Since spending a year in Toulouse 20 years ago, where I shared a house with a keen fan of ‘bandes-dessinées’ (comic strips), I have been a closet fan of what might be called ‘graphic novels’. Of course there is no need for shame nowadays, with highbrow works such as Marjane Satrapi’s ‘Persepolis’, Joe Sacco’s ‘Palestine’ and now Craig Thompson’s ‘Habibi’ breaking into the UK market.

Back in the early 90s though, I would sneak into Forbidden Planet to buy Neil Gaiman’s Sandman books and feel very out of place among the teenage boys flicking through 2000AD.

In France, however, comics and graphic novels form a respectable chunk of publishing income (varying from €300 to €390 million in recent years). Astérix and Tintin are national heroes (the eagle-eyed reader will point out that Hergé, Tintin’s creator, was actually Belgian, but the books are written in French and incredibly popular in France). Tintin and others opened the door to the development of a rich French tradition of cartoon strips and later, graphic novels, collectively known as ‘le neuvième art’ (the 9th art).

So imagine my delight on hearing that I could indulge my dormant love for a finely crafted comic at Europe’s biggest festival of ‘bandes-dessinées’ in Angoulême, just half an hour’s drive from The Barn. You might wonder why Angoulême is the host for such a prestigious event. Was there, perhaps, a burgeoning comics scene, to mirror Bristol’s graffiti scene? It seems not and that this was a council-led move to reinvigorate a declining industrial city way back in the late 70s, which was hugely successful in bringing the city hundreds of jobs and visitors in their hundreds of thousands.

So off we went last Sunday, armed with a flask of tea and a programme. On arrival, and due to it being a freezing cold day, we were lured straight into the commercial hub of the festival – a huge (and warm) marquee. Here we found the big publishers such as Casterman and Dargaud, who list the high selling action comics as well as more ‘arty’ titles like Thompson’s ‘Habibi’ and Joann Sfar’s ‘Le Chat du Rabbin’ (the Rabbi’s cat). After parting with over 50 euros in half an hour, it was time to make a quick exit.

First we visited ‘Tebeos’, an exhibition of contemporary Spanish creators (‘tebeos’ being Spanish for comics), who seem to have a fascination with the ‘noir’ genre. We then wolfed down a quick lunch in the funky ‘Galerie XXIV’ café’. As its name suggests, it doubles as a gallery and it was clearly one of the places to be for any artists in town.

It reminded us of the Arts House café in Montpelier, so it was no surprise to learn that the owner Dawn hails from Bristol too. But with no time to share Bristol tales, we dashed off to catch the amazing ‘Concerts des Dessins’. A team of artists drew a comic strip, projected onto a giant screen, to live music. It was enchanting and the hour-long performance whizzed by.

One of the high points of the festival was a retrospective of the work of this year’s president of the jury, Art Speigelmann, at the ‘Cité de la Bande Dessinée’. Including hand-drawn sketches for works such as ‘Maus’, his Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel on the Holocaust, this was a treat for any devotee of the ninth art.

Angoulême sits on a very steep hill so to get back up to the old city we hopped onto a festival shuttle which dropped us off outside the ‘Nouveau Monde’ (‘New World’) marquee. This revealed itself as a mecca for alternative comics fans, where the independent publishers rub shoulders companionably.

We soon found a treasure trove at the Cambourakis stand, which a fellow punter had recommended. Here we met Lola Lorente, the Spanish creator of delicately drawn tales of a decidedly ‘arty’ genre. Her first graphic novel has just been published in French as ‘Chair de ma Chair’ (‘Flesh of my Flesh’).

Lola takes her inspiration from old black and white films, which you can see in the play of light and dark in her beautiful artwork. She wrote the book, a sensitive tale of children’s fragile worlds, in Angoulême after winning an artist’s residency two years ago. Temptation got the better of me and I parted with yet more euros, then enjoyed watching Lola draw a personalised ‘dédicace’ (inscription).

With my love of ‘bandes dessinées’ reignited and a haul of delectable titles to devour, we made our way back to the old Barn at La Rambaudie. Our tiny hamlet sat silent, a trail of wood smoke the only sign of life, in a different world to Angoulême and its fleeting international community.

Flamenco Thief - aka Craig Sutton

His real name is Craig Sutton but, to his rapidly expanding circle of admirers, he’s The Flamenco Thief. He is also, and it’s not a word I bandy about loosely, unique.

He plays his own brand of music: influenced by traditional Flamenco but a version of the art that would no doubt make traditionalists’ hair stand on end. He also puts in a lot of percussive stuff, drumming on his guitar and, crucially, uses a loop pedal to record himself and then layer more and more tracks on top – all done live.

Now 30, he was born in Bath, grew up in Warminster, Wiltshire, moved back to Bath about three years ago but plays most of his gigs in Bristol. In fact the last time I saw him play he was supporting another Wiltshire lad, Gaz Brookfield, at The Fleece.

Like a lot of people he first got into electric guitars before switching to an acoustic, although in his case it was a classical Spanish guitar. Then he heard Flamenco music and was hooked.

But he tells the story better in his own words…

“There was no one in the family who played, really. I think my mum said my granddad used to play a bit of piano years ago when she was a kid, but there’s no one else at all. I didn’t start playing guitar till I was 16, which is quite late really. Some people are brought up in an environment where there are always instruments around and start much earlier.

“Basically my older brother got a guitar, got one of those start-up kits, and tried to learn but he didn’t really follow it up. Even then I didn’t pick up his guitar straightaway, I was discovering music I liked – the early stuff I’d listen to was stuff my brother had – so it wasn’t until I was 16 that I decided to learn the guitar and fell more and more in love with it. And that was it… that was an electric guitar.”

What sort of bands was he listening to back then?

“Rage Against The Machine was always the one. When I was younger I was absolutely blown away by Tom Morello. I’d never heard anything like it. They were rap mixed with rock, but the other early stuff I listened to was all heavy music, rock stuff. And a few punk bands like The Offspring as well. That was the first music I made a conscious choice to listen to.”

So did he copy someone else’s style when he was learning how to play?

“Not really. I’ve always been… I kind of like to do my own thing. I got loads of music books and tried to learn bits and bobs because you can’t just pluck it out of nowhere. Everything has a basis and you have to start somewhere. But I was never into the covers band sort of thing. I just enjoyed writing stuff for myself but it’s like a language, you have to learn the basics first. You need to learn about music before you can work on your own stuff.

“The first band I was in was like a ska band, kind of ska punk. Less of the reggae side of original ska, more punk but still with the off-beat chords. But I like all styles of music; it’s great to incorporate stuff from everywhere.”

