Viva Lewes Issue #125 February 2017

265 acres of
classroom
Save the date! - 25th March 2017
Family Woods Open Day
To learn more or to book a private tour, please
call our registrar on 01444 483528
www.greatwalstead.co.uk

125
VIVALEWES
EDITORIAL
When we started Viva Lewes, ten years ago and counting, we didn’t use to have
themed issues. Then, in October 2007, apropos of nothing in particular, we decided
to produce a ‘Literary’ issue. We mocked up a 1950s-style Penguin cover (getting
late, late permission from the notoriously protective publisher), previewed the
Lewes Live Lit Festival, interviewed a children’s writer and visited Monk’s House.
Before long we were glorying in a theme every month. December and January took
care of themselves; other months we had to be fairly inventive. Since then we’ve
covered: the seventies, urban regeneration, summer, Tom Paine, spooky & supernatural, shopping,
love, outdoors, animal magic, ‘Dark is the Night’, the river, pubs, recycling, music, photography, fabric
& fashion and, for the issue that I returned as editor, ‘booze’. And much, much more, besides.
The main purpose of having a theme is that it encourages us to vary our subject matter, and so each
month we explore a different layer of this multi-faceted town. It keeps us on our toes, it allows us to
feature a greater number of townspeople, it inspires our latest cover artist, it helps keep things fresh.
This month’s theme, inspired by Valentine’s Night, is ‘flesh’, a subject that takes us from the massage
couch to the butcher’s block, via a chocolaterie and the grim graves sexton beetles dig to rear their
maggoty offspring. We ponder whether it’s right to eat meat, and, while we’re deciding, cook up a
lovely rabbit stew. Here’s to a fleshy February, then, whatever that may entail. Enjoy the issue…
NB: We are assured by the High Weald Lewes Havens CCG that there are NO plans to close Lewes Victoria
Hospital, contrary to rumours mentioned last month in this space.
THE TEAM
.....................
EDITOR: Alex Leith alex@vivamagazines.com
SUB-EDITOR: David Jarman
STAFF WRITER / ACTING ART DIRECTOR: Rebecca Cunningham rebecca@vivamagazines.com
ADVERTISING: Sarah Jane Lewis, Amanda Meynell advertising@vivamagazines.com
EDITORIAL / ADMIN ASSISTANT: Kelly Hill admin@vivamagazines.com
PUBLISHER: Becky Ramsden becky@vivamagazines.com
DISTRIBUTION: Dave Pardue distribution@vivamagazines.com
CONTRIBUTORS: Jacky Adams, Michael Blencowe, Sarah Boughton, Mark Bridge, Helene Carter, Emma Chaplin,
Barry Collins, Daniel Etherington, Mark Greco, Anita Hall, John Henty, Mat Homewood, Paul Austin Kelly, Chloë King,
Dexter Lee, Lizzie Lower, Carlotta Luke and Marcus Taylor
Viva Lewes is based at Pipe Passage, 151b High Street, Lewes, BN7 1XU, 01273 434567. Advertising 01273 488882

HURSTPIERPOINT COLLEGE

THE 'FLESH' ISSUE
CONTENTS
Bits and bobs.
8-25. Merryn Allingham’s Lewes, the
story behind Neeta Pedersen’s cover,
Gorringe’s last furniture auction, Viva on
holiday, and a lot more besides.
Columns.
27-31. Chloë King gets Facebook fatigue,
David Jarman gets into uniform, and
Mark Bridge gets all soppy.
On this Month.
33. Theatre. Ben Crystal talks
Shakespeare, in 'Original Pronunciation'.
35. Seedy Saturday. We meet mushroom
man Rich Wright.
37. Music. Shark attack.
38-39. Film. David Jarman on Carol
Reed’s The Third Man, plus the rest of
Lewes Film Club’s classic movie season.
41. Art. Patrick Goff, abstract collagist, at
Pelham House.
42-43. Art. John Vernon Lord.
33
65
45-49. Art and about. What’s on the
gallery walls, in Lewes and beyond.
51-55. Diary dates. Films galore, and a
WW1 extravaganza in the Town Hall.
57. Music. Paul Austin Kelly’s cello-tastic
classical round-up.
59-61. Gig guide. With the fabulous Test
Tube Babies. And Peter, of course.
63-66. Free time. Badminton at Wave, the
worm-derful Will Mabbitt, and what’s on
for the under 16s.
Food.
67-73. An almond croissant in the
refurbished Lewes Patisserie, veggie
burgers and coffee in Bun and Bean,
rabbit stew courtesy of Peter ‘the
Butcher’ Richards, and food news.

THE 'FLESH' ISSUE
The way we work.
75-79. Skin-tight: Helene Carter captures
Lewes’ flesh prodders, rubbers and
painters.
75
Features.
81-91. Anita Hall on biodynamic meat,
Gilda Frost’s chocolate shop, Michael
Blencowe on the sexton beetle, John
Henty pressing flesh, and a Lewes FC
striker on the mend.
Business News.
93. Musical chairs at the Needlemakers.
91
Inside Left.
106. ‘Porky’ Pryor’s prize-winning
window display.
VIVA DEADLINES
We plan each magazine six weeks ahead, with a mid-month
advertising/copy deadline. Please send details of planned events
to admin@vivamagazines.com, and for any advertising queries:
advertising@vivalewes.com, or call 01273 434567.
Don’t forget to recycle your Viva.
Every care has been taken to ensure the accuracy of our content.
Viva Lewes magazine cannot be held responsible for any omissions, errors or
alterations. The views expressed by columnists do not necessarily represent
the view of Viva Lewes.
Love me or recycle me. Illustration by Chloë King

time
to visit
Visit our March Open Morning to meet our new
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and our renowned ability to prepare pupils for life.
OPEN MORNING • Saturday 4 March 2017 • 9.00am to noon - please book online
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T: 01323 452323 • E: admissions@eastbourne-college.co.uk • Join us on
HMC INDEPENDENT SCHOOL • BOARDING AND DAY • BOYS AND GIRLS 13 TO 18

THIS MONTH’S COVER ARTIST: NEETA PEDERSEN
This month we asked local artist Neeta Pedersen
to come up with a design which illustrates our
theme of ‘flesh’. Neeta’s distinctive style draws
on femininity and sensuality as inspiration, tying
in perfectly with the issue’s theme. “When I get a
brief, I will see the image in my head,” she says. “I
will do some rough sketching, but it all comes from
my imagination. Part of the challenge in this case
was to portray the bodies of the two figures, but
obviously not showing too much flesh,” she says,
so she had the embracing figures morph into tree
trunks to signify the embrace of the two bodies. “As
it will be Valentine’s Day this month, I thought of
The Kiss,” - Rodin’s sculpture, which spent time in
Lewes in the early 1900s - “and of the little cupids,
shooting arrows.”
“I think a lot of my inspiration for what I do now
comes from the combination of my Indian side
and my Danish side, together with my experiences
travelling around various countries. This has
definitely helped me find my own style.” Neeta
was adopted from India by Danish parents at six
months old and travelled back to India as a teenager
to explore her roots. “It’s something I’d had in my
mind for a long time but when I did go back it was
very, very weird,” she says. “I felt so Danish, but
everybody thought I was Indian, even though I
didn’t wear a sari and I was travelling around with
a group of Europeans, wearing a backpack. It was
very interesting to see where I came from. I met
lots of artists there and found their use of colour
very stimulating.”
She studied film at the New York Film Academy
and then graduated with a degree in animation
from London's University of Westminster. “While
I was there, I created an animated short entitled
Disharmonious Coincidence, which the British Film
Council saw, and added to their catalogue. It was
8

also screened at lots of film festivals. After I graduated I discovered
that most of the animation jobs available were poorly paid
and I couldn't afford to do it, so I began to draw and
paint instead and suddenly I started selling my
illustrations and exhibiting my artwork.” She
started sculpting, too, creating pieces which were
“always very figurative, very feminine.”
In recent years, Neeta has been working
increasingly in digital art. She says: “For me,
I feel it’s much the same process, really, only
I have a graphics tablet and a pen instead of
a sheet of paper and a brush, and instead of
dipping my brush in the paint, I’m picking
the colour from my electronic palette. I work
on the image as I would on a painting.”
Most recently, she has been focusing on
children's illustrations and is producing a book
based on her own experiences as an adopted child.
She is also creating a wide range of Neeta Pedersen
products featuring her unusual artwork, which can be seen
on her websites: neetapedersen.co.uk and neetasalling.com. RC
9

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Photo by Alex Leith
MY LEWES: 'MERRYN ALLINGHAM', NOVELIST
Is that your real name or a nom de plume? My
real name is Maureen Stenning but I write under
the name of Merryn Allingham.
What sort of books do you write? I write historical
fiction incorporating suspense, social history and
some romance. My latest novel, The Buttonmaker’s
Daughter, is set in 1914 and the looming war is one of
its major themes, as well as a bitter family conflict. It’s
set on a country estate in Sussex.
Are you local? Kind of. I was born in Yorkshire but
I’ve lived in Sussex for many years, first in Brighton,
then in Ringmer, and for the last 14 years in Lewes.
When the children left home, it seemed a good idea
to move to a smaller house in town. It’s very convenient
- I can walk everywhere I need to go. Ringmer is
quite self-sufficient but when we lived there, I always
seemed to end up in the car.
What’s your favourite local landmark? It would
have to be the Downs encircling the town. I love
the sight of them when I’m walking from the High
Street down to Southover. It’s a wonderful panorama,
almost like a stage set.
When did you last walk to the top of a Down? Just
before Christmas. We live in Southover and regularly
walk to Kingston, going over Juggs Way and back via
Spring Barn Farm.
Do you do anything else for exercise? I do dance
exercise classes twice a week at St Michael’s Hall.
Adult Ballet and Fitstep. If I’m going to exercise
regularly, it needs to be something I enjoy and look
forward to, or it becomes a chore. I love the mix of
music and movement.
What’s your favourite restaurant? I don’t eat meat,
and unfortunately there’s nowhere like Terre à Terre
in Lewes. But I’ve enjoyed eating at Aqua, and the
new Thai restaurant. It’s a pity La Famiglia has closed
down on Market Street - I’ve had some very good
meals there.
Where do you do your shopping? Waitrose for
food. Clothes-wise there are some good independent
places: I often shop in Darcey on Cliffe High Street.
How often to you go to London? Fairly regularly
for exhibitions and visits to galleries. There are also
writing events and workshops, and I tend to meet
friends there from other parts of the country. I’m not
going at the moment, though, because of the Southern
Rail dispute. I can’t cope with the hassle and feel
very sorry for people who don’t have the choice.
Where would you live if not in Sussex? I love the
West Country, Dorset in particular, but now my
children and grandchildren are in Sussex, I wouldn’t
want to leave the area. And I don’t think I’d want to
live anywhere else in Sussex apart from Lewes.
Interview by Alex Leith
Merryn Allingham: The Buttonmaker’s Daughter is
published by HQ, HarperCollins
11

COMMUNITY BITS AND BOBS
CHARITY BOX #11: THE BEVERN TRUST
Photo by Emma Chaplin
Tell us about The Bevern Trust…
We are a residential care home in
Barcombe for adults with profound
disabilities. The Bevern Trust was
founded in 1999 by local parents
with disabled teenagers. The land
was donated and funds were raised
to build a home with the aim of offering people with
the most complex needs a fulfilling life. We’ve just
bought neighbouring land into which we hope to
expand, when we can raise the funds.
Why do you want to expand? Because there’s a huge
demand. We currently have rooms for our nine permanent
residents, plus two respite rooms, which support
eleven families.
What facilities do you offer? A sensory room that
our new patron, Natasha Kaplinsky, opened recently. A
wonderful hydrotherapy pool. And we employ a dedicated,
award-winning Activity Coordinator. We also
have three minibuses for regular outings and holidays.
How are you funded? Partly by fees
through the Health Service and Social
Services. The rest comes from charitable
donations. The Trust must raise at
least £10,000 a month from voluntary
funds to provide these vital services.
How many people do you employ?
65. Not all full time, as we provide 24-hour care over
two shifts for our profoundly disabled residents.
What is the most common misconception about
disabled people? That they are somehow scary and
can’t be talked to directly or treated in the same way as
we treat other people.
If someone is interested in helping, what can they
do? We’re always looking for volunteers. Or come
along to one of our fundraising events. Obviously
donations are needed too. And you could always like
our Facebook page and follow us on Twitter.
Emma Chaplin interviewed Jonathan Spencer
beverntrust.org
ENDING HUNGER IN LEWES
The presence of food banks in Lewes
is a reminder that poverty and hunger
don’t just happen in distant places.
Yet this kind of practical action is
only a partial remedy, described by
some academics as “a sticking plaster
on the gaping wound of poverty”. It’s
prompted a national campaign from
major charities, including the Child
Poverty Action Group, to end hunger across the UK.
Locally, TRINITY Church (congregations meeting
at Southover, St John sub Castro and South Malling)
has teamed up with local food banks to organise a ‘Big
Conversation’ on hunger. Jane Perry, a member of
the TRINITY Church community who’s helping to
develop its social engagement, explains: “Rather than
a few experts going ‘we know what's best’, we're going
to bring everybody together at a very local level to ask
‘what do we think needs to happen?’.
The answer could be a local response or
a national response.”
The Big Conversation takes place in
Lewes on Thursday 23rd February;
full details are online at facebook.com/
endhungerlewes. All are welcome. “It’ll
be designed around a group discussion”,
says Jane, “to get people talking
and listening. There's nothing worse than the church
coming in, stomping around and saying ‘we've got all
the answers’. It's much more appropriate to say ‘what's
happening already?’ and ‘how can we work with you?’.
That's where the motivation for the Big Conversation
comes from. ‘Love in action’ would be a good way to
put it." Mark Bridge
endhungeruk.org / #EndHungerLewes
facebook.com/endhungerlewes
12

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BELLINI TIME
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BITS AND BOBS
TOWN PLAQUE #23
Initially, I saw this month’s theme of 'flesh' as a challenge - but without
this plaque, put up recently, who would know that the quiet residential
twitten of St Martin’s Lane was once home to an abattoir? Before
regulators of all description (European and domestic) came to heavily
control the business of killing animals, many butchers ran their own
slaughterhouses. In the mid-1960s there were at least ten family butchers
scattered through Lewes, and no large supermarket. The abattoir
in this spot served March’s, on the Corner of Station Street. Animals
bought at the market by the station had only a short uphill walk to their
destiny, whereas those that had been reared on local farms may once have been walked into town. The present
house name Knowlands comes from the farm still bearing that name, just north of Barcombe Cross and
at one time linked to one of the butchers on the upper High Street. Marcus Taylor
LEWES IN NUMBERS
The Depot Cinema in Pinwell Road is nearing completion. The cinema will have 3 screens, with 140, 130
and 37 seats. The build will have taken 21 months, and has used 6 different cranes. Around 45 people per
day have worked on the project, either on or off site. There have been 135 site meetings, and 25kg of coffee
have been consumed.
The cinema ceilings are supported by 3,500 struts, while the roof bears the weight of 120 tons of soil. And
finally, the building will be heated by 12 ground source heat pumps which are each 200 metres deep. For
comparison, Mount Caburn is 146 metres high. Sarah Boughton
GHOST PUB #28: THE JOLLY FRIARS, 24 PRIORY STREET
Older Lewesians may recall the Jolly Friars Inn, which stood in Priory Street,
close to the King’s Head, until 1960. Aptly named after the monks who once
lived nearby in the priory (and no doubt enjoyed a good tipple), this pub was
very much a part of the social life of Southover. One of the first mentions of the
pub was in 1848, when a cottage ‘situated nearly opposite the Jolly Friars’ was
sold at auction. The pub narrowly escaped closure in the great Lewes pub cull of
1907. It was one of four pubs situated close together; the others being the King’s
Head, the Bell, and the Priory Arms. During a meeting of the County Licensing
Committee, it was stated that closure was a ‘toss up’ between the Jolly Friars and
the Priory Arms. The decision went the right way for the Jolly Friars’ landlord,
Zachariah Hills, and of course his regulars. The pub flourished for another 53
years, under landlords such as Charles Funnell, Frank Hoad, and John & Maisie
McLarnon. The Jolly Friars boasted a very handy darts team, and were the 1958/59 Lewes Darts League
champions. Despite the pub’s closure, the darts team lived on, playing out of various venues, including the
Elephant & Castle and the British Legion. They continued as the ‘Jolly Friars’ team for many years, and were
league champions another eight times; their last being in the 1977/78 season. Mat Homewood
15

