Interview Martin Clarke 27-02-23
On the 11th December 2022, I bumped into Martin Clarke next to Coombe Lake in the snow and he kindly let me take a few portraits of him, which are shown here. This reminded me that just over six years ago Martin asked me to set up the South Cotswold Jazz Club at Wotton’s Under the Edge Arts (UTEA). The jazz jams that resulted from this have been a staple feature of Wotton cultural life. I wanted to find out more about what motivated Martin to start this, and get some stories from him. So I popped around to his place in Coombe to catch up. I started by asking about jazz and music.
Martin: In terms of singing we've got the fantastic Monday night choir, a community choir, so that niche was catered for when Liz Martin moved to Wotton and set up the Round the Edge Choir and filled that gap straight away. I mean, she is so good. She was just like the flower that attracts the bees who just want to take part in all this fun. And I was part of that once I had found it. In later years I discovered I had a voice; for a long time, I didn't like my own voice. What you hear inside your head is very different to the voice that other people hear. And so singing was something I used to do in the car, but I never thought of doing it with other people. That's changed a little bit recently because during lockdown, I just got into singing online with teacher Jenni Roditi. All of it improvised, even opera. I got a lot out of it psychologically, I really started to explore what my voice can do.
Anyway, coming back to jazz, I'm not a huge jazz enthusiast, but I saw the opportunity to bring people together. Jazz and me, I suppose, my memories go back to when I was young, the 50s; my dad liked the radio. Occasionally I'd flip the channels, try and listen to other music, so you know, American Forces Network and Radio Luxemburg. Not that there was a lot of jazz on Radio Luxemburg, but there was on the American Forces Network. I built a crystal radio, so I used to go upstairs to my tiny little box bedroom, which was about the size of this table, and lay on the bed. So that's where I heard the beginnings of jazz, 60s maybe, no this was in the late 50s. And yeah, so one of the first records I bought was Dave Brubeck at Carnegie Hall. Which is a well known live-album; just loved it. I like to use his treatment of different rhythm patterns of jazz. I liked Take Five. And then the other side of jazz at that time was what was on the TV, black and white. So it was Trad in the main because it was a very popular time for it. Kenny Ball, Acker Bilk, Chris Barber, probably the best for my point of view. And Barber’s vocalist, Ottilie Patterson was fantastic. And I remember seeing the Newport Jazz Festival on TV. There's a very good documentary on Newport Jazz Festival. So yeah, jazz has sort of been coming in and out of my life, I suppose. My ultimate love in all music, at the top of the pile, is Nina Simone. And I don't know anything she has done that I don’t like. She's wonderful, along with Billie Holiday. She was and is amazing, I even like the remixes they have done of her music.
So I still listen to that a lot. When I go up the woods or go on a walk. I've started to do improvisation. Sadly the online sessions stopped in the UK but I'm still doing improvisation, a session once a month on Monday night. It's typical Dutch, sort of a mayhem online. Whereas what Jenni Roditi did was slightly more structured.
Getting away from jazz there sorry. No, I'm really pleased that you took up the challenge of setting up the jazz jams. It's, I don't know, it's a form of music that’s never going to be mainstream, so far as the public is concern. It's always nice to see 15, 20 people in there. The quality is very good.
John: Yeah, we get a lot of punters in. I've never been able to gauge how many will come. It's great. Now when I did those photos of Purton, you said, you commented that you took some concrete boffins there. That sounded fascinating though.
Martin: I got into concrete as a career by chance really. I was at Hull University, I had just done an Msc in Operational Research (OR).
John: That's hard, I used to hate OR when I did my degree in Computing Science.
Martin: Operation Research at that time was going to be the saviour of mankind! The whole of society could be modelled. I thought there would always an option of using it for work. And what finally finished me off, I was given a project to do in a glue factory, a gelatine factory. Beverley in Yorkshire, that was my MSc project. I mean it was a mixture, to get your Master's you had a unit on the research project thesis and that had been signed off, and then you had a bunch of exams on what you were lectured on during the year. I passed the exams, okay, the problem for the thesis was a pain in the neck, and I never got it, I never finished my MSc. It stayed in a box. The reason for that is that, Lynne got a place at Redland College in Bristol to teach. At the time the government had a scheme called Professional Executive Register which was like a trial, so I signed up for three interviews at Bristol, so I collected three lots of travelling expenses; so for me, as having no money at all, that was great, it was a good payday. So I went around three places in Bristol, had interviews. At the third one in Chipping Sodbury the guy I met there offered me the job on the spot. He said, [about the thesis] he said, "tell them you'll do it some other time, I want you to start next Monday. I'll give you a six month contract." So I said yes, went back and told the people in Hull that it was on hold and they said finish it when you can.
