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

And I love you till my fountain pen runs dry

Last weekend I bumped into Honesty Girl, and asked if she too was going to Seedy Saturday.

She looked down her nose at me in a manner reminiscent of the great Edith Evans dismissing the very idea of a handbag (or for a more modern reference, the look on a Mexican’s face when discussing Jeremy Clarkson).

‘Good gracious no. It’s bad enough when the weather’s nice, but today…’ she gestured to the windy rain swirling round us. ‘No, today I’m going to buy up the remaining stock in Sussex Stationers.’

‘It’s such a shame, isn’t it?’

‘I’m gutted. It’s another blow; I was in a state for weeks when Pen to Paper closed. It’s a conspiracy, you know.’

‘Is it?’

She pulled me into a huddle and hissed, ‘They don’t want us to have the means of communication. Slowly they’re removing all pens, paper and chalk from the town.’

‘Chalk?’

‘Then they’ll have us just where they want us.’

‘But we’ll still have email and texts and the internet, won’t we? Who are “they” anyway?’

‘Ssssh!’ She looked round wildly, and I thought significantly, in the direction of the parking shop.

‘The NCP? But why would they…’

‘Not them. Heavens! Say no more. Walls have ears.’

She straightened up and said in her normal voice, ‘Well, better go. I want twenty tubes of Pritt. Enjoy your… seeds.’ You sad little person, she didn’t quite add.

I never worry too much about the state of my friends’ emotional wellbeing. It’s their little foibles that make them interesting. So off I went in the rain to be seedy. But after a few swaps and some merry banter in the Grange my mind started to wander, becoming preoccupied with thoughts of nice crisp pastel-coloured card, fresh packs of Berol felt-tips and multi-coloured drawing pins.

Stationery unites people. You’ll find that if you confess a deep love of paper-based items, many others will reveal the same passion. My first job was in a stationery shop, applied for as a foot fetish might seek work in Russell & Bromley. I was not only allowed but positively encouraged to rifle through rainbow post-it pads and align packs of envelopes by size. I became something of an expert on posh pens, and once sold a solid gold Mont Blanc to a rich gentleman with no taste. I had to take it out of the safe, which remains the highlight of my working life.

News that WH Smiths have bought up Sussex Stationers brings some cheer, though we don’t yet know if they’re going to Smith it up, close it, or turn it into something un-stationery. Just in case it becomes a boutique, I went to the sale and bought a pile of notepads and a packet of chalk.

‘Look!’ I showed Honesty Girl at the checkout. ‘Now they won’t be able to stop me communicating.’

She gave me that Evans/Clarkson look again. ‘It wouldn’t hurt you, actually, to communicate a bit less,’ she said.

Beth Miller, 9th February 2011. Published in VivaLewes.com

Looking at you I'm filled with the essence of, the quintessence of joy

What a strange League of Gentleman place Lewes seems when you read about it in the papers. All right, there’s no need for that. A town awash with burning crosses and people looking at you sideways if you run out of Lewes Pounds: it don’t seem like the Lewes I know. But when I pondered how else to sum up the place in a sound-bitey way, all was blank. So I undertook a small survey of what residents consider to be the very essence of Lewes.

‘Easy’, said Cycle Girl. ‘Only this week I went to a disused foundry to look at some chairs. Not Chippendale or anything. Just ordinary stacking chairs. One of them’, she went on, ‘had brown clay splodged onto the seat. It looked exactly like our chair at home after Cycle Kid’s happened to the playdough. But we all admired it anyway.’

‘Quintessential Lewes?’ said DJ Mama. ‘Crossing the Bell Lane rec and meeting that woman who walks a ferret on a lead.’

‘The window of Crumbs’, grumbled Maximum Diner, ‘with “cakes” made of cloth. Sums up the whole blinking place – twee, useless and pretending to be creative.’ This was, it must be said, one of his better days.

‘Taking the Beast to the cinema to watch a Buster Keaton movie’, said Pells Boy. ‘She kept asking when the colour and sound and action were coming in, but otherwise she enjoyed it. Course she did. She’s a Lewes kid.’

