Stonewalling at the Hilton

Those who survived to the end - back row, Chris Walters, Brie, Paula Stevens-Hoare, Darren Souch, Lucy Hards, Emma Whitby-Smith; front row, Paul McQuillan and Antony Mair

"Like your frock," I said to the bearded young man who was asking me if I knew which table I was on at the Stonewall Equality Dinner last Friday.  It was a sleeveless cotton number, more suited to a vicarage teaparty in the countryside than the plush surroundings of the Park Lane Hilton.  But one needs to celebrate diversity on an occasion like this.  "Like your waistcoat," he obligingly replied.  (I had wheeled out my old Tom Gilbey number for the occasion,)

Phil Price and Jane Milligan

680 of the country's more well-heeled gays, lesbians, bisexuals and trans had gathered to raise funds for the Stonewall cause, at a cost per ticket that was eye-watering.  But that was just the start.  Christopher Biggins, with a flair that revealed new dimensions of camp, conducted a live auction that raised £100k, with people bidding for items ranging from a trip to the theatre and visit backstage to tea with Joan Collins and Liz Hurley - for which someone on a table near us paid a mere £20,000.  (I did notice he put his head in his hands afterwards as if to say "What have I done?").  Raffle tickets were £20 apiece.  There was also a "silent auction" which was like our own Ebay, where bids were registered on tablets left on our tables.  I noticed that a KitchenAid mixer was going for something reasonable, so put in a few bids, but the lesbians put me firmly in my place and it rocketed to double the retail price.  Oh well.

Chris Walters, Darren Souch, Paul McQuillan and Martin Bikhit

There was a clutch of celebs, whom we all tried not to ogle excessively.  Graham Norton was sporting a beard.  "It's grey," people were muttering in shock.  Beside us was an all-male table of well-groomed David Beckham lookalikes.  I thought they were luvvies but learnt they were lawyers and estate agents.  We had a rousing speech from Ruth Hunt, the new CEO, about Stonewall's aims, both domestic and international.  The not-luvvies beside us leapt to their feet to applaud at the end.  Stella Duffy conducted the fundraising part, and news about the amount being pledged was flashed up on large screens on either side of the stage.

Paula Stevens-Hoare 

Clare Balding - who, by the way, is even more charming and svelte offscreen - and other glitterati  left discreetly before the drunken rabble took to the floor for the disco.  We left some time in the early hours, rather the worse for wear, and with distinctly depleted resources.

I'm still pants with my mobile and photos but had my dinosaur's camera with me so here are some clips of our crowd.  Are they on Facebook?  Is the Pope Catholic?  

Antony Mair

Ryan Elterman, Brie, Paula Stevens-Hoare

Emma Whitby-Smith, Ryan Elterman, Lucy Hards and Paul McQuillan

Booze cruising in Calais

War Memorial and cranes at the Fishing Port, Calais

Although I no longer drink, as a result of my Chinese doctor forbidding me alcohol, an irritant in the weekly trip to the supermarket in Hastings is the cost of wine: usually a minimum of £5 per bottle for what is indifferent stuff.  It seems to taste the same whatever the label or country of origin.  The last straw was when we went along to the opening of a new specialist wine-shop in St. Leonard's the other day and found it difficult to get anything under £10 per bottle.

Action had to be taken.  So, courtesy of the internet, I arranged a day trip via Eurotunnel to Calais, booked a restaurant near the port and found a wine-merchant of sufficient scale to give a decent choice of French wines, and off we went yesterday.

I hadn't realised just how painless such a trip could be: just over an hour to the Eurotunnel terminal, and

then you drive onto the train and are rocked like a baby in its cradle for half an hour before France appears through the carriage windows.  I'd timed it so we could get to the restaurant for 1 pm.  Le Grand Bleu was full of locals eating in that particular French way of being relaxed at the table but immensely serious about good food.  Cod, scallops, lemon meringue - all excellent fare.  Then on to Calais-Vins, which I'd identified as offering a better selection than the likes of Majestic.  Again, the staff charming and we loaded a mere 120 bottles into the back of the car for the return journey.  There was the added bonus of a rather good cheese shop next door, where we could stock up for this weekend's dinner party.  