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Animals arrive at Raystede for all sorts of reasons, from relationship
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Every single animal that we receive is vet checked and assessed by our
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the best environment and life for that particular animal, which means we
have a very low percentage of pets that are returned.
We also provide ongoing support and advice once an adoption has taken place. Every pet,
whether it’s a dog, cat, hamster or hen, regardless of their age and background, needs
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Please do not dismiss adopting a rescue pet. There are many misconceptions
around rescue centres and the animals that end up in them. Some people
believe that these animals are ‘damaged.’ This is not the case, in fact it is far
from the truth. It means they have had to endure big changes in their life
and, in many cases, abuse, neglect or heartbreak, but they still have endless
amounts of love to give. They wait so patiently to be offered a forever home
and when they are, they are so grateful and happy to be in a loving home that
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Raystede is a rescue centre unlike any other; we have a 43-acre site which
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comfortable and safe environment.
There is a lot to discover at Raystede and we
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If you have ever considered adopting a pet
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anything and we will provide you with as much
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Raystede Centre for Animal Welfare,
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*animals featured have been rehomed

PHOTO OF THE MONTH
SUNNY SIDE UP
“It’s easy to stay at home when it’s gloomy outside,”
says Iza Kruszewska, winner of this month’s
competition. “But my mate Ken was visiting with
his wife and he’s a great walker, so we decided to
set out into the murk.” It certainly paid off. “We
walked over Juggs Lane and across Kingston
Ridge and as we were reaching the top of Kingston
Hill we emerged through the top of the clouds
into a beautiful sunny day. It was like being on an
aeroplane, looking down onto the clouds!” The
pair then walked on to Swanborough, and back
to Lewes across the C7 and through the fields
via the Priory Ruins back to town. “This picture
was taken as we were beginning our descent into
Swanborough,” she continues, keeping up the
aeroplane analogy. “You can see the outline of Firle
Beacon in the distance.” Iza used to take a Sony
camera on her walks, but now she’s happy just using
her phone. “It’s an iPhone 6, and it takes great
pictures,” she says. Ken, by the way, lives in Kent,
near the North Downs. “But he’s always up for a
walk when he comes round these parts, because he
thinks our Downs are better than their Downs.”
Please send your pictures, taken in and around
Lewes, to photos@vivamagazines.com, or tweet
@VivaLewes, with comments on why and where you
took them, and your phone number. We’ll choose
our favourite for this page, which wins the photographer
£20, to be picked up from our office after
publication. Unless previously arranged, we reserve
the right to use all pictures in future issues of Viva
magazines or online.
17

VALUATION DAY
Jewellery and Antiques
Tuesday 21 February
10am to 4pm
A FANCY COLOURED DIAMOND AND
RUBY BUTTERFLY BROOCH, CIRCA 1900
Sold for £6,000
Bonhams specialists will be at The Boship
Farm Hotel to offer free and confidential
advice on items you may be considering
selling at auction.
APPOINTMENTS
01273 220000
tim.squiresanders@bonhams.com
VENUE
Boship Farm Hotel
Lower Dicker, Hailsham
BN27 4DP
bonhams.com/hove

BITS AND BOBS
BOOK REVIEW: LIVING FOOD
Daphne Lambert’s new book Living
Food is subtitled ‘A Feast for Soil
& Soul’ and that neat bit of slant
rhyming tells you a lot about what’s
inside. Daphne is a founding member
of Greencuisine, an educational
charity dedicated to ‘rethinking our
relationship with food’. For 25 years
she was the co-owner, nutritionist
and chef at the Penrhos Court
Hotel, in Herefordshire, whose
restaurant was the first to be awarded the Soil Association’s
organic symbol. The gist of this book is
that the food we eat, the earth it grows in, and the
season of the year it is produced are all connected
and we should arrange our diet accordingly, not just
for our own good, but for that of the planet, too. So
in winter we need to fill up with root vegetables, in
spring we can rejuvenate our systems
with green leaves from watercress
and spinach, etc, all sourced, where
possible, from our local ecosystem.
And there’s more than just the message:
this coffee-table-sized hardback
is full of recipes, and other box-outs
of information, such as which foods
enhance conception, and which fruit
and vegetables are ideal for juicing.
The book is published by unbound, a
company with an interesting modus operandi: writers
put their ideas online and the print run depends
on how many readers pledge money to pay for an
edition. Living Food is now in its second reprint, and
I’ll certainly put some of the recipes to good use:
carrot cake with hemp cream is going to be on the
menu soon. AL
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BITS AND BOBS
CLOCKS OF LEWES #3: THE MARKET TOWER
Something feels a little
awry about the Market
Tower. It's tucked away
down Market Street,
and its clock can only
be seen from directly
opposite. And the clock
is currently stopped.
The grade-II listed,
four-storey tower
houses Gabriel, the
1555 Town Bell that
used to hang in the
church of St Nicholas.
The ‘Broken Church’ was located near where
the War Memorial now sits, its clock presumably
visible up the hill. It was demolished in 1761
and Gabriel was moved to the market tower,
constructed in 1792.
One might assume the clock installed alonside
Gabriel was also from the Broken Church.
John Downie, engineer and amateur horologist,
and Marion Smith,
researcher of local
clockmakers, say that's
uncertain. Records from
1624 mention a clock
in the Broken Church
- but the Market Tower
clock has a pendulum,
invented decades later.
After keeping time for
centuries, the clock
seized up in 2012. William
Bruce, whose clock
shop is just down the
road, was approached for advice. He, John and
Marion restored it free of charge. Sadly, it was
subsequently allowed to wind down: a shame considering
the tower now hosts such vibrant events
as the Friday Market. LDC is looking to get it
working again. Watch this space; or indeed, keep
looking up when you're walking down Market
Street. Daniel Etherington
WHERE DID YOU
GET THAT HAT?
On yet another cold and wet
winter's day on Cliffe High Street,
Alyson Smith looked particularly
warm in this cosy green beanie.
Not only does she knit her own
hats, she hand-spins and dyes the
yarn from scratch too. This oneof-a-kind
hat (and buff to match)
was made by Alyson three years
ago and is still going strong: she
swears by her own creations to
keep her toasty in this miserable
weather. KH
21

52 Cliffe High St, Lewes . 01273 471893
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52 Cliffe High Street . Lewes . 01273 471893 . www.fyfpc.co.uk
- Nail Cutting
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- Verrucae
- Fungal Nail advice
- Diabetic Foot
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PHOTOGRAPHY
CARLOTTA LUKE
LAST DAY AT GORRINGE'S, GARDEN ST
It was the end of an era on December
6th, when Julian Dawson [see VL #124]
bashed down his gavel for the last time after
overseeing the Garden Street saleroom of
Gorringe’s since 1959, signalling both his
retirement from the business and the last
auction on the premises. From now on all
Gorringe’s sales will take place under one
(North Street) roof; the Garden Street site
will be developed into flats. Carlotta Luke, of
course, was there to capture the drama and
emotion of a very special day.
carlottaluke.com
23

BITS AND BOBS
SPREAD THE WORD
Lorna Gartside took us on a family holiday to Bulgaria over Christmas, spreading the Viva word on a
visit to the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Sofia, on a very cold, crisp 23rd of December (that's her in
the foreground, honest!) And the cold weather continued in Amsterdam where Kathy Berk hid her New
Year's Day hangover behind a copy of VL. We should definitely use a bigger font. And here we are, along
for the ride on the Ramsdens' recent family holiday, to Pompeii, where it seems their guide to the city is
called Viva too... Keep taking us with you on your adventures and keep spreading the word; please send
your photos to hello@vivamagazines.com. Lizzie Lower
Weekly Auctions
From January 2017 all our weekly sales of
ANTIQUES & COLLECTABLES will be held at our
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Why sell at Auction?
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ensures the widest possible exposure for your
goods to buyers throughout Britain and overseas.
Call us for a free no obligation valuation
0800 093 7849
15 North Street, Lewes, BN7 2PE
www.gorringes.co.uk
Sherree Valentine-Daines ‘Winding the String, Boxhill’
Sold for £13,000

delivering to Lewes, Haywards
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01273 486948
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COLUMN
Chloë King
Goodbye to all th@
When I discovered that
reading marketing terms
like ‘glow’, ‘vital’ and
‘journey’ on Facebook
led me to charge angrily
about, I realised I badly
needed a social media
cleanse.
My first online foray began
at 17: the halcyon days of
dial-up when I would chat
to a stranger named Felony
1 on ICQ and George
would make my CD drive go in and out with his
hacking skills. Then came MySpace, where I
collected quirky contacts like Bul!m!atron, His &
Herpes, and The Clap. And then maternity, and
Mummy Blogging. My first iPad: it seemed like an
open door, yet it bestowed an unhealthy fondness
for checking a website visitor graph.
These days my usage manifests as frequent
checking of my iPhone, often sharply followed by
the reading of a Guardian column. It might not
seem much, but when I download the Moment app
that tracks phone use, I clock up four hours and
thirty-eight minutes in just three days.
That’s time I have not been present with my
daughter, partner or friends; I’ve not been fully
engaging in work or play; exercise; sleep. The
only important exclusion I can think of is that
I was almost certainly on the toilet for some of
this time.
The evidence of life-wasting makes me feel
guilty, yet it turns out my usage may actually be
below average. The Ofcom Review of Digital
Communications states that users surveyed
in 2015 spent 1h 54 per day on their phones.
In response to my own discovery, I delete
Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and Twitter,
and start to configure Curbi
Parental Controls.
Now I’m clocking up valuable
minutes working out how
to save myself from my own
free will, and contemplating
a monthly charge. It’s one
of those amazing ‘you do
you’ moments you get online
when you are complicit in the
infringement of your own
freedom, just the same as
everybody else.
Turns out that Curbi is a censor and a spy all
in one. It lets you monitor how a phone is used,
and block whole categories of content, like social
media or video. In an attempt to parent myself, I
see the controls I wish to place on my own activity
are so severe they incur an additional charge. I
kick Curbi to the curb and risk failure by relying
on my own self-control.
It’s at this point I start worrying that I’ll have
nothing to write about this month. The week
goes by fruitfully. I speak to people. I work. I
read. I’m not sure whether it’s anything to do
with the hypnotherapy I had before Christmas,
but the temptation to look at Facebook or
Instagram is minimal.
I note in my diary that on Wednesday at 2.30pm
I had an intrusive thought featuring a red
notification bubble. Beside this, I write “ate seven
strawberry laces in quick succession and developed
shooting pain at the back of throat behind nose”
- precisely the sort of thing I might regret telling
my broader network.
“I can’t tell whether I’m being more efficient,
or whether I’ve just been Googling more
exuberantly,” my diary concludes. On reflection,
either one seems a healthier alternative.
Illustration by Chloë King
27

Talisker
Lower Sixth
Politician
You are warmly invited to our
Senior School Open Morning
Saturday 18 March 2017
9.30am to noon
(Entry at 13 and 16)
HMC – Day, weekly and full boarding
Boys and girls 13 to 18
To register please contact:
admissions@bedes.org
T 01323 843252
or online at bedes.org
Bede’s Senior School
Upper Dicker
East Sussex BN27 3QH
St Bede’s is a Charitable Trust which exists to educate young people

COLUMN
David Jarman
Modernism, beside the seaside
As I write, posters advertising Lewes
FC’s next home fixture are beginning
to appear. Their opponents
are Herne Bay, one of the most
depressing places that I have
ever been to. Admittedly, the
circumstances of my one and
only visit were not propitious.
It was a dull, overcast
Sunday in February. The
year was 1970, and I had
started boarding at The
King’s School, Canterbury
the month before. Already, I
was experiencing the cafard
that is the abiding memory
of my four years at the school.
Why, even at the age of thirteen,
taking the bus to Herne Bay struck
me as a good way of dispelling the
gloom is beyond me. The whole place
was eerily quiet, the seafront comprehensively
boarded up, the seagulls suicidal. The local
roughs not being out and about was probably just
as well as, in accordance with school rules, I was
attired in the regulation uniform of pinstripe
trousers and wing collar. At least I had the sense
to leave the boater behind.
Had I but known it, I was treading in the unlikely
footsteps of Marcel Duchamp. In August
1913, the artist sent a postcard to Max Bergmann:
‘I am not dead. I’m staying for one month
in Herne Bay (England).’ Duchamp was acting as
chaperone to his younger sister, Yvonne, who was
taking a course in English at Lynton College on
Downs Park. He seems to have had a much better
time than I did, writing to his friend Raymond
Dumouchel: ‘The traveller is enchanted. Superb
weather. As much tennis as possible… a sister
who is enjoying herself a lot’. Twenty
years later, Duchamp returned to
the Kent coast, this time as part
of the French team at the 5th
Chess Olympiad that was
held in Folkestone in 1933.
His analysis of one win,
two draws and nine defeats
must have been disappointing
for such a chess
fanatic. One of Duchamp’s
regular chess opponents,
both in Paris in the late
1930s and in Arcachon
on the west coast after
the mass exodus from the
capital, was Samuel Beckett.
Duchamp was the better player.
Incidentally it was in Folkestone
that Beckett married his long-term
companion, Suzanne Deschevaux-
Dumesnil, in 1961.
Other Modernist Kent coast connections? The
most famous is probably TS Eliot. Recovering
from a breakdown, he took refuge at the Albemarle
Hotel, Cliftonville, Margate in November
1921. Working on The Waste Land (‘On Margate
Sands. / I can connect / Nothing with Nothing.’),
Eliot wrote to Sydney Schiff: ‘I have done
a rough draft of part of part III but do not know
whether it will do… I have done this while sitting
in a shelter on the front’. Partly as a result, the
shelter was Grade-II listed in 2009.
And then there’s the, perhaps ill-advised, visit
that Ford Madox Ford and Joseph Conrad paid to
HG Wells at his villa in Sandgate. Ford recalled
in 1924: ‘We paid our call. Whether we were
taken to be drunk or no only the owners of those
grave faces can say.’
Photo by Nicholas Ardagh
29

䐀 漀 氀 瀀 栀 椀 渀 猀 伀 瀀 琀 漀 洀 攀 琀 爀 椀 猀 琀 猀 Ⰰ 䐀 漀 氀 瀀 栀 椀 渀 䠀 漀 甀 猀 攀 Ⰰ アパートアパート 䴀 甀 猀 琀 攀 爀 䜀 爀 攀 攀 渀 Ⰰ 䠀 愀 礀 眀 愀 爀 搀 猀 䠀 攀 愀 琀 栀 Ⰰ 刀 䠀 㘀 㐀 䄀 䰀
㐀 㐀 㐀 㐀 㔀 㐀 㠀 㠀 簀 眀 眀 眀 ⸀ 搀 漀 氀 瀀 栀 椀 渀 猀 漀 瀀 琀 漀 洀 攀 琀 爀 椀 猀 琀 猀 ⸀ 挀 漀 ⸀ 甀 欀
伀 瀀 攀 渀 椀 渀 最 琀 椀 洀 攀 猀 㨀 䴀 漀 渀 ⴀ 䘀 爀 椀 ⠀ 攀 砀 挀 ⸀ 圀 攀 搀 ⤀ 㤀 ⸀ ⴀ 㜀 ⸀アパート 圀 攀 搀 ☀ 匀 愀 琀 㤀 ⸀ ⴀアパート⸀

