Like a glittering prize

Why isn’t recycling a competitive sport? Yes, I know we shouldn’t need external reward; we are supposed to be motivated solely by a warm self-righteous feeling. That used to work for me; I’d ostentatiously recycle the Guardian, secure in the belief that I was offsetting the hundreds of long-haul flights taken by politicians attending environment conferences in interesting places.
I’m so over that now. The thrill of putting out plastic Matey bubble-bath bottles for its own sake has dulled. Prizes would help reinvigorate the whole process, and create an upswing in the amount and quality of everyone’s recycling, and help save this whole goddamn planet of ours. I’d certainly not have chucked that hard-to-clean Nutella jar in the dustbin if there’d been points at stake.

I suspect that my idea will eventually lead to a major award, presented by David Attenborough. But I’m just going to focus for now on the recycling competition categories I think I’d do well in. Let’s start with those Matey bottles, the ones in the form of a sailor, pirate, or mermaid. Or the rarer parrot. Our house is the world’s archive for those bottles. I have probably singlehandedly made a whole fleet of politicians’ aeroplanes, if planes are made from recycled plastic, how would I know, out of Matey bottles. Yet I just looked in the bathroom and we still have fourteen. I will put them out this week.

I am also a dab hand at getting shot of important papers that look like rubbish. Was it Tolstoy whose maid used his manuscript for kindling? Or Samuel Johnson? I get those long-hand pen guys a bit muddled. But anyway, I am in that maid’s league. Members of my family are always saying, “Has anyone seen that phone bill/homework/decree nisi that I left on the table?” Then they have the cheek to complain as I quietly retrieve said document from the paper box. Only a few times has it been actively too late, the little Trumpton recycling truck being too far away to run after.

The big trophy, of course, will come for my natural talents in the cardboard category. “There’s no more room,” less serious competitors might say, on seeing a bag overflowing with cereal packets. They might even consider a supplementary bag – usually a plastic one from Waitrose, but sometimes a paper bag, as if that makes it better. They have already lost. Stand back, I will say. Let an expert through. One time, we missed a recycling collection, and nonetheless the following week I still managed to cram all the cardboard into the one bag. I squeezed toilet roll tubes into places the bag didn’t even know it had places. When I held the bag upside down and banged its bottom, nothing budged. I reckon that effort alone will make up for any UK politicians who are jetting off to the forthcoming climate change summit in New York.

Beth Miller. Published in Viva Lewes July 2014, and in vivalewes.com. Illustration by Michael Munday.

See the red and green displays: Just 58 more shopping days

Schools go back: tick. Hallowe’en: tick. Bonfire: tick. And then, wham, it’s straight onto the figgy-pudding-holly-tinsel-O-little-town rollercoaster. Still, the annual ‘I can’t believe they’ve got their decorations up already it’s not yet bloody December’ conversation is a welcome change to discussing how enjoyable/ruined Bonfire is without rookies.

If only we had Thanksgiving, to prevent Christmas from getting off the starting blocks too early. Mind you, Thanksgiving sounds like a nightmare-ish prequel to Chrismas, what with having to eat turkey, watch terrible telly, and hang out with your family, but with no presents to take the edge off.

Why Christmas creeps up on me unawares every year is a mystery - it’s not like there aren’t any announcements – but on the other hand, it does keep it fresh. If I didn’t have my traditional mid-November crisis, triggered by a full-body recoil from the display of mince pies at the entrance to Waitrose, I would hardly feel festive at all. In Cheese Please the other day, the lady told me that many customers have already ordered their Christmas hampers, and put in their Yuletide Stilton orders. Who are these people, and how can I become them? 

I’m not a leave-it-till-Christmas-Eve type, but neither am I brushing my hands together in an ‘all done’ gesture in July. I seem constitutionally unable to get it together till the start of December, by which time the combined forces of telly, shops and other people make me panic. Out of that panic has come a kind of system, which I will share for those of you who haven’t yet sorted your cheese orders.

1. Never throw any scraps of paper away on which you have made lists. (For one thing, the Getty Institute will buy them when you’re famous.)

2. (Relates to 1): Find last year’s list of the people you sent Christmas cards to.
3.  Cross off anyone who has died recently. Now you have your Christmas card list.
4. Buy cards and wrap in the Cards for Good Causes shop.
5. Go to late night shopping with Grange Girl. Write down everything she buys from the list she made in July. Drink free mulled wine while you wait for her to pay.
6. The day after late night shopping, go round the shops – they’ll be a lot quieter now – and buy everything Grange Girl bought. You can work out who gets what at a later date. Get three of everything, because you know more people than she does. (Grangey claims to know just five people.)
7. Ask the lady in Cheese Please what the most popular Christmas order is. Copy it.
8. Go into Harveys or Symposium and order as much booze as you can afford.
9. Use some of the items in 8 to get you through one solid evening of binge-wrapping.
10. All done. You’re welcome. If you want to buy me a thank you present, I’m fond of cheese.

Beth Miller. Published in VivaLewes.com

So tie me to a post and block my ears

Born & Bred Boy is very excited about the Mumford & Sons festival, and not just because they have an ampersand in common. “I’ve hired out my hard-standing to some bloke with a campervan,” he says, ticking money-making opportunities off on his fingers. “A family is renting my spare room for two nights. And I’m selling glow-sticks outside the gate.”

I don’t know whether to be impressed or horrified by his entrepreneurship. “Don’t you need a licence, Boy? But otherwise, you know, well done, very Apprentice and all that.”

He “pshaws” at my concerns. “Licence to print money, you mean. People who’ve paid £75 for their kid’s ticket are hardly going to balk at bunging them a glow-stick for two quid.” His eyes are alight with dollar signs, like Scrooge McDuck.

Grange Girl’s festival priorities are different. She’s been staying in every night, hunched by an overheating Spotify, to familiarise herself with the entire Mumford back catalogue. She’s nearly mastered that folksy spiritual facial expression she’s gonna need to fit in with the hardcore fans down the Convent Field.