Then back to the terminal for another cradle-rocking session in the train, and an easy trip back home.  We'd have been back by 6 pm had I not foolishly left my wallet in the cheese shop - discovered only after we'd crossed passport control so there was a slight delay while we were escorted back through passport control in order to retrieve it.  

We'll see how long it now takes us to get through the stocks.  Did it work out cheaper?  In brief, yes.  We bought wines at varying prices, but the top price we paid for any one bottle was about £5.70.  The clarets were better value than the burgundies.  In purely financial terms, the overall saving paid for the Eurotunnel crossing.  We could have covered the cost of lunch as well, had we gone for the cheaper stuff throughout.  But the most important thing is that the wines we bought should have some character and style to them rather than the bland stuff you get in the English supermarkets.  And, of course, we had the enormous pleasure of a good day out when the weather's dismal - plus of course the chance to speak French again after all this time.  In some ways, I'm hoping we romp through the booze fast so we can go back soon.

Antony Mair

Progressing with Poetry

It's a month since I began my Creative Writing MA with Lancaster University, and so far I've been entirely delighted with the course.  Although I'm the only person out of the 23 participants to be doing poetry only - the majority being concerned with fiction, some with poetry as an add-on - sufficient of my fellow-students are interested in poetry to make their comments worthwhile.  My tutor, Eoghan Walls, seems to be a charmer who can spot both virtues and vices in what I produce: he has the admirable ability to encourage the one and coax me out of the other.

Publication is no longer entirely elusive.  25 poems of mine are out in the ether, 17 in submissions to magazines and eight in competitions.  I have little hope of the competitions, which are something of a lottery, but my guru Eoghan tells me I need to put pieces into them so I am now trying to do so.  Morale was raised at the end of last week when Patricia Oxley, editor of Acumen, responded within a few days to say she was shortlisting two of the ones I'd sent her, for publication in January.  So they've at least got beyond the first hurdle.  I was quite surprised to get her response so rapidly: another editor has still not responded to my letter of 13th July!  We'll see how the others get on...

Meanwhile the anthology of poems I've been working on with other members of the Brighton Stanza group is reaching completion, with a launch next Monday in Brighton.  It's been a great experience, bringing the work of 26 poets together.  I have a real sense of achievement and am looking forward to the launch immensely.

When I went to a life coach, about ten years ago now, to explore what I would do with the rest of my life, I vividly recall him saying "Sometimes you just have to jump"- meaning that if your gut is telling you to do something there are times when you should ignore the workings of the rational process that is holding you back.  I took him at his word and jumped by pulling out of the security of the legal profession ahead of the normal retirement date; I jumped too when we moved to France; and I feel in some ways that there's been another jump with my venture into the world of poetry - although, since I've been writing it on and off since I was a teenager it's less of a jump into the unknown than a return to the start, with the wish to do it properly this time round.

Antony Mair

Surviving St. Jude

I'd been pretty blasé about the great storm that was forecast for Sunday night.  I'd survived 1987 ok in London (though the awning over a neighbouring building site was blown away and landed on top of my car, successfully flattening it).  We were out to dinner on Sunday evening and the wind was getting up, but I thought we'd been there before.  The wind funnels up our road, so there are often times when it's a bit of a battle walking down it - particularly if you're accompanied by two small dogs that might be transformed into kites at any moment.  It's even worse when there's horizontal rain in your face.

We had all of that for the final dog walk on Sunday evening.  But the scary bit was in the early hours of the next morning.  Wind howl down the chimneys is one thing, but feeling the house rock slightly is another.  Again, we'd experienced this when staying next door in No. 8 when the building works were going on here in No. 7 - that part of the building is timber-framed, so there's a degree of give in it.  When the bedside table starts rocking beside you it's a bit scary.  However, I now know that it's even scarier when you're in No. 7, in the brick-built bit, and that starts moving.  Reminding yourself that the place has stood for 200 years becomes quite difficult when the wind is hitting the side of the house like a giant hooligan.

