I never knew you, you never knew me

“I was just thinking,” said Grange Girl, “about the time I tripped up Bob Geldof.”
We were sipping homemade lemonade in Baltica, spinning out the last taste of summer. Grange Girl’s words jolted me from my melancholy reverie on the futility of existence. “I’m sorry?”
“He deserved it, honestly. You see the lead singer of my band, Megahertz…”
“Hang on! What the what?” I knocked over the lemonade in my confusion. You’d be looking at Grange Girl a long time before you thought, there’s a person who was once in a band.
“In the early 80s, we busked outside what’s now Churchill Square.”
I encouraged her to go on by means of the universal signal, the dropped jaw.
“Well, Bob Geldof pinched our lead singer’s ideas for costumes for his Rat Trap video. Naturally, when I saw him walking down the Kings Road, I stuck out my leg. He went down like a sapling in a storm.”
I gazed at Grange Girl. “Who are you?”
This certainly snapped out of my September torpor. Just how many of my friends, I wondered, had these odd bits of unexpected backstory? That evening I put the question to Pixie Haircut, and she immediately said, “Well, I wrote to Jimmy Savile…”
“OH MY GOD!” What can of worms was I blithely approaching with a tin-opener?
“No, it’s all right. I was upset he didn’t reply, but obviously with hindsight that was the best outcome. I asked him to fix it for me to trim Denis Healey’s eyebrows.”
Back home I made the same enquiry of Man of the House. He lowered the paper, his own not-insubstantial eyebrows beetling, and said, “I was once a model in a fashion show.”
“Ha ha, good one!”
He spread Gentleman’s Relish onto a Bath Oliver. “Photographic evidence in my filing cabinet. Under ‘I’ for ‘Implausible.’”
Stone the crows if it wasn’t true. Though younger and more hirsute, MotH on the catwalk had the familiar dour expression I know so well, though so would anyone who’d been asked to wear that shirt. I showed him the picture and he nodded gravely. “Fund-raiser for the Scottish Enlightenment Society.”
Ah! A dry-as-dust cause. Maybe that wasn’t so out of the ballpark after all. And thinking about it, Pixie Haircut is a neat and orderly person, who as a child would doubtless have been irritated by Denis’s negligent grooming. So I just needed to find some aspect of  Grange Girl’s story that would put her back into her pigeonhole. “This band,” I asked her. “What music did you play?”
“We did a fine version of Leaving On a Jet Plane.”
OK. Nerdy. Tick. Things were begin to slot back into their proper place. “And what was your instrument?”
“The cowbell.”
Of course it was. All was right with the world. “Welcome back, old friend,” I said.

Beth Miller. Published in Viva Lewes September 2014, and vivalewes.com. Illustration by Michael Munday.

I'm sittin' in the railway station

Cowering at the back of Shoe Gallery, pretending to examine a brogue, I mourned what my life had become: hiding as if on a protection witness scheme. The shop door creaked open and I flinched; sure enough, in a few paces my Uncle was at my side, and putting the shoe firmly back on the shelf. “Definitely not, Niecey; too Virginia Woolf.”

Even hitherto impenetrable nooks such as the café upstairs at Ieko and the children’s section of the library were no longer places of safety. Since Uncle Adultery had made an offer on a “small abode” on Rotten Row, his visits to Lewes had increased in such frequency and length that they were one long joined-together visit; essentially he was living with me. At least when he hurt his ankle last year and was confined to my sofa he was stuck in one place. Now, no matter what I was doing – meeting friends in Baltica, browsing in Rehab, necking shots in the Brewers, somehow my Uncle would hear of it and materialise there, wearing his lavender silk suit and a pungent cologne. I began to suspect he’d secretly attached a tagging device to my person. The worst of it was that none of my friends appreciated my plight. That’s always the way with elderly relatives, isn’t it? You spend years bitching about your dreadful old mother, then when your chums meet her they think she’s charming. On one desperate occasion I snuck out, leaving Uncle A enthralling my social circle about the estate agent who’d shown him a house with a DOWNSTAIRS BATHROOM, but I got stuck halfway out the loo window and had to return damply to my seat, to discover the anecdote had only reached Act II, in which Uncle invoked the hardships of the trenches as an appropriate metaphor.

