I know a change is gonna come, oh yes it will

For a town with a reputation for resisting development, there’s actually quite a lot of change going on in Lewes. I don’t mean the big attention-grabbing changes, like the railway land improvements or the knocking down of twitten walls, but those little everyday things which inspire nostalgia for a dreamy distant past, when the Harveys was warmer and old ladies cycled to communion, cricket bats under their arms.

Or in fact, the not so distant past. ‘It’s SO annoying’, said Aging Lad, describing how he had to park many metres from his destination. ‘I remember when you could drive down the Cliffe and park right outside the shops.’ Well yes, Lad, I wanted to say. Even you, with your addled brain should be able to recall last year. But all the others started chipping in with their own freshly minted nostalgia. ‘It’s such a shame having to buy school uniform on-line’, said Absent-Minded Mum, ‘do you remember that shop that used to sell it?’ Everyone looked thoughtful. ‘For goodness sake, people’, I cried, ‘Wards! It only closed a few months ago.’

‘I never bought uniform there, anyway’, said DJ Mama. ‘Not when you could get cheap knock-offs from, oh, what was that place called…?’ How quickly they forget. ‘I think you’re talking about Woolworths’, I said, thin-lipped. This, of course, precipitated the inevitable discussion about how much everyone missed the pick-and-mix and how they’d bought their first seven-inch single at Woolies, so I went away to bang my head against a wall for a brief yet reviving period. When I returned, they’d moved onto the next stage of the debate: how there’s no longer anywhere to buy plastic toys. ‘There used to be another toy shop, you know’, Pells Boy was saying, to incredulity all round. ‘No, really. Where Oakleys is now.’

I left them to it and walked down to Waitrose (‘remember when it was Safeway?’). I bumped into Cycle Girl and had a little moan to her about reminiscence-mongers, but she started doing it too. ‘It’s restaurants for me. I really miss Thackerays; and though I had a nice meal in Shanaz last night, I did hanker after that plastic foliage they used to have that dangled in your dhansak.’

She then moved on to bemoaning the demise of the guitar festival. I legged it before she could tell me about Richard Thompson’s last great set.

Then, in the chilled aisle of Waitrose, it happened to me. I asked an assistant where the little Innocent smoothie cartons had gone – smoothies being as essential to the well-running of a middle-class Lewes family as unleaded is to their Renault Espace. She informed me they were no longing stocking them. I swayed slightly in front of the cabinet, and found myself saying, ‘But I remember when you used to have them, just here, in four different flavours.’ It made me long for a nice sit-down and a cuppa in Artisan, but of course, it’s not there anymore.

Beth Miller, 3rd March 2010. Published in VivaLewes.com and in Viva Lewes magazine, April 2010.

Guilty feet have got no rhythm

An air of gloom hung over our table in Nero’s.

‘What’s up, chums?’ I asked cheerily, slopping moccachino down the leather sofa. I gave it a half-hearted flick with a napkin and sat somewhere else.

‘We’re all suffering from the same malaise’, sighed Cycle Girl.

‘Too much caffeine?’

‘I’ll tell you about mine’, said Hoxton Mum. ‘I’ve been trying to keep things local, so I gave up my intimate relationship with Beowulf at Toni & Guy’s, and started going instead to -’. She named a well-known Lewes hairdresser. ‘We could have been so good together. But she only knows one cut, and that’s the cut I get.’

‘Hair looks nice, Hoxie’, we fibbed, kindly. There’s no comfort in the truth.

‘Yes, that’s because I went grovelling back to Beowulf, cap in hand. Cap on head as well, to hide the mess. But now, whenever I see [Lewes hairdresser], she gives me a hurt look. I should have known better than to cheat a friend.’

‘That’s nothing’, said Grange Girl. ‘Yesterday, there was only one parsnip in my veg box, but the recipe called for two. So I had to buy one from a supermarket!’ She groaned, and clutched her stomach. ‘My parsnip and caper curry was disgusting. Serves me right. Maybe it’s better this way.’

I wondered if it was merely the provenance of the parsnip at fault, but said nothing.

‘At least your veg box people are still in business’, said Pells Boy. ‘Did you know that Seymours closing down was my fault, because I didn’t like their irons? Though it’s easy to pretend, I went and bought one from Woolies. Next thing I knew, Seymours was gone.’

‘Didn’t help Woolies, though, did it?’ Cycle Girl murmured, in a careless whisper. I could barely hear her: tonight the music seemed so loud.

‘The one that gets to me’, said DJ Mama, clutching her brow, ‘is the agony when you refuse Lewes Pounds in your change. We hurt each other with the things we want to say.’

I was puzzled. ‘What are you all on about?’

‘I know you’re not a fool’, said Cycle Girl. ‘Lewes Guilt, of course. It’s highly contagious.’

I suddenly felt bad about my casual coffee-spilling, and dabbed the stain diligently with my scarf.

‘Don’t even talk to me about restaurants’, said Absent-Minded Girl, though we hadn’t been. ‘Every time I passed it, I thought, mustn’t do to Guidos what I did to Circa. But every time I’d forget, and get take-out from Yummy Yummy instead. Oh, the guilt, the guilt.’

I wished that I could lose this crowd, so I went home. As I walked past Anne of Cleves House, I noticed it was shut. The sign on the door said it would be closed till March, owing to very low visitor numbers. I swear I’d been planning to take the kids there at half-term. I stumbled home on non-rhythmic feet, and took to my bed, lain low by this most virulent virus.