Today, of course, the sky is clear and sunlit and it's difficult to imagine there was any problem at all.  None of the trees on the other side of the valley seem to have been toppled, and we appear to have got off rather more lightly than other places.  But I'd still like to have a good long time before we have a repeat.

Antony Mair

Coastal Currents - art, art and more art

Outside 10 The Lawn, St Leonards-on-Sea

 Coastal Currents Arts Festival is now in its fourteenth year.  It's a two-week celebration of visual arts and performance, open studios, exhibitions and events.  And believe me, it's quite difficult to cover everything, even if you live here.

I decided to opt for some of the open studios - partly because of an enjoyable time I'd had last year, partly because we'd been invited to a couple and it seemed a good idea to sample more.  Our neighbours Bob and Claire Humm had asked us round to their house to have a look at what they had been up to.

Outside the Humms' house - no, the figure with his head in the stone is not real

Bob had constructed a diminutive cinema in the form of a compartment comprising six doors, with two cinema seats, one behind the other.  A little claustrophobic, but fun.  A screen showed a film of Claire in one of her Jack in the Green costumes, inspired by folklore.

I followed this up this weekend with a trundle round most of the 22 locations in Saint Leonard's where artists had opened their studios to the public.

Studio at 7 The Lawn, St. Leonard's

 At 10 The Lawn - a slightly dilapidated but beautiful Decimus Burton house - various works had been brought together in the back garden, and I interrupted the various artists over a late lunch.  A few doors away at No. 7 the studios of Nick Snelling and Adrienne Hunter were also in the back garden.  I then found myself in basements, industrial units, and rooms at the top of concrete staircases that might once have been offices.  Artists' resourcefulness never ceases to amaze. Between studios I stumbled on an exhibition entitled "Garden in the Garage", where a group of artists had taken over a large and empty space perfect for exhibiting their conceptual pieces with the theme of the garden.  It was great.

Garden  in the Garage

With some of the studios I was aware immediately that the work wasn't for me.  No criticism there - it's a question of taste.  You're then faced with the awkward question of how to leave without appearing boorish.  I came to the conclusion that a polite "thank you" without further ado was the only way to keep going without being caught up in insincere chitchat.  But if anyone has any better suggestions I'd be interested to hear.  It was a little sad on some occasions, when the artist had obviously been waiting, bored, for an hour or so without anyone crossing the threshold.  But with so much to see, I'm afraid that niceties were sacrificed.

No such scruples were necessary at Studio VII in Shepherd Street, where I spent a very happy time looking at the work of the seven artists exhibiting.  Lynne Bingham does mixed media pieces, a number of which were perspex cases in which old books had been placed with sections cut out and small objects inserted.  I'm not sure what that was about, but I liked them a lot.  Suzie Watts is another mixed media artist, working mainly in bronze and iron, whose small pieces packed quite a punch.  Another member of the group had done some rather fine ceramic bulls.  I'm sorry there isn't another day to go and see them again.

Antony Mair

Lynne Bingham's "Moral Essays"

Afrikàba - Festival of African and Caribbean Art

Sona Jobarteh  - photo courtesy of her website

Afrikàba - the Festival of African and Caribbean Art - is now in its fourth year in Hastings. It overlaps with the higher-profile Coastal Currents festival, which is devoted to the visual arts, so tends to get overlooked. 

I have mixed feelings about anything that combines the words "African" and "Caribbean".  "African" on its own is broad brush enough - what really links the Berbers in Morocco with the Kikuyu in Kenya? but linked with the Caribbean as well?  surely in the latter case only a distant past - yet we continue to lump them together.  It's rather as if a group of people in Nigeria set up an Anglo-Australian festival.  