COLUMN
East of Earwig
Fleshing it out
In my mind there's
an almost onomatopoeic
sizzle
to the word 'flesh',
echoing the fizz of
a pork sausage as
it bounces into a
frying pan. Given
such a topic for
February’s column,
my thoughts immediately
turn to
the meaty delights
of Lew Howard
and Son, the
butcher in Ringmer’s
parade of shops. I particularly like their
simple process for ordering a Christmas turkey,
which involves a numbered list of customers on a
giant board. For a while I convinced our youngest
family member that each bird was wandering
around a field with a corresponding number on a
label tied gently around its neck until a few days
before 25th December, when it would be caught
and dispatched. "Come in number 73, your time
is up."
It’s probably best if I move on and find a different
angle. A quick web search for 'flesh' and
'Ringmer' - for heaven's sake, don't just search
for 'flesh' unless using an especially strong online
filter - offers me a couple of news stories that are
even darker than my sense of humour. There's a
decidedly unfunny assault case from 2007 and a
toe-eating maggot from 2013. Further investigation
reveals the offer of a trainee sword-swallower
who'll travel to the village from London.
Fascinating, but not immediately relevant. It’s
one of those rare times when the internet is not
my friend.
But that's forgetting the reason I live in Ringmer.
In fact, February is
the anniversary of
a romantic event
that resulted in
me moving into
the village. It has
nothing to do with
the mysterious
Saint Valentine
of Terni, who is
celebrated on 14th
February, but a
much better-documented
incident
that took place
a couple of days
later. This, as history books don't yet tell, was
when I first met my Ringmer-dwelling wife. (Not
that she was my wife at the time, of course. The
first time I met her in all her wifely goodness was
when we married at Southover Grange, just over
four years later.)
“They shall be one flesh” says the Bible, perfectly
on-theme for this month’s magazine. Yet despite
Mrs B truly being the love of my life, I still struggle
to express this coherently or without cracking
a joke. Our first wedding anniversary was marked
by a poem I wrote for the occasion, which featured
a dreadful pun about my gift being entirely
wrapping. Surprisingly well-received but I’ve
subsequently wanted to do something better.
Something without rhyme but with plenty of
reason, you might say. Something that celebrates
the unlikeliness of our meeting, the depth of our
commitment and our love for each other. Something
to tell everyone that my wife is the smartest
and the most beautiful person I could ever hope
to meet. I'm sure I'll have an idea soon. Right
now? Nope. Not a sausage.
Mark Bridge
Photo by Mark Bridge
31

ON THIS MONTH: LITERATURE
Ben Crystal
Toasting Shakespeare
I arrange to meet
Ben Crystal, the
Shakespeare expert,
in a coffee bar in
Brighton, but in the
end we have to do
the interview on the
phone, which is a pity.
I’d have paid good
money to watch him
read me Sonnet 18
in the flesh, in the
way he reckons Shakespearian English originally
sounded. It’s pretty good down the telephone,
mind, all fourteen lines of it, in an accent which
has inflections of West Country, Irish and American.
“Shall I compare thee…”
Ben is an actor, producer, director, author
and teacher, who’s dedicated to demystifying
Shakespeare’s work, having had a revelation as a
teenager when he was cast as Ariel in The Tempest.
“Suddenly I got it,” he says. “I realised Shakespeare
- who I had hated - was all about performance, and
not just reading out loud in class. As [US magician
Raymond] Teller says, trying to decipher Shakespeare
by just reading the words is like trying to
listen to Mozart by looking at the score.”
He has since produced, directed and acted in a
number of plays which deliver Shakespeare in “OP
rather than RP” (Original rather than Received
Pronunciation). “We were brought up thinking
that Shakespeare’s lines should he recited like
Laurence Olivier did it, or Kenneth Branagh. As
well as including a number of regional dialects,
Shakespearian English was pitched at a deeper
resonance, it was a bit quicker, it incorporated
beautiful twists and turns. The whole nature of the
plays change if they are pronounced as they were
originally pronounced: the actors move in a different
way. It’s more… earthy.”
Ben’s father is David
Crystal, the highly
respected linguist,
whose systematic
research revealed how
Elizabethan English
must have originally
sounded. The two
have combined as
authors on a number
of books, including
the recently published
Oxford Illustrated Shakespeare Dictionary, which explains
obscure or obsolete words in Shakespeare’s
major plays, and deciphers new meanings given to
old terms. Ben is also sole author of Shakespeare on
Toast, subtitled ‘Getting a Taste for the Bard’ which
attempts to persuade a young readership that the
playwright’s work is far from stuffy.
Ben tells me a lot in the 40 minutes we speak,
about swearing in Shakespeare’s plays (he shied
away from four-letter taboo words as they would
have been censored by the authorities) about the
size of the poet’s vocabulary (smaller than that
of your average GCSE student today); about
whether or not Ben agrees with those who believe
someone else wrote the plays (bottom line “no, but
what does it matter, anyway?”). Then I ask him,
if he were beamed down into late 16th-century
England, dressed in contemporary clothes, would
he be able to pass himself off as an Elizabethan?
“No,” he laughs, revealing that he might have
most of the relevant vocabulary to hand, but some
modern mannerisms would let him down. “I’d
probably be run through before the day was out
for accidentally insulting someone… or locked in
the Tower for blasphemy.”
Alex Leith
Ben is talking at the Lewes Literary Society, All
Saints, 21st February
Photo of Ben as Henry V c/o Aslam Husain, taken at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, Shakespeare’s Globe
33

T H E P H O E N I X C E N T R E
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themselves.
We provide a huge range of fun, interesting and engaging activities, from Tai
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Come along and pay us a visit; have lunch, join a class or simply experience
what we have to offer, using our free taster sessions. For more information,
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Quote Viva Lewes for 25% off the cost of care for the first month on
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Visit www.sussexcommunity.org.uk or find us on Facebook.
SCDA is a charity that works across East Sussex supporting
community based projects and services, aimed at addressing
the needs of those most vulnerable in the community.

ON THIS MONTH: TALK
Seedy Saturday
Mushroom specialist Rich Wright
Tell us about your talk
at Seedy Saturday. I’ll
be discussing how allotment
or home gardeners
can grow two particular
species of fungi: winecap,
which is best grown in
outdoor beds, and grey
oyster, which is one of
the easiest ones for a
beginner. You can grow
them on hardwood logs.
How did you become
so interested in this? It
was first sparked whilst
walking in grasslands in
Wales as a teenager, and spotting many of the
brightly coloured waxcaps in the fields. I was
struck by how outlandish and almost tropical
looking they were in our otherwise brown and
grey autumnal setting. I learnt a lot about foraging
and growing plants, and collecting fungi became
part of my trips out in search of wild food.
After a while, I became interested in cultivating
them, starting off in my bedroom, and then learning
from experienced growers.
And you put this to good use? I set up a small
lab and outdoor space in a forest in Wales, and
supplied local restaurants. Today I work as the
project officer for Feed Bristol, an Avon Wildlife
Trust project that educates and informs people
about the importance of local food and growing
in a way that supports nature. We have a small
mushroom growing facility and run many courses
in fungi cultivation.
Is it true you can use coffee to grow mushrooms?
In my opinion, coffee grinds are not
worth bothering with. There’s a high rate of
contamination with grinds that are collected from
shops or stored for a
short period of time.
Grey oyster mushrooms
are one of the only
species that grows ok
on coffee, but there are
easier and more productive
methods you can
use. If you aim to grow
in an entirely urban setting,
they may be worth
considering. Coffee can
be used as a supplement
to other substrates, and
I have found this useful
in the past. There are
a number of UK producers growing on coffee,
but mainly I think they have persisted at this as it
sounds good to ‘ethical’ consumers, who like the
idea of their Starbucks waste going back in to their
food chain, which therefore sells more product.
How do you like to cook your mushrooms? My
favourite way of eating mushrooms would have to
be baking them, cooking them very hot in a good
oil or butter, or barbecuing them. That way, the
sweetness and all the nutritional value comes out.
But I actually like to cook each different fungi in
their own way. They can be as versatile as a selection
of vegetables.
Interview by Emma Chaplin
Other talks at the eleventh annual Lewes Seedy
Saturday include: Cristina Blandino from the Millennium
Seed Bank discussing seed saving, and
Jo Carter, talking about Wildflower Lewes. There
will also be willow weaving, tool sharpening and
children’s activities.
Sat 4th, Lewes Town Hall, 10am-3pm, adults £1,
children free.
commoncause.org.uk/seedy-saturday
35

ON THIS MONTH: MUSIC
Sharks
Once bitten...
I open my interview with Lewes-based musician
Steve ‘Snips’ Parsons with a quote from the former
NME journalist Cole Sadowizc, who has called
Snips’ band Sharks “the greatest true rock and roll
band of the seventies.” Does he agree?
“For a brief six month period in 1974 we were probably
the hottest act you could see,” he replies. The
band had just toured the States and “everything was
starting to gel. Everyone wanted a piece of us.” So
then what? “Then we split up.”
“Expectations were huge,” he continues. “Led Zep
had just generated vast amounts of money when
their LP Led Zeppelin II was number one both sides
of the Atlantic, and the music industry was looking
for another supergroup. A lot of money was put
into the band. For a bit it looked like we would be
that group.”
It had taken a couple of years to get that far. The
band was originally formed around bassist Andy
Fraser, who’d written the massive hit All Right
Now for his previous band Free, and multi-talented
guitarist Chris Spedding. Snips, aged 19, was hired as
frontman ahead of the likes of Leo Sayer and Robert
Palmer. Island Records signed them up in 1972, and
put them straight into the recording studio. “Our
first album was put out too quickly. Andy didn’t have
any more hit songs ready. Looking back, it wasn’t
very good.”
The band toured in Spedding’s Pontiac, which was
customised with a shark fin on the roof. Legend has
it that Fraser decided to leave the group after Spedding
drove the car into a road-side tree in Yorkshire.
“Truth is, he was looking for an excuse,” says Snips.
“We recruited Busta Cherry Jones on bass, who gave
a funk edge to the rock sound we had, and soulful
keyboardist Nick Judd. We released a much better
second album. And it was when we were touring that
that we got really hot.”
I ask the ‘what the hell happened’ question after
Snips takes me on a whistle-stop tour of his life in
the intervening thirty-odd years, before he reformed
the band: the aborted solo career; the extremely
successful spell as a TV-and-film-score composer
in LA; the late, late midlife crisis. “We sacked the
drummer,” he says. “We should have known not to
stop the train while it was running so fast. That led
to everything cracking up.”
Nearly four decades on, Snips was talked into going
back on stage by Jimmy Page. First up, in 2011,
he set up King Mob, with Spedding and Glenn
Matlock, before changing tack with the latest version
of Sharks, again with Spedding, Judd back on
keyboards, Paul Cook on drums, and Japanese bassist
Tosh Ogawa. I watched them last autumn in the Con
Club, and raved about the experience afterwards.
The greatest true rock band of the seventies? I’m not
qualified to say. But what great sounds they made,
and what a hypnotically energetic front man Parsons
- now aged 65 - proved to be. Sharks have definitely
still got teeth. Alex Leith
Bleach, London Road, Brighton, 9th Feb, £10
Photo © Ross Halfin
37

ON THIS MONTH: CINEMA
The Third Man
Oh, Vienna
‘I had paid my last
farewell to Harry
a week ago, when
his coffin was
lowered into the
frozen February
ground, so it was
with incredulity
that I saw him pass
by, without a sign
of recognition,
among the host
of strangers in
the Strand’. That
opening for a story, scribbled on the flap of an envelope
many years before, was all Graham Greene
had to offer when Alexander Korda asked him,
over dinner, to write a film for Carol Reed. The
year before, in 1948, Reed had directed The Fallen
Idol, adapted by Greene from his own short story,
The Basement Room. Korda was keen to replicate
the success of that cinematic masterpiece. The
outcome of the further collaboration was The
Third Man (1949).
Korda wanted a film about the four-Power occupation
of Vienna, which was still divided into
American, British, French and Russian zones, with
the Inner City administered by each country for
a month. Apart from that, Greene was given carte
blanche. He substituted Schreyvogelgasse for the
Strand, and set off for Vienna in search of inspiration.
Alas, it proved elusive and it was only on the
penultimate day of his two-week reconnaissance
that he was told of both the black market in penicillin
and the underground police who patrolled
the extensive network of sewers. These were to
supply the two central strands of The Third Man.
The film is, superficially at least, a thriller. Carol
Reed adhered to a simple maxim: “Find a story
you believe in. Tell it with speed.” But it’s much
more than just a thriller, albeit a very classy one.
The acting is
exceptionally
good throughout.
Not only the
main characters
- Holly Martins
(played by Joseph
Cotten), lured
to Vienna on the
promise of a job,
by his old school
pal Harry Lime
(Orson Welles)
- but a host of
cameo roles. There’s Wilfred Hyde-White as
Crabbin, Bernard Lee as Sergeant Paine; not to
mention mainstays of pre-war Viennese theatre
like Hedwig Bleibtreu and Paul Hörbiger. Then
there’s the stunning black-and-white cinematography
of Robert Krasner. It’s one of those films
that make you wonder whether the introduction
of colour was a retrograde step. As someone once
said to Josef von Sternberg, when the legendary
film director had taken him to see a much vaunted
film, shot in colour: “it would have been bad even
without the colour.”
The film was distributed in America by David
Selznick who wanted it renamed as ‘Night in
Vienna’. Carol Reed dealt with this and other
fatuous suggestions with the diplomatic evasion:
“Graham and I will think about it.” Selznick’s beef
was “Who the hell is going to see a film called
‘The Third Man’?” Not the shrewdest assessment
of a film that is still shown every Tuesday, Friday
and Sunday at the Burg Kino in Vienna. Lewes
cineastes have only one opportunity.
David Jarman
Lewes Film Club, All Saints, 2pm, Sat 4th Feb
PS: A propos of Orson Welles’ facile, plagiarised
contribution to the script - the Swiss didn’t even
invent the cuckoo clock!
38