We arrive at the Flamenco moment…

“I heard Rodrigo and Gabriela first. I had no idea about Flamenco really, I’d heard of it but that was it. The thing is, Rodrigo and Gabriela aren’t actually Flamenco themselves, they get called Flamenco, but they always say they’re not. But like everyone else I assumed they were and thought, ‘this is amazing’. They do all the percussive stuff, which I really love – the way you can make an acoustic guitar sound like a drum is really great. Then I found out they weren’t actually proper Flamenco and listened to some of that and thought, ‘my god, this is even more insane’. It was a different level up.

“Once I’d heard traditional Flameco… you can’t believe that one person could be playing a guitar and all of that could be done at the same time. So fell I in love with that and, with the two, Rodrigo and Gabriela as well, just wanted to learn how to do it.”

Was it self taught?

“Not really, you can’t just blag Flamenco. I had some lessons from a guy in Salisbury called Tim Rushworth, I had about five lessons. He’s an ex-policeman actually, a really nice guy. He showed me the basic techniques. I also bought the Juan Martin ‘bible’ of Flamenco, but it’s very hard to translate it from a book into reality. You just have to practice a lot, it’s all muscle memory. I worked at it for hours and hours a day with a metronone especially for the rhythm stuff [he raps the table with the four fingers of his right hand, producing a staccato 'drum roll']. I’d be sitting there for like 10 hours.”

Obvious question – does it hurt?

“At the start yes, it’s toughened up now but at the start… Till the day I die there’s a lot more to be done, but I’m still on the basics… some of them are getting there but there’s still so much more.

“I’ve been working on it really hard, trying to merge the elements of what Rodrigo and Gabriela do, the percussive side, with Flamenco – that’s something Flamenco players don’t do that much of. They do more fingerpicking, which Rodrigo and Gabriela don’t do. And then adding in all the things I grew up with, that’s where the breakbeat, hip-hop, ska… everything else comes in.”

So this is where the Flamenco Thief name comes from? [I'm quick like that]

“Basically, yes. Names are very difficult. I was going by my own name and no one was remembering it. I was ‘Chris’ Sutton, ‘Greg’ Sutton… People remembered what I did, but not my name. I think Flamenco Thief works because people know I play a version of it without claiming to be an actual Flamenco player. I could never be that, I mean I’m not from Spain, right?”

Has he ever been to Spain?

“That’s my plan one day, but no – not yet. I’ve played a lot of gigs where there have been Spanish people in the audience and generally the reaction has been really good because it’s got enough of the stuff they understand, yet it takes off into a different way. Their reaction has been really great. I played a gig down The Bell [in Walcot Street, Bath] and there were a couple of Spanish couples there who stayed around for drinks afterwards and offered me a place to stay in Madrid. They said, ‘Come on over, you’ll go down an absolute storm’. So I haven’t been yet, but I will definitely go.”

I have to ask. Can he sing?

“No, not really. But with my stuff the lead work takes over the vocal anyway so there’s no need for it. There’s a limit to how much drumming and playing you can do at the same time on your own, but with a loop pedal you can do it all, build up these big tracks.

“I started doing open mics just over a year ago – Ziggy [rapper, Ziggy Ross] was ill when we had to do a gig and I had to do it on my own and I’d never been up on stage by myself and I was scared shitless, so I thought, ‘right, I’m going to have to practice at some open mics’. That was at the end of 2010.

“This last year has been about performing in public on my own, something I’d never done before. It’s so different from playing at home – you have to learn it all first. Performing solo is a completely different thing.

“This year has been a big change. Things have picked up more and shown me… I think I can do it as my job. The more I meet people, the feedback they give me, they say, ‘you can do this’. It’s so nice when people are like that.

“The first few songs I was writing were very technical, I was trying to cram in all the techniques, but now I’ve learnt it’s more about a groove. People have a few drinks and they want to tap their feet and get in the groove. As long as it sounds good and as long as it feels good… that’s kind of the end goal, you know. What’s the point of playing really technical stuff when maybe two people might understand what you’re doing, and everyone else has gone into the other bar?

There is mention on his site about an EP launch?

“It’s ready to go as soon as the sleeve is ready. The hold up is the artwork. My friend Sara-Jane Swettenham is doing it, she’s a really talented artist and it’s going to be a charcoal portrait. But I don’t want to rush it, I want her to be happy with it because she is phenomenal. Maybe the end of February. When she gives me a date I can go with it – it’s a great excuse for a party. Please mention the EP was recorded by Dave Carlyon, who’s worked with Dub Mafia, and plays in Bohemian Embassy.”

Any other plans?

“It’s not set in stone yet but one day I’d like to work with a string quartet. This is the next level I’m going to be aiming at. Jade, the violinist, studies at Bath Spa and she has a lot of friends there and there’s a few other people who have been recommended. I’ll have to have someone else to score the music, but that’s where I’m heading. The dream would be to be able to score string quartets and pieces for orchestras, that would be great  – just to be able to have a go at it would be amazing. But that’s a long way away.”

Best gig?

“There’s been a lot of really good ones this year but… The Big Chill Bar, in Bristol, on a night when a guy who was teaching English to foreign students brought them along for an end-of-term party. There were people from all over Europe, including some Spanish students, and they went nuts. It was so easy for me, I was just keeping the groove going. The guy who brought them found out when I’d be playing in that bar again, so last time I played there he brought his new class along and, as soon as I started hitting that guitar and start doing some beats, they were straight up and dancing again. That’s the best gig.”

People to look out for?

“Well not acoustic maybe, but Bohemian Embassy, Bite The Buffalo, The Daturas – folky, psychedelic stuff – from Bradford on Avon. From Bristol? Gaz Brookfield, I know everyone says that but, he really is that good, his songwriting is great and really genuine. Sam Easton, vocally amazing. Rae, a jazzy Bristol band, an amazing album. Leonie Evans is the singer, she’s got a great voice – I think she does acoustic gigs by herself as well. I think she’s got a solo album coming out this year. And can I plug Largo Embargo – they are a great ska band from Bath but they do loads of gigs in Bristol.”

Where is he playing?

See his site, below, for updates but, in February, he’s at Underbelly, in London, on Tuesday 7; The Prom Bristol, Thursday 9; St James Wine Vaults, Bath, Saturday 11; The Louisiana (cellar bar), Bristol, Friday 17;  The Seven Stars, Bristol, Sunday 19; and The Canteen, Bristol, Tuesday 21.

Contact: http://theflamencothief.com

Our spoken French has come along in leaps and bounds since our arrival here late last March. Lou has gone from hardly speaking (although he understood a lot) to being able to hold conversations with ease and going to the ‘scierie’ (sawmill) to order wood without his trusty interpreter in tow. I have dusted off my creaking French degree and am slowly becoming more fluent. My new goal, which is by definition timeless – and probably unattainable – is to be able to speak French like a native.

