Polly Tisdall, the 2024-2025 recipient of the Kevin Elyot Award, is publishing an audio diary, ‘Kevin Elyot, Crop Circles & Me’ as part of her residency at the Theatre Collection as she explores the Kevin Elyot archive and her own writing practice. The annual award established in 2016, generously funded by an endowment from members of Kevin’s family, supports a writer-in-residence at the Theatre Collection to inspire a new dramatic work or other creative or academic outcome. It is given in memory of Kevin Elyot (1951-2014) – an alumnus of the University of Bristol Drama Department – and the influence he has had on writing and the Arts.
Episode 7 is available to listen to below along with a transcript. If you haven’t listened to earlier episodes, please head to the previous Kevin Elyot Award blog posts. Polly’s audio diary is also available to listen to via Polly’s website with new episodes being published throughout her residency.
It’s the May Bank holiday weekend, the early one. What are we today? 4th of May. May the fourth be with you! And I am on my research trip that I booked. Just one night away in Wiltshire, near Cherhill and the Cherhill White Horse. I’m actually staying in Calne – Calne – still learning how to say that correctly and I never knew, even growing up! But anyway, somebody in the Morrisons Local just called it Calne, I think.
Just wait for this car to pass. I’m just walking down a, sort of a lane, but quite a wide and busy fast driving country lane. Coming into, I think, Lower Compton and then that will bring me out onto the A4, the Old London Road and onto the stretch of road called Labour-in-Vain Hill, which is where, when I was growing up, there was this lay-by and in the lay-by was a cafe called the Crop Circle Cafe, which isn’t there anymore. But there is, I think, another cafe there now. I don’t even know if it’s in the same building. Just wait for this other car speeding along. This is the sort of sound I imagine in the background to some of the scenes in the play, because the cafe is on this A road. So. Yeah, it’s just a fascinating area to me.
Just walking from Calne to Cherhill this morning. Just the way the land shifts and changes, the land-use shifts and changes. I’ve come through housing estates, new built housing estates on the edge of Calne and then into a sort of old lane called Lower Lane, which then took me through landscape that was by turns beautiful and green and lush. I could see loads of solar panels on the hillside opposite where land is being used for energy, and then I came through what looks like a very old, and I assume now disused, quarry workings, but still loads of barriers up and old machinery and huge quarries that are filled in with water. Lots of danger signs, bits of barbed wire and electric fence to keep you out. And then I came across this beautiful little lake, much further down with swans, as well as what I’m pretty sure was a landfill, like massive hill of landfill. Yes, it’s a really interesting landscape that shifts between the very sort of beautiful countryside, comfortable rich feeling landscape, into the quite industrial, and then the sort of rubbish tip of stuff we don’t want to look at. And I’m aware that there’s also military land. There’s an old RAF base in this area as well. Seeing lots of signs on the edge of the lane, saying CCTV in constant use, no trespassing.
Anyway, so, a whole mix and I’m really excited that after the first stage of the walk, I’m going to finish at the current cafe in that lay-by, hopefully only about 20 minutes, half an hour from now. I’m getting hungry and and I’m really interested to see if it…If it does ring bells with me as the same building, if it’s even in quite the same place and and what the cafe is like, and I’m hoping it will help transport me back to the Crop Circle Cafe. And what I remember of it. Certainly just being back here in this part of Wiltshire, just even some of the smells like the smell of the the Morrisons Local, what was it called the Morrisons Daily? I think they are. I mean it’s Morrisons now, but it had the same smell of, like, the little news agents I remember when I was a kid. I can’t really describe it, but it’s a very particular smell I just haven’t smelled in years! So that’s already sort of springing up memories and thoughts, and while I was in there, I was chatting to a local lady who’s telling me about the local events coming up, which includes I think, one in 2 weekend’s time. I don’t think that I’m going to be able to go. It’s really annoying, because they’ve got the duck racing. I’m so gutted. I’d love to come to the Calne duck racing! I’m going to look it up.
Day 2 of my field trip and and I’ve got a couple of hours left before I hop on the bus back to Chippenham train station and today I’ve come out along the River Marden, which is, like, a little branch of what used to be called, like, the small Avon and I’m just walking from an area called Castle Fields. Yesterday I made it to The Dandy Highwayman and it does turn out that it is the same building that the Crop Circle Cafe was in! I had a chat with the owner, the current owner. And he said that he thinks it was the Crop Circle Cafe and then it was the Silent Circle Cafe, which I want to find out lots more about, where that name came from, or it might be the other way round. It might have been Silent Circle first and Crop Circle Cafe next. But anyway, and then it became The Divine Cafe. More and more godly! And then that closed and then for a long time it was out of use and they sort of made it into a car wash and then he took over with his cafe. And so it’s the same building, but it looked very different. Had the same feel, that same sense that I remember. But I remember all the walls being kind of wood panels and they are, I guess maybe fake wood panels, but they’re all white painted now and the counter is in a different place. I was checking with him. I think the counter was somewhat different. Anyway, he confirmed all of that, or his memory sort of went alongside mine. And then I did a huge big walk up to Cherhill White Horse and the Lansdowne Monument and all the way round about and the London Road and picked my way through lots of small villages and the Blacklands estate. I think it’s an estate, I need to find out more. Yes. And then today this morning, I went to Calne Heritage Centre, which was fascinating for all sorts of local history and discovered in the bookshop, a book on the history of crop circles. I’ve just enjoyed reading that over a coffee, before taking this walk along the river. But it’s looking like rain, so I think sadly it’s time to wend my way homewards now. Back to Bristol and see what I can do with all of these ideas now bubbling in my mind.
One last thing that was very pleasing to me today: There’s a big VE Day celebration in the community centre in Calne and there’s a Victoria sponge cake that people can guess the weight of. That’s pleasing to me because one of the very few things I know about one of my lead characters in the play I’m writing is that she is the best maker in the county of Victoria Sponge. So I was very pleased to come across one in Calne!
It’s the 18th of May, and I’m back in Wiltshire, close to Warminster, near a little village called Sutton Veny, because my partner spotted on Instagram that a new crop circle had appeared on the 5th of May here and we’re just overlooking it now from the hillside. There’s quite a few people who are obviously exploring it, going into the crop circle, to feel the vibes. So we’re going to try and go down there ourselves in a minute. And it’s quite a simple well simple-ish design that I think we need to see another picture from above to remember exactly. It’s kind of like, yeah, one big central outer circle and then inside a bit like a Celtic knot, but not quite that design. Yeah. So it’s quite intriguing. I was just beginning to think, ‘has the crop circle activity died down since the 90s?’ which is really the the era I remember being so full of crop circles, but it seems it’s still going strong, which is obviously great news for me and my play!