I'm sittin' in the railway station

Cowering at the back of Shoe Gallery, pretending to examine a brogue, I mourned what my life had become: hiding as if on a protection witness scheme. The shop door creaked open and I flinched; sure enough, in a few paces my Uncle was at my side, and putting the shoe firmly back on the shelf. “Definitely not, Niecey; too Virginia Woolf.”

Even hitherto impenetrable nooks such as the café upstairs at Ieko and the children’s section of the library were no longer places of safety. Since Uncle Adultery had made an offer on a “small abode” on Rotten Row, his visits to Lewes had increased in such frequency and length that they were one long joined-together visit; essentially he was living with me. At least when he hurt his ankle last year and was confined to my sofa he was stuck in one place. Now, no matter what I was doing – meeting friends in Baltica, browsing in Rehab, necking shots in the Brewers, somehow my Uncle would hear of it and materialise there, wearing his lavender silk suit and a pungent cologne. I began to suspect he’d secretly attached a tagging device to my person. The worst of it was that none of my friends appreciated my plight. That’s always the way with elderly relatives, isn’t it? You spend years bitching about your dreadful old mother, then when your chums meet her they think she’s charming. On one desperate occasion I snuck out, leaving Uncle A enthralling my social circle about the estate agent who’d shown him a house with a DOWNSTAIRS BATHROOM, but I got stuck halfway out the loo window and had to return damply to my seat, to discover the anecdote had only reached Act II, in which Uncle invoked the hardships of the trenches as an appropriate metaphor.

As ever, I was saved by Grange Girl, though by accident. She told me to meet her at the station. I like Grangey’s magical mystery tours, but when I got into the ticket queue she tugged my sleeve and led me, with a familiar nod to the railway guard, down the stairs onto platform 3. “I do like a place that’s been done up,” she said, opening the door to the waiting room. It had been freshly painted, was clean and warm, and had a darling little library of books to browse. More to the point, it was empty of uncles. I sat experimentally on a comfy sofa, but he didn’t appear. “Come on,” said Grangey, “I want you to see the Ladies, they’ve won awards, you know.” I unzipped my parka. “I’ll just stay here for a bit,” I said. With the Runaway next door for sustenance, John Grishams on the shelf and an award-winning loo mere steps away, why need I ever move again? Then my phone buzzed with a text from Uncle A, saying he was “devastated” to report that the house purchase had fallen through. I smiled at Grange Girl through tears of joy. “I’m ready to go back home,” I said.