As ever, I was saved by Grange Girl, though by accident. She told me to meet her at the station. I like Grangey’s magical mystery tours, but when I got into the ticket queue she tugged my sleeve and led me, with a familiar nod to the railway guard, down the stairs onto platform 3. “I do like a place that’s been done up,” she said, opening the door to the waiting room. It had been freshly painted, was clean and warm, and had a darling little library of books to browse. More to the point, it was empty of uncles. I sat experimentally on a comfy sofa, but he didn’t appear. “Come on,” said Grangey, “I want you to see the Ladies, they’ve won awards, you know.” I unzipped my parka. “I’ll just stay here for a bit,” I said. With the Runaway next door for sustenance, John Grishams on the shelf and an award-winning loo mere steps away, why need I ever move again? Then my phone buzzed with a text from Uncle A, saying he was “devastated” to report that the house purchase had fallen through. I smiled at Grange Girl through tears of joy. “I’m ready to go back home,” I said.

Beth Miller, 5th April 2012. Published in VivaLewes.com

Something’s gone so terribly wrong here in Pleasantville

The house being full of estate agents particulars and over-excited uncles, I took myself off to Baltica. But before I’d managed even a sip of cordial, a rose-silk suited Uncle Adultery was lowering himself into the chair opposite me and ordering a latte. “Saw you through the window Niecey!” he exclaimed, and, closing my magazine, he placed six houses in front of me. Not the actual houses, obviously, that would be silly, but their paper representatives. I groaned quietly. I didn’t want to be unhelpful, but to be fair to me, I had spent ALL WEEKEND looking at descriptions of well-appointed kitchens and gardens with potential. I just wanted a teensy break, a chance to read about Cheryl Cole’s latest heartbreak and find out why Kerry Katona’s taking it slowly this time. But instead, once again, here I was perusing granite worktops, dual aspects, and mainly laid to lawns (or ‘manly’ laid to lawn as one of them said confusingly, making me think wistfully of Sean Bean playing Lady Chatterley’s lover).

Ever since Emmanuelle astonishingly agreed to Uncle’s proposal to relocate to Lewes, he’d been in a house buying frenzy, trying to exchange contracts before she woke from her trance and remembered that she hated it here. Poor Uncle. Even his eyes were semi-detached with lack of sleep. But still, it was a bit much to lose my precious Heat-reading time to yet more large bay windows and picture rails. I waited until he nodded off in the middle of an anxious monologue about Grade II listings, then I dashed out. Where could I hide? As I dithered on the corner of Station Street, eyes darting about like a hunted deer’s, Grange Girl walked up and said, “What gives, Bambi?” I hurriedly explained, and she seized my arm and steered me into Fisher Street so abruptly we left Road Runner-esque scorch marks on the pavement.

“Presumably he doesn’t know about Pleasant Café,” she said, pushing open the door, “because you’ve not been here yet.” Grangey’s brilliant at guilt. I apologised for my remiss-ness and ordered tea and cake all round. Sara behind the counter said she was just taking a carrot cake out of the oven and would we prefer it with icing, or without? I crammed delicious warm cake into my face until my cheeks bulged like Chip ‘n’ Dale’s, and properly relaxed for the first time since Emmanuelle kissed me Frenchly (on both cheeks, I mean), and said Lewes was her kinda place.

Everyone who came in said ‘hello’ to the entire café, like we were in an imaginary American town in the 50s. I turned to Grangey and uttered the fateful words, “It’s charming here, so friendly and just that little bit off the beaten…” when the door pinged open and in bustled Uncle Adultery. “Hello ladies! Followed the scorch marks,” he beamed, adding, “serendipitous really, because I found another estate agents. Look!” and he tipped a hundredweight of Fox & Son’s details onto the table.

Beth Miller, 22nd March 2012. Published in VivaLewes.com. Picture is a detail from a shot by Colin Bell

The highway’s jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive

I was barely paying attention, as is my wont when Aging Lad starts banging on about some boysy thing such as QPR’s chances or the comeliness of the Dagenham Girl Pipers. I was playing Wordable on my phone under the table the whole time he droned on about cars, till he snagged my attention by mentioning a road near where I live.

‘Bell Lane’s brilliant. Nee-yow! Nee-yow!’ He accompanied these racing car noises with such violent arm swoops that he fell briefly off the Baltica sofa.

‘Can you go back a stage Lad? Think I missed a bit.’