‘Seeing Hoxton Mum in the window of a cafe, mouthing “I’m very busy”’, said Born and Bred Boy.

‘My essential Lewes’, said Honesty Girl, ‘is watching the Rooks lose at home.’

‘The smell of hops and Arthur Brown in Neros’, offered Viva Girl, and I was just about to ask what Arthur smelled like when Grange Girl said, ‘I had a long conversation in the parking shop today about what happens to recycled batteries.’ This was quintessentially Grange Girl for sure, but was it typically Lewes?

‘I was able to tell them about batteries in great detail, plus recycled milk bottles.’

It’s not often I feel sorry for the people in the Parking Shop. Grangey is well-informed because she reads the council’s Waste & Recycling Link avidly. That is very Lewes: the fact that everyone (except Grange Girl) dutifully recycles their Recycling Link without reading it.

‘Walking to the Friday market and buying mud-covered vegetables’, Decaf Man contributed, ‘and lugging them home in a used plastic bag with spindly handles.’ Despite only having been there five minutes, the Friday market is already very Lewes. ‘Then having to go to Waitrose by car to get a proper amount of vegetables.’

I was writing up my findings in Costa when Hoxton Mum sat next to me with a big phew and ordered an almond Americano. ‘Just a quick one’, she said, ‘I’m very busy. What? What’s so funny?’

Beth Miller, 22nd September 2010. Published in VivaLewes.com

Nobody does it better, makes me feel sad for the rest

It’s so pleasurable to watch someone at the height of their professional powers, one who can command a room with their charisma. In public life, Barak Obama and Bruce Forsythe spring to mind.

In Lewes, of course, we have the Scottish guy in the parking shop. I feel bad that my shoddy research didn’t extend to finding out his name. Last time I was there I intended to conduct an incisive interview, but Scottish guy (let’s call him Glen, after Glenfiddich, another fine Scottish export), overwhelmed me with his easy manner. The only question I managed to ask was ‘Please can I have a totally unnecessary pack of Zone E visitor’s permits?’

Minutes later I found myself outside, a tenner down, smiling inanely. Well, it’s so good to see a virtuoso at work. And how tremendous to find that the universally reviled parking scheme, with its Cold War approach to customer relations, has such a genial and urbane public face. It gives you faith.

Ahead of me in the queue was a very angry man. He’d bought a ticket, but being printed on the sort of paper that makes tissue look hard, it had fluttered to the floor. The Blue Meanies love those. They code them as ‘blow-downs’, did you know that? Well, you should have seen Glen handle the situation.

If you want a good old-fashioned shout at your bank or phone provider, you’ll get some sap who’s been ‘taught’ how to handle you (eg they went on a two-hour training session run by Jeanette from Personnel, and spent half that time trying to operate the tea urn). You rant on, even though they keep looking at their watch; or if on the phone, you know they’re holding the receiver in the air, making ‘I’ve got a live one here’ faces at colleagues. They won’t take any responsibility even though they work for the company, and their voice is so emotionless you get even crosser, which Jeanette might have told them had she not been so busy playing them hilarious calls which had been recorded for training purposes.

How different with Glen. He listened properly to the thrilling ticket-on-floor saga, nodding, tutting and sympathising. Then he gently explained the options for an appeal. A good man in a bad world, maintaining standards while civilizations tumble. Mr Angry left, if not exactly happy, then satisfied he had truly been heard.

It had been a while since I’d enjoyed one of Glen’s master classes in people management. So imagine my anguish when I discovered he had moved on. Head-hunted by Northern Rock, presumably, or the Labour Party, or other organisation desperate for a decent front man. Poor you, if you’ve never been to the parking shop, or only been there in the grip of murderous ticket-related rage, rendering you less susceptible to fulsome appreciation. You have missed out.

Mind you, the woman who told me the sad news was smiley and helpful, so perhaps she’s a worthy successor. I’ll go in for more unwanted permits and find out.


Beth Miller, 30th September 2009. Published in VivaLewes.com