Culture
Midsomer Norton's railway station has been memorialised, along with many other stations, in a famous song associated with railway closures, Slow Train, lyrics by Michael Flanders, music by Donald Swann:-
| “ | No more will I go to Blandford Forum and Mortehoe, on the slow train from Midsomer Norton and Munby Road
No churns, no porter, no cat on a seat, at Chorlton-cum-Hardy or Chester-le-Street We won't be meeting you, on the slow train … |
” |
Children's author Roald Dahl, prior to his writing fame, used to sell kerosene in Midsomer Norton and the surrounding area in the 1930s. He described the experience vividly in his autobiographical work Boy: Tales of Childhood (published 1984):
| “ | My kerosene motor-tanker had a tap at the back and when I rolled into Shepton Mallet or Midsomer Norton or Peasedown St John or Huish Champflower, the old girls and the young maidens would hear the roar of my motor and would come out of their cottages with jugs and buckets to buy a gallon of kerosene for their lamps and their heaters. It is fun for a young man to do that sort of thing. Nobody gets a nervous breakdown or a heart attack from selling kerosene to gentle country folk from the back of a tanker in Somerset on a fine summer's day. | ” |
The Waugh family connection with Midsomer Norton began when Dr Alexander Waugh, father of Arthur Waugh and grandfather of Evelyn Waugh and Alec Waugh moved to Island House, which had been built in the early 18th century, in The Island in the centre of the town in 1865. The family later moved to a house in Silver Street. As a boy, Evelyn Waugh spent his summer holidays in Midsomer Norton with his maiden aunts. He later described his visits there: "I suppose that in fact I never spent longer than two months there in any year, but the place captivated my imagination as my true home never did".
The Palladium cinema was opened as the Empire in 1913 in a building which had previously been a brewery. It closed in 1993 and attempts have been made to turn it into a club and shops.
Midsomer Norton hosts the only unofficial carnival on the West Country Carnival circuit, usually on the second Thursday in November. At one time, floats travelled through the main High Street but road improvements put paid to the larger vehicles. Nowadays, the procession is held on the main Fosseway through Westfield.
The local University of the Third Age was founded in the 1990s. Regular Speaker Meetings are held in the Somer Centre. There are a number of interest groups who also arrange outings to shows and the occasional continental holiday.
The town's free newspaper is the Midsomer Norton, Radstock & District Journal. The other local weekly paper is the Somerset Guardian, which is part of the Daily Mail and General Trust. The monthly magazine, the Mendip Times, also includes local features. Somer Valley FM (97.5FM and online) is the Community Radio for the district. There is also a community website where residents can discuss local issues called Midsomer Norton People.
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Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“Children became an obsessive theme in Victorian culture at the same time that they were being exploited as never before. As the horrors of life multiplied for some children, the image of childhood was increasingly exalted. Children became the last symbols of purity in a world which was seen as increasingly ugly.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“If mass communications blend together harmoniously, and often unnoticeably, art, politics, religion, and philosophy with commercials, they bring these realms of culture to their common denominator—the commodity form. The music of the soul is also the music of salesmanship. Exchange value, not truth value, counts.”
—Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979)
“Like every other good thing in this world, leisure and culture have to be paid for. Fortunately, however, it is not the leisured and the cultured who have to pay.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)