The language is our key to finding our place in the community and especially to meeting like-minded French friends. We have been to so many events now where we have been the only English people present – from group rambles, to the local ‘repas de commune’ (village meals) to the ‘bal folk’. Of course we will often find someone who speaks English, but they do not always want to speak it and are usually much happier if we speak French. Being English in those kinds of circumstances can even give you a bit of a cachet as you have the glamour, believe it or not, of being a foreigner.

Our neighbour Daniel does like to run rings around us sometimes by speaking extra fast in his Périgourdin accent and spicing up his language with the odd smattering of the regional ‘patois’, known officially as Occitan. So far my Occitan language skills amount to “coma vai quò” (how are you?), so it is impossible to make sense of it but I am determined to learn, just as soon as I can get my French up to scratch. ‘Occitan’ is what gives the region of ‘Languedoc’ its name, meaning the place where people speak the ‘oc’ language.

I have to admit that I am a little bit proud of my French accent. So it is always a source of dismay when someone points out a glaring mistake in my pronunciation. This is particularly true when it is something very simple and I really should know better, such as the other day when I told some friends that I had just made their ‘dessert’ (the sweet stuff) for our meal but pronounced it more like ‘dezer’, which means the big sandy place, not your pudding. Oh dear – back to square one.

Pronunciation mistakes aside, the point is that we can communicate. If you are thinking of moving to France, especially to a rural area like the Périgord Vert, do yourself a big favour and take the time to pick up conversational French beforehand. We meet so many English folk around here who can barely string a sentence together in the local language.

Not only do people miss out on French friends and culture, they are also open to all kinds of skulduggery if they move here without the basics, never mind the nuances, of the language. Not least of those who might prey upon them are some of their own compatriots, seeking to make a few bob out of unsuspecting new arrivals.

Tales circulate about the ‘P&O builders’, who have earned their name because of the common practice of acquiring a totally new profession on the ferry journey over from the UK. I have heard of builders digging up foundations, charging the earth and even forging clients’ signatures. This happens because Brits are uncomfortable dealing with French ‘artisans’, most of whom are skilled and hard working. Of course there are also plenty of British builders who fit that bill too, but my point is that the fact that someone speaks the same language as you is no guarantee they are trustworthy.

A new rank of professionals have also sprung up to meet the needs of non-French speakers: the ‘bilingual advisors’, who will help with translation, bureaucracy and legal issues. Although most are probably worth the money, some clearly overestimate their skills, much like the P&O builders.

A French friend has had to rescue two people recently who both unknowingly set up the wrong kind of business – and received a whopping tax bill – after being advised by the same ‘bilingual business advisor’. Most people starting out will want to register as an ‘auto-entrepreneur’ because they are only taxed on what they earn. For any other business, there is a minimum tax even if they earn nothing at all, which could be a nasty surprise.

To avoid such pitfalls and to make the most of the rich flavour of life in France, my advice to anyone planning the move is to make a huge effort to learn the language before leaving home for good.

Earlier this month, individuals and companies came together to defend a free, uncensored internet. Here, a Bristol-based board member of the Wikimedia UK group defended the decision for a ‘black-out’ of the Wikipedia online encyclopaedia, in protest against the proposed SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act), as the piracy laws “threatened freedom of speech”.

The protest led to eight US lawmakers withdrawing their support for the proposed bills. But while action is being taken against SOPA and PIPA, an even more insidious US internet law is making its way under the radar through the legislative process… and you need to be aware of it now.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) was initiated and agreed upon in secret by people who were not democratically elected and therefore cannot be guaranteed to work solely in the public’s best interest.

On the surface, ACTA is designed to protect the entertainment industry from people sharing and copying their goods for free over the internet. But like its threatening but now mostly-crippled counterparts, SOPA and PIPA, putting it into practice would have far-reaching suppressive consequences.

If ACTA is implemented, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like Virgin and BT will be held legally accountable for the online behaviour of all their customers. Merely to avoid being prosecuted, they will be forced to put systems in place to examine every single data packet travelling in and out of your computer, and to employ thousands of people whose entire job it is to do the monitoring.

Informing a friend about a technique or skill you learned in an online course? Uploading a video on YouTube of your friends or children where copyrighted music just happens to be playing in the background? Putting up a photo on Facebook where a brand logo is obviously displayed, even if it’s a tattoo on your own body? Sending a song for a friend to listen to which they just might otherwise have paid for? Any of those things could result in denial of internet access, fines or even imprisonment.

Websites designed around user-generated content, not only the big names like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter but also the smaller, upstarting and alternative sites would be forced to drastically change the way they run – perhaps only allowing tweets and uploads after they have been approved by an administrator – or risk being fined or shut down. It’s not difficult to imagine what that would do to freedom of speech if that was the internet of tomorrow.

SOPA and PIPA got millions of people’s blood running in defence of a free uncensored internet, and those people are finally responding to ACTA, after it has passed under the radar for so long. Representatives from America, the USA and many European Union member states have signed for ACTA, but it needs to be passed through in a vote by the European Parliament, which is thought to be taking place in June.

There is still time. Act Now. Protect the internet by signing the petition below, contacting an MEP and spreading the word about ACTA.

Sign: https://secure.avaaz.org/en/eu_save_the_internet_spread/?slideshow

Watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8Xg_C2YmG0 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16757142

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_bERAf5KAg&feature=related

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120124/11270917527/what-is-acta-why-is-it-problem.shtml

http://graphjam.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/acta.png

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110105/02301112524/son-acta-worse-meet-tpp-trans-pacific-partnership-agreement.shtml

Howard Sinclair

Howard Sinclair, born in a village called Wrotham, near Sevenoaks, Kent, in 1977, is a very talented – but fairly quiet and modest – singer/songwriter who plays occasionally at The Seven Stars. I’ve known him for a while now, but only as a ‘pub friend’.

All the other musicians clearly rate him, so would he have an interesting story to tell? Well, it turns out he started on a cello, moved on to the trumpet and then bass before ending up playing a 12-string guitar and singing some lovely songs. That’ll be a ‘yes’ then.

“My earliest memories of music? My mum listening to Radio 3, so a lot of classical influences – in fact the first instrument I learnt to play was the cello. I was about seven and I had a quarter-sized one, it was tiny, but I kind of fell in love with the sound of it.

“But then I gave that up, sadly, because… I got to Grade 2 and I had to change teachers. My teacher said ‘I can’t teach you any more’ and put me on to another teacher, but the new teacher tried to change the way I held the instrument completely, pulled me about, messed it all up for me and I said: ‘I don’t want to do it any more.’

“Then there was a bit of a gap but there was always music around me, we had a piano in the house, so I was always messing about with that.