‘Let’s have a live re-enactment. This salt shaker is the mini-roundabout at the Swan, ok? And this sugar-bowl is the recreation ground.’­

‘It’s nothing like the rec. Where’s the slide, for starters?

‘And this jelly-tot is my Jeep Wrangler.'

‘Where’s that jelly-tot from?’

‘Off my cupcake.’

‘Any left?’

‘Only this one. So, here I am in my jelly Wrangler. I come down Southover High Street, don’t stop at the mini-roundabout cos stopping’s for losers, go screeching round the top of Bell Lane and then…’ He grabs a smartie off my biscuit and enacts a near-miss with the jelly-tot, ‘…I meet a massive Freelander coming up the middle of the road. So what do I do?’

‘You give me back my smartie?’

‘No! Without missing a beat I pull onto the pavement like I’m in Top Gear, I’m James May by the way, and thanks to my superb quick thinking the head-on is avoided and I’m at the prison traffic lights before you can say Clarkson-jeans.’

‘And what if a small child is walking along the pavement at the time?’

‘Why is it always a small child? It’s so emotive. Why can’t it be, say, a large middle-aged man who likes Pink Floyd?’

‘Lad, what if anyone was in the way when you sped along the pavement?’

‘Actually the scale’s wrong; no way is a Freelander that much bigger than my Jeep.’ He bites my smartie in two. ‘No-one was on the pavement. But in future, well I’m afraid either I take them out or I have a collision. Someone has to make a sacrifice.’

Bell Lane used to be wide enough to fit two lanes of traffic simultaneously. But it’s been cluttered with parked cars since everyone discovered it’s the Last Unregulated Parking in Lewes; and drivers and pedestrians face thrilling near-misses every day.

‘Here’s a joke I’ve just made up,’ said Lad. ‘Why is Bell Lane so called? Because it’s shaped like a bell: narrow at the top and wide at the bottom.’

‘That reminds me of another joke I’ve just made up. Why is Bell Lane so called? Because the people who use it thoughtlessly are bell-e…’

Lad interrupts. ‘You know I don’t like rude language.’

I swipe his jelly-tot and pop it into my mouth. If only the real cars were as easy to deal with.

Councillor Ruth O’Keefe will present a petition to ESCC in July to request double-yellow lines along Bell Lane. To add your name to the petition email Ruth on rok@supanet.com, or sign one of the paper copies around town.

Beth Miller, 15th June 2011. Photo by Alex Leith. Published in VivaLewes.com

You say bananas and I say banahnahs

It’s another rainy day in Baltica – the rain’s outside, to be fair – and we’re discussing greengrocers, and how they’ve almost disappeared.

'When I were a lass,’ says Cycle Girl, ‘there were greengrocers everywhere. They had little signs stuck into the fruit which said ‘apples’ or ‘bananas’ for their slower customers.’

Born and Bred Boy says, ‘I remember before The Flood, when Bills was just a large scruffy greengrocers.’

‘The Flood starring Noah?’ asks Absent-Minded Girl, the sort of person who would benefit from those ‘apples’ signs.

‘Greengrocers used to bag up your fruit themselves,’ says Aging Lad. ‘None of this self-service malarkey.’ Lad, as his full name suggests, is getting on a bit. Probably used to date Mrs Noah back in the day.

‘The greengrocers at the top end of town still bags up your fruit,’ says Grange Girl.

‘Where?’ asks Absent-Minded Girl.

We all point up the road.

'You mean up at St. Annes,’ says Sweary Mary.

‘St Annes is just the church.’

‘No, it’s the whole blinkin’ area.’

‘I call it that bit where the butchers is,’ says Cycle Girl.

‘I call it Western Road, ’ says Aging Lad.

‘But that’ll never catch on, Lad,’ I say. ‘Because there’s a school called Western Road that isn’t in Western Road. So if you say you’re going to Western Road, no-one knows if you mean the school or the top end of town.’

‘To be honest, no-one cares where you’re going,’ says Aging Lad.

I hit him with one of Baltica’s fine painted teapots.

‘Born and Bred Boy should decide,’ says Grangey magnanimously. ‘After all, he does live up there.’

‘Top end of town,’ he says.

