Looking at you I'm filled with the essence of, the quintessence of joy

What a strange League of Gentleman place Lewes seems when you read about it in the papers. All right, there’s no need for that. A town awash with burning crosses and people looking at you sideways if you run out of Lewes Pounds: it don’t seem like the Lewes I know. But when I pondered how else to sum up the place in a sound-bitey way, all was blank. So I undertook a small survey of what residents consider to be the very essence of Lewes.

‘Easy’, said Cycle Girl. ‘Only this week I went to a disused foundry to look at some chairs. Not Chippendale or anything. Just ordinary stacking chairs. One of them’, she went on, ‘had brown clay splodged onto the seat. It looked exactly like our chair at home after Cycle Kid’s happened to the playdough. But we all admired it anyway.’

‘Quintessential Lewes?’ said DJ Mama. ‘Crossing the Bell Lane rec and meeting that woman who walks a ferret on a lead.’

‘The window of Crumbs’, grumbled Maximum Diner, ‘with “cakes” made of cloth. Sums up the whole blinking place – twee, useless and pretending to be creative.’ This was, it must be said, one of his better days.

‘Taking the Beast to the cinema to watch a Buster Keaton movie’, said Pells Boy. ‘She kept asking when the colour and sound and action were coming in, but otherwise she enjoyed it. Course she did. She’s a Lewes kid.’

‘Seeing Hoxton Mum in the window of a cafe, mouthing “I’m very busy”’, said Born and Bred Boy.

‘My essential Lewes’, said Honesty Girl, ‘is watching the Rooks lose at home.’

‘The smell of hops and Arthur Brown in Neros’, offered Viva Girl, and I was just about to ask what Arthur smelled like when Grange Girl said, ‘I had a long conversation in the parking shop today about what happens to recycled batteries.’ This was quintessentially Grange Girl for sure, but was it typically Lewes?

‘I was able to tell them about batteries in great detail, plus recycled milk bottles.’

It’s not often I feel sorry for the people in the Parking Shop. Grangey is well-informed because she reads the council’s Waste & Recycling Link avidly. That is very Lewes: the fact that everyone (except Grange Girl) dutifully recycles their Recycling Link without reading it.

‘Walking to the Friday market and buying mud-covered vegetables’, Decaf Man contributed, ‘and lugging them home in a used plastic bag with spindly handles.’ Despite only having been there five minutes, the Friday market is already very Lewes. ‘Then having to go to Waitrose by car to get a proper amount of vegetables.’

I was writing up my findings in Costa when Hoxton Mum sat next to me with a big phew and ordered an almond Americano. ‘Just a quick one’, she said, ‘I’m very busy. What? What’s so funny?’

Beth Miller, 22nd September 2010. Published in VivaLewes.com

I’m irate, peeved, irate, peeved

It’s rare to get a phone message from Grange Girl, especially one this excitable. ‘They just announced a massive music festival on 6 Music! In Lewes! We’ve got to go! Runrig! July!’

By the time I reached her house, she’d gone all deflated. ‘Turned out to be Lewis with an ‘i’, did it?’ I said sympathetically.

She sniffed. ‘Who’d have thunk the Outer Hebrides would have a more rocking scene than us?’

‘Nonsense’, I said. ‘There’s tons of gigs every week here. Meadowlands Festival this weekend. Starfish thing in the summer. Rock in the Bog in July. Arthur Brown lives here. The guitar festival, er, used to be on every year.’

Her head slumped into her hands. ‘Runrig have never played here though.’ She was clearly in a slough of despond. ‘And 6 Music’s going to be axed.’

‘Is it? Damn those Tory-Dems and their swingeing cuts.’

‘It was decided months ago, when Labour were in charge.’

I often arrive a bit late to the news.

‘Well, we must protest’, I protested. ‘I listened to it once and it was good. That nice George Lamb was on.’

‘You’re too late. The consultation closed on 25th May.’

I often arrive a bit late to the direct action.

‘Oh. Shall I make some tea then?’

We mused in silence for a while, sipping our drinks.

‘There’s a Save 6 Music Facebook group’, Grangey said, suddenly.

I started, spilling tea on my Hush Puppies. ‘How would you know that, Grangey?’

Grange Girl’s techno-peasantry is the stuff of legend. She listens to music on reel-to-reel tape, and absolutely will not countenance a mobile phone. In fact, she’s still a bit suspicious of her land-line. ‘Letters were good enough for Napoleon and John Peel.’

She looked defensive. ‘They mentioned it on the wireless. Obviously I can’t join, not having the interweb, but you could.’

I nodded vigorously, filing the idea away in the large drawer at the back of my brain labelled ‘Things I probably won’t get round to.’

‘Shall we go to a gig tonight?’ I suggested, perusing the handy Viva gig guide taped to Grangey’s fridge. ‘There’s bands at the Snowdrop, Royal Oak and the Pelham. We should go to all three, demonstrate our support for music in all its myriad forms.’

‘Except jazz.’

‘Goes without saying.’

‘Nah, let’s just listen to the early Peel sessions with The Fall and have another cup of tea.’

This seemed rather a reckless imbibe of caffeine after six o’clock but she read my mind and said, ‘Camomile, obviously.’

She popped the kettle on the gas hob, fired up the reel-to-reel, and we were transported, by the power of music, to 1981. To a time before mobiles, CDs and Facebook, and before 6 Music was going to be axed (or indeed, existed). Mark E Smith sang, ‘You don’t have to be weird to be wired’, and Grange Girl and I clinked our mugs together and toasted to happier times.





Beth Miller, 26th May 2010. Published in VivaLewes.com. Many thanks to Annabel for introducing me to the term 'techno-peasant'.