I must confess that I hadn’t even heard of Mumford & Sons until their Lewes tour was announced, and even then, when I heard their name I initially thought they were a BBC sitcom, in the Open All Hours mould. Though why would a sitcom need a tour? Actually it’s rather a good idea, must see if Born & Bred Boy fancies backing it.

Ah, there was a time – specifically 1982 – when I knew not only every band in the top twenty, and the words to their songs, but also the names of all the band members, AND was very clear about which band member was the most fanciable (often not the one marketed as such – for instance in Madness I preferred Chris Foreman, while in the Human League it was Joanne Catherall). Looking at Mumford & Sons I suspect one is meant to go for Marcus Mumford, and apparently the lovely Carey Mulligan has done so, but surely the pin-up money is on the other one, the one with nice teeth? It was reassuring to know that Grange Girl wasn’t familiar with Mumford’s oeuvre either, but being Grangey, she wasn’t going to just wing it. Be Thorough Even If Wrong is her family motto. I, on the other hand, was planning to wing it proper. Only uncool people sing along at concerts, is the way I see it, so why bother knowing the songs in advance? But of course I was going to be there. What, miss the biggest thing to hit Lewes since Waitrose arrived? And more to the point, miss a festival that’s a five minute walk from home, and a proper toilet? My younger self might have known who the drummer in the Undertones was, and the reason why Haircut 100 were so-named, but there was one vital thing she didn’t understand: the importance of being able to nip home easily from a festival.

Beth Miller, published in VivaLewes.com

And still it begins, needles and pins

“It’s not just Waitrose vs Tescos you know,” said Pierced Boy, rubbing A&D cream gently onto his new tattoo.

“What’s not?” I asked, filling the kettle. For some reason I’m always the go-to person for Boy’s tattoo after-care. This involves making tea, providing an evening of diverting box-sets, and saying convincingly admiring things about his latest tat. Clearly I had also signed up for listening to his latest theory.

“I’m talking about another Great Lewes Debate,” Boy said. “To add to the where do you shop discussion. Or the are-you-from-Islington or have-you-been-here-since-the-Reformation argument.”

I handed him a cup of tea, but made no other encouraging continue-please signs.

“Biscuits?”

“You only get them for giving blood.”

“I have bled. Look!” He pointed.

“Rather not, thanks.” I averted my eyes and broke out the Rich Teas.

“Where was I? Yes, I’ve realised this is the season for another Great Lewes Debate: Bonfire.”

“Aren’t you away on the fifth as usual?” Despite being born and raised in the environs (Plumpton), Pierced Boy is well-known for his aversion to loud bangs.

“Yes, I’ll be in the centre of London. Nice and quiet.” He put the lid on the A&D. “So, do you want to hear my Bonfire theory?”

Oh god. Still in tattoo after-care mode, I smiled encouragingly.

“I’m glad you asked. Here it is. There are only three sanctioned opinions allowable about Bonfire. One: you love it and you march. Two: you love it and you watch. Three: you hate it. And there are only three reasons why you might hate it, and they are (a) because you misunderstand it (b) because you’re a wuss or (c) because you’re a health-and-safety-political-correctness-gone mad DFL.”

“Wow, you really have been thinking about this.”

“But actually,” he went on, wordlessly indicating that he wished me to direct me the cooling fan I was waving nearer the tattoo, “I believe there are many other different  possible responses. For instance, you could really like and support the idea of Bonfire, wish it well in all its wildness, and yet not necessarily want to be there on the night.”

“Like you.”

“Like me. Fan down a bit please. Or you might just be kind of indifferent towards it.”

“My arm’s aching.”

“Or you might like some aspects of it, such as the fireworks, but not others, such as car alarms going off in the middle of the night. Have you got any frozen peas?”
“You can’t put frozen peas there!”

“Fair enough.” Pierced Boy stood up gingerly. “Do you like the new body art by the way?”

I looked properly for the first time. It was an image of a blue rookie. “Nice – fits very well there.”

He pulled his jeans up, and taking my arm, limped into the sitting room to watch some pain-distracting telly.

Beth Miller, 18/10/12. Published in VivaLewes.com

Fire, I'll take you to burn

“What else can you barbecue?” asks Thing Two with interest, holding aloft a wooden spike, his mouth smeared in sticky pink goo. I realise I have nodded off briefly, worn down by barbecue stress, and during that time my child has turned into a vampire. That really takes slack parenting to a whole new level. “Honestly, Social Services, I turned my back for ONE MINUTE and next thing I knew he was one of the blood-sucking undead.”
I reach out to check the marshmallow bag but it is, of course, empty. The children have toasted and scoffed the contents, and Thing One is lying in the hammock groaning that she never wants to see a marshmallow again. As a test I say, “I do have another bag,” and she sits up attentively. “Where? I’ll get it for you Mummy.”
“Can you barbecue feet?” Thing Two asks, looking at mine speculatively.
“No, only sausages and corn on the cob,” I say, but he’s already run indoors on a dastardly unsuitable-for-barbecuing fact-finding mission.
This time of year there’s so much pressure to have fabulous Cath Kidston-styled outdoor meals. In my head, egged on by those Waitrose magazines, I see pastel-coloured parasols and water jugs sprigged with mint leaves. I hear children laughing with a tinkle of cowbells, and see them eating salad, yes, even celery. I see a hunky man wearing nothing but an apron (actually he’s in my head all year round), smiling sensitively while flipping burgers, framed by a wisp of white smoke from the barbie.
I probably don’t need to humiliate myself completely by playing spot the difference with my own al fresco attempts. Enough to say that though the hunky man is in place (my hand is somewhat forced here), the whole pitiful un-matching no-celery affair is drowned in choking clouds of black smog because the stove is always downwind no matter where we put it. Still, it makes the clothes on the line smell interesting, like they’ve been worn by Burger King employees on a long shift. While the hunky apron man wanders off to attend to his singes with Savlon, the tonging and flipping falls to me. But all I have by way of a technique are those tv adverts about getting salmonella from half-raw chipolatas, so out of fear I don’t stop cooking until everything is as carbonated as the charcoal beneath it. Hence the children filling up on marshmallows, I guess.
Thing Two trots out of the house with sacrificial objects for the flames: a cheese string, an apple, a Barbie doll, which is semantically clever of him, and my slipper. I’m about to rescue this last item when Hunky Apron reappears, hurls the last desiccated burger – his - into the hydrangea, and puts the slipper on the grill in a subtle undermining of my domestic capabilities. I honestly don’t think this can have ever happened to Cath Kidston.