ON THIS MONTH: CINEMA
HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE 12A 97mins
Friday 10th 5.45pm and Sunday 12th 7.45pm
Comedy about an orphaned boy used to city life who is left in
the care of a foster family in rural New Zealand.
BRIDGET JONES’S BABY 15 120mins
Friday 10th 8pm and Saturday 11th 5pm
Bridget's focus on single life and her career is interrupted when
she finds herself pregnant, but with one hitch... she can only be
fifty percent sure of the identity of her baby's father.
STORKS U 90mins
Saturday 11th 3pm
Storks have moved on from delivering babies to packages. But
when an order for a baby appears, the best delivery stork must
scramble to fix the error by delivering the baby.
100 STREETS 15 93mins
Saturday 11th 7.30pm and Sunday 12th 5.30pm
British Drama. Three people, three extraordinary stories, one
life-changing event. All lived out within a hundred London streets.
THE BFG PG 117mins
Sunday 12th 3pm
Fantasy adventure based on the much loved children’s classic by
Roald Dahl in which a young orphaned girl is carried away to a
magical land by a big friendly giant.
THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS 15 111mins
Friday 24th 5.30pm and Sunday 26th 8pm
A scientist and a teacher living in a dystopian future embark on
a journey of survival with a special young girl named Melanie.
SULLY 12A 96mins
Friday 24th 8pm and 25th February 5.15pm
Directed by Clint Eastwood. Biographical drama based on the
true story of Captain Chesley “Sully" Sullenberger, who safely
crash-landed a plane on the Hudson River in 2009.
PETE’S DRAGON PG 103mins
Saturday 25th 3pm
Live action fantasy adventure about a young orphaned boy who
grows up in the woods alongside a giant friendly dragon.
FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND
THEM 12A 133mins
Saturday 25th 7pm and Sunday 26th 5.15pm
The adventures of writer Newt Scamander in New York's
secret community of witches and wizards seventy years before
Harry Potter reads his book in school.
KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS PG 100mins
Sunday 26th 3pm
An animated fantasy about a gifted boy who embarks on a magical
quest, accompanied by a maternal monkey and a samurai beetle.
Info & advance tickets from the All Saints Centre Office, the
Town Hall, High Street, or www..lmatallsaints.com
All Saints Centre, Friars Walk, Lewes, BN7 2LE. 01273 486391
Six of the best
Classic movie round-up
If a Lewes cinema-goer’s life were a box of chocolates,
the first weekend of February would see a
whole tray of succulent truffles gone in a flash.
Between the 3rd and the 5th, Lewes Film Club
are putting on no fewer than six all-time classics.
Aptly enough, the first is Cinema Paradiso (Fri
3rd, 8pm), that unforgettable Enrico Morriconescored
weepie that harks back to the golden age
of Italian cinema in the 40s and 50s, as an old
projectionist teaches a film-obsessed little kid
his trade. It’s the original 118-minute version,
not Giuseppe Tornatore’s much longer 2002
director’s cut.
On Sat 4th there are three films set during or just
after WW2: Carol Reed’s The Third Man (2pm,
see pg 36), Rossellini’s Rome, Open City (5pm) and
the Bogart/Bergman vehicle Casablanca (8pm).
Rossellini’s 1945 film is widely regarded as the
first neorealist movie, using real-life surroundings
and including non-professional actors; on the
other hand Casablanca, made in 1942, is a shameless
piece of propagandist Hollywood schmaltz,
and all the more watchable for it, if you drop
your cynicism guard a little. The scene where
Madeleine LeBeau - in soft focus - joins in the
Marseillaise never fails to provoke a tear or two.
Sunday finishes off proceedings with two French
language treats: Luis Bunuel’s surreal hungerinducing
1972 oddity The Discreet Charm of the
Bourgeoisie (4pm) and Jules Dassin’s 1955 noirish
thriller Rififi (8pm), which expertly builds up to
a remarkable dialogue-free 30-minute sequence
featuring a bold and intricately planned bank
heist. All the films are screened at the All Saints.
Indulge yourself. Dexter Lee
39

匀 漀 甀 琀 栀 䐀 漀 眀 渀 猀 一 甀 爀 猀 攀 爀 椀 攀 猀
䄀 ㈀ 㜀 アパート 䈀 爀 椀 最 栀 琀 漀 渀 刀 漀 愀 搀 Ⰰ 䠀 愀 猀 猀 漀 挀 欀 猀 Ⰰ 圀 攀 猀 琀 匀 甀 猀 猀 攀 砀
䈀 一 㘀 㤀 䰀 夀 ㈀ 㜀 アパート 㠀 㐀 㜀 㜀 㜀
眀 眀 眀 ⸀ 猀 漀 甀 琀 栀 搀 漀 眀 渀 猀 栀 攀 爀 椀 琀 愀 最 攀 挀 攀 渀 琀 爀 攀 ⸀ 挀 漀 ⸀ 甀 欀

ON THIS MONTH: ART
Focus on: Sunset Wave #9 by Patrick Goff
Collage of oil pastel on cartridge paper and giclée photographic print, £900
So it’s half photo, half painting? Exactly. It’s a
photo of the sunset reflected on the sea water and
a painted response to that, each cut into strips and
spliced back together.
Don’t you normally do flowers? Often. I start
with a photo and then use a grid to blow that
pattern up onto a larger canvas, in time-honoured
tradition. Then I play with the edges and surfaces,
dislocating colour and lines, creating a kind of
controlled chaos, so the viewer has to use their
intellect to work out what’s going on. It’s a game,
and a way to seduce the viewer into the piece.
In short: we live in a screwed up world and I do
screwed up imagery to reflect it.
You seem to have embraced digital technology…
I went to Bath Academy in the sixties and
worked as an artist for a while in Lancashire, but
then after moving to London, I found work in
design, and particularly hotel design. Technology
moved on fast and we had to embrace that in order
to keep ahead of the game. So of course I use a lot
of digital technology in my work.
How much time do you dedicate to your art?
I was running HotelDesigns magEzine for fifteen
years but illness forced me to stop travelling round
the world and to sell the business. My partner built
a studio at the back of my garden for a Christmas
present and now I can dedicate all my energy to
my art. From the garden I can see Seaford Head:
it’s wonderful having a horizon to look at.
Who has been a big influence on you? There
are so many, but I’d like to mention William Tillyer,
who taught me at Bath. He’s still exhibiting at
the age of 80. And Bridget Riley: I am a product of
my generation, after all. Plus Claude Monet, head
and shoulders above all other artists. That’s what I
think this year, anyway.
What painting would you hang from your
desert island palm tree? The curved cycle of
Monet’s Water Lilies murals - his Nymphéas - at
the Musée de l’Orangerie.
Interview by Alex Leith
Sunset Wave #9 is on show as part of the Open Art
Exhibition in Pelham House Hotel till the 18th
41

John Vernon Lord
A Catalogue of Life
John Vernon Lord has illustrated many things
over his long career, including versions of Edward
Lear’s Nonsense Verse and recently, Finnegan’s Wake.
On the way to interview him, when I ask a passerby
for directions, they say:’ “Ah, the great man of
Ditchling”. I find the great, bearded, and indeed
charming man at home down a nearby lane,
and we sit in his cosy studio for a chat about his
upcoming exhibition.
Tell me about A Catalogue of Life. It’s some of
my diaries and notebooks. The diaries date back to
the sixties, but became regular in the 70s. I wrote
them in the 50s too, but my stepmother got rid of
them, probably because I was rude about her. For
the exhibition, I’ve left out the ruder bits.
Where and how do you write? I used to handwrite
them in Alwych notebooks (they’ll withstand
awful weather), but I started typing in 1992.
Mostly I write in my studio. They’re an addiction.
I need to make sense of ‘yesterday’. I’m not religious,
but they are a bit like a confession. I write
about trivia, such as the price of Christmas, but
social trivia can be interesting. I’m a member of
Mass Observation, and a keen diary reader; Pepys,
[Francis] Kilvert, Alan Clark, Tony Benn.
How did you come to be an illustrator? I was
42

ON THIS MONTH: ART
born in Glossop, Derbyshire. I went to art school
in Salford, then the Central School of Art, where I
was taught by Mervyn Peake, Lawrence Scarfe and
Stanley Badmin. Badmin recommended me to his
agent, who took me on, and I had to do all sorts of
illustrations to earn a living. I did lots of children’s
books at first. Epics, sagas, myths. But my main
career has been teaching. Scarfe recommended I
get a part-time teaching job at Brighton, and I’ve
been at what’s now the University of Brighton for
56 years [he is now Emeritus Professor].
What have you been working on recently? I’ve
illustrated Joyce’s Ulysses for the Folio Society, and
it’s coming out in February. I read and read and
read to decide what moment to illuminate - a frozen
moment in the novel. I went to Dublin twice
to get a sense of place. Your work is both casting
a light on a subject and adding lustre. Sometimes
you want to illustrate a climax, sometimes more
intimate bits.
What brought you to Ditchling? We’ve been
here 45 years, and I love it. We have a daughter
with a learning disability, and wanted to live in the
catchment area for a good school in Burgess Hill.
Ditchling is friendly and sociable, not snobby. But
I don’t drive a car and the bus service is lousy. And
the village has fewer useful shops than was once
the case.
What might you have been if you hadn’t been
an illustrator? A singer. I’m addicted to music. I
have it on in the background when I’m working.
Something like Vivaldi to keep me cheerful. Then
I sit in a particular chair to listen to something
properly, every day. Emma Chaplin
Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft, until 16th April.
ditchlingmuseumartcraft.org.uk
43

FRIENDS GO FREE

ART
ART & ABOUT:In town this month
‘Dancing’ by Ursula Stone
'The Nativity, at Night' by Geertgen Tot Sint Jans
Passionate About Life, Chalk Gallery’s latest
exhibition, takes an appropriate theme for the
most romantic of months, with a collection
of work celebrating beauty in the natural
world. Featured artists this month are Nichola
Campbell, with her vibrant collages, and the
semi-abstract watercolourist Simone Riley.
[chalkgallerylewes.co.uk]
Over at Paddock
Studios, in addition to
the usual workshops and
classes, Peter Messer
will be giving a Desert
Island Paintings talk on
the 18th at 3pm, where
he’ll discuss artworks
he’d never tire of, and
why. [paddockartstudios.
co.uk]
The annual Open Exhibition continues at
Pelham House until the end of the month.
The exhibition - featuring around 40 artists,
working in a range of media - was put
together by curator Diana Wilkins, with
the input of the hotel staff. A percentage
of all sales will go to support the Sussex
children’s charity Rockinghorse. Daily from
9am to 9pm, until 28th February, entry free.
[pelhamhouse.com]
'Boy Sewing' by Katie Griffiths 'Between the Trees' by Graham Read
45

A CERTAIN KIND
OF LIGHT
LIGHT IN ART OVER SIX DECADES
21 JANUARY – 7 MAY 2017
Towner Art Gallery, College Road, Eastbourne
townereastbourne.org.uk @TownerGallery
AN ARTS COUNCIL COLLECTION NATIONAL PARTNER EXHIBITION
Image: Peter Sedgely, Corona, 1970 Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London © the artist. Gift of the Arnolfini Trust, 2001
Towner is an Arts Council Collection National Partner. The Arts Council Collection is managed by Southbank Centre, London on behalf of Arts Council England

ART
ART & ABOUT
Just down the road
'Wild Woman' by Georgie Tier
Alfriston is an unlikely home for an ex-punk, but, having recently moved
there, David Apps is hosting an exhibition of his original artworks in
intricate frames, each created from a mosaic of discarded found objects and
jewellery. It’s at The Coach House Gallery, until the 21st.
[david-apps.co.uk] Also in Alfriston,
L’Amour is a one-day exhibition by
Georgie Tier, which combines her love
of life drawing with her passion for linear
design. The Old Chapel, 11th, from
11am-4pm.
Art meets science at Brighton Science
Festival and amongst the extraordinary
science-y things at Bright Sparks at Hove
Park School on the 11th and 12th, is the chance to have a go on Nick
Sayers’ giant drawing machine, which uses an adapted scrap bike to create
complex Lissajous curves onto A3 paper. At Phoenix Brighton Gallery on
the 15th, a one-off tour called Behind the Scenes will examine what artists and
scientists have in common. Apparently, quite a lot. [brightonscience.com]
Photo by Nick Sayers
Family Fun
for Half Term
The Princess and The Pea
Tues 14th Feb, Anne of Cleves House,1- 4pm
Drop in for storytelling, dressing up and craft activities.
All ages welcome. Included in admission.
Digging for Treasure*
Thurs 16th Feb, Lewes Castle,10.30 -12pm
Hands on fun. Dig, draw and make your own treasure!
Ages 4-8. Adult to stay. Tickets £5 (includes child admission).
Archaeologist for an afternoon*
Thurs 16th Feb, Lewes Castle,2 -4pm
Discover, dig, draw and make your own special artefact.
Ages 6-10. Adult to stay. Tickets £6 (includes child admission).
Morning Explorer: access hour*
Mon 13th Feb, Lewes Castle,10 -11am
New session, open to families with additional needs:
easier access to collections, activities and castle.
Call to book or email educ@sussexpast.co.uk
*Book required, call us: 01273 486290
www.sussexpast.co.uk

ART
ART & ABOUT
Further afield
A Certain Kind of Light is at Towner Art Gallery in
Eastbourne [townereastbourne.org.uk], and Turn Back Now
continues at Jerwood Gallery, documenting the results of
two decades of gallery-wall sketches, notes and scribblings
by the Brighton-based Turner Prize-winning artist Keith
Tyson. [jerwoodgallery.org]. Both shows continue until the
end of April. De la Warr Pavilion host an exhibition curated
by another Turner Prize-winner, Elizabeth Price. In a Dream
I Saw a Way to Survive and You Were Full of Joy is made up of
pieces by 50 artists, loosely connected, in her words, by ‘the
slippery, fugitive logic of a dream’ and hung in four sections:
Sleeping, Working, Mourning and Dancing. [dlwp.com]
Katie Paterson (detail)
'Light Selections' by Edward Wadsworth, 1940
© Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove
Early-20th-century Sussex was something of a hub for modernist
writers, artists and makers. Why? What did they do here? And
what kind of ‘political, sexual and domestic experimentation’
did they get up to when they weren’t busy innovating? A new
exhibition seeks answers to such questions. It will feature more
than 120 works, taking in Bloomsbury-ites, surrealists, socialists
and (we imagine - usually a safe bet) general eccentrics. Curated
by a University of Sussex academic, and featuring works from
the collections of nine of Sussex’s best loved galleries, Sussex
Modernism: Retreat and Rebellion is, of course, being held in
London: at Two Temple Place (near Temple tube station, until
23rd April). [twotempleplace.org] Whilst we're on the subject, Dulwich Picture Gallery has an exhibition
of around 100 paintings as well as fabrics and photographs by Vanessa Bell, 'focusing on her most
distinctive period of experimentation' in the 1910s. Photographs by Patti Smith, who's long been drawn to
Charleston, hang alongside. Both until the 4th of June. [dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk]
Finally, and whilst you’re up in town, Lewes potter
extraordinaire Tanya Gomez has a collection of her
fabulous pots in Collect, the
Craft Council’s International
Art Fair for Contemporary
Objects at the Saatchi
Gallery from the 2nd until
the 6th. [craftscouncil.org.
uk / saatchigallery.com]
Photos by Jonathan Bassett
49

CREATIVE
WORKSHOPS
QUEER BRITISH ART
A COMEDY OF ERRORS
FOUR QUARTETS
FESTIVAL OF THE GARDEN
CHARLESTON.ORG.UK
01323 811626

