Devonshire June July 16

A point of view!
Nelson’s Column
by JOHN FISHER
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The Seven Wonders
of Devon
ASK ONE OF DEVON’S HOLIDAY VISITORS
to list The Seven Wonders of Devon and they
will smile politely and move down to the
other end of the bar.
On the other hand ask a Devon resident the
same question - particularly in The Weary
Mary Poppins’s birthday
BUY A TICKET for Mary Poppins at the
Theatre Royal, Plymouth for Tuesday, 9th
August and you’ll also be marking a birthday.
For the woman who wrote the Mary Poppins
Badger (somewhere in
Devon) - and they will
scratch their heads,
push an empty glass
towards you and begin
their lists - because we
all of us have them
- each one different
from the rest.
So what defines
a wonder? The
pyramids were and
are a Wonder of
course, the lighthouse
at Alexandria, the
hanging gardens of
Babylon and so on.
Special places that
touch the spirit of
those who experience
them, as well as
knocking the socks
off them in the process.
Here is the The Weary
Badger list, for what
it’s worth and in no
particular order.
The Jurassic Coast from the sea, early
morning: Brunel’s bridge over the Tamar, the
smell of a Devon bluebell wood after rain: a
cappella singing in Exeter cathedral: basking
sharks glimpsed from the Coastal Path:
Dartmoor’s standing stones in a blizzard:
seals around our estuaries.
Eight would have to be Summer - anywhere
in the Devon countryside.
books, who used the pen name P. L. Travers,
was born on this day 117 years ago in
Australia, and died in London aged 96, in 1996.
She was, according to her adopted son,
Camillus (she never married) “a difficult
woman to live with” and very difficult to
work with too, according to the writers
of the screenplay for the film Saving Mr
Banks, which starred Emma Thompson as
Ms Travers and Tom Hanks as Walt Disney.
Her relationship with Cameron Mackintosh
on the other hand, who produced the stage
version due in Devon shortly, went much
Champagne days forecast
WE ARE HOTTING UP in the West Country
at such a rate reckon climate researchers at
Harvard University, that we may one day
become the new Champagne region of Europe
as France grows too hot for wine grapes like
chardonnay and pinot noir.
Good news for our region perhaps but too
late for the poet John Keats who came to
live in Northumberland Place, Teignmouth
in Spring 1818, not in search of a good wine
but rather in pursuit of a health-promoting
mild climate.
Sitting outdoors with a friend it is known
that, presumably to give themselves a rush
and to keep warm, they put pepper on their
tongues and chased it with claret.
Then he wrote of Devon that is was a “splashy,
rainy, misty, snowy, foggy, haily, floody,
muddy, slipshod county,” and left. Well, you
would, wouldn’t you.
more swimmingly, having premiered in 2004,
since when it has received critical acclaim
wherever is has been produced.
So Ms Travers may not have been “practically
perfect in every way” but where would the
world of childhood be without the on-going
magic of her creation? Mary Poppins runs at
the Theatre Royal from 3rd August through
3rd September, so Happy Birthday, Pamela
Lyndon Travers, OBE, and thank you.
JOHN FISHER
What's On in Devon? mydevonevents..co.uk 31