You had one eye on the mirror, as you watched yourself gavotte

I was talking to two hip young things in Brighton when the subject of Lewes came up, as I find it so often does when I’m around. Immediately they both cried, ‘Oh, lovely Lewes’, and began comparing notes about the perfect day-trips they’d taken here when their parents came to stay.

Because of Bonfire, plus a slightly wacky art scene, an alternative approach to pound coins, and, er, Bonfire, Lewes sees itself as the town equivalent of a streetwise hoodie-wearing young shaver. Whereas everyone outside thinks it’s a terrific place to bring aging relatives for tea and a potter round the antique shops.

Whether you usually swan about in a black turtle-neck pretending you’re off to meet Jack Kerouac for an aubergine smoothie in Bill’s; or wear your jeans half-way down your thighs and rattle on about what a bare nang time you had getting hamstered down the Volly, innit, even you must have noticed that when your parents pay a visit, they think Lewes is NICE. They cluck at the dear little shops and pretty views. They drag you the length of the High Street, clutching a copy of Pevsner, insisting you show them the town walls. They will not believe you when you say you have never heard of any town walls. They will find those walls and they will insist that you accompany them.

‘Come along’, they boom, fortified by a nice cuppa in Shelleys, and the chance to inform you that the porch dates from 1577. ‘There are other interesting buildings down the Cliffe. Pevsner says one of them has unmistakeable ammonite capitals to the giant pilasters.’

‘Uh huh?’ you say flatly, trudging ten paces behind. Be you turtle-neck or knee-jeans, you will mutate into a sullen adolescent with unmistakeable flattened slouch to your giant shoulders.

In the same way that I have finally come to accept that no glossy magazine is ever going to ask me for my beauty secrets (‘clear boot polish keeps my skin looking fresh’), it’s about time Lewes stopped deluding itself. Hey Lewes? No-one thinks you’re edgy, okay? You are not about to be dubbed Brighton-on-the-Ouse. Deal with it.

The other day I was chatting to Waitrose Wench about how our mothers like to inspect the boutiques, for the sheer pleasure of gasping, ‘that’s four million shillings in real money!’ My Mum once did Flint and Flint At Home in one go, and had to spend the next day lying down.

‘Last time my parents were here’, she said, ‘I did try to show them the real Lewes.’

I was intrigued. ‘What IS the real Lewes?’

‘I don’t know, but I was sick of the Keere-Street-Anne-of-Cleves-Fifteenth-Century-Bookshop stuff they always want to do. So I took them to a warehouse all-nighter down at the Phoenix Quarter.’

‘And did this convince them there was more to the place than twittens and teacakes?’

‘Not really. They said it was a sweet party, but the music could do with being a little louder.’


Beth Miller, 7th October 2009. Published in VivaLewes.com. Photo by Alex Leith

Your socks smell of angels, but your life smells of brie

'I've had a lovely time’ trilled Country Mouse, kissing me goodbye, ‘Lewes is such a wonderfully smelly town.’

Did the ill-bred little backwater rodent really consider that an acceptable parting shot?

‘Excuse ME!’ I cried, yanking her back into the house by the belt of her Country Casuals mackintosh and interrogating her with an angle-poise lamp. ‘Whaddya mean, smelly?’

She broke down instantly. ‘I don’t mean anything bad’, she squeaked. ‘It’s all the fascinating scents as you walk round – it’s not sanitised, like Milton Keynes.’

I hurled her, whimpering, onto the path and slammed the door. A whiffy town, eh? It was time for some scientific research.

‘Remind me what we’re doing’, whined Born and Bred Boy, standing unhappily outside Streaks Ahead, a black scarf tied round his eyes. ‘When you said something about blindfolds and smells I had a different image all together.’

I explained again. ‘We’re going to walk around the town centre’, I said, putting on my lab-coat and safety glasses, ‘to see if you can identify where we are by nose alone.’

We began with a minor tripping incident, but as Boy limped, bleeding, past Fur, Feather ‘N’ Fins he reared like a greyhound sniffing a rabbit.

‘It’s that pet shop with all the F’s’ he cried triumphantly. We stopped a moment, and breathed in deeply. As a child I used to inhale at the threshold of our local pet shop for hours. There wasn’t much to do in the 1970s.

A little further, Boy yelped, ‘May’s!’ adding superfluously, ‘Eau de hippy’s bedroom’.

Minutes later, and his eyeless face was smiling. ‘The Best! Smell! Ever!’ he exclaimed. It was the unsurpassable perfume of hops brewing at Harveys. Boy overdid the sniffing, hyperventilated, and had to be assisted with a paper bag.

Is Lewes not fragrant? I was starting to think we were truly blessed, when Boy grabbed my arm.‘Oh’, he said anxiously, ‘If we’ve gone past Harveys, we must be about to… Aaaargh!’ He began weaving about, hands cupped over his mouth, bumping into benches. Like Jonathan Ross, that weird cheesy fragrance from Forfars divides people. Some, like Boy, generally avoid it with a circuitous route via the carpark. Yet my dear Man of the House claims it’s so yummy he wants to rush in and fill his pockets with buns.

As we moved up the hill, Born and Bred Boy got into his stride. Dry-cleaners (interesting chemicals); Flint (bizarre perfume); several estate agents (fear). I promised Boy there was just one more, and knew he’d got it when he clutched his throat and fell to his knees.

'School dinner cabbage', he gasped, 'warmed up and piped through extractor fan for all to share.’ I ticked the White Hart off my list, and treated Boy to a good long inhalation of the coffee aroma outside Nero’s.

Later, I rang Country Mouse to apologise. Lewes is indeed a heady town. More so, possibly, than Milton Keynes. But there’s nothing wrong with that.

Beth Miller, 15th April 2009. Published in VivaLewes.com. Photo by Alex Leith