Beth Miller, 5th April 2012. Published in VivaLewes.com

Wherever I lay my hat that's my home

‘Let’s do this systematically,’ I said, playing for time. ‘Lewes has eight estate agents. There’s the grainy-photo one that’s been here since it sold the castle to William de Warenne. There’s the very posh one, and the quite posh one. The overpriced pushy lot, and the slightly-cheaper-though-not-by-much-it’s-all-relative-innit crew. The one where the staff are sitcom-style wide boys, and the one where they’re so low-key they won’t notice you unless you stand on their desks waggling a cash-lined briefcase.’
‘That’s only seven,’ said Uncle Adultery, far more on the ball than someone seeking a retirement pad ought to be.
‘Yes, well there’s the one that set up after I bought my house and I don’t know nuffink about it.’
‘You can stop it with the innits and nuffinks, Niecey. I believe my intention to buy un petit igloo has rattled your cage. No, no,’ and he raised a hand to quell the raggedy flow of my half-hearted denials, ‘I have sprung it upon you. Fret not: I don’t intend to settle here until I am immobile and dotage-ish.’
‘I’ll be delighted whenever you move here, Uncle,’ I lied, feeling expansive now I knew it was un-imminent. ‘So where shall we start?’
He took my arm. ‘The very posh one, of course.’
We strolled along the high street and gazed in at the window. ‘Egad!’ said my Uncle, and staggered slightly. ‘Hasn’t the recession arrived here yet?’
‘You’re looking at beautifully-situateds with wisteria,’ I said. ‘Surely a pied-a-terre is more a cosy flat.’
‘To your undemanding mind, perhaps. Well, maybe I do need to lower my sights. A separate library is a tad provincial, after all.’
With the help of the scarfy lady, who was to an ordinary estate agent as Helen Mirren is to Bob Hoskins, we spent a lovely hour flicking through dream properties. Both Helen and myself tried, with varying degrees of subtlety, to find out just how lucrative the dating-agency-for-married-people business was. Was it four-bed-in-Rotten-Row profitable or one-bed-above-a-kebab-shop struggling?
We seemed to have the answer when Helen went off to answer the gold-plated phone and Uncle A whispered that he’d like a look at the cheaper-innit crew. We slipped out and trotted briskly down the hill.
‘It’s not that I can’t manage some of those, Niecey, but in these uncertain times one had better…’ said my Uncle, but I never found out what one had better because he turned to check that Helen wasn’t chasing us with details of a superb rear-facing view, tripped and went down like a shot deer. I tried to help him up but noticed his right foot was facing a different direction from that which is conventional in the foot-direction world.
‘Oh Ankle, your uncle,’ I gasped in confusion.
‘Take this money , Niecey,’ he wheezed hoarsely as paramedics lifted him into the ambulance. ‘I need Darjeeling – leaf not bags – rye bread and Gentlemen’s relish. See you back at ours when the butchers have released me.’
Ours?

Beth Miller, October 18th 2011. Published in VivaLewes.com. Photo by Alex Leith

A beautiful sky, a wonderful day, whip crack-away

We were coming to the end of the Easiest Easter Holiday in Living Memory TM, classified thus because the steaming weather meant you could go to the park every day instead of seeking waterproofed and expensive diversions. But we’d now been to the park rather a lot, and there’d been a small incident in the Bell Lane Rec when someone forgot it wasn’t her own back garden but rather a public utility and words were said to someone else who was sitting on the bench she had come to regard as her own. Ahem. So as Thing Two and I hastened away in search of alternative fun, my eye was caught by the brightly coloured posters of the Climate Change campers at the old St Anne’s school site. Or ‘Calamity Camp’ as Thing Two read it, a charming fusion brought on by his five-year-old reading skills and his recent viewing of Doris Day’s Calamity Jane.

The person who does all the curly colourful sign-writing at environmental camps and festivals sure has got the market sewn up. Quite literally, as the lettering is often stitched onto sheets. The smiling dreadlocked lady who was knitting at the entrance invited us in to look round. There wasn’t a huge amount going on, but everyone was friendly and it was nice to be in a place with a lot of sitting down – sitting-in, I believe is the technical term – and where was no-one was arguing about benches and land ownership. Oh hang on, yes they were. A nice chap, doing a masterful impression of Tom, Reggie Perrin’s son-in-law, explained while washing up that they’d originally occupied the site to raise awareness of climate issues via peaceful direct action. I think he said peaceful but I was distracted by trying to stop Thing Two interrogating Tom as to why he didn’t have a dishwasher. In the end I took some peaceful direct action of my own, by stopping my child’s mouth with a vegan flapjack. Tom explained that the police had thought they were protesting about the imminent demolition of the school buildings. Bet that officer went ‘oops’, because until he told them, the calamity campers knew nothing of this proposal. Naturally they immediately added it to their protest roster. I asked Tom if the camp would consider also protesting about an unattractive gazebo going up in my neighbourhood but he said it was ‘outside our remit.’

Thing Two swallowed the last cake crumbs and asked to go home. Having been mainlining Easter eggs for the last two days he was now showing clear signs of withdrawal. Cold bunny, I suppose. We bade farewell to our new friends, and sang Whip-Crack-Away! as we walked home. Passing Bell Lane, I noticed my bench was still occupied, but I took no action, peaceful or otherwise. Early tomorrow morning I would return with a flask and hold a lengthy sit-down.

Beth Miller, 28th April 2011. Published in VivaLewes.com