Of course you get sucked into the work cycle. That's it. So I finished up in this place in Chipping Sodbury that made concrete pipes. So this is now opposite the entrance to Waitrose, it’s a housing estate. I was in there six months and did a project which was installing a sales analysis computer system and he said that we wanted me to stay on, do some marketing works. I became a marketer promoting concrete and we bought a company in Oxford making concrete blocks, and I became marketing manager for that part of the group. It was part of the Amey Roadstone Corporation, which was part of the Consolidated Goldfields group. I stayed there for 18 years. I went from the concrete company to a group role, and they moved from London. I went with a team that moved from London to Chipping Sodbury and then ultimately became Development Director of the aggregates side of the business. So I was sent all over the world to look at acquisition studies, and the market studies. Very fantastic opportunity.
Probably the best work I have ever have done was in 76-'77, in America. No mobile phones. And I remember the music from that when I spent four weeks touring America flying from City to City. Making phone calls to the next city. Get a bunch of interviews with key people. And all the time, hiring cars and so on. And then radio stations. Eight tracks in the hire cars in those days in America. I had a lot of 8 tracks. You could put it into your car when you were driving. So it was nice to hear those. I kept going back to America.
John: Do you remember any other music in particular?
Martin: Oh yeah, I remember the West Coast, California stuff, Beach Boys, I was a big fan, great band. And I liked their later stuff. It is a bit sad to see Brian Wilson now. Still churning stuff out, but it's obviously not as good as the classics. But I liked some of their more obscure music. I'm very much guided by emotion when it comes to this. Particularly the effect of music on your body. So the rhythm that goes through your body and the tingle factor, as I call it, which I don't pick up much in jazz. Occasionally I do. Occasionally, but when you get goosebumps ...
John: Spine chill, chill factors, yeah.
Martin: That is what a writer called Godfrey Smith called it. Many years ago he wrote a book called The Tingle Quotient. There's a chapter in it about music and about people's views about music. At the end of the book there's a list of top 50 tingle music, this was about 40 years ago. For me, this can come from anywhere, even the young guys in the hall (UTEA). It's a mix of what's in the head and the notes and the relationship, even just the bending of a note can produce it. I listen to jazz, classical, everything.
John: There was something in the news about that recently. Some people don't get that spine chill thing. And some people, and they were saying why, but I can't remember why.
Martin: Exactly. It's about half the time, that people get goosebumps from music. And the same thing with Pareidolia, which is another thing that I get where I see images in the sky and on trees. I can see faces and images and that comes from being a kid in a small bedroom that used to get ice on the inside. I used to see pictures of the ice on the inside of my bedroom. So I think it has always been there in me. So yeah, I still walk through woods and see sprites and goblins and stuff.
John: That's interesting. So tell me about the Purton thing.
Martin: The Purton hulks, yeah, I did a lot walking along there when we were younger. I was fascinated by the ships’ graveyard and the story that they needed to shore up the land between the Seven and the canal. The canal was just a massive artery to bring seagoing trade into Sharpness and onto the Gloucester. And for a time it looked as though they might be breached. So I don't know who made the decision. They joined together a lot of barges that were a mixture of wooden and some concrete barges. They lined them up on the opposite bank and waited for the tide to be right and just charged them across, they just sped them to the bank to shore up the bank and I was amazed at how they have stood the test of time. When we first went there, we saw there had been some vandalism and that still goes on, particularly the timber. There's one guy who stopped the damage, I can't remember his name.
John: Paul Barnet, he started to look after them. He's a writer, historian over there here. He's tried to educate people.
Martin: Yes. And it's a story that he's keeping alive. But for concrete technologies, it's always interesting to have old examples. It's a little bit subject to marine environment problems. The visits are not for any part of any serious research project, but if I had any good people stay with us I’d take them over there for a picture of them standing on the concrete hulks.