But that's a side-issue.  We should probably be grateful for anything we can get that tells us more about the peoples and cultures of African states, and last night's opening event at Hastings Museum certainly did that.  Poetry was contributed by Akila Richards, picture right, originally from Liberia but now living in Brighton.  A performance poet, she recited her pieces with studied and beautiful gestures that were close to dance.  The words were almost shaped by her hands.  A beautiful poem called "Dancing with Grandmothers" went the whole way, with Akila dancing to a recording of her voice against a musical backing. 

Good though Akila was, the real star of the evening was Sona Jobarteh, described on the Afrikàba leaflet as a "Kora virtuosa".  In case that has you puzzled: the kora is a twenty-one stringed West African harp that dates back to the thirteenth century, when Mali was one of three West African empires that controlled trans-Saharan trade.  Sona Jobarteh comes from a Mali family of griots - storytellers and musicians, who act as a repository of oral tradition and advise royal personages.  She explained that only five families traditionally have the right to play the kora, and she is the first woman to do so.  

Accompanied by a drummer and three guitarists, she played several numbers to rapt attention.  One of them was in honour of a nomadic tribe that roams across the northern territory of a number of West African states - a noble and hospitable people, she said.  Looking round at the scattered audience of Guardian-readers in Hastings Museum, I could hardly think of a culture more alien.  But by this stage we were all on our feet at Sona's behest, for her showstopping final number that had us all dancing and clapping with enthusiasm.  

Antony Mair   

Art on the Stade

"Sunbathers" by Jeffery Camp RA

The trouble with things being on your doorstep is that you don't give them the attention they deserve.  This has certainly been true of the Jerwood Gallery's current exhibition of paintings by Jeffery Camp RA, entitled "The Road to Beachy Head".  Nothing in the publicity had particularly tempted me, so my visit to the exhibition was a particular pleasure.

Not that Camp's loose freedom with line and shallow layers of paint are normally my thing.  But after the initial jolt I began to look more closely.  In this group of paintings Camp, who formerly lived in Hastings, concentrates on the landscape of and near Beachy Head, just down the road.  But what makes the paintings unusual is his combination of elemental landscape with human figures or heads.  The impression is of human beings caught in an elemental environment beyond their control - or, as in "Sunbathers" above, rapturously united with nature.  It's not fashionable art, but it has a particular resonance that is usually the key to something important happening.

An incidental pleasure of nipping into the Jerwood Gallery is that they have rehung the permanent part of the collection, removing some and introducing others.  There are some terrific new appearances.  I particularly liked David Bomberg's "Portrait of Eunice Levi", but could happily have pocketed half a dozen or so others for the walls of the Shoebox.

Across the open space of the Stade is the Stade Hall - a featureless large room that is sometimes used for art exhibitions, sometimes for meetings.  At the moment there's an exhibition of paintings by Oliver Crowther called "Guardians of the Stade", with powerful portraits of local fisherfolk.  There's no sentimentality about them, and they're a good complement to the Jerwood's curated show.

Antony Mair

Wired Aerial Theatre on the Stade

Little did I think that the show put on in Hastings tonight would be my introduction to bungee-assisted dance.  Imagine five people dangling from wires on the face of a large screen on which images are projected, and you get an idea of the Wired Aerial Theatre's production of "As the World Tipped".  A crowd of a thousand or so of us stood in the gloom and slight drizzle on the open space of the Stade, by the seafront, as the show began, with some deafening music and a speeded-up simulation of the 2005 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, with voiceovers of delegates and five people onstage whizzing about with files.  When the talks collapsed, the fun started, with the stage first tilting then upending completely, before being raised in the air by a giant crane.  Clever effects followed, with the dancers/acrobats interacting with footage from Yann Arthus-Bertrand's film Home about climate change, and from Gideon Mendel's films about floods in Pakistan and Australia.  As continents fell apart, the actors fell with them; they ran vertically through a grassy meadow and fell off the sides of buildings that were themselves constructs of endless television screens with newscasters broadcasting climate change news.