Beth Miller 30th May 2012. Published in VivaLewes.com, and Viva Lewes magazine July 2012. Pic by Alex Leith

Ça plane pour moi

As I toiled up the hill, muttering my list like a mantra - wrapping paper, Turkish Delight, hexbug nano - someone hurtled into me with a decisive thud.
“Why don’t you look where you’re going?” thundered the bag-encumbered shopper.
‘Hello Country Mouse,” I said, for it was she. “Chrimble shopping?”
“Yes, O Curse-d Day,” she intoned. Mouse always gets mardy when forced to forego her cornfield for the fleshpots of the Big Town.
People pushed past us, muttering, for we were blocking the entrance to the Parking Shop, which was doing brisk trade. People buying tinselly parking-related presents for their relatives, I guess.
“Lucky I bumped into you, actually,” Mouse said. “You can show me round the new supermarket.”
I escorted her to Aldi, acting all knowledgeable because Mouse makes me feel urban and loaded with street smarts. But I hadn’t actually been inside Aldi yet. Man of the House is in charge of Supermarket Policy, and as his personal list of significant dates reads, in its entirety:
1978 – Scotland beat Holland in the group stage of the World Cup
2003 - First child born
2005 - Waitrose opened in Lewes
he was unlikely to sanction an official visit.
The doors swished open and we browsed the famously unfamiliar brands. There was a no-nonsense element to the display of goods. BISCUITS. FLOUR. RICE. JUICE. ANORAKS. Eh? Yes, the middle aisle housed bins of arbitrary items such as inflatable air beds, worryingly cheap power drills, and blue anoraks the exact type my Dad wore in Brittany in 82, which I remember well because he wore it a lot that trip. I realised I had a nice mellow holiday feeling, because it was like being in a French supermarket. The lighting, the oddly-named items, the unpretentious furnishings – all that was missing was a sullen French goth girl rapping out the total amount so quickly I had to keep repeating, “Scusez-moi?” till one of us died or she reluctantly agreed to take the correct money out of my hand. Possibly not the correct money, I now reflected – I had doubtless been fleeced un peu.
While I’d slipped into reverie, Mouse had been filling her trolley with pretty much everything except anoraks. “Essentials to get us through the festive season,” she snapped, in response to my inquiring eyebrow. She said festive season as others might say “nuclear holocaust.”
I’d have asked if she really needed fourteen packets of Disco Biscuits, but my attention was snagged by a pile of boxes of Turkish Delight, very attractively priced, and some super-cheap wrapping paper. With a cry of Zut alors! I grabbed armfuls.
‘Seasons greeting, I suppose,” Mouse said fulsomely, as we parted.
“Joyeaux Noel!” I cried, and went off to find someone – anyone – who was able to tell me what a hexbug nano was.

Beth Miller, 7th December 2011

We got a-little beans, and a-big a-beans

Hoxton Mum’s blog.

30th September – The Beginning!!!
Terribly excited about ten day ‘Shop Local’ challenge. So good for Lewes economy and environment. Am ignoring naysayers e.g. Lysander who believes we will DIE without Waitrose. New trug from Herstmonceux (actually they didn’t have right colour so had to use Amazon) is marvellous for carrying Friday market veg. Made Django amazing beetroot soup but little heathen wouldn’t touch it. Forced to substitute spaghetti hoops, but from Leicester Road Stores so STILL LOCAL.

1st October – Cornucopia of Delights!!!
What would we do without Farmer’s Market say I! Filled trug with meat, bread and cakes, plus I Can’t Believe It’s Not Stilton, from Newhaven. Lysander renamed it I Can Believe It’s Socks, but with local chutney it was perfectly acceptable. Spent quarter of usual Saturday amount! Lysander said was because I’d bought nothing worth eating, but am finding him easy to ignore.

2nd October – For Mash get Smash!!!
‘Suppose no Sunday roast,’ was Lysander’s opening gambit. ‘And good morning to you darling,’ I replied. Popped beef into Aga, then realised no potatoes! Grabbed trug, but potatoes go hide-and-seeky on Sunday. After wistful glance at Waitys luckily remembered packet of Smash left over from hilarious seventies party last year. Lysander declared dinner Best Ever, and even Django ate all his Smash.

3rd October – A Mars a Day!!!
Didn’t have Django’s usual lunch treats so sent him to school with a Chaula’s samosa. Went to buy more supplies. Important to experience life before supermarkets took fun out of daily shop.
After school Django broke into emergency cupboard and ate whole bag of mini-Mars bars. Silly chap was sick all night.

4th October – Thanks Hubby!!!
Lysander informed me new colleague Ambrose coming for dins tomorrow. Tiny tiff as I suggested Shop Local week not ideal to host someone who is FRIENDS WITH DAMIEN HIRST. Lysander said what else did I have to do all day, I discovered trug is impressive weapon, and there we left it. Him to work, me to spend yet another day shopping. Discovered old Valium stash from Tasmania trip, feeling like proper 1950s housewife today!!

5th October – In a Tizz!!!
Django begged for school dinner. Told him it was mass-produced chemical rubbish but he got money from his piggy bank and ran to school on wings of Mercury.
No time for usual dinner party prep, so got tweezers and Clairol Nice ‘N’ Easy from St Anne’s Chemists. Lamb from Richards, Rioja from St Pancras Stores, Stinking Bish from Cheese Please, veg from Lewes Fruit Stores, though no asparagus – claimed ‘not seasonal,’ absurd because Waitrose has it. Not convinced broad bean, mighty as it is, offers same panache. By time I reached Wallands weight of trug almost dislocated shoulder. Not concentrating on beauty treatments due to broad bean anxiety; ended up with no eyebrows and white streak in hair like Diaghilev.