FEBRUARY listings
WEDNESDAY 1
Lewes and District Garden Society talk. Garden
writer Dr Barbara Simms talks about the famous
designer John Brookes and his work at Denmans
Garden. Cliffe Church Hall, 7.30pm-9pm, £3.
Dark Matter, Dark Energy and Gravity Waves.
Talk with Bob Turner for the Lewes Astronomers
group. Lewes Town Hall Lecture Room, 7.30pm-
9.30pm, £3.
THURSDAY 2
Comedy at the Con. With Joe Rowntree, Lauren
Patterson and Stephen Grant. Con Club, 7.30pm
for 8pm, £7.50-£11.
FRIDAY 3 - SUNDAY 5
Around the World in 80 Days. Lewes Theatre
Youth Group present Laura Eason’s adaptation of
the famous adventure story. Lewes Little Theatre,
times vary, £6-£8.
FRIDAY 3
Film: Cinema Paradiso (PG). Oscar winner about
a director’s nostalgic love for the movies. All Saints,
8pm, £5.
SATURDAY 4
Film: The Third Man (PG). A trashy writer
embarks on a journey to uncover the truth behind
an old friend’s ‘death’. All Saints, 2pm, £5.
Film: Rome, Open City (12). Drama about the
Nazi occupation of Rome. All Saints, 5pm, £5.
cture and a film screening...
© Garrett Davis Capture Imaging
PHOTO: GARRETT DAVIS/CAPTURE IMAGING
Film: Casablanca (PG). Cynical American Rick
rekindles an old romance in Vichy-controlled
Morocco. All Saints, 8pm, £5.
Lewes Farmers' Market. Generally organic fare
in the Cliffe Precinct, 9am-1pm.
Seedy Saturday. Seed swapping, talks, activities
and more. Lewes Town Hall, 10am-3pm, £1 (see
pg 33).
SUNDAY 5
Film: The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
(15). Surreal depiction of a collection of middle
class people attempting to sit down to a meal
together, only to be interrupted at every turn. All
Saints, 4pm, £5.
Film: Rififi (12). Tense 50s film-noir heist movie.
All Saints, 8pm, £5.
Living Food. One-day nutrition course for all,
Greencuisine Byre, Ringmer, 10am - 4pm, £95.
MONDAY 6
Brexit's bigotry
tendency.
Guardian writer
John Harris opens
an open Lewes
Labour-organised
post-Brexit
discussion on how
leaving the EU has
become an argument
against immigration. The Phoenix Centre,
7.30pm, free.
TUESDAY 7
Film: The Square (12). Exploring the extraordinary
events and stories of the Arab Spring revolution.
All Saints, 8pm, £5.
Alfred Nobel and his Legacy. Philatelist Grace
Davies explores Nobel’s life and work. Council
chamber, Lewes Town Hall, 2.30pm, free.
The Group. Club for people aged 50+. A pub in
Lewes, 8pm, see thegroup.org.uk.
We are Gob Squad and So Are You. Lecture
from successful theatre group ‘Gob Squad’ on their
20-year history of working together (pictured left).
Attenborough Centre, 7.30pm-8.30pm, £8-£12.
© The Guardian
51

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Saturday 9am-5pm
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01273 472737

FEBRUARY listings (cont)
WEDNESDAY 8
Mrs Beeton Presents: Beeton's Book of Household
Management in its culinary context. Talk.
Uckfield Civic Centre, 2pm, free for members or £7.
THURSDAY 9
Graffiti - A history
of scratchings at local
NT properties.
Lewes NT Centre talk
with Nathalie Cohen
and Matt Champion.
Priory School, 7.30pm,
£4/£2.
War and Peace. Gob Squad’s playful and improvised
performance based around a Salon discussion
of ‘War and Peace’. Attenborough Centre, 7.30pm-
8.30pm, £8-£12.
FRIDAY 10 - SATURDAY 11
The Lezzwardians: Murder at Lezzton Abbey.
Musical theatre slapstick send-up of Downton Abbey
by Lewes/Brighton group. The Barn Theatre,
Southwick, 7.30pm, £11 see lezzwood.co.uk.
Film: Bridget Jones’s Baby (15). Bridget finds
herself pregnant, but who is the father? All Saints,
8pm and 5pm, from £5.
FRIDAY 10 & SUNDAY 12
Film: Hunt for the Wilderpeople (12A). Comedy
about an orphaned boy used to city life who is left in
the care of a foster family in rural New Zealand. All
Saints, 5.45 and 7.45 pm, from £5.
SATURDAY 11 & SUNDAY 12
Film: 100 Streets (15). British drama starring Idris
Elba and Gemma Arterton. All Saints, 7.30pm and
5.30pm, from £5.
TUESDAY 14
Lewes Board Gamers. Elephant and Castle, 7pm-
11pm, free.
WEDNESDAY 15
Stargazing Lewes. Celebration of astronomy with
talks, games, activities, and more. Linklater Pavilion,
7pm, free.
THURSDAY 16
Friend of Lewes talk. David Arscott, local author
and broadcaster, gives a talk on 'a personal take on
Lewes'. Lecture room, Lewes Town Hall, 7.45pm,
£3 (free for FoL members).
RSC Live: Saint Joan. Gemma Arterton stars as
Joan of Arc in Bernard Shaw’s classic play. De La
Warr, Bexhill, 7pm, £14.
Book launch: The Natural Baby. With authors
Holly Daffurn and Samantha Quinn. Waterstones
Lewes, 6.30pm, free.
FRIDAY 17
Film: The Here After (15). Following a Swedish
teenager’s life after he’s released from a youth detention
centre. All Saints, 8pm, £5.
FRIDAY 10 - SUNDAY 12
Gardener’s Arms beer festival. Wide selection of
strong dark beers. The Gardener’s Arms pub, free.
SATURDAY 11
Ditch the Detox. Party for Patina. Live music,
cocktails, photo booth, roulette and more. Lewes
Town Hall, 7.30pm-12.30am, £8 advance tickets
from Hannah’s Van, Kings Framers and Si’s Sound,
£10 on the door.
SATURDAY 18
Film: Roger Corman double bill. The Man With
the X-ray Eyes and The Masque of the Red Death.
Westgate Chapel, 7.30pm, £5.
53

FEB
@ The Con Club
3 JOEY LANDRETH
THE WHISKEY TOUR
5 PETER & THE TEST TUBE BABIES
SOME OF THE BEST PUNK SONGS EVER...
10 JENNY & THE MEXICATS
FUSION DE ESTILOS Y NACIONALIDADES
16 LEWIS & LEIGH
A UNION MUSIC STORE PRESENTATION
23 POLICE DOG HOGAN
A UNION MUSIC STORE PRESENTATION
LOOSE CABOOSE NIGHT
25
WITH
MUSIC EVENINGS
DJ’s RACHELLE PIPER AND MARTIN JACKSON
SEE WEBSITE FOR DETAILS & ENTRY

FEBRUARY listings (cont)
SATURDAY 18
Unleash your voice. Voice workshop with Adrienne
Thomas. Lewes Subud Centre, 10am-3pm, £45
(includes lunch).
Lewes Farmer’s Market. Cliffe Precinct, 9am-1pm.
SATURDAY 18 - SUNDAY 19
Bee Hive Assembly
Day. Beehive building
course. Plumpton
College, £70, see
plumpton.ac.uk.
FRIDAY 24 & SUNDAY 26
Refugee Collections. A collection of items and
money for refugees, organised by Lewes Actions
for Refugees. The Hearth, Lewes Bus Station,
10am-12pm.
Film: The Girl with All the Gifts (15). A scientist
and a teacher living in a dystopian future embark on
a journey of survival with a special young girl named
Melanie. All Saints 5.30pm and 8pm, from £5.
SATURDAY 18
Down the Rabbit Hole. Mad Hatter-themed
electro swing night. All Saints, 7pm, £15 advance,
£20 on the door.
TUESDAY 21
The Hearts and Minds of Shakespeare’s World.
Actor, author and producer Ben Crystal talks at
Lewes Literary Society. All Saints Centre, 8pm-9pm,
£10 (see pg 35).
WEDNESDAY 22
The Victorian and Edwardian Eras in Brighton
and Hove. Talk with author Sue Berry. The Keep,
5.30pm, £3.
Reckless Sleepers: Negative Space. Fantastical and
surreal performance set in front of a blank architectural
canvas. Attenborough Centre, 7.30pm-8.30pm,
£8-£12.
THURSDAY 23
Film: In Pursuit of Silence (PG). Documentary exploring
the negative impact of noise, and the benefits
of quiet in our lives. St Michael in Lewes, 7pm, £7.
FRIDAY 24 & SATURDAY 25
Film: Sully (12A). Biographical drama based on
Captain Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger, directed by
Clint Eastwood. All Saints Centre, 8pm and 5.15pm,
from £5.
FRIDAY 24
The Headstrong Club. Talk with human rights
activist and historian Craig Murray. The Elephant
and Castle, 8pm-10pm, £3.
SATURDAY 25 & SUNDAY 26
Film: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
(12A). Prequel to the Harry Potter series: Newt
Scamander’s adventures in 1920s New York with a
suitcase full of magical creatures. All Saints, 7pm and
5.15pm, from £5.
SATURDAY 25
Quiz night. Tables of six, ticket includes dinner.
Chailey Parish Hall, 7.30pm, £12.50, contact friendsofstpeterschailey@hotmail.co.uk
to book.
First World War Lewes Music Hall. A patriotic
evening of musical entertainment from the era, as
performed for the troops in the Assembly Rooms
between 1914 and 1918. Town Hall, £20 inc buffet
supper, all profits to Mayor's charities. Booking info
01273/471468/mayors.sec@lewes-tc.gov.uk.
TUESDAY 28
Lewes Death Café. Conversations about death and
dying. Firle Village Hall, 7pm-9pm.
55

ON THIS MONTH: MUSIC
Classical round-up
A cornucopia of concerti
For those of you fortunate enough to have by now
thrown off the germ warfare that the final days of 2016
lobbed at us, good on you. I confess to still carrying the
dregs of bronchitis as of this writing. However, February
is presenting us with reasons to drag ourselves out
of our winter stupor and go hear some fine music.
As it happens, it all begins in Brighton with its Philharmonic
playing a can’t-miss concert of Mozart, Haydn
and Mendelssohn. The Mozart is Symphony No.29, a
well-loved early work, and Haydn’s Cello Concerto with
Welsh cellist Thomas Carroll conducting the concert
as well as soloing. The Strad says Carroll plays with
‘authority, passion, an unerring sense of direction,
full of colour and underpinned by a clear musical
intelligence.’ The concert ends with Mendelssohn’s
Symphony No.4, the Italian.
Sun 5, 2.45pm, Brighton Dome, tickets £12 to £37
Later the same afternoon in Seaford, the Corelli
Ensemble will offer another cello concerto, this one by
Vivaldi, and will feature
cellist Ella Rundle. Ms
Rundle has won several
prestigious competitions
and also received the
2015 Philip and Dorothy
Green Award for Young
Concert Artists. Also on the bill, music by Purcell and
Finzi, plus concerti grossi by Stanley and Handel.
Sun 5, 4pm, Cross Way Church, Seaford, £10/£12,
children free
Meanwhile, back in Lewes there is a wonderful opportunity
to hear a concert version of Purcell’s Dido and
Aeneas as played by the wonderful Baroque Collective
led by Alison Bury and conducted by John Hancorn.
The singers are Catrin Woodruff as Dido, Andrew
Robinson as Aeneas and Jennifer Clark as Belinda.
Sun 19, 6.30pm, St Michael’s Church, tickets £15 & £10,
under 16s free. Paul Austin Kelly
Photo of Ella Rundle by Robert Piwk
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and to support you in every way we can.
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42 High Street, Lewes
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GIG GUIDE // FEBRUARY
GIG OF THE MONTH
Peter and the Test Tube Babies. ‘Let’s go!’ was the resounding
response in the Viva office when we heard that this made-in-Peacehaven
punk rock band were playing the Con Club in February.
Branded by themselves as ‘The Coolest Uncool Band in the World’
they are known for their ‘gloriously offensive’ tongue-in-cheek
lyrics, vivacious live shows and ribald sense of humour. Formed in
the early 80s, they tell tales of the hazards of being young punks
in Brighton with songs such as Banned from the Pubs and Run Like
Hell. They are still headed up by current Lancing resident Peter
Bywaters, and will be touring throughout Europe in 2017. Their
mission statement (in true punk fashion) remains ‘To Get Pissed &
Destroy’, and with hints of a new album on the horizon this gig is
not to be missed. Con Club, Sun 5, 7.30pm, £11.50
THURS 2
John Fairhurst. Rock guitarist. The Lamb,
8.30pm, free
Vintage Hot Swing. Pelham Arms, 8.30pm, free
FRI 3
Two Man Ting. Sunshine Afro-roots. Lamb,
8.30pm, free
Joey Landreth. Blues. Con Club, 8pm, £11.25
inc booking fee
SAT 4
Sam Walker. Multi-instrumental indie. The
Lansdown, 8.30pm, free
The Don Bradmans. Chap rock. The Lamb,
9pm, free
Alan Austen & Linda Smith. Folk. Royal Oak,
8pm, £6
Mary Chapin Carpenter. Country/soft rock.
De La Warr, 7pm, £26.50
SUN 5
Peter and the Test Tube Babies. Punk rock.
Con Club, 7.30pm, £11.50. See gig of the month
English dance tunes session - bring instruments.
Folk. Lamb, 12pm, free
MON 6
Jason Henson plays Wes and Benson. Jazz.
The Snowdrop, 8pm, free
TUES 7
English dance tunes session - bring instruments.
Folk, JHT, 8pm, free
WEDS 8
Old Time Session. Appalachian Roots. Lamb,
8pm, free
THURS 9
Mambo Jambo. Acoustic roots duo. The Lamb,
9pm, free
FRI 10
Jenny and the Mexicats. Latin pop. Con Club,
8pm, £5 on door
Jabul Gorba. Gypsy ska punk. Lamb, 9pm, free
SAT 11
Joy Lewis & Derrick Hughes. Folk (Trad),
Royal Oak, 8pm-11pm, £6
Son Guarachando. Salsa sounds. The Lamb,
8.30pm, free
59

GIG GUIDE // FEBRUARY (CONT)
SUN 12
Splash Point Jazz Club. Jazz guitar. Westgate
Chapel, 4pm, £10 (kids free)
Open Space Open Mic. Music, poetry and
performance. Elephant and Castle, 7.30pm, free
MON 13
Julian Nicholas with Terry Seabrook trio.
Jazz. The Snowdrop, 8pm, free
TUES 14
Concertinas Anonymous practice session.
Folk & misc, The Elly, 8pm, free
THURS 16
Lewis & Leigh. Americana. Union Music at the
Con Club, 7.30pm, £8/£10
FRI 17
Porchlight Smoker. Bluegrass. The Lamb,
8.30pm, free
SAT 18
Ollie King. Folk (English trad). Royal Oak,
8pm, £7
SUN 19
Bolshy + Paper Wings. Ska punk. Lamb,
8.30pm, free
MON 20
Lawrence Jones & the Brighton Jazz all stars.
Jazz. The Snowdrop, 8pm, free
TUES 21
Open Mic. Lamb, 9pm, free
Songs of the South Downs. Folk session. John
Harvey Tavern, 7.30pm, free
WED 22
Ceilidh Crew session. Folk singing and dancing.
Lamb, 8.30, free
THURS 23
Police Dog Hogan. 8-piece country/folk. Union
Music at the Con Club, 7.30pm, £8/£12
FRI 24
Town of Cats. Afrobeat Ska, Latino & Funk.
Lamb, 8.30pm, free
SAT 25
Damien Barber & Mike Wilson. Folk (English
trad). Elephant & Castle, 8pm, £8
The Contenders + Guests. Rhythm & Blues.
Lamb, 8.30pm, free
MON 27
Andy Panayi Quintet. Jazz. The Snowdrop,
8pm, free
TUES 28
Lewes Favourites tunes practice session.
Folk - vocal harmony. The Elephant & Castle,
8pm, free
Photo of Police Dog Hogan by Andy Willsher
61

Educating
mind, body,
heart & soul
Open Mornings: Monday 30 January, Tuesday 14 March & Thursday 27 April
To see rst hand how we can help your daughter to ourish academically,
to develop her talents – wherever they lie – and discover hidden ones,
join us for an open morning or personal visit.
• New Sixth Form Centre
• Oxbridge Success
• Full & Weekly Boarding
• Creative Thinking
01435 874642
registrar@mayfieldgirls.org
The Old Palace, May eld, East Sussex TN20 6PH
www.may eldgirls.org
An independent Catholic boarding
and day school for girls aged 11 to 18

