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| Jane Bom-Bane's House |
Venue: Bom-Bane's Music Cafe
Promoter: Bom-Bane's and She Bakes
Entrance fee: £10/£5 - Afternoon Tea + mini-Tour, £25 - Family Ticket (Daytime)
£20/£10 - Evening Meal + mini-Tour, £50 Family Ticket (Evening)
Website: http://www.bom-banes.co.uk/
Facebook: Bom-Bane's
Age Suitability: A family friendly event (i.e. suitable for all ages)
To enter Jane Bom-Bane’s house, over two hundred years old with original winding stairs upward to the attic as well as down to the basement, is to experience a house as full of twists and turns as the tales told by Bom-Bane.
Once the front door has opened expect to find the most unique dining room, where there are six small tables, each with its own identity and mechanical devices to surprise and delight - the Aesop’s Tables, the Tablerone, the TurnTable, the Twenty-Seven Chimes Table, the UnsTable and the Water Table.
But wait, you are not stopping there, your hostess will invite you to climb the narrow staircase to the rooms above where she will sing to you and leave you to encounter musical, mechanical and magical delights that await you in each room. The mini-tour is designed for up to four people after which you will return to the dining room for afternoon tea or dinner.
By this time your initiation into Bom-Bane’s world is over and now you can sit back and take it all in, because the impression that Bom-Bane creates is one closer to the fantasies normally found in children’s books and films like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang or Alice in Wonderland than in a terraced house in Brighton. But this event is not just for children, adults arguably need to reconnect with the fantastical even more. To imagine a world of such inventiveness, to create it and bring it alive is to bridge the gap between adult and child, reality and fantasy, the marvellous and the mediocre. It is to step outside the responsibilities and stresses of life and escape into fantasy for a while.
Jane Bom-Bane’s House Tour is available throughout May, as part of the Brighton Fringe, and is a completely unique experience and lots of fun. After the Tour enjoy Afternoon Tea of open sandwiches (very tasty) and cupcake provided by SheBakes, which tastes so good btw; or an Evening Picnic of cream of tomato soup with a dash of vodka, tortilla primavera, jerk chicken drumsticks, potato salad, coleslaw, tomato, mozzarella & basil and hard-boiled eggs Bom-Bane style, served with bread baskets and afterwards homemade cake by She (youaint'seennothin'likeit) Bakes. For a vegan or other dietary requirements, please let them know in advance.
Throughout the rest of the year she runs the House as a music cafe. ‘We do music nights and cinema nights and we sometimes do our own musicals, one’s called Bom-Bane musical which is all about how Bom-Bane’s started and the other is called a musical history of 24 George Street Brighton. We do nice homely food, stews and salads and posh sausages. Our signature dish is Stoemp and Sausage £9.75 (£10.95 for two sausages) - we offer Oxford Pork, with Belgian beer gravy, Spicy Italian, with tomato and red wine sauce, Ostrich (low cholesterol) with tomato and red wine sauce, Bom-Banger of the Month (£1 suppl), Wicken Fen Vegetarian Carrot and Coriander. Stoemp is a Belgian dish of mashed potatoes with vegetables in it, savoy cabbage, carrots, broccoli, and spinach, the veg can be varied and the sausages are from a firm in Chichester.'
'Our tables all do different things and there are little buttons to press everywhere, each table has its own novelty and downstairs there is a big table for twelve and also little nooks. We’ve been here for six years and run a film and food night for £5.50 every week; music nights are on a Tuesday with rotating performances by students, Rosie Brown, a fantastic local performer and me. I play the harmonium, which is a pump organ and I make mechanical hats, I write songs and some of the songs have hats that illustrate the song. The most popular is called Goldfish bowl, when I sing, I’ve got a Goldfish bowl on my head people join in and feel they can relate to it. For me the best song I’ve written is Years of Sunday Suns, which is a ballad about Sundays.'
During the festival there will also be an opportunity to hear her son playing in a band called Melodica, Melody and Me and a poetry group called Pighog will be taking over the space for an event too.
I've already booked to go back and have a whole host of friends who are lining up to come with me.
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| Jane Bom-Bane's House |
