I want to ride it where I like

“It’s just like the Scarlet Pimpernel.”
“It’s not in the least.”
“Yes, it is. They seek him here, they seek him there, his clothes are loud, but never square.”
“That’s not the Scarlet Pimpernel, that’s the lyrics to Dedicated Follower of Fashion.”
“Is not.”
“Is.”

I was quite enjoying the bickering between Born and Bred Boy and Absent Minded Girl. My head was swivelling from one to the other, like I was watching Billie Jean King wiping the floor with Bobby Riggs. Except here, in Café Nero, the battle of the sexes was reversed; AM Girl was losing, on the grounds of incorrect usage of a Scarlet Pimpernel analogy.

“So what’s the Pimpernel’s spiel then?” she demanded of me.
“I believe it’s: ‘We seek him here, we seek him there, those Frenchies seek him everywhere.’”
“See? Practically the same. Pimple totally plagiarised the Kinks.”
“Look, there are two reasons why the Scarlet Pimpernel is a red herring,” said Boy. “First, he was elusive, which is the exact opposite of omnipresent. And second, he was not a bicycle.”
“You are just nit-picking now.”

I felt the time had come for me to step in with a carefully worded intervention. “What the flippety flip are you two on about?”
“That gold bike that advertises the tattoo parlour.”
“You never know where it’s going to pop up.”
“Just like the Scarlet Pimpernel, in fact,” cried AM Girl.
“No!” yelled Boy. “How many more times? The Scarlet Pimpernel was not easy to find. Whereas that bike is all over the place. One minute it’s on the corner of Grange Road…”
“…the next, it’s chained to the railings on the Phoenix Causeway.”
“I’ve seen it,” I said, “outside Nationwide.”

AM Girl’s phone made a noise like a whoopee cushion. “Makes me laugh every time,” she said, and started replying to her text.
“Apparently this is called ‘phubbing’,” I told Boy, knowing he would find this neologism infuriating. “It stands for ‘phone snubbing.’ It’s when someone starts looking at their phone when they’re in the middle of a conversation with you.”
“Were we in the middle of a conversation?” murmured AM Girl, texting busily.
“This bloody awful modern world,” railed Boy, waving his skinny soy latte around irritably. “If my old ma was here, she would make YOU” – meaning Absent Minded Girl – “put your phone in the high cupboard; she’d make YOU” - me - “wash your mouth out for saying ‘phubbing,’ and if she knew there was a tattoo parlour in Lewes, well, I can’t even begin to imagine.”

“Anyway,” I said, discreetly tugging down my sleeve so that Boy wouldn’t comment on my Celtic warrior armband design, “where is the tattoo place?”
“Opposite the station,” he replied. We both looked at him, and he continued, less confidently, “I’ve, uh, looked in at the window a couple of times.”
AM Girl’s phone farted again, but she ignored it. “Are you thinking of getting a…”
“Certainly not,” said Boy, going as scarlet as, well, a pimpernel.

Beth Miller. Published in VivaLewes.com

Think of all the fun I've missed

Country Mouse rings with her usual seasonal barrage of one-upmouseship.

‘Have you finished yet? My dear, isn’t it awful, I’ve barely started.’ [Translation: Everything’s done; relaxing in a tinsel tracksuit.]

‘Now what do you think of my Christmas dinner with a twist? Goose with brandy reduction and cider-glazed pearl onions. Nigella, obv.’

I scrunch the phone against my shoulder in official 1950’s housewife style and scrawl myself a reminder note: ‘Get food for Christmas’. If only I was a 1950s housewife, I might come up a better rejoinder than ‘Pearl onions can be awfully windy.’ [Translation: Shuddup.]

She ignores me, quite rightly. ‘Must dash. So much to do!’ [Translation: Off for my massage, the reward for having (a) done everything and (b) crushed your soul.]

It’s because of this kind of pressure that 1950s housewives were all junked up to the eyeballs in Valium. I do up my pinny and continue my list.

1. Get food. Not turkey. Turkey so over. Rattlesnake?
2. Get drink. Lots. Strong.
3. Inspect unwanted present cupboard. Surely this is the year I can offload that pink tart’s boudoir bubble bath set? Maybe my father-in-law would like it.
4. Start domestic marketing campaign centering on the principle of when I was your age I was thrilled with a walnut and a roll of sellotape.

