Shout, shout, let it all out

It must be the prospect of the festive season that makes people become abruptly more assertive. Even shy retiring types like myself, when faced with the prospect of hosting elderly relatives at Christmas for the FIFTH YEAR RUNNING, go all Naomi Campbell and start shouting and throwing things. Sure, shouting’s not exactly assertive so much as aggressive but sometimes a calm restatement of one’s position simply doesn’t cut it and you have to smash a few china mugs with pictures of cute terriers on.

I’ve now gracefully extricated myself from the joyous Yuletide that had awaited me, and if the small price to pay is excommunication and another boxed Zen garden for a present, well so be it. Even bring it on. I’m in bullish mood. And it’s not just me. All around are people saying, ‘No-one talks to me like that and gets away with it,’ and ‘I just threw it straight in the bin.’

Take Library Boy. By day a mild-mannered librarian; by night, a mild-mannered librarian. Yet last Saturday when strolling through the Cliffe his attention was caught by that bloke who dresses like an insurance salesman and shouts vigorously about the Bible. Ordinarily L Boy would have simply walked on by, like those geezers who weren’t the Good Samaritan. But something came over him. Call it Festive Assertive Disorder (FAD) if you like. He approached Bible Bloke and said firmly, ‘I do wish you’d be quiet.’

Respect, Library Boy, as the young people say. Bible Bloke was struck dumb for almost a second before he threw his arms wide enough to encompass WH Smiths. ‘SEE THIS YOUNG MAN, THE VOICE OF CONSCIENCE,’ he bellowed in tones borrowed from the Reverend Ian Paisley. Library Boy was quite pleased with this outcome because it’s been a while since he was referred to as a young man.

Over on freegle (the new freecycle), the normally gentle atmosphere of pleases and thank yous has also been infected by FAD. ‘This is a BIG item so don’t bid unless you have an articulated lorry,’ say people huffily, and ‘Don’t leave mobiles I will only respond to landlines between 3 and 4 am.’ Punctuation is not allowed in freegle world, other than the assertively placed triple exclamation mark: ‘AND MOST OF ALL DON'T MESS ME AROUND OR ANYONE ELSE FOR THAT MATTER!!!’

It’s good to practice these skills as December gets into its stride. Now is the time when the list of things you have to do begins to resemble one of those joke Roman scrolls that out-run a roll of Andrex. Say after me. ‘No thank you, I won’t be helping my child do their third sponsored thing of the week.’ Good. Now try this one: ‘Oh how lovely a boxed Zen Garden I will treasure it.’ Excellent. Now open your bin and quietly tip it in. There is no need to burst into tears. Remember, assertive and calm. And if that doesn’t work, shouting and CAPITAL LETTERS.

Beth Miller, 1st December 2010

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.

Television man is crazy saying we’re juvenile delinquent wrecks

What’s the matter with young people today, eh? Well, if it’s a good enough opening sentence for the Daily Mail it’s good enough for me. On Saturday I encountered three different buskers along the Cliffe. Outside Forfars a boy no older than thirteen accompanied himself on guitar as he sang surprisingly accomplished Beatles covers. They weren’t copies so much as interpretations, which as a purist I normally can’t condone, though obviously I make an exception for Brian Sewell’s masterly version of ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’ (or rather, ‘I Want To Be’; Brian would never use lazy colloquialisms). Yet as the lad re-imagined ‘She Loves You’ as a melancholy torch song, I found myself clapping my hands on the off-beat, as once did Princess Margaret at a Beatles Royal Command Performance.

On Cliffe Bridge sat two young women, aged about fifteen perhaps, though I’m lousy at guessing ages, they could have been fifty. In careful harmony they sang ‘I can see clearly now the rain has gone’, which even the X Factor would reject as too uncool. Then at English Passage another young man played olde Irishe annoyinge jigs on a violin.