6th October – Nearly There!!!
Ambrose charming last night. He once shared rice cakes with Kate Moss! Said dinner delightful, didn’t mind broad beans stepping up to the plate. Lysander kissed me and asked if stress of Shop Local caused eyebrows to fall out. Only three more days. Booked big Ocado delivery for Monday.

Beth Miller, 5th October 2011. Published in VivaLewes.com

Yeah, these are just the rules and regulations

A little known subsection of the unwritten British constitution concerns rules specific to Lewes. These are rarely discussed and remain largely untested. I’m only going to commit them to paper, or whatever this webby thing equivalent is made of, because last weekend I discovered there are two more than I realised. The standard rules, which we all know, are:

(1) We won’t be druv.

(2) Druv is an elusive concept, but essentially means our right to object if anyone does anything we don’t like.

(3) We have to not be druv a lot, because despite living in one of the most prosperous areas of one of the richest countries on earth, rotters are always trying to push us around with regard to our beer and whatnot.

(4) Talking of beer, Harveys is the best in the world. End of.

(5) There is no fence-sitting here. Lewes will not tolerate wishy-washy middle-grounders. You’re either Waitrose or Tescos. You’re either a Tory who votes Tory, or a Labourite who votes Liberal. You either hate DFLs, or you are a DFL. You either think the parking scheme is the greatest example of man’s inhumanity to man, or you say things like, ‘But I can always get into the Needlemakers car-park now and anyway you only get a ticket if you break the rules.’

(6) Bonfire Clause 1. If you’re not for it, you’re against it. Vaguely non-committal is not an option. Anyone who says, ‘Fireworks are pretty aren’t they? Mind you, seen one parade and you’ve seen them all,’ will be drummed out of town.

(7) Bonfire Clause 2. You are not allowed to say anything critical about Bonfire Societies. Unless you’re a member of a Society having a pop at another Society; this is an essential element of Bonfire experience.

(8) No useful shops are allowed to move in. They must all go to Uckfield.

Two weeks ago I went to the Southover Priory May fair thing and found I was falling in line with the hitherto unknown but clearly well-established rule number 9:

(9) Everyone who is within a ten mile radius must attend the May Fair.

Every woman and her husband was there. It was marvellous. I said, ‘hello,’ so many times I ran out and had to substitute the less satisfactory, ‘wotcha’ instead. Thing One was in her element, shooting plastic crossbow arrows, making plastic soldiers out of a mould, and interrogating me as to why there was so much plastic around in the Middle Ages. Thing Two was only interested in climbing teetering piles of Priory rubble, which have stood unmoving since time immemorial but began looking a bit crumbly after he’d happened to them.

Then the drumming started.

(10) There is often drumming at Lewes events. Do not ask why. You will like it. Or if you don’t, get you gone quietly, perhaps to a comfortable hostelry.

You will be pleased to hear that we rule-abiding Lewesians followed this one to the letter.


Beth Miller 18th May 2011. Published in VivaLewes.com and Viva Lewes handbook, May 2012

If I ruled the world, every day would be the first day of Spring

I have broken Rule 243 of parenting. (For a copy of the complete rulebook send £14.99 to the usual address.)

‘For the last time, I don’t care what they say, March 1st is NOT the First Day of Spring!’
‘But Mummy! The teacher SAID!’

Rule 243 states: ‘Thou Shalt Not Disagree with Things Primary Teachers Have Told Your Child.’ There’s a clause which lists exceptional circumstances around creationism and sexism and whatnot but we rarely need to invoke this in Lewes.

Thing One’s nearly in tears, for I have brought Doubt and Confusion to her small teeming mind.

I try and restrain myself, force a smile and mutter, ‘We’ll have to agree to disagree won’t we,’ (which I completely don’t agree with), before I break rank and shout, ‘But everyone knows it’s the 21st March.’

Once Crèche Manager has arbitrated, rather poorly in my opinion, by telling me to grow up and by letting Thing One watch four episodes back-to-back of Chop Socky Chooks, I sneak off to confirm that I am correct. But Google is a horrible let-down. Apparently the 1st/21st argument isn’t new; as far back as 2006 Nicholas Winterton, Tory MP for Macclesfield, was taking up the cudgels in this debate. To my chagrin I realise I am on the same side as Winterton, and that it is the Met Office who have designated 1st March as Officially Spring. I frantically search for evidence that Winterton might know more about these matters than the Met. Is he perhaps a secret climatologist or hippy? But in amongst all his jolly activities such as supporting Section 28 and capital punishment, there is no mention that he likes to send up weather balloons, or even that he hangs seaweed from his window.

As penance I offer to take Thing One on a walk so she can be knowledgeable about the Signs of Spring and impress her teacher in a way that my playground ranting might have failed to do. There are many signs: the ducks are back on the Winterbourne Stream, there are purple crocuses most everywhere, and some trees have sprouted brave blossoms. Someone walks past with a plastic daffodil on their lapel and I try and engage them in Welsh but they hasten quickly away. Thing One rolls her eyes at me, a Sign of Teenhood I wasn’t expecting to see for a few years.

We go through the Grange: catkins, green leaves, mating frogs, (‘Come ON, Thing One!’ ‘But Mummy this is interesting.’). Then into town: Priory schoolgirls with bare legs, the road being dug up, Easter eggs in Waitrose.

‘There,’ I say magnanimously. ‘You and your teacher are right. It is Spring after all.’

But Thing One scrunches up her brow, clearly struggling to comprehend the bewildering nature of evidence versus anecdotal report. ‘Mum, if it’s Spring why is it still freezing?’

‘Well sweetie,’ I say, failing to hide my glee, ‘That’s something you’re going to have to ask your teacher.’

Beth Miller, 1st March 2011. Published in VivaLewes.com and Viva Lewes handbook, March 2012

Chill will wake you, high and dry

The second thing I saw after swishing intro Waitrose (the first was a special offer on turnips), was Hoxton Mum. Or rather, Hoxton Mum’s hairline: the rest of her was obscured behind a comically overloaded trolley. I immediately assumed she was having a party to which I wasn’t invited, and decided to ignore her. But she spotted me lurking near the leeks and yelled ‘COOOO-EEEE’ at volume. You could see a few old ladies wondering if they were allowed to hiss ‘shush’ here or only in the library.

