the Montpellier Gardens are to be seen at their most vibrant. What a joy it is to live in Cheltenham!

Armagnac

Olivier Azam is better known as the Gloucester hooker than as waiter in his restaurant in Montpellier here in Cheltenham. Today, however, I was lunching at Armagnac, and there he was, struggling a little with reading out to us the chef's specials: you could say we hung on the words of he who was suspended.

When the food came, however, it was excellent: frogs' legs, a rare delicacy, for my starter, and deliciously fresh mussels for a main course. Not that I eat out much, but on this form, the Armagnac chef has to be amongst the best in Cheltenham - and their businessmen's lunch the best value. (Too bad Caroline has 'flu.)

15 Rotunda Terrace always seems to have been a place for French food: Olivier's previous business there was fittingly "Le Quinze" - I photographed its window in June 2006 - and before that it was Le Beaujolais, scene of a number of memorable family parties as I recall.

"Remnants of our time"

Cheltenham's caryatids are a familiar and much-loved feature of the Montpellier shopping area. However, we now have - temporarily - a rival collection, albeit undraped, at Pittville. Josie Spencer is exhibiting there a dozen or so lifesize figurative works (not all armless) under the title "Remnants of our time": bronze and clay - green, blue, brown, grey, ochre - and all in different positions.

Visiting the show when there weren't many people about, I found the presences somewhat disconcerting; but then that would seem to be the artist's intention. Anyway, the Pump Room colonnade makes a superb display place for them.

Part of the proceeds of any sales will go to support the Music Festival. I hope to write about a third of this year's stimulating exhibitions another day.

OYBike

Paris, Barcelona and now... Cheltenham! As I anticipated last month, the University's new cycle hire scheme has been extended throughout Cheltenham as a whole. It's England's first town centre scheme.

Any of 30 bikes can be commandeered at any of nine docking stations - like this one in Montpellier.


And it's free for the first half hour, so you can for instance jump on at the Station and leave your yellow cycle in the Town Centre. If you want one for the day, it's £8 - quite a bit less than the cost of two gallons of petrol. There has been no great rush for them yet - the procedure needs simplifying - but it is early days, and the recession has hardly begun to take hold.

As Cheltenham's terrain is basically pretty flat - compared to somewhere like Sheffield or Bristol - and we are all having to extend our mortgages each time we fill up our fuel tanks, it should succeed.

Fit to print

"I have some good news for Caroline," the telephone voice said; so I passed it over to her. "The Cheltenham Arts Council are giving you an award as an individual who has made a special contribution to the arts in Cheltenham over the years," the voice told her.

Hooray! Caroline's latest achievement has been wading through a sea of bureaucracy to help establish The Gardens Gallery, which greatly enhances the experience of a trip to Montpellier, as many are finding.

Other family news: Edmund is in Cork, sailing. Leo and Mini have been busy furnishing his flat. Thomas is off in a few weeks' time to Lisbon, to live there for a while (if you have any Portuguese contacts, do email him). Agnes has two or three weeks' house-sitting lined up shortly, and is open to further similar offers. Ida has four teeth, which make themselves felt, and are easily visible as she hardly ever stops smiling. Rosie has lost her Winter coat (and is twice the dog for it). And we still await a buyer for our house, but meanwhile enjoy, if not the sun. then the Summer garden smells: lavender, pelargonium, dianthus, jasmine, roses, tobacco plants, sweet peas and night-scented stock. Still no datura flowers though.