Celebrating England’s favourite poet and Britain’s favourite food. Glyn Watkins will be telling stories from Rudyard life and reading some of his best loved poems, including If… Consistently voted the nation’s favourite poem.
He will also be doing some of his own poems, (WARNING: these poems will rhyme), including: Saint, George. – the tale of a poor lad from Bratfert who went to Ilkley Moor in search of dragons.) and Endless Cycles – a poem of thanks to a fan who bought him a washing machine.
7pm. Thursday 5th October 2023.
Peacock Bar
North Parade
Bradford BD1 3 JL
Tickets include curry (chicken or daal, please say which when booking) and a naan.
Tickets £12.50 each or 2 for £20 if booked before the 5th.
Tickets available from Monday 25th September from eventbrite (fee payable) or Weds 27th from venue.
Every year Bristol Museum Service runs The Bristol’s Brilliant Archaeology event at their Blaise Castle museum. All sorts of artists, experts and historical re-enactors take part, and this year they were joined by a pretend Bishop Blaise from Bradford in West Yorkshire.
Yorkshire based poet and showman Glyn Watkins has been dressing as Bishop Saint Blaise for years. Blaise was tortured with iron combs before being beheaded by the Romans in AD 316. Because of the combs he became the Patron Saint of wool combers and the whole wool trade. The wool combers in different Yorkshire wool towns used to take turns to celebrate Blaise’s day (3rd Feb.) with massive processions. The last procession Bradford combers organised had around a thousand people from the wool trade in it; but that was in 1825!
For well over a decade Glyn has been trying to spin and weave a revival of the celebration. He started by leading walks around Bradford, dressed as Bishop Blaise, with a home made mitre and wool comb. 5 years ago himself and Bradford Industrial Museum organised Bradford’s first ever wool fair; and last Saturday he took his Blaise story to Blaise Castle, thanks to a grant from Bradford BID.
So on Saturday 16th September Glyn wondered around the event telling the story of Saint Blaise; about how there used to be a chapel dedicated to the Saint in the grounds; and how Blaise was martyred. Lots of children wanted to know what the fearsome looking comb was, and a lot of them said: “Oh! It’s only pencils!” when they realised how Glyn what made it out of.
The Romans of the Ermine St Guard denied all responsibility for Blaise’s death, pointing out that they were from the 1st Century AD and that their great-great-great grandchildren were responsible for doing away with Bishop Blaise in the 4th Century.
At the end of the day Glyn thanked the staff of Blaise Castle for a brilliant effort and declared that he was delighted to have kept his head and combed out and spun some stories, and he hopes to be be at next year’s Bristol’s Brilliant Archaeology event.
This September Bradford poet and showman Glyn Watkins will be not only celebrating his own birthday; and the birthday of Bradford born writer J.B.Priestley on the same day; he’ll also be celebrating the fact that it will be 25 years since he came up with a ‘Pie & Priestley Show, celebrating J.B.Priestley’s birthday and a Bradford meat & potato pie that defied Hitler!’.
The idea came from a radio broadcast made in September 1940, during the worst period of the Blitz. Priestley had returned to his home town of Bradford to see the results of a German bombing raid. He’d been told a small pie shop had been destroyed, along with its giant pie, that sat in the window and steamed. To his delight the shop and the pie had survived and was steaming away:
‘Every puff and jet of that steam defied Hitler, Goering, and the whole
gang of them. It was glorious.’
The show will feature stories, reading and pictures from Priestley’s life and works; will feature surprises (even to Glyn, if his past shows are anything to go by!) and includes meat & potato pie (of veggie alternative) & peas in the price of the ticket.
The show is at The Boar & Fable, North Parade, Bradford BD1 3HZ; at 1.00 pm, Sunday 10th September. Tickets are £10 inc. pie & peas. Available from The Boar & Fable, or from eventbrite (for a fee).
I have done a podcast of the poem but don’t know were it is. So below is the text of this year’s card.
The December hard spend
Can chill our hearts
then fog the mind
Can seem like just a duty
That leaves us powerless and blind
Leaves us forgetting what love has meant
So sharpens the winter of our discontent
So let’s resolve to mend
And with loving parts
switch on the kind
So make up the beauty
Of what fools have spent
And use the power
That love has sent.