‘Hoxie! Wow, that’s a lot of shopping. What you up to this weekend?’
‘Nothing much. Derek’s coming over for my lymphatic drainage massage, but otherwise there’s no point making plans.’
‘Isn’t there?’
‘Not if it snows, no.’
‘Is it going to?’
‘It might. It’s cold enough. Brrr!’ She did that rubbing arms thing that no-one cold really does. ‘Caught me on the hop last time. Won’t happen again.’

There were eight tubs of star anise in her trolley. Either she was making Vietnamese pho bo for thirty close friends or…

‘Hoxie, are you panic buying?’
‘Certainly not! Keep your voice down. I’m merely laying in a sensible array of provisions should we once again be marooned in our isolated shack for weeks on end.’

I don’t think Lewes Estates would recognise this description of Hoxie’s detached Wallands house, but I could hear the anxiety in her voice. Back in December she’d rung in a flap to tell me that Ocado couldn’t get up their street and how was she going to manage? I gave her my store-cupboard recipes (baked bean surprise; digestive biscuit surprise), but she was clearly shaken by the drying up of her usual supply lines of aduki beans and pomegranate molasses. I wasn’t about to judge her. I was the source of much ridicule in 1999 when instead of dancing to Prince I was obsessively rearranging the jars in my Millennium cupboard and wondering whether twenty-seven tins of tuna was enough to get me through the approaching apocalypse.

Panic-buying is one of those irregular verbs: I am laying in a sensible array of provisions; you are overdoing it somewhat at the checkout; they are panic buying. And indeed, a few people were clocking Hoxie’s trolley, picking up the words ‘snow,’ ‘panic,’ and ‘marooned,’ and exchanging glances with their loved ones.

‘We really should get some dried milk,’ I heard a woman say to her husband, and that seemed to be the signal. Dried milk is a code-phrase from Protect and Survive. Everyone started barging round, snatching things randomly off shelves and arguing politely with other shoppers.

‘Excuse me, I do believe I had the last Camembert.’
‘I don’t think so. Anyway, this Port Salut is just as nice.’
‘No it bloody isn’t.’

I turned to my friend. ‘Oh dear Hoxie, what have you done?’
‘Heavens,’ she gasped, dashing off with her precariously wobbling trolley, ‘I’ve forgotten to lay down some stocks of passata.’

Beth Miller, 2nd February 2011. Published in VivaLewes.com. Photo by Alex Leith.

Think of all the fun I've missed

Country Mouse rings with her usual seasonal barrage of one-upmouseship.

‘Have you finished yet? My dear, isn’t it awful, I’ve barely started.’ [Translation: Everything’s done; relaxing in a tinsel tracksuit.]

‘Now what do you think of my Christmas dinner with a twist? Goose with brandy reduction and cider-glazed pearl onions. Nigella, obv.’

I scrunch the phone against my shoulder in official 1950’s housewife style and scrawl myself a reminder note: ‘Get food for Christmas’. If only I was a 1950s housewife, I might come up a better rejoinder than ‘Pearl onions can be awfully windy.’ [Translation: Shuddup.]

She ignores me, quite rightly. ‘Must dash. So much to do!’ [Translation: Off for my massage, the reward for having (a) done everything and (b) crushed your soul.]

It’s because of this kind of pressure that 1950s housewives were all junked up to the eyeballs in Valium. I do up my pinny and continue my list.

1. Get food. Not turkey. Turkey so over. Rattlesnake?
2. Get drink. Lots. Strong.
3. Inspect unwanted present cupboard. Surely this is the year I can offload that pink tart’s boudoir bubble bath set? Maybe my father-in-law would like it.
4. Start domestic marketing campaign centering on the principle of when I was your age I was thrilled with a walnut and a roll of sellotape.

On the way to town (5. Go to Waitrose, have small and mostly unnoticeable breakdown by the Christmas puddings, buy cheese strings), I bump into Pierced Boy. I assume confidently that his Christmas plans will be less formed than mine.

‘Oh, I’m spending the whole week at Lorenzo’s place in Marrakech, didn’t I say?’[Translation: Ner ner ner ner ner.]

I reel into Neros. The staff are wearing Santa hats but I am prepared to overlook this in the interests of scoring a triple espresso. Then Eco Dad sits down, spills green tea and says, ‘Done all your shopping then?’

‘Yes,’ I lie, brazenly. ‘How about you?’

‘It was a trick question!’ he laughs. ‘We’re not joining the consumerist bun fight. We’re giving each other the gift of love and space.’ [Translation: Ner ner ner ner ner.]

I give Eco Dad the gift of space and trudge to Honesty Girl’s place. Surely she’ll sympathise with my Yuletide ennui? But she’s up a ladder decorating an immense tree.

‘I love this time of year,’ she says.

‘Ha ha!’

‘No, seriously. I try and put my cynicism aside and hear sleigh bells in the snow.’

I burst into tears.

‘What on earth’s the matter you silly old trout?’ she soothes. ‘Here, this’ll make you feel better.’ She hands me a huge Cadbury’s selection box. ‘The kids’ll never know, we’ll just take one or two.’ [Translation: We eat the entire thing.]

The taste of the Crunchy makes me think of chestnuts roasting on a open fire, and how much more I’d rather be eating a Crunchy. Though just for a moment I ponder what it would taste like garnished with some glazed pearl onions.

Beth Miller, 8th December 2010. Published in VivaLewes.com and Viva Lewes magazine, December 2012

Tomorrow I'll be glad, cause I've got Friday on my mind

Wordlessly, Grange Girl seized my arm and dragged me from Waitrose, scattering organic carrots and fennel in her wake. I clung to the automatic doors and then to the leg of the Big Issue seller. But Grange Girl has been regular with the pole fitness lately and is strong as a Duchy Originals ox. As she swept me up the hill, not even letting me look in the new shoe shop, I begged her to tell me where we were going. But she was too enraged to speak. Steam snorted from her nostrils.