John: It's quite a magical place. It's quite an unusual place. I love it. I've got a brilliant sunset on photos. I'll go back.
Martin: Yeah. We like going there. As you know it's a great place for picking up driftwood. For the children.
John: As Billy my Son knows, because I take him with me. Because he's stronger than I am.
Martin: We've got one piece at the back, which one day will be turned into a piece of art that's about 12 years old now. And it's been worked by man. You can see where, I'll show you where one's got marks. So, it has got two areas on it where it's been worked or something, so it's had chunks taken out of it. And it's deteriorating unfortunately.
Hopefully, we can get it shown, treated as a sculpture. And I saw it lying on the bank, it was a covered in mud, I said to Lynne, “I really like it”. So we drove home from Purton for a wheelbarrow in the car. And I bought the wheelbarrow back, we walked out of the towpath. I got it. But you know how clingy the mud is.
John: Yeah, me and Billy have done that with each other. Sometimes I had to get the wheelbarrow over the reeds. So Billy comes in because he is strong. I've got some of the hilarious shots of me getting him to do that near the 7 Bridge. I find it all that, that river quite magical. [see below]
13 July 2019 John's Facebook post. "To get Billy Magerison warmed up for his recording session on Friday, on that morning I dragged him off to banks of the Severn to find driftwood for my garden. Reclamation was done with a barrow at Aust near the old ferry crossing, with the old Severn Bridge in background if you look carefully. Fascinating area".
Martin: Yeah it is, it's quite unusual. And yeah, there's a place underneath the second-Seven crossing, Severn Beach where you can walk. There's some spectacular driftwood, interesting things there. Most of it you can't think about getting home. Wanting to own something is a strange thing, and you have to think “maybe you can’t”.
John: I even looked at the laws on that. They reckon that if it's in the tidal reach, you should be totally fine to reclaim it. But, I mean I agree, you'd have to be sensitive.
Martin: Yeah. It's interesting to go looking for the stones and rocks. I have painted with mud from there. I’ve drawn with mud straight on to paper. That was an early experiment, but that got me into painting with natural pigments. In a way it was a separate way of thinking. I went to a couple of walks with the Walking the Land group from Stroud along the river bank, including a slow walk. I didn’t really understand what a slow walk was exactly. So I haven't quite gone into it, but I know what they were doing.
John: Do you absorb?
Martin: I don't know what they were doing. Yeah, just really, really, really slow. And you just have to decelerate. How you're going to go that day. And there are guys that do that, they are still around and still working on producing art. And that got me into organising the Wotton Art Making Walks where I take a bunch of people, normally women for some reason, for a few hours around the town and around the countryside and I ring a bell and they've got 15 minutes to produce something, a picture, a micro painting and a poem, a dance or a bit of music and so on. Then we move on to another place. I ring a bell to signal the end of 15 minutes. So the reason for doing that was to prove that you can transcribe onto paper or into song, your surroundings pretty well instantly. And then it was surprising how much work were able to produce. And then we connect it all up and then go back to the all-in-one display. So we had an instant art exhibition, I was really enjoyed it. I don't know whether I'm doing more, just because of the other things I have to do. But hopefully somebody else will take it on.
John: Any pictures for that?
Martin: I've got plenty. It’s a great way of getting people to meet and talk as well.
John: The 100 Acer Wood thing, tell me about that because that looks fascinating. Are you right in the centre of that? Yeah, tell me about that.
"Seven volunteers worked today on our double/double hedge down to the stream, following the line shown of the mid-19th century map".
Above two photos taken from https://www.facebook.com/100AcerWood
Martin: Yeah I’m the Acting Chair at the moment. Well, the reason we moved to Wotton in ‘78 was essentially this valley, Coombe Valley / Tiley Bottom. We were living in Bishop's Cleeve, which is just north of Cheltenham Race Course. And my job was supposed to be in Cheltenham, it never actually happened. It cancelled because of a recession, one of many recessions.
