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

So then I dropped it in the mailbox and sent it special D

On my way into town I bumped into Grange Girl. I began telling her about an excellent article in Tunnel and Bridge Monthly, which settled the much-disputed pronunciation of ‘Cuilfail’ once and for all. Nonetheless, Grange Girl picked holes, plunging us into a heated debate which culminated in me saying I’d already put the article aside for her, her replying she would use it for cat litter, and me pointing out that she hadn’t got a cat.

Both slightly ashamed after this outburst, we moved to discussing our Waitrose lists. I said, ‘Must remember to post a letter on the way.’

Grangey seemed strangely interested. ‘Which post box will you use?’

‘Probably the one opposite Boots. Why?’

‘Ah ha! It’s not there any more.’‘Where’s it gone?’

‘Post box heaven. You’ll have to choose another. May I recommend the fine example outside the Nutty Wizard?’

‘Grangey, have you been making a study of Lewes post boxes?’

‘My new year’s resolution is to memorise them all!’ she cried. ‘Then, wherever I am, if someone rushes up in urgent need of a post box, I can calmly direct them to the nearest.’

‘You really have lost it this time.’

‘Let’s take a tour’, she said, steering me up the hill. ‘There’s one outside Ask, and obviously the Post Office. You can’t use that, it’s too easy. Though there is that decommissioned box inside… very interesting.’

Round Lewes we trundled, my protests futile: Grangey had the light of obsessive completism in her eyes. ‘Ah yes, one by LOGS, one outside the loos, the Gallops, ooh, here’s the funny one in the wall of St Anne’s Crescent.’

‘A pigeon-pock fairy box’, I said without thinking.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Ahem. It’s what we called those flat ones when I was a kid. We, uh, thought they looked pretend, the sort of things fairies would use.’

‘Fair point, I’ve never actually seen a postman emptying one of these. They’re probably a front for something.’

We counted the impressive series of red boxes across the Nevill and Wallands: ‘Nine!’ Then down to the pigeon-pock fairy box at the bottom of Keere Street, where we found DJ Mama swearing because she was unable to post a letter into the tiny slot. We sent her to a real post box, and headed off, round Grange Road, Priory Street, the station: by the time we were back at the Cliffe I was agog at both the extent of the network and Grangey’s imaginative methods for passing the idle hour.

‘We haven’t even done Landport, Pells, or Malling’, she said happily.

‘Yes, there’s that one at Cuilfail’, I said, risking the correct pronunciation, and receiving a hard stare.

Outside WH Smith’s I finally posted my letter.

‘Who’s it to, out of interest?’ asked Grangey.

‘It’s to you, Grangey. It’s that article from Tunnel.’

‘I’m just going to mark it ‘return to sender’ when it arrives’, she said, as we walked back along the Cliffe.

‘I know’, I said.


Published in VivaLewes.com. Photo by Alex Leith