At the War Memorial she barked, ‘What day is it, young lady?’
I always go blank under pressure. I’d be no good at those old people tests when they ask the name of the prime minister or what year it is. I’d be put on medication and only allowed milky puddings before you could say ‘Is it Ted Heath?’

I tried to sneak a look at the date on my phone but Grangey dashed it to the ground where it was trodden on by a passing Afghan hound.

‘It’s Friday!’ Grange Girl snapped.

‘Oh. Is this something to do with Crackerjack?’

‘On Friday mornings we don’t go to the supermarket, do we?’

Light dawned. Grange Girl has been banging on about the marvellousness of the Friday market since it began, possibly even before it began, but I never remember it’s on until Friday evenings.
When she saw my contrite expression Grangey softened, and handed me a Waitrose Bag For Life. ‘Less picturesque, but more capacious than a wicker basket,’ she confided.

Hitherto known to me only as the cut-through with the waving Tom Paine, the markety thing was now full of stalls and busy shoppers. I stopped to inspect some cheese but Grange Girl said firmly, ‘There is a particular order in which one does the market.’

Under her despotic guidance, I discovered the brilliant fruit stall where you can buy a mix of different apples because they all cost the same. You can taste them too, but I didn’t get the chance before I was yanked off to the excellent bread stall. There were stalls selling jam, meat, cakes and vegetables, all terrific stuff, and much more homely than the Farmer’s Market. Normally shy, unless terrorising her friends, Grange Girl was on fine bantering form, swapping century-old badinage of the ‘squeeze me and I’m yours’ variety with the merchants.

On the way out we inspected a cute map with pins showing the locality of the produce. Three pins were just outside the magic circle of however many kilometres you’re allowed to stray from Lewes before being shot. I made a mental note to buy whatever those rebellious items were next week. Long as I remembered the damn thing was on.

I waited till Grangey toiled up the road and disappeared. Then I went to Tescos. I needed cheese strings and rice crispies, and she was much less likely to find me there than in Waitrose.

Beth Miller, 2nd November 2010. Published in VivaLewes.com

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.

We will find it, we will bind it, we will stick it with glue, glue, glue

I didn’t go to Seedy Saturday. I was haunted by last year’s debacle, when Grange Girl arrived a married woman and left arm-in-arm with my Uncle Adultery, an application form for his dating agency tucked into her Bag for Life. She claims to be considerably happier since freed from the yoke of patriarchy, and perkily recounted all the seedy stuff I’d missed. I faded out to the sound of ‘homemade chutney’ and ‘insect homes’, and only regained consciousness when she mentioned Marguerite Patten.

Lucky I wasn’t there. I would have found it hard not to question Marguerite resentfully about her cashew nut risotto. My mother was so strangely enamoured of it, we ate nothing else during the long summer of ’76.

‘She was terrific’, said Grangey sternly. ‘She talked about the return of make do and mend.’

This phrase sends chills down my brand new cardigan. Make do and mend is dusters, fashioned from gaffer-taped Y-fronts, and home-crocheted swimming costumes that sag embarrassingly when one is thirteen and trying to impress boys at Pontin’s Holiday camp. Still, that was years ago, not that it happened (cough), so I dutifully examine the advice from Lewes District Council.

A cheeky little intro implies that flooding is entirely carbon dioxide’s fault rather than, say, casually giving planners the nod to build on flood plains, but it also offers a homespun list. I already store leftover food in the fridge – best place for it, I find – but I’d never thought of using empty bottles for homemade wine. I lost a few days on that project, and resurfaced woozily to see what else I could m d and m.

Some of the ideas seemed old-fashioned – well, all of it, obviously - but some were more recently dated, such as doctors wanting toys for their waiting rooms. Err, not the swine-flu isolation zones I’ve been in lately, which are barer than the nap on a Y-front duster. Other suggestions lacked the courage of their convictions. Turning jars into candle holders seemed reasonable, if a trifle suggestive of nothing much going on in one’s life, but the instructions concluded: ‘decorate with glass paints which can be purchased quite easily.’ Why only quite easily? Either it’s easy: you hand over money in a shop and they give you paints; or it’s difficult, e.g. there’s a worldwide shortage. And if we are making do, should we really be purchasing expensive paints? We might as well buy ready-made candle holders and use the free time to drink homemade parsnip wine.

Talking of which, apparently Marguerite described how wartime kids were fobbed off with mashed parsnip sandwiches, masquerading as banana. Given the price of Waitrose’s fair-trade bananas versus the free parsnips Grangey keeps forcing on me from her veg box, I gave this a try. Thing One spat it out, and Thing Two sobbed for rice cakes. Still, waste not want not, eh? I can scrape it off the bread and use it for my next batch of Chateau Parsnip.

Beth Miller, 10th February 2010. 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

Oh, the good life, full of fun seems to be the ideal

Hats off to Lewes Rotary Club, say I. Not for their good works, particularly, though I’m sure they do lots of those, and fund-raising, and, er, other stuff. Are they the funny handshake people or is that a different crew?

Anyway, grateful salutations to them, for collecting Christmas trees on January 3rd, thus bringing to an early halt the interminable festive season. Mine has been going on since Waitrose guilt-tripped me into buying mince pies in August. After 140 days of Christmas it seemed I would just segue smoothly into the run-up to next year’s Yuletide, without any intervening tinsel-free buffer zone. I was saved from this fate by the tough love of the Rotary Club, who dragged the tree from my arms, crushing baubles underfoot, and brought me to my senses.

So I’m now ready for a new January, a new year. Here I sit, snow at the window, my scratchy bic biro in hand, to make my resolutions. The first couple are easy. Resolution 1: Buy a new biro. Resolution 2: Stop pretending I am writing with a biro when I am actually speed-typing onto a computer with a screen so flat you can’t see it when it turns sideways.

My other resolution is more challenging. I made an important discovery the other day, while watching The Good Life Christmas Special. (This, incidentally, will form the central example in my forthcoming paper, ‘The role of sitcoms in raising self-awareness: Richard Briers and the Forces of Evil’.) The episode was the one where Margot is bullied by Tom, in what I now see is an aggressive and misogynistic fashion, into lightening up, playing silly party games, and being generally as cerrr-azy as him and Barbara.