We huddle round a piece of paper to draw the boundaries. A small fight breaks out over whether it should begin at the Shelleys or Lewes Grammar, but after some rough work with the teapot we compromise on the bottleneck. It’s clearer where it finishes: at Morris Road Garage (which isn’t in Morris Road).

‘Not at the prison?’

‘The prison is in the next area along.’

‘Which is called?’

‘That bit with Baron’s Down Road in.’

‘That’s not a very slick name.’

‘You know what’s interesting about the top end of town?’ asks Grange Girl. ‘It’s small, but has everything a person needs. Pubs, churches, school. A greengrocers, chemists, butchers, takeaway, sandwich shop and an undertakers.’

‘And a paint-your-own-pottery place.’

‘Oh yes, that too.’

‘I’ve often thought I’d be fine if Lewes flooded again, but you know, much worse,’ says Born and Bred Boy. ‘I’d grab supplies from the shops and climb to the top of the Council tower. They’ve probably got water coolers, so I’d survive for weeks.’

We all think about that.

‘I wonder how I’d go if the Grange Road area flooded,’ says Cycle Girl.

‘That’s part of blimmin’ Southover,’ says Mary.

‘It’s clearly in Winterbourne,’ says Grange Girl.

‘You’d be stuffed, whatever you call it,’ says Born and Bred Boy happily, pouring another cup of tea.

Beth Miller, 16th Feb 2011. Published in VivaLewes.com and in Viva Lewes magazine, April 2011. Photo by Alex Leith

And I tell you it don't mean jack, no it don't mean jack

'Blimmin’ heck,’ muttered Sweary Mary as we laboured up Keere Street. ‘This blasted hill gets steeper every dang day.’

For purposes of pre-watershed publication I have replaced Sweary Mary’s usual epithets with quaint alternatives.

‘It better be jolly well worth it,’ she said threateningly, twisting her ankle on a cobble.

‘It will, don’t you worry,’ I gasped, grabbing onto a passing Sherpa.

I’ve long been singing the praises of Shelleys to my chums in the face of general scepticism and indeed, entreaties to shove it. I’ve endorsed the terrific afternoon teas; applauded the charmingly vague staff; waxed lyrical about the invariable emptiness of the cosy lounge, which is probably not on Shelley’s tick box list but is a positive thing for the tired person who’s trundled from the bottom of town. And every time I mention these delights, my friends say, ‘Yeah whatever. Baltica then?’ I know I probably need some other friends, but in the current economic climate it seems profligate to acquire a batch of glossy new mates when the old ones could be good as new with a bit of patching. Reuse, Repair, Recycle, that’s my motto. Except when it comes to afternoon tea. Cake, Scones, Tea makes more sense there.

Anyway I had pretty much given up trying to persuade anyone into Shelleys, or The Shelleys as it has renamed itself, when Sweary Mary suddenly lurched over and said ‘Flipping heck Tucker’, no she didn’t, my name’s not Tucker, ‘Flipping heck,’ she said, ‘If I go into Baltica once more this week they’ll be erecting a blinking plaque to me. I need a new top town venue pronto. What’s that damn one you’re always blathering about?’ Yes, I know it’s not very polite but it’s a step on from ‘Yeah whatever’. And lo it came to pass that Mary and I toil-ethed up the steep hill-eth to partake of The Shelleys cup of good cheer.

‘Jumping jellybeans, I’ve never been here before,’ Mary said as we arrived at the pretty peach-coloured building. ‘Will they let me in with my dratted trainers?’

‘They’ll let you in wearing flippers,’ I said, explaining again how the amiable staff always seem surprised, though pleasantly so, to find they have a large hotel on their hands.

We went into the homely sitting room which was nicely void of other tea-takers. There was then a lacuna of some goodly while, during which Mary muttered nervously, ‘Jiminy Cricket! They’re taking their time,’ and ‘Swipe me, I could use a cuppa.’ However I relaxed into the squashy sofa, secure in the knowledge that sooner or later or perhaps later than that, someone would find us and maybe even bring a menu.

Finally, the reward: a proper tea with melty chocolate cake, moist fruit slices and fluffy scones.

‘Crumbs,’ said Mary, brushing crumbs off her trainers, ‘This is a confounded bit of all right. Why the deuce have you been keeping it to yourself?’

‘Gee willikins,’ I cried exasperatedly, and poured myself a soothing Assam.