Do you get a whiff of propaganda?  well yes, this was a work with a message - underscored at the end with the words "Demand Change" projected in capitals on the screen.  My problem with it as a work of art was that the message was over-explicit and over-simple.  Women in saris and small children standing in mud and staring soulfully at the camera have become a cliché for the West's indifference to the problems of underdeveloped countries.  A little more showing and a little less telling would have made a big difference.

As would a slight reduction in the volume of the sound.  With admirable political correctness, a screen had been placed at one side with text for the hard of hearing.  This displayed not only words that were spoken but also the nature of accompanying sound effects - "winds howl", "woman screams".  However, the noise level was such that anyone deaf would probably have got much of the point from the vibrations in the ground beneath our feet.  When the message came up with "Soft piano music" as we were being deafened by some less than tinkling ivories I thought they could do with replacing the sound engineer.

But if you looked at the show just as a spectacle there were some superb moments.  I particularly liked the sequence where a dancer posed in the centre of the screen as Lena Horne singing Stormy Weather.  The running up the screen was also good.  It was a fine way to celebrate the start of the Coastal Currents Festival, about which more later.

Antony Mair

Seafood and wine at Hastings - where else?

The correspondence columns of the Hastings Observer are well worth a read for measuring outrage against any proposal by the Council.  Hastings residents are not fond of change.  In recent weeks there has been protest against the imposition of an entry charge for the annual Seafood and Wine Festival, which took place over this weekend.  The Council, strapped for cash like all local authorities, had said that the Festival cost them £50,000 to support.  I'm not quite sure how this figure is made up, and whether it is gross or net of, for example, charges to stallholders for the privilege of mounting their stands on a drafty site which, last year, was awash with rain.  However, dire foreboding about the effect was expressed by local Cassandras.  "Look what happened to Eastbourne Air Show", they said darkly.

We were for once well-prepared.  Smugly armed with wristbands bought in advance at a discount, we were able to wander round an excellent selection of stalls.  I was a little puzzled by the bold advertisement for cheeseburgers from the 1066 Bakery (I thought burgers were made from horse these days, not seafood), but I suppose not everyone wanted fish.  Paul Webbe, owner of the eponymous restaurant just opposite the Stade, was in charge of a small army of staff serving queues of peoples with nicely-cooked delicacies - small fishcakes, sardine fillets and little dishes of whiting.  Pissarro's, opposite, had adopted a more European flavour, including squid stuffed with chorizo.  Mouthwatering.  

Alas, since our Chinese doctor has taken me off alcohol, I didn't sample the local wines from Carr Taylor et al.  But I did notice an attractive stall selling jams and chutneys.  

Along Rock-a-Nore there were further stalls that seemed to have only a marginal connection with seafood.  One man was optimistically peddling sunglasses, while another had a display of lurid coloured soaps.  The fishmongers in Rock-a-Nore were entering into the spirit, with an outside stall selling shrimps and crabs.

Paul, flanked by Polo and Martina Piatti

But the real event of the weekend was the transformation of Winkle Island into Fantasy Island, a fundraising event run by the Winkle Club. Fake palm trees had been erected round the paved island, deckchairs set up round the edge, and a sequence of musical acts entertained passers-by.  Refreshment was also on offer from the indefatigable Polo and Martina Piatti, aided on this occasion by Paul as a genuine Winkler.  A somewhat menacing papier-mâché mermaid cast a disapproving eye on anyone who failed to contribute.  

The numbers at the Festival were such that I wasn't sure the doom-predicters were right.  But certainly some were deterred, and took refuge in the Winklers' deck-chairs, sampling the tea and coffee on  offer and tipping some coins into the collecting box.  It's quite satisfying to think that the Council's loss may be the Winkle Club's gain.

Antony Mair

  

Missing the point with the bedroom tax

Pretty on the outside - beauty salon in George Street

The proliferation of nail boutiques and beauty salons in a time of austerity has reminded me of the occasion when a female friend who has difficulty with her weight explained to me that women in her situation tended to focus on handbags and shoes because it was less depressing than learning your true dress size.  

I like to think of this as an illustration of the predicament facing the present UK government with the so-called "bedroom tax".