FREETIME UNDER 16 êêêê
SATURDAY 4
Pat-a-Cake Baby. Musical puppet show for kids.
Chichester Festival Theatre, 11am and 2pm, £10.
SUNDAY 5
Look Think Make. Exploring exhibitions and
testing ideas and materials through making. All
ages. De La Warr, 2-4pm, free (or £1 donation).
SATURDAY 11
Film: Storks (U). Storks have moved on from
delivery babies to packages, until an unexpected
order arrives. All Saints, 3pm, from £5.
Comedy Club 4 kids! Stand up and sketch night
for a young audience. Chichester Festival Theatre,
2.30pm, £10.
SUNDAY 12
Film: The BFG (PG). New live-action retelling of
the Roald Dahl book. All Saints, 3pm, from £5.
MONDAY 13 – SUNDAY 19
Wildlife Week. Lots of fun wildlife-based activities
for the family, and the first few lambs expected!
Spring Barn Farm, springbarnfarm.com.
MONDAY 13
Tales for Toddlers. Activities for children aged
18 months to five years. De La Warr, Bexhill,
10.15am and 11.15am, £1.
Morning Explorers: Access hour. Storytelling,
activities and audio described tours for families
with additional needs. Lewes Castle, 10am-11am,
see educ@sussexpast.co.uk.
TUESDAY 14
Princess and the Pea. The classic tale brought
to life with dressing up and crafts. Anne of Cleves
House, 1pm-4pm, free with admission (£3.30/£5.90).
THURSDAY 16
Digging for Treasure. Archaeology workshop
for children aged four to eight. Lewes Castle,
10.20am-12pm, £5 per child, booking essential.
Archaeologist for an Afternoon. Workshop for
children aged six to ten. Activities include digging,
recording, sorting and drawing. Lewes Castle,
2pm-4pm, £6 per child, booking essential.
FRIDAY 17 & SATURDAY 18
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Kaleidoscope
Theatre’s telling of the CS Lewis tale.
Priory School, 1pm & 6pm, £6/£8.
SATURDAY 25
Film: Pete’s Dragon (PG). Fantasy adventure
about a young orphaned boy who grows up in
the woods alongside a giant friendly dragon. All
Saints, 3pm, from £5.
SUNDAY 26
Film: Kubo and The Two Strings (PG). An animated
fantasy about a gifted boy who embarks on a
magical quest, accompanied by a maternal monkey
and a samurai beetle. All Saints, 3pm, from £5.
School Open Days:
Mayfield School open morning. Mon 30th
January, Mayfield School
Sussex Downs College open event. Wed 1st
Feb, Eastbourne campus, 4.30pm-8pm
© The Walt Disney Company
Switzerland. All rights reserved

Senior Open Day
with Y4-5 Masterclasses
Saturday 25 th February, 9:00am
Senior Open Doors
Thursday 2 nd March, 9:30am
rsvp 01273 280170
enquiries@bhhs.gdst.net
Pre-Prep & Prep Open Day
(Ages 3-11)
with Netball Tournament
Saturday 4 th March, 10:00am
Pre-Prep & Prep Open Doors
Thursday 9 th March, 9:30am
rsvp 01273 280200
prepenquiries@bhhs.gdst.net
www.bhhs.gdst.net
We have a school bus that runs to and from Lewes
Part of the GDST network | Registered charity no 306983

FREETIME
UNDER 16
êêêê
WILL MABBITT: AUTHOR OF
I CAN ONLY DRAW WORMS
How did you become a children’s picture book writer? I used to
commute to a design job in London, and I started writing a book - The
Adventures of Mabel Jones - for my daughter while I was on the train. When
I’d finished it I showed it to some publishers and got offered a series deal
with Puffin! The third Mabel Jones book is coming out in February.
Who is Mabel Jones? She’s a young girl who was kidnapped by animal
pirates and is trying to get home.
Was it difficult to write on the train? It was perfect, because if you
get on the London train from Lewes you nearly always get a table, and the journey was an hour and ten
minutes which gave me just enough time to write a chapter. I’d edit it on the way back. When it’s a shorter
chapter you can tell I didn’t get a table; if it’s a longer one the train was delayed.
Do you still commute? No I’ve given up the day job, and now I’m a full-time children’s writer. And
illustrator, too!
Tell us about I Can Only Draw Worms… When you write children’s books half the money goes to an
illustrator so I decided I wanted to illustrate one of my books. The trouble is, the only thing I could draw
was worms, so that became the subject of the book!
Will is reading from the book, giving worm-drawing tips and signing copies at Bags of Books on Feb 4th
YOUNG PHOTO
OF THE MONTH
“We were on our way home from the Ashdown Forest (visiting
Pooh Bridge),” writes Tia Saunders, aged eight, “when
we stopped at Malling Fields to take this photo.” It’s the
firemen’s tower in the Phoenix Industrial Estate, of course,
decked out for Christmas. What’s amazing about the image
is the colour of the sky behind it, all pinky-orange, as if a
kid-friendly version of the Northern Lights was manifesting
itself in the Lewes sky. “It was between Christmas and New
Year," continues Tia, “and Father Christmas had given me
my first camera, a Canon IXUS digital compact.” Congratulations,
Tia, you’re the winner of this month’s £10 book
token from Bags of Books, which you can collect from the
shop. Under 16? Please send your pictures to photos@vivamagazines.com with your name, age and a
sentence about where, when and why you took it. The next voucher could be yours!
65

UNDER 16
êêêê
SHOES ON NOW: SHUTTLECOCK THERAPY
Recently I’ve been trying to spend more time with my eldest son, who
is on the cusp of becoming a teenager. I’m aware that these years are
short and that soon he won’t want to hang out with his mum, so I’m
making the most of the time we do have together. Thus, this Sunday we
ambled down to Lewes Leisure centre for a friendly game of badminton.
After warming up for ten minutes or so we soon began to play a
tournament and it wasn’t long before my competitive side kicked in and
I became determined to win. I must admit to grunting and groaning like
a wounded wildebeest when the play wasn’t going my way - apologies to
the adjoining court where a father and son were playing a rather more
sedate round. Unfortunately, I was defeated. A quick water break and we
were back on for a second tournament - I was focused, intent on claiming
victory over a rather cocky pre-teen. Alas, despite a concerted effort on my part, I was beaten again and
rather reluctantly shook my son’s hand to prove I was a good sport.
So the glow on my face afterwards wasn’t one of victory, but it wasn’t just due to my exertions on the court
- I’d also spent some much needed one-on-one time with my eldest son. Jacky Adams
Wave Leisure, 01273 486000
“This school is a beacon of professionalism among UK Steiner schools and the children
who emerge are confident, articulate, international, open-minded
and grounded, lucky them!” Good Schools Guide
Open Morning - 2 nd March 2017
Early Years Open Morning - 11 th March 2017
Day in the Classroom - 25 th March 2017
For more information on the above
events, please contact us.
Kidbrooke Park, Priory Road, Forest Row. East Sussex, RH18 5JA
Tel: 01342 822275 - Registered Charity Number 307006
www.michaelhall.co.uk

FOOD
Lewes Patisserie
Carbing up in Station Street
The Pelham arms
HIGH ST • LEWES
A Great British pub, a warm welcome,
wonderful food & ambience
Several Januaries ago, I resolved never to make a
New Year’s resolution again, and that was the most
successful resolution I ever made. Last month,
however, I made a rational decision to alter my
eating habits quite significantly. It just so happens
that the decision was made in January.
I decided to follow a ketogenic diet, which means
eating (almost) no carbohydrates and getting
most of your calorie intake through fats instead.
I’ve read on various blogs by keto ‘experts’ that it
can be beneficial to have the occasional ‘carb-up’:
a meal or a day of eating carbohydrates to give a
shock to your system. So today I’m having one of
those, and for breakfast, I’m feeling pastry.
I decide to try out Lewes Patisserie, which has
finally reopened after being put out of business by
the sinkhole that closed Station Street last year.
As it’s 8am on a weekday in January, I’ve got the
place to myself, I order an almond croissant, which
is so generously stuffed with the sweet, nutty filling
that I’m not sure I’ll be able to finish it, and a
mocha, as a double treat. The inside is very cute,
furnished with mismatched farmhouse chairs and
tables, and I sit and read and sip my coffee for half
an hour in peace. It’s a very indulgent start to the
day, and more than enough to keep me satisfied
until my next carb-up. Rebecca Cunningham
5 Station Street / 01273 483211
Lewes’s first
Smokehouse
in a Pub!
Best Burgers for Miles
Simply Amazing Sunday Roasts
Great Venue for Celebrations
OPENING HOURS
Monday
Bar 4pm to 11pm
Tuesday to Thursday
Bar 12 noon to 11pm
Food 12 noon to 2.30pm & 6 to 9.30pm
Friday & Saturday
Bar 12noon to Midnight
Food 12 noon to 2.30pm & 6 to 9.30pm
Sunday
Bar 12 noon to 10.30pm
Food12 noon to 8pm
GET IN TOUCH!
T 01273 476149 E manager@thepelhamarms.co.uk
@PelhamArmsLewes pelhamarmslewes
Book online @ www.thepelhamarms.co.uk

wingrovehousealfriston.com

FOOD REVIEW
Bun & Bean
Veggie burgers, and Honduran coffee
We normally let restaurants
settle in a little
before we do a review
but, for our ‘flesh’ issue,
I can’t resist cheekily
trying out Lewes’ new
veggie burger and coffee
shop, Bun & Bean,
located where Pleasant
Stores and Ron’s
Convenience Store used
to be, just two days after it opens. It’s 1.30pm on
a Saturday lunchtime, Rowena and I have been
doing our Saturday morning town centre potter,
and we’re lucky - a couple are vacating one of the
three tables as we arrive.
As part of a raft of January health measures I’m
not eating meat, so I’m unusually open to the
idea of a veggie burger. I haven’t much experience,
actually, since my last stint as a vegetarian,
back in the eighties, when what you were offered
was a bit of cardboard in a bun.
The first thing I notice about Bun & Bean is that
it’s unlike any place I’ve ever been to in Lewes.
Exposed brickwork, hanging pendant lights,
Scandi-looking pale wood furniture, coffee beans
on sale in brown paper bags. One wall has been
painted white apart from the shape of South and
Central America which emerges in the brickwork,
with the legend ‘the coffee belt’. It’s very
Bond Street, Brighton.
There are two types of burger on offer, written
on a blackboard: the young manager (tattoos,
beard, beanie hat, see previous sentence) is cooking
a batch with great care on small electric grill
on the counter. We both go for the ‘sweet potato,
carrot, swede, lentil & quinoa’ (£4.50) with added
avocado (plus £2) and
a bottle of home-made
juice (apple, pear, cucumber,
celery, kale, £3.50)
which we pull from the
fridge.
As we sip this at our table,
a young woman tacks
a poster onto the wall.
The beautifully designed
picture shows a toucan
sitting next to a coffee plant with some foliage
overhead, and the caption ‘creatures of the coffee
canopy’. “It’s part of a series,” she says. “We
choose coffee which is grown as it should be,
with a canopy of foliage overhead, which allows
wildlife to thrive. From Honduras.” I ask her who
designed the poster. “It was me.”
The juice is real tasty, zingy and not too sweet,
and the veggie burger is - after all those years - a
revelation. It’s more of a patty, actually, pleasantly
soft without being mushy, and enhanced
by its accoutrements, and the sweetness of the
brioche it’s housed in. We wonder where they
source their delicious gherkins.
There are no chips or side salads on offer, and
we’re still hungry, so we order one of the other
burger on offer - ‘pumpkin, potato, carrot, red
lentil and ginger’ and a couple of coffees, which
arrive in interesting cups, bound with twine
so you can pick them up without burning your
hand. There’s no need, it turns out, as the coffee
isn’t hot enough for my liking, which - the second
burger being as tasty as the first - is my only
quibble about the meal. Otherwise, top marks.
Alex Leith
8, Mt Pleasant, 8am-4pm, Mon-Sat
Photo by Alex Leith
69

70
Photo by Alex Leith

FOOD
Rabbit in cider casserole
Pete Richards, third in a line of Western Road family
butchers, serves us up a warming winter stew
Rabbit is one of the healthiest types of meat you
can eat. There aren’t as many about as there
used to be, apparently, but the Downs are still
pretty full of the little critters. You can’t get
much more organic than wild rabbit, that’s been
feeding itself on lush green Downland grass.
My granddad, who ran the shop in the war, used
to say that nobody went short of meat round
these parts, however strict the rationing was,
because anyone with a gun - or a ferret - could
just go up on the Downs and bag themselves a
pair or two.
We used to get a lot of people coming in with
rabbits to sell, but we don’t get so many now.
Pity, because I’ll always take them, and sell them
on. Nowadays I tend to order them when I need
them, from a chap in Cooksbridge. He’ll go out
in all weathers and shoot me however many I
need. Good clean head shots, as well, no mess
on the carcass.
You can do quite a lot with the meat, but in the
winter, there’s nothing better than a good rabbit
stew. One of my customers raves about a rabbit
and prune casserole she makes. This recipe is a
little more alcoholic than that: rabbit goes really
well with cider, as long as that cider’s of the dry
variety. The following recipe feeds four.
Ingredients:
2 medium sized rabbits, butchered.
¼ cup plain flour.
3 tbsps of a neutral oil – rapeseed is good.
4 shallots (1 large onion will do), roughly
chopped.
¾ litres of dry cider.
3 medium-sized potatoes, quartered.
1 leek, roughly chopped.
4 medium-sized carrots.
2 sprigs of tarragon.
Salt and pepper to taste.
Ask your butcher to chop two small rabbits into
six or eight pieces. Put the plain flour in a plastic
bag, drop in the rabbit pieces, and shake it all
about until they’re covered.
In a large casserole dish heat 2 tablespoons of
oil, and gently - and only gently - brown the
rabbit, then remove the pieces and reserve. Add
more oil if necessary and fry the onion until it’s
soft and golden. Pour in the first 100ml of the
cider to deglaze the pan, then put in the rabbit
pieces, then the rest of the cider. It doesn’t
matter if it’s fizzy or still, and don’t worry about
its strength, the alcohol will evaporate while it’s
cooking.
Season with salt and pepper, and add the leeks,
carrots, potato and the leaves from the sprigs of
tarragon. Bring to the boil, and then simmer for
about 45 minutes (top up with a little vegetable
stock, if needed), until the stew has thickened
nicely… the flour the rabbit has been coated in
will help this process.
That’s all there is to it. There’s plenty of veg in
the stew, so I’d just serve this with some sautéed
kale, and a couple of slabs of buttered wholemeal
bread, for dunking into the stew. Wash it
down with a nice glass of wine, or the rest of
the cider… but as always with rabbit, be careful
about bones!
As told to Alex Leith
71

FOOD
Edible Updates
In food land some exciting
plans are taking shape for
2017. First up, we welcome
Bun & Bean, a new café
specialising in veggie burgers,
coffee and craft beer
now open on Mount Pleasant
(see pg 65).
A friendly hello to Articiocca,
too, a new ‘home
restaurant Italiano’ offering
home-cooked Ligurian food,
next dates 10th and 11th Feb.
Contact Nina on 07979 095874.
We’re pleased to hear about the launch of End
Hunger Lewes. The first meeting on 23rd Feb
from 7.30pm hopes to kick off plans to address
the issue of food poverty locally (see pg 12).
facebook.com/endhungerlewes
At Lewes Food Market, two new stallholders to
try: Southdown Dairy live yoghurt and fromage
frais and Freya's Feast organic tofu.
Laporte's tell us they’re having a ‘mini refurb’
to emphasise their takeaway and produce store,
and Ouse Valley Foods are excited about their
‘classic and classy’ rebrand created by Lewesbased
design firm Pixeldot.
Look out for some positive changes at Pelham
House. The hotel welcomes back restaurant
manager Rob Wilson, who plans to ‘resurrect
the place’ along with new head chef, Naomi, who
is cooking great food with a Caribbean influence.
A good place to start: their wine and food
matching event on Friday 3rd.
Also for wine lovers, Café du Jardin are hosting
a biodynamic wine tasting on the 24th. The café
will also be open in the evening for St Valentine’s
which, take note, falls on Tuesday during
half-term.
Which brings me, lastly, to an indulgent offer at
Rathfinny Flint Barns: stay two nights during
half-term and enjoy dinner for free. Chloë King
Illustration by Chloë King
Two main meals
for the
price of one
@thesussexox
The Sussex Ox
www.thesussexox.co.uk
With this voucher
Milton Street
East Sussex
BN26 5RL
01323 870840

Offer excludes drinks and weekends
Cheapest meal for free. One voucher per table
Valid until 28th February 2017, Mon-Thurs
LEWES
FARMERS’
MARKET
@thesussexox
The Sussex Ox
www.thesussexox.co.uk
Milton Street
East Sussex
BN26 5RL
01323 870840
A SLICE OF SUSSEX
1ST & 3RD SATURDAY OF EACH MONTH
CLIFFE PRECINCT 9am - 1pm
www.commoncause.org.uk
2 FOR 1 WINTER WARMER
With recommendations in both the Michelin
and Good Food Guides, The Jolly Sportsman in
East Chiltington is widely renowned for its
excellent standard of food and wine, cosy fire
and stunning location.
In February they are offering Viva readers two
main courses for the price of one from their à la
carte menu on any Tuesday, Wednesday or
Thursday evening (excluding February 14 th ).
Minimum of two courses, not including sides.
Booking essential. Please mention this voucher
when booking and bring it along with you.
01273 890400
info@thejollysportsman.com
jollysportsman.com

THE WAY WE WORK
This month we asked portrait photographer Helene Carter to capture four local people
who work with 'flesh'. She says: "As a photographer, I always enjoy the challenge of
portraying people in a refreshing and original way. If you get a sense of someone’s
character in an image of them, I’ve been successful."
She asks them: 'How would spend a perfect Valentine's Day?'
07729287750 | helene@helenecarter.com
Facebook: Fingerprint Photography
Oscar at Mews Bodywork Clinic
“A cycle ride over the South Downs and a pub lunch afterwards.”