Beth Miller, 13th October 2010. Published in VivaLewes.com. Photo by Alex Leith.

I see your true colours shining through

‘Typical’, huffed Hoxton Mum, sipping her skinny macchiato. ‘The one time something exciting happens in Lewes, and I was stuck in bloody Tuscany.’

‘Good holiday was it?’ I asked, idly watching as Things One and Two carefully emptied hundreds of sugar sachets into Hoxie’s handbag. So nice to see them working on a project together without bickering.

‘Rotten. The coffee wasn’t even as good as here.’ Hoxie waved her hand round Costa’s, her boycott of Bills having been extended to Café Nero and Baltica. Nero’s due to people with laptops hogging the best tables, and Baltica because ‘the mirror in the loo makes me look like my mother’.

‘And I couldn’t relax by the pool because every two minutes someone sent me a tweet or text about this Sunday Times business. Maddening, it was.’

‘Maddening to be accused of unthinking racism?’

‘No, maddening to be so far away from the action. Anyway, the article specifically excluded DFLs from any such accusation. Which is only right. After all, back in Hoxton I won plaudits for my sensitive direction of Hox-Dram’s culturally diverse production of My Night with Reg.’

‘Hard for the children’, I said, thinking of the youngsters mentioned in the article.

‘Yes, indeed. Poor Django: he had nightmares that everyone would be talking about it on his return and him quite clueless. Thank heavens I had my Blackberry so he could Facebook his friends and keep up.’ She smiled, basking in the glow of her superb parenting.

Django and Lysander joined us. Lysander had been charged with supervising his son’s hair-cut in Avant Garde, but had clearly drifted off, for rather too much of Django’s pink scalp was revealed.

Hoxie squealed in horror. ‘Lysander, what have you done? He looks like a Black Shirt.’

‘It’s not that short’, Lysander blustered. ‘I didn’t notice them getting the clippers out.’

‘Just pop into Brats why don’t you, get him a Ben Sherman and some Doctor Martens and your job’s done’, Hoxie said hysterically.

Thing Two looked up from his sugar work and said rudely but accurately, ‘Django’s ears stick out.’

I hastily apologised to Django and reminded Thing Two of our rule that all personal comments must be run quietly past me before being relayed to a third party. This rule has been enforced since the time Thing One asked a very large gentleman if he was pregnant.

But Django leaped to his own defence. ‘You can’t say that about my ears, it’s racist.’

This gave us all pause.

‘How so, darling?’ Hoxie asked her earnest little chap.

‘If you say anything about someone’s appearance it’s racist. It said so in that newspaper.’

‘Hmm’, said Lysander. ‘There’s going to have to be a certain amount of education all round in the wake of this business.’

Hoxie picked up her bag. ‘Lord, this is heavier than I remember’, she sighed. ‘How apposite: as with the burden of kids, one’s load never seems to lighten.’ And off she went to her yoga class.

Beth Miller, 18th August 2010. Published in VivaLewes.com and in Viva Lewes magazine, September 2010.

Oo-hoo, everybody’s talking ’bout the new kid in town

‘I’m really liking this hip new Lewes’, said Hoxton Mum, raising a blue and white patterned cup to her lips. ‘This Lewes 2.0’.

‘What are you on about?’ I looked round to try and pinpoint the source of this newness. Sure, we were in Baltica, which had only been open a few weeks, but I couldn’t see what was so 2.0 about it. We were there because Hoxton Mum had put a temporary veto on Bills, her habitual hangout, owing to a recent skirmish over the amount of tapenade in a goats cheese and sunblushed tomato panini.

Hoxie waved the July issue of Viva at me. ‘Have you not seen this?’ She flicked through the pages. ‘Hush-hush cinema? Can’t believe that’s come here. We used to go to Secret Cinema in Shoreditch.’ She sighed. ‘Happy days. Even though we saw rather a lot of Andy Warhol films. And lookie here: this Hollywood red carpet thing with cabaret and burlesque.’

I scanned the magazine. ‘It seems to be taking place in the bus station, Hoxie.’

‘Yeah, totally edgy. And then there are all those parties down at the Zu Studios.’

‘What parties?'

Hoxton Mum, Cycle Girl and Absent-Minded Girl exchanged little smiles.

‘I tell you’, Hoxie went on, delicately slurping her Polish soup, ‘Lewes wasn’t gritty and cool like this when I first moved here.’