“In my immediate family… my mother is a Grade 8 piano player, she used to play in assembly at school. So everyone knew me as ‘Mrs Sinclair’s son’. I have three older sisters – yes I was spoiled rotten – the middle one plays the flute, but they all play piano and are good singers and sing in choirs.

“The next instrument I actually learned from a teacher was a trumpet. When I started secondary school the teacher there was a trumpet teacher and I rather liked the noise of it. But I kind of lost interest a bit. I wasn’t learning any more from my teacher. I was playing and quite enjoying it but then GCSEs and things took over and so the guitar took over as well.

“I started teaching myself guitar. We had a guitar in the house, it was my uncle’s, a classical guitar. But I started playing it as if it was a cello to start with. Sort of held it between my knees and played it almost as if it was a double bass.

“In fact when I bought my first guitar I actually wanted an electric bass, because I found myself picking out bass lines – it’s what I naturally hear when I listen to music. I will hear the bass line very strongly.

“But when we went out shopping my mum said: ‘I really think you ought to get a guitar, it’ll be more versatile, you’ll be able to do more with it and play more on your own.’ So I took her word for it and got a guitar.

“I was 15 when I started playing. There was a praise (hymns) songs book in the house and it had guitar chord diagrams in the back so I  just went through them and learnt enough to play a few things.

“And a friend of mine was a good classical guitarist and we’d jam together. We played songs by The Shadows, he was big into 1950s music. The thing with learning the way I did, with the cello and the trumpet, is you learn to read music – and I was singing in the church choir as well – so you learn how music works in a formal sense. So I think that gives you a good grounding if you then go ‘informal’, if you know what I mean.

“When I’d mastered the guitar a bit more I started to apply what I’d learnt, the chords, on the piano.”

At this point Howard pauses to direct two lost tourists to the Ibis Hotel. The one near the harbour. Just as well, really, I’d have sent them to the one round the back of Temple Meads on Avon Street…

Back to the music.

“So I transposed what I’d learnt from the guitar onto the piano. Now I do some writing on the piano, some on the guitar – it depends on the feel of the song. When I was younger I did quite a lot of writing on the piano, almost classical-style pieces.”

Who influenced him?

“The progression from classical to what I got into later music-wise… I got into 1970s progressive rock. Because there’s quite a lot of classical influence in that. Early Genesis, King Crimson, Camel… those sort of bands where it’s mostly about music, if you know what I mean. It’s about the prowess of each instrumentalist. Andy Latimer of Camel, his guitar playing, the tone… is just.. he’s one of the best guitarists out there, I adore it. I adore their early stuff. And early Genesis… I liked some of the Phil Collins era, but more the Peter Gabriel period.

“In the early stuff their guitarists used a lot of 12-string guitars and that’s what got me into using one. They used all kinds of tunings as well.”

He explains to ignorant me that the strings of a 12-string are usually tuned the same as a normal guitar (EADGBE), with the pair to each of the first four (bottom) strings an octave higher than its partner. With the last two (top) strings the pair are both tuned the same.

“I’m still into that 1970s stuff, really. If any of the bands are still playing… I managed to see Caravan – or at least one member of Caravan and a few other musicians – at The Cambridge Rock Festival this year.

“Later I got into Marillion. I heard people talk about them and they said their early stuff was very much like Genesis, and Fish’s vocals were like Peter Gabriel. I’m still into them now, although Fish is no longer their lead singer, but I saw him recently on the acoustic tour he’s doing. He’s mesmerising, absolutely incredible.

“As a result of being a Marillion fan you get to know a lot of other Marillion fans. Jerry Turner [Jerry's interview will be up soon, I promise, IP] is a fellow fan, although I didn’t realise until I met him here at The Stars. And the Marillion fan-base get behind other bands who do similar stuff. The latest I’m massively into is called Panic Room. They’re a female-fronted, five-piece rock band and their lead singer, Anne-Marie Helder, is the best female rock vocalist out there at the moment, she’s just amazing.”

What about his own songs and in particular, a favourite of mine, called The Hitcher?

“The story behind the Hitcher? It’s actually a tribute song to Marillion. It’s a bit of a love song as well, but there are words in there… there are a couple of stolen lyrics towards the end. It is deliberately referencing and making a tribute to Marillion. In the chorus section I mention three of the band members by name.

“I actually started writing poetry when I was quite young, writing words without music. My dad was a very wordy person, he’d use words that most people wouldn’t know. If I said, ‘What does that mean?’ he’d say, ‘Go and look it up in the dictionary and find out for yourself.’ So I got absorbed in words and word-play from quite a young age and started applying it to music later on.

“I find writing difficult, I’ll admit that. I don’t write very many songs. It doesn’t happen very often, sometimes music first, sometimes words first. I think the two come together, I’ve always liked songs with meaningful lyrics.

“For me songs will come from two places, either a direct experience or it’ll be a flight of fantasy and complete imagination. It’s easier to write about things that have happened to you to get the feeling out.

“I used to be in a folk duo (called Master Of None) with my now ex-wife. We were both multi-instrumentalists, I’d do stuff on the piano and she played the saxophone. So when we split up my first album was all about me proving I could be a musician on my own. I did, literally, everything on it. I recorded it myself, I played every instrument on it – there’s even a bit of trumpet on a couple of tracks. But although some of the songs are things that happened to me, there are some completely imagined songs and even a couple of instrumentals.

“I enjoy putting an instrumental together. I love the layering process of playing a keyboard track and then playing a guitar over the top… I like being able to write something with emotion but not having to put words to it. I love listening to instrumental music and some of the emotions it can create are beyond anything any lyric could express.”

When did he first start playing in public?

“It started out with me playing the trumpet at school in front of the school assembly, usually with my teacher, and I played the cello a few times when I was younger, with an orchestra. Guitar-wise I really only started playing when I was chatting to Alfie (Kingston, who puts on the Seven Stars gigs) and told him I was writing my own stuff and did he know somewhere I could play. He was doing open mics then, two or three years ago, and he said, ‘of course’. I’ve known Alfie on and off for a long time so then I started playing here at The Stars and it has really reignited my interest in acoustic music.”

In ‘real life’ Howard has a worthy but not very exciting job in social housing he describes as, “a job you can do with a fairly clear conscience”. But it’s also a job he can do pretty well anywhere and he has moved a round a lot, living by turns in Stroud, Abergavenny and with his sister in a tiny village near Taunton – which had its own advantages.

“This was great because I could connect properly with my niece. She’s a troubled teenager, as I was when I was her age, and she’s started playing guitar, she’s already a good singer with the choir, and she’s started writing her own music. So it was nice to help her and jam along with her. And I brought her up to The Stars a couple of times and called her up to do a song with me… It’s so nice to help nuture that talent. It’s something I didn’t have. I was encouraged, but here wasn’t anyone like me for me.”