On the way to town (5. Go to Waitrose, have small and mostly unnoticeable breakdown by the Christmas puddings, buy cheese strings), I bump into Pierced Boy. I assume confidently that his Christmas plans will be less formed than mine.

‘Oh, I’m spending the whole week at Lorenzo’s place in Marrakech, didn’t I say?’[Translation: Ner ner ner ner ner.]

I reel into Neros. The staff are wearing Santa hats but I am prepared to overlook this in the interests of scoring a triple espresso. Then Eco Dad sits down, spills green tea and says, ‘Done all your shopping then?’

‘Yes,’ I lie, brazenly. ‘How about you?’

‘It was a trick question!’ he laughs. ‘We’re not joining the consumerist bun fight. We’re giving each other the gift of love and space.’ [Translation: Ner ner ner ner ner.]

I give Eco Dad the gift of space and trudge to Honesty Girl’s place. Surely she’ll sympathise with my Yuletide ennui? But she’s up a ladder decorating an immense tree.

‘I love this time of year,’ she says.

‘Ha ha!’

‘No, seriously. I try and put my cynicism aside and hear sleigh bells in the snow.’

I burst into tears.

‘What on earth’s the matter you silly old trout?’ she soothes. ‘Here, this’ll make you feel better.’ She hands me a huge Cadbury’s selection box. ‘The kids’ll never know, we’ll just take one or two.’ [Translation: We eat the entire thing.]

The taste of the Crunchy makes me think of chestnuts roasting on a open fire, and how much more I’d rather be eating a Crunchy. Though just for a moment I ponder what it would taste like garnished with some glazed pearl onions.

Beth Miller, 8th December 2010. Published in VivaLewes.com and Viva Lewes magazine, December 2012

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

You’re gonna make me lonesome when you go

Summer has ceased abruptly, reminding me of that Peanuts cartoon where all the leaves fall off the trees in one mighty ‘whump.’ As the mercury sinks so the mind turns to quintessentially autumnal questions: is it environmentally wrong to pop the heating on yet? Must I wear a jumper instead? Where in fact are the jumpers anyway? Oh please can I put the heating on? When then? All right, can you pass me the duvet?

September’s metaphorical back-to-school vibe is compounded this week by Thing Two’s actual start at school, a fortnight after everyone else for doubtless excellent reasons known only to reception teachers. So from Friday all my little chicks will have flown, and with a whump my seven years of the pre-school round will end. Gone, the familiar weekday routines: hanging out in an empty Grange, watching Thing Two make mud pies amongst the primroses; performing resistance tests on playground equipment; wiping apple juice off our seats in Neros; trotting round the shops when they are quiet.

I think we might have outstayed our welcome in some of the shops though. This week Thing Two and I were told off in both Wickle and Bright Ideas. I like an independent shop as much as the next person (unless the next person is from Transition Town, in which case they win), but I do wonder if shouting ‘We love kids coming in here BUT…’ is exemplary commercial policy? Whereas boo hiss chain Costa has always greeted Thing Two and I with great warmth during the innumerable times we have repaired there for his favourite chocolate milkshake (till I discovered that a Frescato was essentially an enormous coffee with a hint of chocolate. Which might explain the bouncing around in Bright Ideas.)

‘What will you do with yourself when both Things are at school?’ is a question I have been asked a lot lately.

Grange Girl suggested I consider the small ads of Lewes News for day-filling ideas. I noticed she’d already ringed some: dolls house club, embroidery workshop, and singing for larks.

I thanked her, put Lewes News in the recycling and turned on the heating (the one cancels the other out, you see). To put a dampener on any further talk of embroidery, I then started to draw up a timetable of things to do.

Day One. Have bit of a cry, then get a grip. Go into Bright Ideas without incident.
Day Two. Fold his little clothes and have bit of a cry. Then get a grip. Go into Neros and spill own drink on seat to make self feel at home.
Day Three. Watch something on telly other than Ben 10. Then watch Ben 10 for old times’ sake. Have bit of a cry, then get a grip.
Day Four. Make mud pies in the Grange. Fail to cry.
Day Five. Forget I have children and arrive late for school pick-up.