Surely these young people should be off being menacing instead? If you believe what you read on the internet – and I do, faithfully - you’d think Lewes was overrun by marauding hoodies, who shove old ladies into the Ouse or run them over with souped-up Ford Escorts. Maybe I’ve been lucky, but whenever I patter along the pavement, clapping in time to some inner beat and doing my best impression of a gin-soaked raddled old royal, young people scurry to get out of my way. I’ve always found them to be very polite whenever I’ve approached them for a favour, such as to get something down from a high shelf, or remind me who the Prime Minister is again.

When I returned from an appointment an hour later, all the buskers had all gone. Swept off to reformatories I imagine. The only musicians still playing were an elderly jazz trio. I tried to clap on the off-beat but they threatened me with the sharp end of a double bass, on the spurious grounds of distracting them. So rude, these older people.

The young builders, currently bashing the ceiling over the room I’m writing in, are also unflaggingly respectful. I don’t know what they’re teaching in building school these days. Shouldn’t they be sticking Nuts pin-ups over the house and saying ‘It’s gonna cost you’, if I so much as offer to make them a cup of tea?

The worst thing that’s happened so far is having to listen to them singing along to the radio. I don’t think Brian Sewell would approve of their listening choices. Only a minute ago one of them warbled, ‘Your sex is on fire’. I tapped on the ceiling with a broom and said, ‘Long as it’s not my flue, young man.’

They’ve gone pretty quiet since then.

Beth Miller, 23rd February 2010. Published in VivaLewes.com and in Viva Lewes magazine, March 2013

Oh, Sussex, Sussex by the sea

I returned from two weeks holiday in pensive mood. How different Lewes looked to my fresh eye. How quaint the half-timber, how steep the hills, how expensive the shops. How weird not to see chunky men in crackling nylon football shirts guzzling fish and chips at all hours.

But most noticeably, how odd not to have the beach at the centre of everything. For a fortnight, life began and ended with the beach. Budgens is to the left of the beach; the chip-eating contest to the right. Having an argument? No better place for it than standing precariously on the sea-wall. Feeling romantic? Get you down to the seaside, young lovers. No, not there, where I can see you, for heaven’s sake.

Back in Lewes, was it any wonder I’d lost my centre of gravity? Turning into Southover from the station, I sniffed in vain for that pervasive smell of brine, fried doughnuts and bulky chip-eater; was disappointed not to see sparkling blue on the horizon, nor hear distant cries of ‘You little tyke, you’ve got sand in me eyes again’, and the resulting slaps so dear to my seafaring self. The cliffs and the squall of seagulls just added to the confusion.

Absent-Minded Girl suggested we meet, but was a tad puzzled by my chosen venue, the Bell Lane playground. We took off our shoes and socks and sat in the sand-pit.

‘I was just the same when I came back from the Isle of Wight’, she said sympathetically. ‘Every morning, I’d put on my wet-suit and goggles. They were very understanding at work.’ I worried that I was becoming as a.m. as A.M. Girl, but the very next moment she tried to lie back in the sand and banged her head on the climbing frame.

‘You know what Lewes needs?’ I said to Aging Lad next day. I was wearing a purple sarong that had been à la mode in Swanage. Aging Lad never notices the physical appearance of women over twenty-three, but he looked perplexed when I suggested the missing factor in Lewes’ fabulousness was the sea.

‘I thought you were going to say a Spearmint Rhino club’, he said. We bought ice-cream and sat on the Cliffe bridge. Without my contact lenses, the Ouse looked a mighty and boundless body of water.

Inevitably, Grange Girl brought me to my senses. We were in the Knot Garden, next to the sign that says no children playing in the fountain, watching children playing in the fountain.

‘Everyone loves being by water’, I mused. ‘All this joyful scene lacks is a dappled path leading from Eastport Lane down to the sand dunes.’

‘I wonder’, said Grangey thoughtfully, ‘what Lewes would be like if it had a beach?’

‘Like Swanage’, I said, hopefully.

‘No’, she said firmly. ‘It would be like’ – she spat the word – ‘Brighton’.

We both shuddered. After a moment, I removed my sarong, and dropped it in the bin.

‘It’s good to be home’, I said.

Published in VivaLewes.com, and in Viva Lewes magazine September 2013. Photo by Alex Leith