OK, so why haven’t I heard his album?

“It sold out. I only made 120 copies and I haven’t done a rerun yet. It was all I could afford to do. What I did, and will probably do again, was to get people who had heard my music and seen me play, to pay a tenner. That tenner gets them a mention on the inlay card and they get their copy first. It’s been done on a much bigger scale by Marillion, they gave me the idea. So I got about 40 people to sign up and that basically paid for the production and printing and things like that. Luckily friends did the photography and artwork for free and I recorded it at home. It was a project and I did it and I sold out of the original pressing. I released it a couple of years ago.

“Although I still play material from that album, I want to move on to the next one. I’m in the writing stages at the moment. Whereas the first one was all about me and doing it all myself, I want this one to be a real collaboration with lots and lots of musicians I’ve met over the last few years. I want to get people involved, people from The Stars, from other areas, musicians I like and respect and would like to have some input on what I do next. That’s going to take a lot of planning, so I’m not giving myself a deadline.

“I want to work with people, get them to play a few tracks or record someone else’s song. Geoff Pugh [yes, he's on my interview list, IP] played a song recently and said: ‘I don’t usually play this song because I think it’s rubbish.’ And both I and Tim Rice said afterwards… Tim said, ‘Can I play it?’ And, they said it was one-upmanship on my part but it was quite genuine, I said, ‘Can I record it?’

“Geoff was kind enough to email the chords and recorded a version of it on his phone… I hadn’t caught the melody the first time, and I thought I want to do something a little bit different with it but be as true to the original text as possible, so I kept most of the words, changed a couple, and changed quite a lot of the chords, put a few more chords in. I performed it down at The Grain Barge recently.

“I want to use the fact that there are so many able musicians who come down here to enable me to write a bit more, because I’m not naturally a prolific writer. What’s nice is picking up on someone else’s writing abilities and playing around with stuff.

“I was talking to Tim Rice the other night and I said what would be really lovely would be to get all of us in a cottage by the sea for a weekend, or a week, and sit around and play, make notes… just putting things together.”

Back to the way he writes his own stuff…

“I will scribble half lines, or something will be in my head for months. I’ve got the first line for a song buzzing round my head at the moment but nothing else yet. I use a lot of open tunings on my guitar and the funny thing is, you can’t write down the chords. Well, you could… but it would be hard work. So I have to play it to get it in my head.

“The open tunings I use are DADGAD and then open D. When I was playing in folk clubs I could hear other musicians using them, so I started talking to people and they said, ‘It’s DAGDAD.’ And when you start off you discover how few fingers you need to play a chord. You can play one-finger chords.”

And the future is…?

“Get together with other musicians and work with them, like I said, plus a tour next year. Myself and a great instrumentalist and singer called Ryan James, who’s from Wales. We met some time ago. He plays piano and percussion at the same time – he’s a bit of a legend. Take a look at One Man And Four Pot Noodles on YouTube.

“The one to remember is the Grain Barge on Friday, February 17, supported by Chris Webb. We’re doing it in two sections: the south of the country in February; starting with a fund-raising gig on February 12 in Swansea then the big one for us in Bristol, as I say the Grain Barge gig on Friday the 17th. Then we’re off on our travels doing bits of Wiltshire, London and Oxford. In the second half there are lots of bits in the north: Liverpool, Birmingham, Leeds… hopefully Manchester as well. It will be a bit of a marathon… but we’re really looking forward to it.”

Howard’s ‘ones to watch’: “Ryan Jones, obviously. Lydia Rose, Holika, that young talented bastard Christopher James Webb and, yes, all the usual suspects from The Stars.”

Good gig? “The Grain Barge recently supporting Ant Noel and playing alongside Tim Rice, that was great, fantastic.”

Bad gig? “The worst was The Globe on the outskirts of Cardiff. I did a support slot for some people there, they’d book it out. After we played, to about six people, we found out the promoter hadn’t been given the information until the same day so they had no chance to publicise it.”

The future: “The tour, obviously, and then get together with other musicians to do some songwriting.”

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Howard-Alan-Sinclair/138023196249193

http://www.soundcloud.com/howard-sinclair

Victims of polio in Africa

When tuberculosis is mentioned in this country, Victorians in top hats and hooped skirts generally spring to mind, perhaps aided by characters like Satine from Moulin Rouge or Fantine from Les Miserables.

Infections are low in this country, such that routine secondary school vaccinations ceased in 2005. However, the bacterium that causes TB, Mycobacteria tuberculosis, is currently responsible for 2 million deaths a year, and is changing fast.

Terrifyingly, New Scientist recently reported a form of TB spreading through India which is resistant to all known drugs. This is a situation which hasn’t been seen for a century. How has this come about?

Some diseases are tantalisingly close to being wiped out. Polio, a disease which can cause severe limb deformation and paralysis, was only found in 1,606 people throughout 2009. So haven’t we pretty much won – isn’t elimination inevitable? It’s still too soon to say. If the endgame is played too recklessly or if too many corners are cut in the interest of saving money, a devastating resurgence is still a possibility.

Africa came worryingly close to a mass resurgence after Nigerian groups, mainly leaders of the Muslim communities, incited their citizens to boycott the polio vaccinations offered by the West in the middle of the last decade. They feared the free vaccinations were laced with anti-fertility drugs designed to reduce the African population, and distrusted Western drug companies after Pfizer allegedly used an untested drug on Nigerian children in an anti-meningitis clinical trial in 1996 without receiving proper ethical consent.

This refusal to comply resulted in polio maintaining its stronghold in Nigeria, and aided its spread to countries like Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, causing paralysis of an estimated 1,500 children.

The debates and controversies remain even after infections have long since stopped. Smallpox was eradicated in the wild in a triumph of world co-operation and tactics. Following a tragic lab accident in Birmingham resulting in the last death on earth by smallpox, all viral samples were destroyed or moved to one of two super-high-containment labs in America and Russia. So Planet Earth is not totally free from the smallpox virus, and there has been much debate as to whether it ought to be destroyed entirely.

Most drugs work by interacting with vital proteins needed by the bacterium or virus to carry out its infectious life cycle. Tighter, more specific interaction with the right part of the right protein generally makes for a better drug.  The current method of drug discovery involves physically testing thousands of substances from vast stocks in laboratories, to see if adding a given chemical helps prevents growth of the problematic bug.

This long, expensive process is close to being bypassed, thanks to the brute computing force of modern technology. Computers are increasingly becoming powerful enough to model, purely in silico, the interaction between the millions of chemicals in a virtual repository and the protein of choice. The most promising candidates are then tested physically in the lab, streamlining the process greatly and allowing life-saving drugs to be administered to the population faster.

