I dropped into a shanty I used to frequent

When I was at school with Kanga she was as British as binge-drinking, but living in Australia the past 15 years has given her more than just a Queensland twang. Walking round Lewes with her is like stepping out with Crocodile Dundee. She really does say ‘G’day?’ to everyone, and she would doubtless raise her leather bush hat if she only had one. Luckily for me, and Lewes, she’s staying with mates in Brighton - see? ‘Mates’? It’s contagious? - and has popped over here for day trips, and decent pubs.

‘Ohmigard?’ she drawls, blowing the froth off a pint of Harveys. She never was a glass of white wine for the lady kind of person.

‘You seen the blasted hell-holes they call pubs over in Brighton?’

‘Rough, I expect’. I sip my white wine.

‘Hell no? Not rough like the watering holes in old Toowoomba?’ She laughs, a delicate sound that causes everyone in the Gardeners to whip round and fix her with a hard stare.

‘How ya going?’ she chirrups, and they turn quickly away, lest she engage them in conversation.

Born and Bred Boy sidles into the seat opposite us and stares askance at Kanga’s knee-length shorts. ‘What’s wrong with Brighton pubs then?’

‘They’re not pubs? They’re bars?’ Kanga gives his nose a playful flick with a beer-mat. ‘You know, I’ve been really looking forward to bending the elbow in some proper English pubs? Like the ones we went to at school?’

Boy regards me with respect.

‘At least this one’s dinky-di?’ She looks round the Gardeners approvingly.

‘Any idea?’ Boy mouths, and I shake my head.

Kanga drains her glass. ‘Let’s hit the turps, guys?’

Like the Queen interpreting the native lingo, I tell Boy, ‘She wants us to take her on a tour of authentic drinking establishments.’

‘Right ho’, says Boy, going all PG Wodehouse under the pressure.

There are roughly twenty pubs in Lewes, and as we walk, we discount those which Boy deems inauthentic (most of them), those which I deem too far (most of the rest), and those in which Kanga, in her shorts and rude t-shirt, might cause a stir (almost all). That leaves us with the Lewes Arms, although there is a slight contretemps caused by Kanga casually wandering into the front bar as though she were allowed there. However, we are soon sitting comfortably in the back room, watching a game of Toad in the Hole.

'Ah, this is great?’ she sighs, lovingly necking another pint. ‘This is what I dreamed of when I was sinking stubbies in old Fibber Magee’s?’

Boy, trying to turn the conversation away from Australia, begins to explain the rules of Toad. Kanga stands up, says, ‘I know? Was a dab hand at it when I visited the Harrietville Hotel Motel in Victoria? Only table in Oz? Who fancies another?’ and strides off to the bar.

‘What a woman?’, breathes Boy, and I don’t think he means it as a question.


Beth Miller, 26th January 2010. Published in VivaLewes.com

Tell 'em a hookah smoking caterpillar has given you the call

One hot day a couple of weeks ago, Born and Bred Boy was lounging in the Gardeners Arms appraising the Racing Post when he began to feel sleepy. All of a sudden, a white rabbit boinged past, staring intently at an iPhone and muttering, ‘I’m late for the 16.51’, as it dashed out the door.

Intrigued, Boy gave chase, and they both tumbled down a huge hole in the Cliffe roadworks. When Boy straightened himself out, he was astonished to find himself in London, on the Finchley Road. There was no sign of the rabbit. A strange fellow, who was perched on a bollard smoking a dodgy-looking pipe, said abruptly, ‘Who are YOU?’

When Boy politely replied, ‘I hardly know sir, just at present’, the man called out, ‘Good lord everyone, it’s another wretched UFL’.

A crowd of strangers thronged round poor Boy, who only managed to say, ‘Unidentified Flying what?’, before a florid matron holding a pig-like baby tutted scornfully, ‘Typical. They always have too much to say, these Lewes people.’

‘Too right’, added a ginger-haired man with a huge grin, who faded in and out of view. ‘What makes them think they can move up here and start complaining about our Primarks and our Tesco Metros?’

‘Before you can say no to a planning application, they’re letting off rookies and insisting they won’t be druv, whatever that is’, said an old man with a white beard, unaccountably doing a handstand.

‘But’, said Boy indignantly, ‘Just because people come from the same town doesn’t mean their views are identical.’

‘Have a nibble of this, mate’, said the pipe-smoking guy, rummaging in his bag. ‘See if it don’t make you feel better.’

Feeling discombobulated, Boy ate some of the mushrooms the guy handed him. At once, the scene dissolved and he was sat at a table in a pub, a bit like the Gardeners except women were allowed. A toff in a top hat immediately cried, ‘There’s no room!’

As Boy began to protest that there was in fact, plenty of room, a girl wearing bunny ears said lazily, ‘No room for any more Lewesians with your cerr-azy striped jumpers and your misguided persecution complexes.’ Her head then fell forward into a teapot.

To steady his nerves, Boy took a sip of an unspecified brown liquid which tasted rather like Harvey’s Best. Instantly he shrank to the size of a dormouse, at which point everyone in the pub started throwing darts at each other. Terrified, Boy cowered under the table, the noise of darts hammering against the wood like a machine gun, and wished he was back home.

When he opened his eyes he was back to his usual size and sitting in the real Gardeners, pint and paper where he’d left them, but there was still a persistent thudding noise. He went outside, and found the street filled with dozens of people dancing wildly, nails fitted to the soles of their boots.

Thank goodness – back to sanity.


Beth Miller, 14th July 2009. Picture by Suzie Fox. Published in VivaLewes.com and in Viva Lewes magazine, August 2009.