And may that power
Be what you find.
Happy Christmas. This year’s electricity pylon was going to be multi-layered, but ended up being glue & glitter on the glass of a picture frame. The foreground is a bit of wool pad. The hill is a paper bag, and the background is a black rag glued to the backing, with a star shaped hole cut in it, with a torch behind.I started the poem on the way to Keighley(pronounced Keef-ley) to see A Bunch ofAmateurs, a film you must see. Glyn Watkins 8th Dec. 2022.
Prime Minister Lord Palmerston laying the foundation stone of Bradford’s Wool Exchange on 9th August 1864. There was a ‘silent protest’ by Bradford’s workers (not shown) .Bradford Wool Exchange’s foundation stone marker in Pizza Pieces.
The Building opened in 1867 and was, literally, the centre of the wool’s unspun wool trade. Everything from raw, unsorted, fleeces to washed, combed and carded, and dyed wool fibre was bought and sold here.
The statues at the clock tower entrance are by James Tolmie. He has no Wiki, and died before the Wool Exchange was opened. The statues are of Bishop Blaise Patron Saint of wool combers, and Edward III a great supporter of England’s wool trade (which paid for him to spend his life winning battles, and even with wool money he bankrupted his own county. I am not a fan).
The rest of the outside busts of explores and famous men are by the Leeds firm of Mawer and Ingle I have only just discovered that, and their Wiki is making me wildly excited! Not just because one of the sculptures and business parterres was a woman.
The busts are:
Bank St
Christopher Columbus 1451-1506
Francis Drake 1540-1596
Walter Raleigh 1552-1618
George Anson 1697-1762
James Cook 1728-1865
Market St.
William Ewart Gladstone 1809-1898
Samual Cunliffe Lister 1815-1906
Richard Arkwight 1732-1792
James Watt 1736-1819
Robert Stephenson 1803-1859
Titus Salt 1803-1876
Richard Cobden 1804-1865. Also statue inside by Timothy Butler, unveiled 25 July 1877.
Finally I have 2 picture of the roof of the Wool Exchange. Before Waterstones put in the new entrance and glass wool the inside was dark and gloomy. Now you can see the shields of Yorkshire wool towns, and see that some of them are rubbish. The theory is that nobody bothered that they were rubbish, because nobody could see them.
Roof of Bradford’s Wool Exchange. Spot the shields.Bradford’s shield in the Wool Exhange’s roof. This is quite good. You can see the boar’s well and the 3 horns the slayer of the boar had to sound when his Lord of the Manor visited the land given as a reward.
Glyn Watkins will be spinning yarns on the anniversary of the laying of the foundation stone.
A walk of less than 30 mins. A collection will be made. Please keep a safe enough distance.
The walk may be filmed.
Bradford Woolly Heritage CIC
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The Story of the walk.
The Wool Exchange, on Market Street, was once the centre of the whole world’s wool trade: and while new businesses have given it new life; what it did for wool is a fading memory. Poet and showman Glyn Watkins, of Bradford Woolly Heritage Community Interest Company, is determined to re-spin the yarns of the building’s great wool days, on the anniversary of the laying of its foundation stone, on 9th August 1864, by the then Prime Minister Lord Palmerston.
Glyn will be walking around the building and telling stories while dressed as Bishop Blaise, Patron Saint of the wool trade; who’s statue stands by the clock tower entrance. As he explains:
“Bradford used to have a massive celebration of Bishop Blaise’s day in February up until 1825, and we are reviving it. The Wool Exchange has some magnificent stone carvings and the Blaise statue is a great reminder of a once great occasion we can reweave. Last August 9th I filmed a live to Facebook walk because of Covid19. I told some of the many great stories of the building, people, trade when the Wool Exchange once wove the world together with wool. It got a good response so I am repeating it for anyone who’d like to walk around with me.”
Glyn will be doing a walk at 10.30 am and 2.30 pm. Starting at the clock tower and taking less than 30 minutes. People are asked to keep a safe enough distance. He will repeat a walk if too many people want to join. A collection will be taken.
The Glyn Watkins Show Page. 
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