Unfortunately, just having the technology to develop the drugs successfully is not enough. As the Nigerian polio case demonstrates, there are a great many social and political factors inhibiting successful eradication of deadly diseases. Even with full public compliance, a slightly outdated or old combination of drugs can easily do more harm than good, and the speed of mutation of many pathogenic species makes delivering these drugs to the right people at the right time very expensive.

Far from the disease-free world that was envisaged after the discovery of the first antibiotics, infectious diseases still kill many millions of people every year. Large proportions of these are under five years old. The pathogens have speed and numbers on their side. Each replication provides the opportunity for mutation, and they replicate fast. However, they are not intelligent or sentient as we are, and never will be. It seems the only thing stopping us winning this is our current lack of computing power and our perennial inability to get along as a species.

Emily Coyte is a recent graduate of Biochemistry at the University of Bristol

Tim Rice

Tim Rice and I were sitting outside The Seven Stars on a Sunday ready to do his interview when the band in The Fleece, next door, decided to do a sound check – clearly they wanted their fans in Fishponds to be able to hear them too. Even pubs suffer from noisy neighbours. Luckily, I can still hear Tim on my little recorder as I write this…

Tim is, of course, the real Tim Rice because, unlike his famous namesake, he writes the tunes as well as the words. And very good ones, too.  He admits to being 51 but doesn’t look anywhere near it – riding a bike to work for 28 years may be a clue. And he’s a Bristolian, born and bred…

“There was always music at home, I remember my parents always having Jimmy Savile on on a Sunday afternoon. It was mostly my mum, I think, she used to listen to The Carpenters and that American singer, Jack Jones, is it? But all sorts going on. Music was in the family. My uncle played guitar in a band and they were very musical on my mum’s side. Her dad played drums in a big band, and saxophone and was into amateur dramatics… But my parents didn’t play any instruments themselves.

“I’ve got an older sister and three younger brothers, the youngest two are twins. The twins dabble and I’m forever trying to get them to get out and play something, but it’s only me really.”

I mention a song of his that inspired me to pluck up the courage to do a few open mic performances (with decidedly mixed results) that has the lines ‘What use is a sundial in the shade?’ and ‘No more singing when you’re dead’.

He laughs: “Yeah, well – a lot of people have come up to me and said that. The reason I wrote it is because… I’ve been in bands for years now but at the beginning, I didn’t play any instruments, I had music lessons at school but really was not interested.

“I liked my sport, I was a keen rugby player, I used to play fly half for Bristol Harlequins’ colts and moved up to the seniors. But I broke my leg in a motorcycle accident, quite bad – bone graft and plate and such like – and I didn’t play again so I was looking around for something to do. And I just fancied getting into music. Never really thought I could sing much or was that gifted but, prompted by my wife Nicola, whom I’d known about a year by then, I looked to join a band.

“So – I’ve never been so nervous in my whole life – I answered an advert in Venue magazine and a couple of chaps came round with guitars to audition me and they liked what they heard – and it went from there.

“We did a few covers but also did our own stuff and at one point I actually started to learn to play the guitar, but obviously this was not until my mid-20s.

“I’m not very good. I was never gifted at it, but it was something I wanted to do, play acoustic guitar at places like The Stars, in front of people, but I never had the balls, which is partly why I wrote – to get back to your original question – Don’t Hide (Sundial In The Shade). I sang in bands where everyone else is playing and that is far easier as far as I’m concerned.

“I can be a bit of an extrovert – I’ll jump down into the crowd. When I’m frontman I’ve got nothing else to think about. But when I’m playing acoustic I feel restricted, I have to really concentrate on what I’m doing. But I spent years just wanting to do this.”

I am suitably astonished because, as I tell him, he struck me as a natural singer/songwriter and the singing-in-a-band stuff comes as a complete surprise. He’s also a better guitarist than I’ll ever be.

“I think you have to play to your strengths. I can’t twiddle, so I do a lot of damping, muting with the palm of your hand? It’s something I worked out for myself.”

What about his own songs, where did they come from?

“I wrote songs with the early band – En Route –  and played a little bass as well, but again it was hard work, I’m not a great bass player – so we got a bass player in. The next band was called The Bizzness, this is still me in my 20s, you understand. From that I went on to a functions band, weddings and stuff, called Reason To Be. The singer was leaving so I joined a ready made band basically, with a brass section. Then another band, more or less the same kind of thing, called Shenanigan.

“I’ve never been the type who thought I could ‘make it’, I just enjoy it, although if someone made an offer, obviously… but when I was with The Bizzness we got played on GWR (now Heart Bristol) and we did quite well on that, that was a song I wrote called Break The Silence – we used to do more original stuff, the function bands were more about covers.

“The last band I was in was Hot Plumz, for about six years. The money I got when the band split up and sold its PA went towards my own PA that I bought for the duo I’m in now with Darren Addicott called One Two Many.

“We both play guitar and sing, share the vocals – anything from Simon and Garfunkel’s Mrs Robinson to House Of The Rising Sun and Smooth by Santana – it’s all covers.”

Despite his busy music career Tim has held down a day job – don’t we all if we can? – with Airbus for more than 20 years. It sounded very complicated but he works on a parts catalogue – “like a Haynes manual, to a degree, but for an airplane”.

We then get on to the cycling.

“When I broke my leg, to get fit… at the time I lived in Filton and worked in Bedminster (more than six miles away) so I bought a pushbike to ride to work and back. And I never stopped, I still ride a bike now (from Winterbourne to Filton and back, about 10 miles a day). So I’ve been on my pushbike since about 1984, 28 years!”

Who has influenced Tim’s music?

“When I started… this is embarrassing… the first single I bought was Tiger Feet, by Mud. I started with that but I soon moved on to Deep Purple, Whitesnake, Rainbow, all that sort of stuff. From there, Pink Floyd, Genesis, whatever appealed really. One song I never get tired of hearing is Somewhere Down The Crazy River by Robbie Robertson.

What about favourite venues (apart from The Stars)?

“The Fleece, I played there one New Year’s Eve supporting On The Edge. And The Grain Barge recently where I roped in some Plumz for the gig, we supported Ant Noel. When we were in The Fleece that New Year, I got up on stage, the place was packed everyone’s up for it – that’s why I like doing New Year’s gigs – and, it’s just how I am, I said to the audience, ‘If you’re up for a good time shout Not ‘alf Popickers,’ and it came back as a roar ‘Not ‘alf Popickers!’. And I knew it was going to be a great gig.

“But that’s what I like. It’s the entertainment. When I’m with a band I can let myself go – I like to express myself – but with the acoustic stuff, like I said, you’re restricted. But I still love it.”