Personally, I think the time will fly by.

Beth Miller, 15th September 2010. Published in VivaLewes.com and in Viva Lewes October 2010 magazine. Photo iStockphoto

Wake you up in the middle of the night, just to hear them say...

The survivors lay scattered across the Pelham Arms, sleep-deprived, and dazed. Most wore visible scars of their tours of duty: bandaged wrists, bruised shins, plasters on foreheads. All were grateful for the company of others who understood what they’d been through. After a silent period of reflection, the recounting of war stories began.

‘You simply wouldn’t believe the people next to us’, cried Absent Minded Girl, knocking over her Crabbies ginger beer. ‘I said politely, would you not play any more Chris Rea, enough’s enough, it’s one in the morning. And they just laughed and turned it up!’

A collective shudder went through the troops.

‘Same at our site, only it was the Eagles till dawn’, winced DJ Mama. ‘I still have Hotel California in my head on a loop.’

‘You should have seen the so-called toilets’, said Eco Dad, taking a large gulp of babycham. ‘Like the Somme, they were.’ Eco Dad has a composting loo at home and his children were raised without benefit of nappies. For him to balk at a facility was really something.

‘Every damn year the same’, said Honesty Girl. ‘Smelly tents, crap food, joke showers, and worst of all, feral children up till midnight. To paraphrase Alan Bennett, camping means late nights, early mornings, and naff-all in between.’

Everyone nodded.

‘As Sartre said after a nasty experience under canvas with Simone de Beauvoir, hell is other people on a campsite’, agreed Pierced Boy. He had just returned from Shambala, and wore his bandages ostentatiously. ‘From banging the tent peg into my hand, to tripping over someone’s absurdly extended guy rope in the pitch dark, the whole thing was a non-stop ghastly cabaret.’

For Pierced Boy to resist a pun about extended guy ropes showed just how broken was his spirit. How different from his bravado a week earlier, when he’d set off with his pink dayglo rucksack chanting, ‘I’m gonna put the camp in camping.’

‘I’d high hopes for glamping’, muttered Hoxton Mum from behind dark glasses. ‘Posh tipi and proper beds.’ She shook her head in dismay. ‘You wouldn’t think yobbos with didgeridoos could afford to stay there.’

I was at the war council in an honorary capacity, as I don’t do tents, having had a sanity-shattering experience in a non-waterproof steel-framed monstrosity on the Pennine Way in 1991. But I’d spent this year’s holiday in a flat above a live-music pub, so I too had known suffering.

‘You’re going camping’, said Absent Minded Girl, ‘so why do you need an enormous electric guitar? Why? WHY?’ Shell shock was clearly setting in, so we gave her some prawn cocktail crisps and she calmed down.

The barman put on music, but everyone flapped their hands and shouted till he turned it off.

‘Good to be home’, said Eco Dad. ‘It’s so nice and quiet here.’

A barrage of fireworks went off close by, and we all ducked under the table.

‘End of summer’, sighed Cycle Girl. ‘Start of Bonfire Season.’

Beth Miller, 1st September 2010. Published in VivaLewes.com

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.

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

I never knew you, you never knew me

When I met American Girl in Neros for an almond croissant, I thought we would be gossiping about mutual friends, not discussing the merits of proportional representation. But it turned out she was still a bit excited about her first vote as a new citizen of this sceptred isle. Whenever I tried to move the topic onto X’s hideous new handbag or how Y had been banned from the John Harvey’s for eating beer mats, Am-Girl behaved as if these were trivial matters unworthy of consideration.

‘Yes, the Gardeners threw him out as well’, she said dismissively. ‘Anyway, can you explain this Alternative Vote system?’

I wasn’t much help on AV, nor on how the newsreader managed to announce ‘Theresa May gets equalities role’ with a straight face, nor what a coalition actually meant in practice (though to be fair to me, the ‘government’ also seemed unsure).

As I wiped the crumbs off my chin, preparing to leave her to an intensive study of last week’s newspapers, she said casually, ‘Weird about the BNP, isn’t it?’

‘What, weirder than usual?’

‘You wouldn’t think they’d get almost 600 votes in Lewes, would you?’