THE WAY WE WORK
Emma at The Beauty Rooms
“A bit of pampering for myself!”

THE WAY WE WORK
Luis at Barracloughs
“A European city break or weekend away.”

THE WAY WE WORK
Lindie at Browns
“Time to myself to indulge in guilty pleasures!”

CNM
TRAINING SUCCESSFUL PRACTITIONERS
COLLEGE OF
NATUROPATHIC
MEDICINE
CHANGE CAREER
Train to become a…
Nutritionist Herbalist Acupuncturist
Homeopath Naturopath Natural Chef
Postgraduate Courses and Short Courses also available
Colleges throughout the UK, Ireland, Finland, USA
Part time and full time studies
01342 410 505 www.naturopathy-uk.com
Attend a FREE
Open Evening
at CNM Brighton
or CNM London
A. S
APOTHECARY
SMALL BATCH DISTILLERY
WE ARE DELIGHTED
TO INVITE YOU TO OUR
NEW THERAPY ROOM
Sublime 90 minute
Aromatherapy session
with Wendy Spencer
on Thursdays
Luxury 1 hr Facials
using A.S APOTHECARY
products with Ellie Gill
on Fridays and Saturdays
PHONE 01273 253186
OR EMAIL ASAPOTH@GMAIL.COM
TO ARRANGE AN APPOINTMENT
31 WESTERN RD, LEWES, BN7 1RL
WWW.ASAPOTH.COM
MICHAEL BENNETT CONSULTING LTD

HEALTH
Biodynamics
Can eating meat be ethical?
Veganism is having a
moment. Shaking off
its tie-dyed image of
lentils and (canvas)
sandals, it is now
the dietary choice of
celebrities as diverse as
Pamela Anderson, Brad
Pitt, Venus Williams
and Bill Clinton (along
with over 500 others
listed on Wikipedia).
In fact, 542,000 people in the UK are vegan, according
to a 2015 Ipsos Mori study - a number
that has more than tripled in the past decade,
making veganism one of the fastest-growing
lifestyle movements.
While many vegans cite ethical reasons for
eschewing animal products, some are troubled
by the environmental implications of intensive
livestock farming, while others are switching for
their health.
But what if, well, you don’t really want to give
up meat? You care about animals, the planet, and
your health, of course, but you enjoy eggs and
bacon and the occasional steak…
Director of the Biodynamic Association, Peter
Brown, who runs Tablehurst Farm in Forest
Row, believes there is an alternative. In contrast
to conventional, industrialised agriculture,
biodynamic farming works with nature rather
than against it, he explains. “We see the farm
as a whole, balanced, holistic organism. So, for
example, we don’t keep more animals than we
can feed, and we don’t buy manure or fertilisers,
or use any chemicals.”
It’s an approach that enables his cattle, pigs,
sheep and chickens to graze in mixed pastures,
behaving as they would in nature. “The main
thing is that an animal is able to express its natural
instincts,” Peter
says, “so it is important
that a cow can go out
into pasture and graze,
browse the hedges, and
smell the breeze.”
Unlike intensive
farming, biodynamic
methods have no cost
to the environment, he
adds, while few would
dispute that his animals
have a better life than their factory-farmed
equivalent. But what about the health argument?
Isn’t meat bad for you?
Apparently it depends on what the animal has
been fed. Intensive farming feeds livestock on
soya or maize - foodstuffs that they would not
normally eat, and which affect the quality of
their meat. Conversely, Tablehurst’s animals
graze on natural, mixed pasture, making their
meat closer to that hunted by our ancient ancestors
- and, thus, better suited to our nutritional
needs. Peter claims that it tastes better too.
“It’s a bit like with bees. If they are making
honey just from white sugar, as with some commercial
honeys, then it is not going to taste the
same as when they are going to millions of different
flowers. It’s the same with animals grazing
on mixed pastures. It’s what’s natural.”
So is biodynamically farmed meat an ethical, environmentally
sound and healthy compromise?
The choice, as they say, is yours…
Anita Hall
Peter Brown will be speaking at the Alternative
Lewes talk ‘Meat? Dairy? Both? Or Neither?’ at
Pelham House on the 10th. Tickets at
eventbrite.co.uk.
For details on Tablehurst Farm and its farm shop,
see tablehurst.farm
81

Bonne Bouche
Gilda Frost, chocolate shop owner
How long has Bonne Bouche been going? Elizabeth
Syrett opened the shop in 1987. She used to
be Head of Confectionery at Fortnum and Mason,
but when this shop came up for sale she decided to
stop commuting into London and have her own
chocolate shop here instead. She still lives just two
doors away. Her husband would help out behind
the scenes, but he died in 2015, so she decided to
sell the lease.
When did you take over? In April; before that I
worked as a theatre company and stage manager
for over 30 years, in the West End and on tour. I
worked on The Dresser, A Little Night Music, Thriller
Live, Chicago, and many more, plus a little show
called Potted Potter which took me to Canada, Singapore,
Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand and
the USA. But a couple of years ago I decided it was
time for me to settle down near my family.
Are you from Lewes? I was born in Brighton
and brought up in Kingston, and I went to Priory
School. My parents now live in Cooksbridge; it’s
been lovely being back. Some of my best friends
live here and it’s really nice seeing them more often
after travelling for so many years.
Did you want to change much? At first I wanted
to open it as a card shop but then I thought, why
change it, when it’s been such a top chocolate shop
for so many years and so many local people love it?
So I kept most things the same, but I sell a few cards
on the side.
Did you have any experience in running a shop?
No! I sold merchandise on various shows I was
touring with, so I had a bit of knowledge of dealing
with stock. But it’s just like a show really; the chocolates
are like the props and I set them up at the
beginning of the day, only in this show somebody
82

FEATURE: MY SPACE
comes in and buys the props, and then I have to
reset them ready for the next audience.
What have been the biggest challenges? Heat
and cold - neither are good. We had a couple of very
hot days in the summer, which were a bit worrying
as my French truffles were on the verge of melting.
Similarly, if it’s too cold the chocolate can get a
white layer, called ‘blooming’. The chocolate is still
perfectly alright, it just doesn’t look so nice.
And what have been your favourite parts? Being
my own boss, and meeting the people, locals and
tourists. I love finding out where visitors to the town
have come from. We’ve had several tourists from
Japan who have known about the shop - I’m still not
exactly sure how.
What do you have in for Valentine’s Day? We’ll
have our gift boxes and some chocolate hearts,
which people can fill with their own selection of
chocolates, and we’re now also doing gift vouchers.
Plus I’ve started serving hot chocolate, which is
perfect for anybody out shopping in the cold!
Interview by Rebecca Cunningham
3 Martin’s Lane, 01273 470977
Photos by Rebecca Cunningham
83

BRICKS AND MORTAR
The Miller’s Walk
A forgotten pathway from the Downs
Many Lewesians will be familiar with Hill Road.
This is the long, narrow road that starts from the
junction of Offham Road and King Henry’s Road,
and takes you up to the top of Nevill Road. However,
far fewer may be aware that this was once known locally
as ‘The Miller’s Walk’.
There were three windmills on the Downs to the
west of Lewes in the late 1800s: Town Mill, next to
the prison, Spital Mill, about 500 metres further up
the hill, and Offham Mill, at the top of the race hill,
by the race stand. If you walk up Hill Road, and carry
on up the Downs in a straight line, you will arrive at
the site where this old mill once stood. It therefore
seems logical that The Miller’s Walk was named after
the route taken by the miller at Offham Mill when he
walked between the mill and the town.
It is uncertain when Offham Mill was built, but it
features on an Ordnance Survey map of 1787. In its
later years it was also known as both Steere’s Mill
(after one of its owners), and Race Mill. After a bad
storm in the 1890s, miller John Hurst arrived to find
the cap and sweeps had blown off. They were scattered
so wide that he concluded that ‘the sweeps must
have gone over like a bird to have gone that far’.
After the mill had stood derelict for some time, Hurst
was ordered to pull it down. The 1st Sussex Volunteer
Engineers were stationed nearby, and coincidentally
were eager to try out a new type of gun cotton
explosive. On 29th April 1901 they arrived, and three
explosions later had reduced the building to a pile of
wood and iron.
The Hill Road we see today looks quite different
from its early days. The photograph here was taken
sometime after numbers 1, 2, & 3 had been built
at the bottom of the hill during the 1920s. Next to
the new tarmacked road, you can see a well-worn
chalk path running down the hill; presumably the
path taken by the many millers who had worked at
Offham Mill.
Whereas now there are trees and bushes all the way
down the hill on the left, you can see that this was
once just a grass slope. Lewes resident Brian Bodle
has fond memories of playing on that elongated
triangle of grass as a child during the 1940s. At the
very top of the hill, along Nevill Road, you will see a
bench which looks strangely placed, facing away from
the road and into a clump of trees. However, when it
was originally put there it had a view much like the
one we see in the photograph.
Perhaps one day it would be nice to see this old
pathway from the Downs restored and signposted,
with an addition to the Hill Road sign; ‘Hill Road
(formerly The Miller’s Walk)’.
Mat Homewood
Many thanks to Peter Hill and Bob Bonnett for their
invaluable input.
84

FEATURE: WILDLIFE
Illustration by Mark Greco
Sexton Beetles
Subterranean corpse-disposal blues
“Now, you got a corpse in a car, minus a head… take
me to it”. In Quentin Tarantino’s movie Pulp Fiction,
Winston Wolf provides a professional clean-up
service for two incompetent hitmen when they have
a little ‘problem’ that needs solving urgently. Hopefully
illicit corpse disposal isn’t a regular dilemma for
Viva Lewes readers but in the natural world death,
disposal, decay and decomposition are vital, constant
processes which recycle the nutrients that keep our
planet functioning.
This clean-up duty is undertaken by a cast of unsung
underworld characters. Bacteria and blow-flies, fungi
and foxes, worms and woodlice all put their tendrils,
talons, mandibles and molars to the task. But if
you want a corpse removed efficiently and cleanly
you had better call in the professionals: the sexton
beetles. The sextons are members of the family
Silphidae. At about 3cm long they are amongst the
heavyweights of our county’s 3,000 beetle species.
Some sextons can be identified by their lurid orange
wing-cases; a hi-vis jacket befitting a worker at the
scene of a tragedy.
Now, you’ve got a dead blue tit in the back yard.
Its little soul will have winged its way to that great
peanut feeder in the sky and now it’s time to return
its earthly body back to the soil. Sextons, armed with
super-sensitive chemoreceptors in their clubbed
antennae, can detect the sweet smell of death from
a mile away. The male flies in first and assesses the
scene. First job - call for back up. He secretes a stink
from his rear end to lure in a female - hey, I never
said this was pretty - and his partner arrives.
Next job - secure the corpse. The beetles start
beetling around the blue tit, stripping off the feathers.
But - phew-wee! - that smell will soon be luring
in every fly in the neighbourhood. So the sextons
baste the body with their antibacterial and antifungal
chemicals slowing down the decay and preventing
the pong.
Now the sextons live up to their name. Working together
they dig a grave which they line with feathers.
The corpse is tenderly lowered down into the earth.
It’s here, in this cosy crypt, that the sextons will raise
their family. Eggs are laid and develop into hungry
larvae which, unusually for an insect, ‘beg’ for food
and are fed by their devoted parents. The bird’s body
is slowly stripped of flesh and reduced to a simple
skeleton. After pupation new sexton beetles emerge
from the soil and fly away, perhaps to find their own
corpse or to become food for birds themselves. No
eulogy, no flowers, yet it’s still a dignified, life-affirming
send off. So, when it’s my time to go, just drag
me into the garden and let the sextons do their job.
Michael Blencowe, Sussex Wildlife Trust, 07827830891
87

COLUMN
Lewes Out Loud
Plenty more Henty
To avoid any dubious
rumours spreading
round the town, I feel
that my photograph
this month may need
some explanation and
I am inclined to blame
the editor.
You see, when I
bumped into him on
Cliffe High street,
and politely asked him
to specify a theme for the February edition, he
gleefully shouted one word: “flesh” - much to the
surprise, I have to say, of several elderly shoppers.
A challenge indeed, thought I, and so it proved as
I set out on a damp, dismal Sunday morning with
the sole aim of what is euphemistically called
‘pressing the flesh’ or shaking hands with a lot of
people, wishing them a belated Happy New Year.
Only problem, even down at the trusty car boot,
apart from the lovely Fox Farm free-range folk
and a couple of first timers from Hastings with a
baby barn owl called ‘Princess’ (I’m not making
this up), hardly anyone else had ventured out.
And that is how, in desperation, I came to
photograph the nearest thing to real people I
could find… and they were standing forlornly in
Wickle’s post-sale shop window - starkers.
Behind them, however, I did spot two lively girls,
Lucy and Georgia, fully clothed, who leapt about
madly and generously accepted my explanation,
rather than calling security, which they could
have done.
Sadly, the only real example of flesh-pressing
over the festivities that I encountered was a
cheery supporter of Horsham FC who toured the
home terrace before the match at the Dripping
Pan, shaking hands
and wishing Lewes
supporters well. He
could afford to - his
team eventually won
the game 2–1.
There were other
brief encounters, of
course. Bill, the coach
driver from Hailsham,
for example, whose
replacement bus carried
me, as the sole passenger, between Lewes
and Seaford on a delightfully sunny morning.
Travelling at a leisurely 30 mph, we discussed the
on-going train dispute and what it meant for him
and his colleagues. We also enjoyed the stunning
Sussex scenery and agreed that too many people
today just belt through it without a glance.
Sales time in Clarkes the stationer's and a smile
from Nikki when I enquired where I should press
a rather tired looking Homer Simpson doll (£5)
to make him speak. After some intimate prodding
down below, a noise did emerge. “It seems
to have slipped”, she suggested. I won’t tell you
where she thought his battery might be inserted
but as it turned out, he didn’t have one and so I
bought him for £3.
This month I am trying out a new talk on a couple
of occasions, the first of which, to Peacehaven
WI, will be in the Meridian Centre on Wednesday
afternoon, February 1st, at 3pm. It would
be nice to see some Viva readers there as I recall
meetings - in the flesh - with the likes of Alfred
Hitchcock, Dame Flora Robson, Spike Milligan,
Petula Clark and the remarkable Sir Ken Dodd,
who celebrates his 90th birthday this year.
John Henty
88