What about the future?

“I don’t think I’d ever retire, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. I’ll just continue as I am, enjoying it all, and see where it goes. I’m hoping to get most of my favourite tracks recorded on a CD one day…”

People to watch on the Bristol Acoustic music scene?

“Guitarists? Chris Webb and Dave Green, now in Bhutan. Entertainment? Gaz Brookfield. But they’re all good. I just take my hat off to people like Howard Sinclair and Ant Noel, for their… musicianship I suppose. Ant can play anything.”

You may remember that we finally put in our planning application for The Barn on the Saturday before Christmas. We had expected a wait of up to two months for a reply, with the possibility of elements of the design being refused.

However, thanks to our Mayor Monsieur Jarreton, we received a hand delivered ‘permis de construire’ on Boxing Day. He had dropped in at the DDE offices (the planning authorities) while he was in St Astier just before Christmas to see if they had received our application. They had and he managed to persuade them to sign it off there and then.

Which just goes to show that it is a very good idea to make friends with your local Mayor. He or she actually has the final say on all building permissions and even if the DDE gave the go ahead, your Mayor could veto it.

We are lucky that our Mayor also happens to be our neighbouring farmer and is a very jovial and helpful man. Monsieur Jarreton goes out of his way to help the people in his ‘commune’. He is so keen to have new people in the commune that he recently co-opted his tractor and driver for an afternoon to help someone move their sofa into an empty property.

We also mucked in with our trusty Landrover ambulance, which would not have done us any harm in his eyes. And we have done our bit by going along to all the communal ‘fêtes’ last year and generally being friendly to all our new neighbours.

This ‘commune’ has nothing to do with hippies. It is in fact left over from the French revolution in 1789, when 60,000 parishes and cities were replaced by 40,000 communes. The idea was that every commune had an equal standing and democratic elections, to replace the oligarchies of the nobility and merchants. There are still around 36,000 communes – and therefore Mayors – in France.

Our own commune is ‘Cercles’. It is made up of the village itself (with an impressive 12th-century church) and 28 hamlets scattered over a few square miles, including La Rambaudie. There were 187 people in our commune in 2009, which is around the average across France. Communes can vary hugely in size – Paris, for example, has two million inhabitants, whereas some have only two or three. In our canton of Verteillac there are several communes with only 60 or so, including neighbouring La Chapelle Montabourlet, which was part of Cercles between 1825 and 1877 but then reclaimed its own Mairie.

Despite Monsieur Jarreton’s affable manner, he has managed to stir up a vipers’ nest in the ‘conseil municipal’. Last summer I was surprised to find barbed comments and retorts in the minutes of council meetings pasted up on our communal noticeboard.

The controversy seems to have been triggered by the purchase of a brand new tractor for the commune. From what I can gather from the locals, the general gist seems to be that anything Monsieur Jarreton wants to do is opposed by the other, longer-standing members of the council, who had expected that his jovial personality would mean a biddable Mayor. They were clearly mistaken, so now a political intrigue is afoot even in our little commune of Cercles.

Meanwhile, Monsieur Jarreton gets on with the day to day work of milking his dairy herd in the next hamlet of Verchiat (population: four). His wife Marise is always in the farmhouse, preserving mushrooms or making jam or some other useful activity. I often take the 10-minute walk to buy eggs from them.

We call him ‘His Egg-cellence the Mayor’ because his hens lay the tastiest, brightest yellow-yolked eggs we have found here. I am already looking forward to April, when we will eat fresh asparagus omelettes made from Mayoral eggs.

Paul Tierney is a Glaswegian singer/songwriter who calls himself The Lonely Tourist, writes brilliantly intricate and intelligent lyrics and plays his guitar at 100mph.

Soon after he started appearing at The Seven Stars (he’s almost a fixture now) Alfie, who organises, comperes and sound engineers the weekend gigs, noticed that Paul’s right foot was descended from a metronome with OCD – so he put a mic on the floor to pick up this ‘rhythm section’.

Paul now uses a small thingy I can only describe as a drum pad when he’s playing, but I remember thinking at the time, it wouldn’t have been much fun living downstair from him when he was learning to play guitar…

Where did the name Lonely Tourist come from?

“There’s a Louden Wainwright album called Unrequited with a song on it called Lowly Tourist and I was going to call it that, but I thought people might misspell it so I went for Lonely.

“I was in a band in Glasgow, for about 10 years, called Odeon Beat Club, and we got called the O’Dean Beat club, which I thought would be a good name for an Irish tribute band.”

Paul was born in Glasgow on May 25, 1973, which makes him 38. What about the early years?

“My mother encouraged me. My sister played the piano and she was the one who took an interest in music, she’s a music teacher so she’s played, like, forever. My mum encouraged me but… they certainly didn’t encourage me to listen to The Smiths or the other stuff I got into.

“When I was really young my mum got me a Monkees tape, it was being repeated on the telly when I was young.

“They had some great songs written for them. I loved Daydream Believer, Last Train To Clarksville and Listen To The Band – that was a Mike Nesmith song and one of my favourites. I would have been about seven then.”

If you like good songwriting The Monkees is not a bad start. What next?

“Queen was the first band that I really, really got into. I’d've been about 11 or 12… The first time I heard Queen was when my dad took me to the Glasgow motor show, or something like that. And they had a section where they were demonstrating stereos. And I heard Queen, unsurprisingly in a section where they have stereos.

“But your tastes change so quickly when you’re that age. I went from liking Queen almost instantly to liking The Wedding Present and The Smiths and indie music. And that was my thing… that’s been my thing ever since.. The Fall and stuff like that.”

Was a guitar his first instrument?

“I always wanted to be a drummer but I couldn’t have a drum kit where we lived, it was never going to happen, so my mum bought me a guitar. Initially I wasn’t interested, it took me ages to get into wanting to play the guitar. Guitar lessons are really boring – the guy was trying to teach me Spanish guitar and I was really hopeless at it, I wasn’t interested. But then you learn some bar chords and you find you can play any Billy Bragg song. A few bar chords and before you know it there’s a world of music opens up to you. I say you can play Billy Bragg songs but you can’t play anything by The Smiths because they don’t seem to use bar chords. Johnny Marr, he’s too much of a genius.”

So when did he decide he wanted to be a musician?

“The first time I suppose at 17 when I wanted to be in a band. A terrible band at school – it was just awful. A vaguely indie dance band. It’s just embarrassing. There is a video of me in a rehearsal room with my mates and it’s never seen the light of day and it’s never going to.

“Then I formed another band in Glasgow in the early 1990s, and they were terrible… The first band I ever played in we didn’t really take it seriously, we were just arsing about for three years, so it wasn’t until about 1998 that I started taking it all seriously.