It cancelled an office move to Cheltenham and I had to retrace my steps to Chipping Sodbury to work. I'd already got a job in Cheltenham, so we moved up there for four years. And I commuted, I got a company car through that, which was handy. And coming down, Rushmire Hill we looked at the valley, and that clinched it, we said, “just look down there”, so we moved to Beechwood Grove, which was on the other side. We started out in Court Meadow renting a house, but we'd seen a house at the top of the Grove and a couple of elderly owners agree the price, and they stuck to that price so they could find something to go to. So we were beneficiaries of old fashioned honourable behaviour. Six months later we bought it from them at the same price. So we lived up there and loved it. And it was a little bit of a trek to town. So we moved from there to Old Town to an old mill, a four storey mill, it was a part of the building that houses the Catholic Church. The garden was in the back, which kept the children away from the road, there was no way out from there so very safe. I got made redundant. A take over, when Hanson took the company over. Lord Hanson and I did not get on. I was a Business Development Director, but a chap called Gordon White already did all this business development for him. So people like me, he thought, were completely unnecessary, so it's was just like a waiting for the payoff cheque. So I put my redundancy into Adey’s Lane we got the Old Coach House, which had a field next to it which was like a dream for us. And then we bought a piece of walled garden next to it from a woman in Texas who owned it, but that is another story. We acquired our own green belt around our house. But that got too much for us. I'd been working away from home for a few years, so had to leave it all up to Lynne, just too much work so we sold up and moved here to Coombe; that was 18 years ago. So we have always drifted around this part of Wotton, that Coombe valley and the symbolism of it is very important.
A few years ago, the woman that owned the agricultural land in the lower half of the Coombe valley put it up a sale. A guy who was a cowman for a farm bought it as his own dream. A big piece of land. Ultimately, he decided to cash it in and started to break it into chunks. I didn't like the idea of it, but that's what he did. There were three chunks nearer to us. They we're all about the same size, each about two-and-a-half acres, put on the market for 15 grand each (£s). And a guy called Mark Chimley bought one, who lived nearby. He bought one. He developed a scheme called Woodland Friends, where anyone could go along and pledge to buy a tree for £40 dedicated to the memory of somebody. It wasn't a memorial in the sense that no bodies were there. But it was like a tribute. There was one very similar, by the Avon, at Damery. He planted up to 500 trees of which about 100 were paid for through this dedication scheme. He put the usual green plastic tube around them, but a lot of the trees died; a lot of them were attacked by squirrels and deer. And over the years, he moved to Derbyshire. And then obviously he wasn't on the spot to look after them. I saw that there was a piece of land that was slightly distressed, the hedges hadn't been laid properly. You need to lay hedges and keep them on top of them. You don't have to, but that's a countryside tradition. So to my surprise, this is about two years ago, I said to Mark, "Let’s talk about forming a trust, we'll look after your land. I'll pay you a pound a year. This will stop any ideas of making money out of it”. And he came back and said, "Yeah, okay". So we talked about it, in COVID times, we agreed to set up a trust, he agreed to be a trustee, even though he was the owner. And they've gathered together 28 volunteers to look after it. Many have got the skills that can be applied and knowledge. So ecologists and foresters, people who have moved over to country crafts. It's a place for, it's hard to get it over, it's a place of solitude where you can go and recharge batteries, or it's a place of companionship. In the hedge-laying season, I think we've had up to 14 people working together for a few hours, so we've got a good company there. We've got a meeting place now where we have a fire and we can cook. And we're developing crafts, we want to make charcoal there. We can make hurdles, we've got a hurdle making station. We've made a few hurdles which we didn't know anything about. We've supplied big poles, a lot of firewood, and take some firewood, every week. We can't get too much away because the wood has to be dry. It's got to be seasoned otherwise you finish up with the crusty tar in your chimney and the pollution levels are high. So we've been drying firewood. So that's it really, we're having a lot of fun. We've got 750 trees this season to plant. I've got about 200 to go to the end of March. It looks bit raw with all the tree guards in place but will soon soften and become wilder. The piece of land, we call it "Hundred Acer" but in the 1850s it was called "Tuggers Ash Leaze". I don't know who Tugger was but it's on the Tithe map. It's fantastic.
John calls time on the interview.
Lynne and Martin Clarke are holding a joint exhibition at Under the Edge Arts 24-27 May 2024 - painting, sculpture, photographs, curiosities www.creativityincoombe.com