With a thud, I realised that, though I have aspired all these years to be like Barbara, except without dungarees – pert, practical, up for a laugh – in fact I completely identified with Margot. I suppose years of domesticity have taken their toll. I can at last appreciate why she was annoyed when Jerry put rubbish in the bin just after she’d emptied it. I have become resentful of eco-warriors and their assumption that they’re the only ones with any answers. I increasingly value the ritual of the pre-breakfast gin and tonic.

And I have started, at last, to be honest with myself. Instead of forcing on a paper hat and pretending to get the joke, I now accept that my true nature is to be the grump in the corner saying, ‘I don’t understand. Why is it funny?’

My final resolution, therefore, is to embrace my inner Margot. I’ve already made a start. When the Rotary finally wrestled the tree off me, they asked for a donation. I put on my most Tory voice and trilled, ‘Two pounds? After you’ve dropped pine needles all over the parquet? I think not’, and firmly shut the door. It felt great.

Beth Miller, 6th January 2010. Published in VivaLewes.com

Do not falter little donkey, there's a star ahead

‘The little baby Jesus’, says Thing Two confidently, ‘was found in a manger in his Daddy’s tummy.’

That DOES sound like the Greatest Story Ever Told. I secretly hope this is the version they’ll be performing at his nursery, but fear I will be disappointed.

This year, for the first time, both Things are in Christmas productions – by coincidence on the same day. Glory be, I’ll need a snifter or two after that little lot. Thing Two, being top of the food chain at preschool by dint of age, and presumably, supreme understanding of the nativity story, is a King. He is the one with the dud gift of myrrh, which no-one knows what to do with. Everyone can always use a bit more gold and Frankenstein.

When quizzed about the actors playing the other two kings, Thing Two sniffily refuses to accept their existence, insisting there is only one king. I guess the others will be kept busy helping Joseph with the birth, anyway.

Thing One, being in a lowly class at school, is part of a faceless production line of angels and stars, who have little to do other than try not to clutter the stage while the big kids hog the limelight. The main character, according to Thing One, is the donkey, so I am also looking forward to seeing this version. It might be directed by Scorsese, and have the donkey realising that he is destined for great things if he can only throw off the shackles of his humble origins. He fights with the sheep to gain supremacy. Then he incites the unimportant angels and shepherds to rebellion, and they leap out of the chorus to overthrow Herod, and get into some decent camcorder footage.

This is a spirit of the blitz time of year, when parents are urged to ignore other, more trifling responsibilities, such as work, and come to the aid of the juggernaut that is the school Christmas season. It’s finding purple things for hampers and buying eye-wateringly-priced Christmas cards and dressing your child in tinsel and making decorations and baking cakes and buying other people’s cakes and, as Hoxton Mum reminds me, doing our bit for the artists and makers fair at the Town Hall this Saturday.

‘I’ve made exquisite little samplers’, says Hoxie. ‘Bringing back the traditional arts, you know.’

I reach out for one and she snaps, ‘Don’t touch it! I’m pricing them at a tenner a throw.’

I wipe my hands on my jeans and she says, ‘What are you selling? Some mums are doing hand-printed silk scarves, and Supermum’s giving us some of her etchings.’

‘A cake’, I improvise.

She rallies quickly. ‘Oh yes, the art fair café is always very popular. The homemade cakes are a particular draw. Well done you!’ and she turns back to her needle-point, like the bitchily patronising sister-in-law in a Jane Austen novel.

Waitrose have nice, homemade-looking cakes. Memo to creative self: remember to remove the packaging.

Beth Miller, 1st December 2009. Published in VivaLewes.com and as an updated version in Viva Lewes magazine, December 2010. Photo by Alex Leith

It's not easy being green

Now there’s a nip in the air, it isn’t much fun round Grange Girl’s house. ‘Put the heating on?!’ she shrieked, as though I’d suggested she perform the dance of the seven woolly scarves. ‘You just need a couple more layers.’

Grangey, I noted, was wearing enough clothes to win a Michelin Man lookey-likey competition. She also had one of those Tibetan ear-flap hats that don’t suit anyone from Wickle.

Pells Boy, sporting a donkey jacket and balaclava, rolled his eyes like an exasperated IRA man when I asked him what was going on. ‘10:10’, he said.

‘Oh, 10:10’, I replied, cluelessly. Was that when you could see really well? No, that was 20:20. No, wait, wasn’t 10:10 what those motorbike cops in Chips used to say to each other?

We drank lukewarm tea made from tap water. Apparently boiling kettles is definitely not 10:10.

‘My consciousness was raised’, said Grangey, ‘at a meeting last week at Lewes Werks’.

She explained that 10:10 was a pledge to cut your carbon emissions by 10% during 2010. There were so many tens in this explanation I was forced to have a biscuit. Meanwhile, Grangey demonstrated a gadget which showed her electricity usage. It was fascinating. When she put on a light, the meter jumped a tiny amount, but when she boiled the kettle (taken briefly out of its cupboard exile), the numbers went into orbit and an air raid siren went off. Pells Boy dived under the table and Grangey unplugged the kettle with a satisfied smile.

‘Lots of people and organisations are taking part’, she said, putting her hands in the fridge to warm them. ‘Waitrose, even.’

‘It must be all right’, I said, ‘if Waitrose are doing it.’

Pells Boy dusted himself down. ‘So what did they say at this meeting about local initiatives?’

‘Ooh, lots of things’, Grangey said, showing off her 10:10 metal tag wristband. ‘Um. We’re going to see if the Sussex Express will dedicate an issue to it.’

Pells Boy examined the tag covetously. ‘That would look good with my “Make Poverty History” wristband’.

‘I’m doing well’, Grangey said, ‘apart from driving to work. I’m car-sharing but of course that doesn’t count because I’m still using my car.’

‘Hang on’, I said, ‘aren’t you reducing overall emissions by giving someone a lift who would otherwise drive?’