Lewes Town & Country
Residential Sales & Lettings
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T 01273 487444
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Charming, well maintained period cottage situated between Lewes
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A selection of 3 bedroom newly built family homes in an elevated
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A selection of 8 newly converted 1 bedroom apartments ideally
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oakleyproperty.com

FOOTBALL
A bitter twist
Striker George Landais
George Landais was something
of a Victor Kiam
signing for Lewes: having
scored twice against The
Rooks in the Sussex Senior
Cup for Littlehampton,
Lewes liked him so much
they decided to buy him.
The jump up two divisions
for Landais quickly
soured, however, when the
striker badly twisted his
knee minutes into his debut. “Getting a move
to a club the size of Lewes and then getting an
injury 24 minutes into my first game was a nightmare,”
said Landais.
He knew immediately the injury was serious, but
after going for a scan on his knee, the news wasn’t
as bad as first feared. “I was told it was cartilage
damage and the recovery time would only be six
weeks,” he recalls.
Landais was swiftly booked in for surgery to
repair the damaged cartilage, but only when the
surgeons opened up the knee did they realise the
injury was much worse than the initial scan had
revealed. “After the op, the surgeon said it was
positive on the cartilage. Then he said: ‘the bad
news is you’ve fully ruptured your ACL [anterior
cruciate ligament]’.”
The ligament damage would require a second
operation, but first the knee needed eight weeks
to recover from the initial surgery. The ligament
was repaired in the second operation, but
he endured another frustrating wait before he
could even begin the months of rehab that would
be required. “It was ten weeks of complete rest,
only walking. By then, the muscle wastage in my
leg meant the joint had gone from fully built to
struggling to walk up and down stairs.”
That didn’t only keep the
24-year-old out of football,
it had a serious impact on
his new job as a primary
school PE teacher. “The
first three months were a
real struggle,” he admits.
“The injury takes away your
football, your mobility,
walking, everything. I had
to soldier through the first
few months because I’d only
just started the job and wouldn’t get any sick pay.”
If Landais did have one stroke of luck, it’s that
his girlfriend - Paige Wise - was (at the time) the
club’s physiotherapist, meaning he could barely
be in better hands when it came to getting the
treatment required.
Since then, it’s been gym work four or five times
a week, as well as twice-weekly visits to the club’s
new physio, Paul Baskin, until now - 13 months
after his ill-fated debut - he’s preparing to pull
on the black and red again. “It’s been gradually
getting harder the closer I’ve got to fitness,” said
Landais. “At the start, you’re so far away you
don’t really think about playing. But when you’re
a month or two from fitness, it’s much more
frustrating.”
We spoke the night after Landais had played in
his first comeback match for the Development
Squad. Any worries about the knee? “Ten minutes
beforehand, the butterflies were going,” he
admitted. “But once the match started I was back
in match mode and completely forgot about it.”
Now he’s just hoping his second coming lasts a lot
longer than the first. Barry Collins
Men's home fixtures in February:
Weds 1st (7.45pm) v Dorking, Sat 4th (3pm)
Chipstead, Sat 18th (3pm) Tooting
Photo by James Boyes
91

BUSINESS NEWS
It’s been musical chairs in
and around the Needlemakers
recently. The
illustrator and designer
Mary Fellows has moved
from the building entirely
and will now be operating
from Mount Place, near the
Lewes Arms; she will be
selling her colourful artwork
in its many shapes and forms, but sweets are no
longer on the menu. The artist and designer
Louise Harding has moved into Mary’s old space
(near the Market Street entrance) where she will
be selling artwork, cards and gifts. Louise vacated
a smaller unit within the complex; this has been
filled by Songbird Trading (who sell seasidy art
stuff). Songbird have moved from the small unit
at the bottom of the stairs in the basement, which
is currently vacant (watch this space). Phew! And
while we’re in that part of
town it’s worth noting that
the notary Louis Browne
has taken an office at 5, Fisher
Street, from where Angie
Osborne used to run the
Hop Gallery. The Hop, of
course, is set to become the
Martyr’s Gallery in March.
Is that all clear? Good-oh.
From indies to the biggest chain of the lot: we’ve
been informed that Tesco’s Lewes branch now
have a Community Officer, Vicky Page, who is
employed to support local causes with the help of,
for example, funds collected by the supermarket
giant from the sale of their 5p plastic carrier bags.
This money is to be directed at local environmental
causes; Tesco can also provide raffle prizes etc
for fund-raising events in the community.
[tescolewescommunity@gmail.com]
Photo by Marianne Wells

DIRECTORY
Please note that though we aim to only take advertising from reputable businesses, we cannot guarantee
the quality of any work undertaken, and accept no responsibility or liability for any issues arising.
To advertise in Viva Lewes please call 01273 434567 or email advertising@vivamagazines.com

HOME
Directory Spotlight:
Mobile chiropodist Alison Merrien
I treat people in the comfort of
their own homes. I travel around
on foot with my trolley, which carries
my instruments and equipment.
I cover all of Lewes and also come
out to Ringmer on the 28 bus.
I have been a chiropodist for
over 20 years and am registered
with the Health & Care Professions
Council (HCPC). They’re an
independent regulator set up for the
patient’s benefit.
People have problems with their feet for many
different reasons. Often it’s inappropriate or
badly-fitting footwear. Some have underlying
health issues that affect their feet, such as poor
circulation or diabetes. Others may have back
problems or knee problems and can't physically
reach their feet any more. And if your eyesight
isn’t good, you could cut yourself
instead of your toenails.
Neglecting your feet is the
worst thing you can do to them.
They can change shape and size
all the way through your life. So
when you buy shoes, it’s best if you
get them fitted professionally.
Try not to wear the same pair
of shoes for two days in a row.
Your feet sweat, even though
you're not aware of it, and the
shoes will pick up that perspiration. They need
time to dry out and go back to their normal shape.
I love it when my patients tell me how comfortable
their feet feel after I’ve completed my
treatment. When they’re happy, I’m happy.
As told to Mark Bridge
Call Alison on 07722 725096
95

HOME
CP Viva Lewes Ad (Qtr Pg)_62 x 94mm 18/02/2011 17
Colin Poulter
Plastering
Professional Plasterer
Over 25 years experience
All types of plastering work
and finishes undertaken
FREE estimates
Telephone 01273 472 836
Mobile 07974 752 491
Email cdpoulter@btinternet.com

HOME

HOME

HOME
Nina Murden,
the Lewes Seamstress
E S T . 2 0 0 5
Bespoke curtains and Roman blinds
Insulating door curtains
Professional Repairs and Alterations Service
Tel: 01273 470817 | Mob: 07717 855314
TheLewesSeamstress.co.uk
Chartered Building Surveyors
• Building Surveys • Defect Analysis
• Project Management • Dilapidaaons
• Historic Building Specialists • Party Wall
Contact us for friendly professional advice
01273 840608 | www.gradientconsultants.com
Handyman Services for your House and Garden
Lewes based. Free quotes.
Honest, reliable, friendly service.
Reasonable rates
Tel: 07460 828240
Email: ahbservices@outlook.com
AHB ad.indd 1 27/07/2015 17:

HOME
1
䰀 䔀 圀 䔀 匀 䌀 䠀 䤀 䴀 一 䔀 夀 匀 圀 䔀 䔀 倀
㜀 㜀 㤀 㘀 㠀 ㈀ 㔀 㠀 㠀
Jack Plane Carpenter
Nice work, fair price,
totally reliable.
www.jackplanecarpentry.co.uk
01273 483339 / 07887 993396
alitura
landscape and garden design
Services include
01273 401581/ 07900 416679
design@alitura.co.uk
www.alitura.co.uk
- Garden Design & Project Monitoring
- Redesign of Existing Beds & Borders
- Plant Sourcing
Call us for a free consultation
• Site Assessment & Design
• Planting Plans
• Ongoing Maintenance
GARDENS
Global
Gardens
Design,
Restoration &
Landscaping
GARDEN DESIGN
M: +44 (0) 7989 176101
info@wendydarby.co.uk | www.wendydarby.co.uk
ethical print & web design
01273 936063
littleseeddesign.com
PRINT | WEB | BRAND | MARKETING
10% OFF FOR ALL NEW CLIENTS THIS FEBRUARY
Mobile 07941 057337
Phone 01273 488261
12 Priory Street, Lewes, BN7 1HH
info@ globalgardens.co.uk
www.globalgardens.co.uk
TREES|HEDGES|CLEARANCE
Free quotes and advice
07507 523748
oliver@newleaftreesurgery.co.uk
newleaftreesurgery.co.uk

HEALTH AND WELLBEING
The Barn
Brighton and Hove Psychotherapy
Long and short-term Psychotherapy
& Clinical Psychology for individuals,
couples, families, adolescents and
children, based in central Lewes
We also offer Life Coaching and
Nutritional & Functional Medicine
NEWS UPDATE
We are currently working hard behind the
scenes to ensure we can reduce the impact
of the funding cuts to our pharmacy. We
will keep you informed.
January is a good time to think about your
health and meet those health targets. Look
out for new services in your local pharmacy
by viewing the NHS choices website for a
full range of health related information
where you will find diet and exercise advice
along with a wide range of other NHS
services.You can also visit our St Anne's
Pharmacy page on NHS Choices to see the
latest services and news.
Psychotherapy (UKCP registered)
Mark Vahrmeyer, Integrative Psychotherapist
Individuals & Couples
Sam Jahara, Transactional Analyst
Individuals, Couples & Groups
Angela Betteridge, Systemic Psychotherapist
Couples, Children & Families
Dr Simon Cassar, Existential Psychotherapist
Individuals & Couples
Clinical Psychology
Jane Craig, HCPC reg.
Individuals, Couples & Groups
Life Coaching
Michael Laffey, MNCP
Nutritional & Functional Medicine
Tanya Borowski, IFM-certified, DipCNM, mBANT
Find out more at:
www.brightonandhovepsychotherapy.com
or call us on 01273 921355

HEALTH AND WELLBEING
Ruth Wharton Viva Advert AW.qxp_6 01/11/2016 11:58 P
CLIFFE OSTEOPATHS
complementary health clinic
Julie Padgham
Western Herbal
Medicine & Reflexology
What is Herbal Medicine?
Herbal medicine uses extracts of whole
plants. It is a safe & effective therapy that has
been used for centuries to provide relief for a
range of health problems.
Why see a Medical Herbalist?
A consultation with a Medical Herbalist is a
unique experience where the focus of treatment
is on the underlying cause of your
health problem, not just your symptoms. As
a result, you receive a herbal prescription
that is as individual as you are.
Herbal medicine & reeexology can help you
regain the balance for good health.
For further details, please contact Julie
07796 580435. juliepadgham@yahoo.co.uk.
www.thehighwealdherbalist .co.uk
OSTEOPATHY
Mandy Fischer BSc (Hons) Ost, DO
Steven Bettles BSc (Hons) Ost, DO
Susie Wanford MSc (Hons) Ost, DO
PSYCHOTHERAPY
Julia Rivas BA (Hons), MA Psychotherapy
Tom Lockyer BA (Hons), Dip Cound MBACP
ACUPUNCTURE & HYPNOTHERAPY
Anthea Barbary LicAc MBAcC Dip I Hyp GQHP
HOMEOPATHY, COACHING,
NLP & HYPNOTHERAPY
Lynne Russell BSc FSDSHom MARH MBIH(Lic.)
01273 480900
River Clinic
RUTH
WHARTON
BIODYNAMIC
CRANIAL
OSTEOPATH
www.ruthwhartonosteopath.com
SALLY
GALLOWAY
NUTRITIONAL
THERAPIST
www.sallygallowaynutrition.co.uk
also available:
HOMEOPATHY
& COUNSELLING
INTRINSIC HEALTH
01273 958403
32 Cliffe High st, lewes bN7 2aN
OSteOpathy
& Cranial
OSteOpathy
Michaela Kullack & Simon Murray
Experienced, Registered Osteopaths
COMpleMentary therapieS
Acupuncture, Alexander Technique,
Bowen Technique, Children’s Clinic,
Counselling, Psychotherapy, Family
Therapy, Herbal Medicine, Homeopathy,
Hypnotherapy, Massage, NLP, Nutritional
Therapy, Life Coaching, Physiotherapy,
Pilates, Reflexology, Shiatsu
Therapy rooms available
To renT
Open Monday to Saturday
01273 475735
River Clinic, Wellers Yard,
Brooks Road, Lewes BN7 2BY
email: info@lewesosteopathy.com
www.lewesriverclinic.co.uk
like us on Facebook

HEALTH AND WELLBEING
Psychotherapy
& Counselling
UKCP and BACP-Registered Psychotherapist
Psychotherapy offers a safe, private place to talk.
I am an experienced, qualified therapist following
a strict code of ethics. Lewes-based.
First session concession
Call Kate Hope on 07794 308989 or
visit www.katehopetherapy.co.uk
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圀 攀 愀 瘀 椀 渀 最 眀 攀 氀 氀 渀 攀 猀 猀 琀 漀 最 攀 琀 栀 攀 爀
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Andrew Wells_Viva Lewes_AW.indd 1 25/06/2012 09:05

INSIDE LEFT
'PORKY' PRYOR BUTCHER'S, 1931
So why were Reeves commissioned, in the summer of 1931, to take pictures of two different butcher’s
shops, as well as a host of other High Street shop fronts? The answer is written in the window of this
shop. Pryor’s has won second prize in the Empire Window Dressing Competition. As well they might
have, with this sumptuous display of meat. We suspect that their sister shop Colbourne’s (situated in the
Seveirg Building, where Boots now stands) was also nominated among the winners.
The competition was a national venture by the Empire Marketing Board, a body which, between 1926
and 1933, tried to alter consumer habits by encouraging shoppers to buy food sourced within the British
Empire. Pryor’s, known in town as ‘Porky Pryor’s’ (until it changed use in the 1980s) was one of the
longest established butcher’s in town, having been on the High Street since the 1880s. The space is now
used by Paul Clark (gentleman’s outfitters): look closely at the front window and you can still see the
original metal lattice work, to help cool the meat, and hooks, to hang it.
Colbourne’s bought out Pryor’s in c1928, which might have pleased Lewes diarist Alice Dudeney, who, in
her 1916 diary, found Mr Pryor to be very rude: when she asked for some pigs’ tongues she’d seen in the
window, the proprietor, when he’d finally finished reading a sentence in his newspaper, replied: ‘You can’t
have ‘em, they’re going to be cooked for my tea.’ In another entry she calls Mr Pryor, ‘silly - very like a
pig - on a high stool and surrounded by carcasses’.
We might be wrong, but we suspect Mr Pryor - one of twenty or so butchers in the town in that era
- wouldn’t have bothered entering the competition had he still run the shop. But then again, Alice
Dudeney was nasty about just about everyone in her diaries: for all we know he could have been a charming,
diligent chap, and won it outright. Thanks to Edward Reeves, 01273 473274.
106