Beth Miller, 3rd February 2010. Published in VivaLewes.com

Cos you left me, just when I needed you most

I’d become in urgent need of a child’s fishing net, such as the Famous Five carry when nipping off to Smugglers Island for a spot of shrimping, villain thwarting and getting mashed on ginger beer. Damn those pesky kids and their easy access to seaside paraphernalia. Nets there were none, even on the net (ha!) Actually there were tons on the internet, fellow net-needers, but I’d left it so late that casual delivery promises of ‘three to five days’ were simply taunts, designed to drive a person insane. Say what you mean! Is it three, or is it five? And does Saturday count as a working day yet? (Voice rises to a scream.) My wrangle with the semantics would have impressed Wittgenstein, especially if he too had been forced by his five year old to score a net, by Wednesday.

I scanned Lewes with the desperate air of a person without a, well, safety-net. Once again, I fear not for the last time, I mourned the passing of my favourite store. We’re the last generation that will say, ‘A net, by crikey? Get thee to Woolworths forthwith.’

Then I began to brood upon all the other shops that had let me down by closing, taking their net potential with them. The mitherers on Lewes Forum are always reminiscing about the fabulous shops here in 1903, but we’ve lost some cracking ones more recently.

Big Kids, where were you in my time of need? Turned into another really useful estate agents, that’s where. And what ho, Ransomes? I never knew how much I’d miss you. Bet you had a whole fishing section for kids, with pretend bait, and mini-waders, and dear little buckets to keep your crabs in.

Crèche Manager was little help. With the air of Archimedes after an enlightening bath, he exclaimed, ‘It’s obvious: Woolies in Brighton.’ He’d failed to notice it was a national cull – he’s become kind of parochial. Then stirring himself, he suggested the scary hunting ‘n’ fishing shop on the Cliffe where women aren’t encouraged.

I bravely went there, after not shaving to try and blend in, and it sure was a manly place. There were knives, and wellies in size 14, and frighteningly macho tools for, I don’t know, removing the windpipe of a young chit foolish enough to go where she ain’t supposed to.

‘Have you any children’s fishing nets?’ I whimpered, peeping over the top of the counter. They were kind enough to laugh rather than do anything more Deliverance, but it was a narrow squeak.

And so the deadline of pond-dipping with the school drew ever nearer. I stopped sleeping, and took only such food and water as necessary to keep alive the flame of net solutions. Finally, like desperate parents since time immemorial, I cobbled something together from a stick and an old pair of tights. It’s what Julian and George would have done, had they ever lost their fishing equipment during a bacchanal of hard-boiled eggs and fruit cake.


Beth Miller, 28th April 2009. Published on VivaLewes.com. Photo by Absent-Minded Girl

The Wonder of Woolies

When Country Mouse came to stay a few weeks ago, she asked if Lewes was a good place to buy her nephew a present. ‘A good place?’ I shouted. ‘A GOOD PLACE? We’ve nothing BUT gift shops. IT’S ALL WE’VE GOT!’

After begging me to stop yelling - they’re not used to loud noises and hysterical laughter in the sticks, apparently - she entreated me to take her the length of the High Street so she could examine every single one of the chi-chi gift shops, which is to say, every shop. She wandered around Wickle, flounced into Flint, breathed over Brats, rested in the Laurels, scampered round Skylark, and had a Mc-breakdown in Ada McKewski. I don’t think there was a small wooden thingy of great expense that we didn’t peruse, a single carefully crafted whatsit that we left unturned. And yet. The nephew’s gift remained elusive.

We had a well-earned tea-break in the Riverside café, and it was there that Country Mouse turned to me with the light of revelation in her eyes and said, ‘You know what I need to find?’ ‘Yes’, I sighed, gazing at my steaming feet and wishing I was somewhere far from any shops, such as Country Mouse’s own dear village, ‘You need to find a new nephew.’

‘No’, she cried, ‘I need something plastic!’

There was a sudden silence in the café, as everyone turned with a sharp intake of breath to gaze at the unwitting Country Mouse. Tea-cups rattled, forks froze half-way to lips, a waiter shed silent tears. ‘Yes’, my dear friend went on, not realising that she had made a terrible faux pas, ‘I need a Woolworths!’

I shoved a handful of Lewes Pounds at the waiter and ushered Country Mouse out of there, my coat over her head for her own protection. It was only when we got outside that I was able to say, under my breath so no-one else could hear, ‘You may not believe this, Mousey one, but we do actually have a Woolies right here in Lewes’.

The look on her face was a joy to behold. Emotions flitted across it: delight, astonishment, excitement and anger - the latter demonstrated by her hitting me with her umbrella and yelling, ‘Well why didn’t you say so in the first place?’

It’s not a long walk from the Riverside to Woolies but all the way she berated me for not taking her there straight away. ‘He’s a six year old boy!’ she said. ‘He just needs some plastic.’ And ‘Who’d have thought there would be a Woolies here?’ And ‘Oh my god there’s an Argos too!’

We swept in, past the Perry Como CDs and racks full of straight-to-DVD titles. We skirted the famous pick-n-mix which has oft been cited, on this website’s very own forum as well as many a lesser publication, as the training ground for every fledgling shop-lifter. Avoiding the nylon slippers and packets of Bob the Builder vests, we arrived at the marvellous plastic toy section. Every child in Lewes was here, gazing mutely, and sometimes not mutely, at the array of Ben Ten merchandise, High School Musical dolls, and Power Ranger lunch-boxes. It took almost no time at all for Country Mouse to select a brightly coloured something and hand over the £1.99 – a sum which wouldn’t have been enough for even half of the smallest wooden bauble in any of the other shops.

‘Woolies!’ she sighed happily, clutching the timeless red and white carrier to her chest as we strolled down a darkening street, ‘What would we do without it?’

What indeed?



Beth Miller, December 2009. Published on Lewes.co.uk