Faced with an imbalance in public housing between persons purportedly occupying houses or flats too large for their needs and a growing number of people needing to be housed, the government has decided that there should be more mobility, and a greater matching of resources to requirements.  Sounds good, doesn't it?  Understandably, however, nobody is going to move out of their home unless they have to.  So the government has decided to wield the stick of partial removal of housing benefit if there is deemed to be a "spare bedroom".  So it's not so much a tax as a reduction in income received from the state.

Sounds sensible, doesn't it?  There are however a number of attendant problems.  First, the new rules don't cater for a number of cases that should properly count for exemption.  For example, a bedroom will be counted as spare even where a separated parent keeps it for a child who visits for part of the week.  Equally, a couple sleeping apart because of illness or disability are not recognised as needing the extra room.

More importantly, there's nowhere for these people to go even if they want to.  There's an acute shortage of social housing, inherited from the Thatcher era and the "right-to-buy" policy introduced by the Iron Lady's government.  The proceeds of sale should have gone to the building of replacement stock, but landed up fuelling the riptide economy of the 80s.  You'd have thought that in these circumstances the solution would lie in a massive programme of building, which would have the incidental benefit of kick-starting an ailing construction industry.  But no: the Nasty Party has decided that the construction industry is best assisted by subsidising mortgages for prospective homebuyers, thus fuelling another artificial surge in property prices and increasing the gap between rich and poor.

I was delighted to read in today's Guardian that the UN rapporteur on adequate housing is about to pronounce that the UK's policy infringes the Human Rights convention.  Her findings are being dismissed by the Department of Work and Pensions as the result of anecdotal evidence and a handful of meetings.  "Anecdotal evidence" is however the result of meeting victims on the ground and hearing their concerns.  I'm hoping that the case will find its way into the courts.

Meanwhile the government is championing the construction of a high speed rail link at a cost of £50 billion.  I call that polishing your nails instead of tackling your weight.   

Antony Mair 

Seamus Heaney - shaping the future

Without wishing to sound overly egocentric, Seamus Heaney's death last Friday came at a particularly poignant moment for me.  A month or so ago, some relatives of Paul's were visiting Hastings for a wedding, and I learnt that one of them had grown up on a farm in Co. Derry beside that of the Heaney family, and that she had known the great man and his siblings as a child.  "I liked the poems he wrote about his childhood," she said, "but I didn't really understand a lot of the others."

After she returned to N. Ireland, I took down my copy of Opened Ground, Heaney's poems 1966 - 1996, and read it cover to cover, with joy and total admiration.  I finished it just before returning to Belfast last Thursday for the funeral of Paul's sister-in-law.  The news of Heaney's death came between the two nights of wakes between death and funeral, and contributed to the already keen sense of grief and loss.  I felt it particularly not only because I had immersed myself in his poetry over the preceding month, but also because of the awareness I had gained of his personal attitudes and approach to life.  These deserve to be as influential on society at large as his poetry has been, and will continue to be, on his fellow poets.

At the end of Opened Ground there is a transcript of Heaney's Nobel Lecture, given in 1995 after he had been awarded the Nobel Prize for literature.  In it he recounts the incident when a minibus full of workers being driven home one January evening in 1976 was held up by armed and masked men and the occupants of the van ordered at gunpoint to line up at the side of the road:

Then one of the masked executioners said to them, "Any Catholics among you, step out here."  As it happened, this particular group, with one exception, were all Protestants, so the presumption must have been that the masked men were Protestant paramilitaries about to carry out a tit-for-tat sectarian killing of the Catholic as the odd man out, the one who would have been presumed to be in sympathy with the IRA and all its actions.  It was a terrible moment for him, caught between dread and witness, but he did make a motion to step forward.  Then, the story goes, in that split second of decision, and in the relative cover of the winter evening darkness, he felt the hand of the Protestant worker next to him take his hand and squeeze it in a signal that said no, don't move, we'll not betray you, nobody need know what faith or party you belong to.  All in vain, however, for the man stepped out of the line; but instead of finding a gun at his temple, he was pushed away as the gunmen opened fire on those remaining in the line, for these were not Protestant terrorists, but members, presumably, of the Provisional IRA.