‘Exactly’, she said, ‘he’s reducing his, but I’m not reducing mine.’

The cold must have addled my brain as I felt something was wrong with this but couldn’t say what, exactly.

Pells Boy stood up. ‘Better get going. Got to pack for our half-term trip to Disney World. God knows how we’ll keep the kids amused on a nine hour flight.’

There was a frosty silence after he’d gone.

‘I walked here’, I said to Grangey, hoping to cheer her up, but she was frowning.

‘It is quite parky, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Perhaps I will put the heating on after all.’


Beth Miller, 20th October 2009. Published in VivaLewes.com. Photo by Alex Leith

So kiss me and smile for me, tell me that you'll wait for me

Ordinarily, Grange Girl is phobic about the normal rules of social intercourse. She will hide behind a lamp-post rather than make small-talk with an acquaintance, and if you invite her out, will quiz you closely as to whether there will be ‘any people there’.

But bizarrely, put her in a shop and she is transformed – she simply has to banter. She banters so long and so amiably that anyone in a hurry is forced to take their custom elsewhere.

Lewes isn’t a brilliant town for repartee, compared with less englishly inhibited areas of Britain, such as, well, most of Britain. But there are some pockets of excellence, where a mundane exchange is given sparkle by a bit of old chat. These places make life just that bit more worth living. Particularly for Grangey, who otherwise can spend the entire week speaking only to her goldfish.

One of the happiest days of her recent life was arranging for us to go to a gig, because the few remaining tickets were secreted in banter shops across town. She flitted merrily between Laportes and Riks Disks, buying one at a time, drawing the shop-keepers into the drama of whether there would be enough. She enjoyed the quest considerably more than the gig, which she pronounced ‘too full of people’ and left early.

Grange Girl’s friend, Library Boy, once foolishly tried to emulate her parlaying skills in Waitrose. However, he merely bewildered a poor assistant by his attempts to sympathise with her long shift on the check-out. ‘And what time do you finish this evening?’ he chattered gamely, as she pressed the security button and had him escorted from the premises.

Elsewhere, with a little encouragement Catlin will lean his elbows on the counter and natter about the latest planning scandal. You can’t peruse the slab at the Riverside fishmongers without Terry himself him riffing about cunning ways with a grilled mullet. Say Cheese is unbeatable for a surreal chinwag, like the time they gave me ten good reasons to eat unpasteurised camembert despite my being pregnant.

Sometimes, however, for really top-notch chatter you have to shove your shop local in your bag for life, and get in the car. No-one gives better banter than my friend, the Postmistress of a nearby unnamed village. Her queues stretch out the door. Though whether this is due to the renown of her badinage, or because every transaction takes time beyond imagining, who can say?

The best place in Lewes for blether is of course the Runaway at the station, where they sprinkle magic onto every transaction. One morning, the man buying tea in front of Grange Girl mentioned his imminent flight to Europe. Instantly, the staff broke into an acapella rendition of ‘Leaving on a jet plane.’ Grange Girl, who normally would die of shame rather than hum a note, joined in with gusto, and soon the whole café was singing the chorus. Everyone then went on with their day uplifted, despite having missed their trains.

Beth Miller, 19th May 2009. Published in VivaLewes.com. Photo by Alex Leith

Pretty Green

As I was hauling Thing Two to the shops, amidst the usual bribes and random shouting, I bumped into Pells Boy doing the same with his child, The Beast of Playgroup. We ambled companionably down School Hill, chatting and smiling vaguely as our toddlers rammed, cackling, into the backs of old ladies’ legs. Then we crossed the road at Boots and suddenly we were at the Great Lewes Divide.
Thing Two ran into Waitrose as if it were his second home, which it pretty much is. I started to follow, when I realised that Pells Boy was standing incredulously at the threshold, fending off a Big Issue seller and holding the squealing Beast two inches off the ground by her collar. ‘Waitrose?’ he spluttered, ‘we don’t go there. We go to Tescos.’
Tory or Liberal, Catholic or Bonfire; there’s nothing that divides Lewes residents quite as much as their preferred supermarket. Yes, there are a few floating voters who use both, and a few who pretend not to use either, but generally you say tomato and I say vine-ripened. I reasoned with Pells Boy. ‘Look, you’re never going to get The Beast to schlep all the way to Tescos.’ He hesitated, and I coaxed: ‘They’ve got this brilliant thing for kids at the exit.’ Pells Boy looked left and right, pulled his balaclava over his face and slunk in.
We whizzed briskly round the aisles, stopping occasionally to kick broken eggs or jars discreetly under shelves, and to allow Pells Boy to clutch his heart and gasp, ‘Lawks a mercy, £3.99 for a punnet of blueberries’ (though actually blueberries are now half-price in Waity’s, bargain hunters). At the check-out, the cashier – clearly deluded - thought the children were cute and gave them extra green tokens. ‘Pretty’, gasped the Beast, and tried to eat them.
‘The kids love this’, I explained to Pells-Boy, as we tipped the Beast upside down. ‘They can bung these in that slot thing over there.’
Pells-Boy likes to read the instructions, and informed me that each slot in fact represented a local charity. ‘Poor old Camera Club’, he said. ‘Fancy pitting them against the Lifeboat Society. That’s like Jimmy Krankie being drawn against Roger Federer.’
It’s true that the Lifeboat Society had about four million more tokens than its rivals, who included the Monday Club, a group of self-proclaimed grumpy codgers whose pitch, I felt, needed some work.
‘We can even it out a bit’, I said, and lifted Thing Two so he could reach the Camera Club’s slot. However, he subscribes to the doctrine that to those who have shall be given – he’d just experienced a classic toddler Christmas – and he donated all four of his tokens to the lifeboats. The Beast, who’d had her tokens removed in the interests of health and safety, threw herself to the floor and began screaming, ‘I WANNA GO TO TESCOS!’ Pells Boy carried her out proudly, and I heard him whisper, ‘That’s my girl’.

Beth Miller, 28th January 2009. PUblished in Vivalewes.com and in Viva Lewes magazine, June 2009. Photo taken by Alex Leith.