‘That was less than two years ago’, Cycle Girl pointed out.

‘So? That’s a lot longer than plenty of people who think they own the place. Why, there’s a mum at Django’s school who’s still unpacking, and she keeps banging on about the creeping gentrification of the High Street. There’s another family who have yet to sign the contract on their Wallands house, and they’re already big in Transition Town.’

I asked Cycle Girl how long she’d lived in Lewes. ‘Ten years. Practically a native.’

Absent-Minded Girl spilled tea onto her shoes but didn’t notice. ‘We’ve been here six years but of course, we’ve got cousins in Brighton so we’re as good as indigenous.’ She might be a bit vague but she knows some big words.

‘I’ve been here since 2005’, I joined in, ‘But we were in Barcombe before that for seven years and that counts double. And we used to come to Brighton on holiday when I was a kid, so I’ve basically always lived here. Apart from twenty years in Essex.’

There was a silence.

‘How long’, asked Hoxton Mum quietly, ‘do you have to live here before you’re accepted as a Lewesian?’

‘Ten years’, said Cycle Girl.

‘Six years’, said Absent-Minded Girl.

‘Three generations’, I said.

‘Anyway’, said Cycle Girl, ‘the correct term is Rook, not Lewesian.’

‘I knew that’, Hoxton Mum said quickly.

Then Born and Bred Boy walked past, saw us sitting at the window table and came to join us.
‘What are you talking about?’ he asked.

‘Nothing’, we chorused, in agreement for once.

Beth Miller, 29th June 2010. Published in VivaLewes.com and in Viva Lewes magazine, August 2010.

Hey, you’ve got to hide your love away

‘Say again? I didn’t quite get that.’

Country Mouse was on the phone, murmuring even more quietly than usual.

‘I said, what Lewes venue would you recommend for a secret assignation?’

I shook the phone. ‘Sorry, Uncle Adultery. I thought I was talking to Country Mouse.’

‘It is me!’ Mouse squeaked furiously. ‘Stop making your judgemental face.’

Spooky. How could she know that?

‘Daytime. Private. Somewhere no-one in ___ would dream of going to.’

She named her home village, which I have Jane Austenly disguised, and will give no further clue than to say it is a handsome shire, lying quite fully nine miles hence.

Fired up with curiosity, I popped on large sunglasses and wrapped my hair in a scarf, Jackie O style (or so I fancied, till Man of the House started reminiscing about Hilda Ogden), and set off for town.

Lewes looked different now I was seeking dark corners. All my usual haunts were too exposed. Café Nero had just one hidden table, at the back behind a pillar, and the noise of the coffee machine would drown out discreet conversation. What could she be up to? A dodgy financial deal or criminal activity seemed unlikely. Mouse would surely not sully her soft leather-gloved hands. Romance, then. And she wanted to keep well away from nosey villagers. Fair enough. We dwellers of bustling metropolises are above such idle speculation.

Unsurprisingly, I bumped into Hoxton Mum in Bills (completely open-plan). She suggested the Zu Studios, but their space is only available ‘for those who promote creativity and positivity’. Say what you like about Country Mouse, but she’s never bothered with that sort of thing.

I tested the new café, Baltica, but after ten minutes in a window seat I’d been waved at by everyone I ever knew (and by some complete strangers too). Neither Pelham House nor the Real Eating Company are over-endowed with nooks. I thought the dimly-lit downstairs bar at Buddha Belly would be perfect, but it was not only shut during the day, but seemed shut in a more global sense.

After extensive research, I presented Mouse with a shortlist of three. Lewes Patisserie on Station Street, thus far largely undiscovered; downstairs at Robsons - not very glamorous but certainly no-one would find you; and Shelleys, with its cranny-filled garden and nineteenth century vibe.

By cunning sleight of hand I extracted the date of Mouse’s tryst, and spent that day scampering around town looking for her. When at last, I gave up and walked home across the Grange Gardens, I discovered her under a lilac tree with Aging Lad.

I greeted them warmly, saying, ‘Lad keeping you company till your gentleman arrives, eh?’, before registering her blushes and his ill-bred gestures. With a shocked and possibly judgemental expression on my face, I hastily backed out whence I had come.

Beth Miller, 8th June 2010. Published in VivaLewes.com. Photo by Alex Leith