It is difficult at times to repress the thought that history is about as instructive as an abattoir; that Tacitus was right and that peace is merely the desolation left behind after the decisive operations of merciless power... But...the birth of the future we desire is surely in the contraction which that terrified Catholic felt on the roadside when another hand gripped his hand, not in the gunfire that followed, so absolute and so desolate, if also so much a part of the music of what happens.

This quiet, distinguished, erudite genius of a poet spent most of his life trying, through his poetry, to create the future we desire, while acknowledging the music of what happens.  If you read the text of the lecture, or listen to it being read by the great man himself (click here for a link) it is impossible not to be both moved and inspired.  My only regrets are that it has taken me until this late stage of my life to discover the full scope of his genius, and that he will no longer be producing the beautifully crafted work that will survive long after his own disappearance.  

Antony Mair

To believe or not to believe

St. Clements' Church, Hastings Old Town

Seven or eight years ago I started looking more closely at my religious faith.  I'd been brought up, and had remained, a Roman Catholic, but I found myself increasingly questioning some of the fundamental articles of the Creed.  The Virgin Birth was a bit iffy, but as I read more about the origins of Christianity I had growing doubts about the divinity of Jesus.  I could see how it all tied into a neat and logical theological package, but I felt that Jesus himself would have been astonished at people asserting he was God the Son.  

I was not at this stage doubting the existence of God himself.  There had always been a strong spiritual element in my way of thinking and a life without God had always seemed - well, rather a waste of time.  So it was a bit of a body-blow when I read Conceiving God by cognitive archaeologist David Lewis-Williams.  Mr Lewis-Williams drew on what he had learned from studies of caves and cave-paintings to argue that religious experience did not derive from any contact with an external deity.  Rather, the concept of God was the explanation our forefathers gave for phenomena that are essentially within, and part of the workings of, the human brain.

I have never shrunk from the conclusions of science.  If science is able to prove that the earth is round rather than flat I see no reason to maintain the contrary.  David Lewis-Williams' arguments were sufficiently cogent for me to accept them.  However, I found the conclusion depressing.  If God did not exist, and there is nothing beyond what we can see, life had very little meaning.  Moreover, the secular/humanist codes of behaviour did not strike me as having sufficient inspiration behind them to be accepted by the major part of humanity.  The future seemed bleak.  The churches that stud our towns and villages would become entirely redundant.  The fragile foundations of our society would collapse.

However, it appears that my gloom may be unjustified.  I've just read a book called Proof of Heaven by the neurosurgeon Eben Alexander.  The book was written after Mr Alexander had been in a coma for seven days, in the course of which he had a near death experience.  This involved a journey to a place of great beauty in the presence of a guide, and a nonverbal communication between him and a superior presence.  

Most importantly, after Mr Alexander's recovery he was unable to find any physical explanation for his experience.  He knew, from his medical files, that the part of his brain that would normally have produced this sort of vision was so damaged that it could not have been the source.  He used his knowledge of the human brain to consider every possible alternative, but to no effect.

The Virgin Birth remains iffy for me, as does the divinity of Jesus.  But I'm delighted to think that there may after all be something beyond our immediate surroundings. 

Antony Mair

August Bank Holiday - relaxing or exhausting?

The miniature golf course

People talk about relaxing over the bank holiday, but we're both poleaxed after this one.  On Saturday we'd been invited to a sixtieth birthday party by family connections of mine.  It was held in a stunning old barn behind their very beautiful small manor house.  Although the dress code was "smart casual" everyone seemed very glammed up.  The barn was full of flowers and the beams draped with hops.  The 120 or so people present seemed to own most of the land in East Sussex, not to mention some of the neighbouring counties.  Much talk of shooting parties and harvests.  The immaculately-groomed woman sitting beside me at dinner said "I think people are very judgmental", which I only later understood as "I know you're gay but I don't mind even if others do."  The women seemed to specialise in greetings that involved effusions of shrieks.  It took a while for the men to loosen up and indulge in some bluff teasing that your average feminist would have probably found offensive - but then your average feminist would probably have to put up with quite a lot in a farming community.  A good time was had by all.

