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 good they named it once

It's not often, walking round town, that you start to ponder the many ways in which Lewes is actually a lot like New York. In fact, it's never happened to me before. It probably hasn't happened to anyone before.

But suddenly, on Saturday, there I was, thinking, hmm, yes, Grange Gardens is just like a very small, clean, safe Central Park. If you squint a bit. And the twittens are kind of laid out in a grid, really, aren't they? Just not a very conventional grid.

What, I hear you plead, led to this Manhattan-obsessed train of thought? I'm glad you asked. It was a small thing, really. I was trundling along the High Street, and I'd like to say I was minding my own business, but that's not true, because not only was I peering nosily into every shop window and smiling randomly at old ladies, but I'd also just caused a minor fracas in the bank, the details of which needn't detain us here.

Anyway, in the midst of this not minding my own business, I was suddenly brought up short by an unfamiliar and extremely unexpected sight: a chollah in the window of that cheesy shop (as in, they sell cheese, not that they are naff and like Val Doonican).

A what? I hear you gentiles cry. A chollah: it's a plaited loaf, traditional in Jewish homes on a Friday night. Well you could have knocked me down with a chollah, as the old saying I've just made up goes. I haven't seen one of those since the last century when my dear old East End mum would mutter an ancient blessing over such a loaf on Sabbath evenings (and would be ably supported by my brother and I saying 'Get on with it, we want to watch 'Winner Takes All').

I bustled in to the cheesy shop and was about to seize a chollah, possibly two, for who knew when these times would roll round again, when a horrible thought struck me. This was Lewes, right? Not Manhattan, or Ilford, or Hove, even. Probably - and here I let out a disappointed sigh - almost certainly, this chollah was nothing but brioche in rabbi's clothing.

'Is this brioche?' I asked the sales assistant, putting the full force of my disdain into the word so that it sounded as if I was swearing.

'No', she replied, 'It's chollah'. She pronounced it perfectly.

Strolling away with the bag under my arm (I only bought one in the end - it's just a loaf of bread for god's sake, nothing to make a song and dance about), suddenly Lewes was lit with a more cosmopolitan light. My overdraft-related fracas in the bank now seemed like a vibrant and forthright exchange between two colourful and busy city-types, rather than an overheated scene of public humiliation.

And that wasn't all. Why yes! Like New York, we have an amazing array of shops, some of which even sell things you want to buy. We have restaurants with food from many nations, although mainly Italy. We have a melting-pot of people, from all over Sussex and the south-east, and if we don't have a mayor who preaches a zero tolerance regime, we do at least have a parking system which operates on the same principle.

So ran my thoughts, as I wandered home, imagining that the lone Big Issue seller was in fact a large number of witty pan-handlers, and that if I popped into Beckworths they could sort me out with salami on rye to go.The chollah tasted of brioche, by the way. But it was very nice brioche.

Beth Miller December 2008. Published on Lewes.co.uk