‘How many?’ My shriek caused all the baristas to spill those little espresso glasses they mess about with.

She showed me the stats: 594 people who looked at the numerous options and thought, ‘Well, that Nick Griffin, he’s got a point.’

A lost deposit, sure, and less than the Green Party (though not by much). But considerably more than I’d have guessed. And oodles more than the poor Independent candidate, who with just 80 votes couldn’t even have counted on all his Facebook friends.

I walked home, not in my usual happy perambulating mode, but anxiously, paranoid-ly. I scrutinised the faces of passers-by. Did he vote for them? Did she? Later, I looked up the history of Lewes voting (there was nothing on telly), and discovered this was the first time the BNP had stood here. Though back in 1979, when skinheads had a brief fashion moment, the National Front gained 764 Lewes votes.

When Aging Lad popped round, I was lost in melancholic thought. ‘You live somewhere, you think you’ve got the measure of it, then it turns out there are hundreds of people who don’t read the Guardian after all’, I whinged.

‘Ah’. He looked embarrassed. ‘You know how you forced me to vote?’

‘Yes indeedy. Universal suffrage, not to be taken for granted.’

‘Well, as you know, I’d never done it before. Got flustered. Couldn’t remember if it was a tick or a cross. Dropped the pencil. Got the BNP muddled up with the SDP.’

So that accounted for one of the votes. I had just another 593 to track down.

‘The SDP weren’t even standing, Lad. Because they disbanded twenty years ago.’

‘I’m very sorry’, he said. Then brightened. ‘But it didn’t make any difference, did it? My vote didn’t count, anyhow.’

There were many of us who could say the same.


Beth Miller, 19th May 2010

She knows she's the chocolate girl

Easter has changed its meaning over the years. When I was a child, it was a time of dismay, because it always coincided with Passover. This is a Jewish festival, so called because the Angel of Chocolate passes over the houses of Jewish children and gives them matzos instead. A matzo is a large square cracker; pleasant enough, but not really a substitute for delicious creamy chocolate. Makes a lousy sandwich too. Bite into it and it explodes into fragments, which is why at Passover, Jewish mothers all carry dust-busters in their handbags.

If only I’d been aware, back then, of Richard Dawkin’s proposition that bringing up a child within a religion is tantamount to abuse. Though he selfishly didn’t make this statement till 2006, far too late for me. To be fair, being brought up a liberal Jew wasn’t usually abusive so much as wishy-washy. Until I was given some criminally horrible ‘approved for Passover’ chocolate, at which point I would have been only too happy to ring Social Services and expose my parents as monsters.

Once I grew up and could abandon the faith of my forefathers, which I did gladly, Easter became a time of supersize gluttony. There were lost years to make up for. Soon after Man of the House and I got together, he briefly left me alone in the car with a large Easter egg which we were taking somewhere as a gift. By the time he’d paid for the petrol, I’d laid waste to it like a plague of locusts, and had no defence other than to mumble, thickly, ‘You were sold a pup, this box only has half an egg in it’.

When my kids were toddlers, Easter became a lovely four day break, spent gazing at their dear little faces as I scoffed the many presents they’d been sent, and occasionally chucked them a smartie.

Then Thing One started school, and Easter is now an immensely long holiday for which I am completely unprepared. Two weeks? Hang on, we’ve only just had half-term. Everyone else must have been secretly planning, as they’ve all gone away, in a mass Exodus (I still remember my Old Testament). In their stead, come a load of people from other places.

In Neros yesterday, I didn’t recognise anyone. You can normally guarantee to see Hoxton Mum at least; she’s always sitting in the window sipping a skinny soy something. The place was heaving, but it was filled with strangers, holiday-makers in wind-cheaters, all talking about how quaint and nice everything was.

I strolled around, looking at Lewes through their eyes. I guess the castle is quite cute. And there’s a Monsoon. And a brewery. Fair enough, it’s got everything you need for a mini-break.

Then I found myself at Catlins. He still had a couple of Montezumas eggs left. I sat in the Grange, frenziedly ripped off the cardboard and tinfoil, and spent a therapeutic afternoon shaking off the memories of my deprived childhood.


Beth Miller, 7th April 2010. Published in VivaLewes.com. Photo by Alex Leith

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