“In between there was my time at uni and then I stopped for three years and I don’t quite know why because I wish I hadn’t. But in 1998 I got together with my mate and we said we’ll form a band, Odeon Beat club, that’s what we’ll call it… and that lasted until 2009.

“We did OK. It kind of filled in the gap between then and now. We started and immediately the singer left, so I became the singer. Then there were other changes, my sister left. Then in about 2002 we recorded a tune and got selected for a competition called T Break – an annual competition for a Scottish band to get a slot at T In The Park – Snow Patrol were the judges. We got a year or two of breaks, cut singles with small labels. We were one of those bands… it just happens, you never quite make it. We had a few radio plays, Radio One sessions, and you think this is going to go well but… It just goes on and on, a few years later we did the Babyshambles tour. We got the first gig by luck and the others by being good enough – seven or eight dates over the course of two years. But it never quite happened.”

What about non-music stuff?

“At uni I did politics and history. Being a student was the best thing ever. Not for getting drunk, but you can go to libraries and read books. You don’t realise it at the time but this is what you’re more or less being paid to do.”

Then Gaz Brookfield crops up in the conversation and I say that there are similarities in that they both have a knack of writing songs that people can immediately identify with.

“He’s also got something that I definitely don’t have. When he plays live he has a wee bit of charisma… well a big bit of charisma. We both played to the same crowd at Brisfest this year and I went down OK but Gaz plays to them an hour later and he goes down a storm. He just nails it. In Glasgow I’d never seen anyone play like Gaz.”

I ask if he wants to carry on in a solo career?

“I love being able to just say ‘yes’ to everything, do a million gigs. Just pick up my guitar and go and play, so yes, I’d like to keep solo, but I’d like to do stuff with the band. I launched my album with Kick Inside, a Bristol band, the name comes from a Kate Bush album, they were the backing band and it was brilliant, really great. But it would be best used sparingly because they’ve got their own thing… But if someone says, ‘do you want to do a gig tonight, Paul?’ I can just turn up, whereas you’d have to phone round three people and arrange for a drum kit. It’s the practical thing I love.”

Why the move to Bristol?

“Steph got a chance to do her masters here. I stayed in Glasgow to finish off the band’s album and then moved down here. Best thing I ever did, moving here. I’ve not enjoyed music so much for years. There’s a million places to play here. Glasgow’s a great music city as well and most of my favourite bands come from there. But moving down here was magic. People are always so nice.”

Could he go full time?

“I don’t know. I’d have to work on my covers set.”

What about the future?

“I’m doing another album. I’ve got eight or nine songs for it already and it should be out middle of this year. The last one took the best part of a year to record…”

Listen to a sample track of Paul Tierney and The Lonely Tourist…

Contact: www.myspace.com/lonelytourist and http://lonelytourist.bandcamp.com/

Interesting facts: Paul has played inside a statue in the park in Totterdown and also to about 25 people sitting in the bedroom of folk singer Rachael Dadd as part of the Southville Arts Trail.

Good venues: “I always have a good night at the Thekla and the Louisiana. I’ve played the O2 here, the Carling Academy, but it was like… a hundred bored teenagers waiting for Pete Doherty. And The Seven Stars, or course.”

People to look out for: “A band called Scarlet Rascal and the Train Wreck – really fantastic. Acoustic? Suzy Latham…  and Sadie Fleming’s very good. And Chris Webb, of course (the other half of the Alfie Kingston Duo) – and I’ve already mentioned Gaz…

Over the coming weeks Paul is playing at: The Curfew, Bath, tonight (Friday, January 13); The Seven Stars in Bristol, tomorrow (Saturday, 14); Grounded, in Bedminster, 15; Stag and Hounds, Old Market, Bristol (with Gaz Brookfield), 21; and for those who fancy a trip a little further afield, at the Cafe Continental at Gourock (near Greenock, Scotland and overlooking the Firth of Clyde) February 10; and ABC2, Glasgow, 18.

I have met some fantastic characters in my job as retail chaplain to Bristol City Centre. Although I work in the city for only half a week that gives me plenty of time to get about and to hear of people’s joys and sorrows, hopes and despairs.

One great fellow was selling from a stall on the street and it was his last day. He was off to India to walk around, gathering experiences (and a bit of work, hopefully!). We got on to talk about fairness and justice and generally we put the world to rights.

I met with another individual who chatted about what she was doing day-to-day and then, just as I was about to walk on, she started talking about an issue of abuse in her life. I was able to listen to how she was dealing with this situation and offered whatever support I could.

Another chap was trying to sell charity membership to passers-by and had a target of three ‘sign-ups’ for the day. I asked him how he kept such a bright smile on his face all of the time. He told me that he didn’t know as he had suffered a bereavement the previous day.

This is what makes the life of a chaplain so interesting. Interaction with people and the privilege of listening to their stories. Of course, all the stories I hear are strictly confidential so those I have quoted are necessarily vague and without too much detail.

My role follows a long line of chaplains in the workplace stretching back to those chaplains who travelled with the soldiers to the trenches of the Great War. You will find chaplains in a number of town and city centres up and down the country along with those in more recognised places such as hospitals, hospices, the Armed Forces, police stations and so on.

Essentially a Chaplain is a listener and offers an ear to anyone who needs this level of support and is available to everybody regardless of religion, lifestyle, gender, sexuality, and so on. Chaplains are motivated by their faith to action and that action is to offer service to others and place upon them no expectations. The service offered is unconditional, confidential and independent.

Retail is a particularly vulnerable occupation to be in during a recession and all of us will have read the headlines and know of shops and stores that have disappeared from the High Street. Many of us will know some of the people behind the headlines who have lost their jobs with little prospect of picking up a new one.

A great tragedy about this is the fact that some of the lowest paid workers in the nation work in retail and when they lose their income they very quickly slip into the poverty trap. Through my work I offer a listening ear and will help ‘signpost’ people toward the help and support they need.

I can be contacted on retailchaplain@gmx.co.uk ; or on 07508 701878 or tweet me on @ChaplainAndy2. There is also an organisation called The Retail Trust who are the only charity to offer support to all 3 million people who work in the retail sector in this country. The Retail Trust can be contacted on their confidential helpline 0808 801 0808; or email at helpline@retailtrust.org.uk; or text the word HELPLINE to 88010.

Information about how to support the work of retail and other workplace chaplaincy is offered by an organisation called ISR who can be found at www.ccisr.org.uk . Bristol City Centre Chaplaincy Trust, who employ me, are working with ISR and exploring ways that Chaplaincy can be extended into other areas of Bristol City life.

For more information about Chaplaincy pleased do contact ISR on 0117 9557430, admin@ccisr.org.uk, alternatively please contact me using  the details above.