The atmosphere in the plush barn could not have been more different from a barbecue we attended on Sunday, given by a couple of ladies in Saint Leonard's, and largely attended by representatives of Saint Leonard's LGBT community - quite a lot of Ls, a certain amount of Gs, one T and some apparent heterosexuals who could have been Bs but you never want to ask.  The ladies were heavy drinkers and very self-confident, somewhat eclipsing the men.  There was enough muscle power for them to erect a marquee without outside assistance but the sun shone on the festivities and we basked in their spacious garden.  

Friends stayed overnight on the Sunday and we engaged in seaside pleasures today: ice-creams at the Italian ice cream parlour, a game of miniature golf and then a burger at the Pelican Diner, before the friends departed and we could regain our sleepy existence.  Socialising's fun, but it's nice when it stops!

Antony Mair  

Hastings - deprived?

View of Hastings Old Town from East Hill, with the pier in the background

Shortly after news came through that funding had been obtained for the renovation of Hastings Pier, a report was published by the Office for National Statistics last week, which concluded that Hastings is high on the list of the most impoverished coastal towns in the UK.  There are a number of problems with this.  First and foremost, the conclusions are based on figures for 2010.  Everyone locally agrees that immense progress has been made since then.  There is an increasing influx of new residents, particularly in the arts and media sectors.  This usually means that an area is on the up.  Call me biassed, but my impression has always been that artists and the gay community are often the first to spot potential, and precede the subsequent arrival of the middle class.  That certainly seems to be happening in Hastings Old Town and parts of Saint Leonard's.  

On the other hand, it's impossible to deny the existence of deprivation.  There's a shortage of local employment possibilities, which is in part due to a lack of investment by businesses.  This in turn is partly due to poor road and rail access.  Local difficulties are compounded by London boroughs sending benefits claimants down to cheaper lodgings in Hastings, which increases the ratio of people in the town on benefits together with the attendant social problems involved.      

We know all of this.  There's no quick-fix solution - Luddites lamenting the building of the Jerwood Gallery and pleading for extended amusement parks fail to appreciate the changes in visitors' tastes, and the increased diversity of their demands.  Improved road and rail access requires enormous investment and is not going to happen in the short term.  The town's council is probably doing its best, in difficult circumstances, but is bound to make mistakes along the way. 

However, there are a number of major plus points that nobody seems to be mentioning.  The town has a wonderful community spirit.  The voluntary sector seems to be thriving, even if more helpers are always needed.  There is a vibrant social life in the pubs and clubs.  Festivals and celebrations abound.  The fishing industry, historic core of the Old Town, looks set to benefit from changes in the quota system.  The diversity of people and interests, combined with a highly egalitarian attitude, makes for a very special place.  I can't speak for Blackpool, Margate and Clacton, also high on the list.  But I know that in Hastings a historic figure for deprivation only tells part of the story.  

Antony Mair 

Beachy Head from Saint Leonard's

So we're all terrorists now...

David Miranda and his partner journalist Glenn Greenwald

(reproduced courtesy of The Mirror newspaper)

There's been a flurry of protest in the flabby English press about the detention of David Miranda at Heathrow Airport, purportedly under powers conferred by Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2006.  But not enough.  The Home Secretary, Theresa May, has run to cover, saying it was in the domain of the police, who enjoy operational independence.  (Remember her?  she was the one who assured Parliament of the strength of the government's case to deport Abu Qatada after a deadline had been missed in the procedure.)  On Radio 4 this morning Sir Malcolm Rifkind, chairman of the intelligence and security committee, supposed watchdog over the British intelligence agencies, defended the action on the basis that Edward Snowden's revelations had assisted terrorists.

Everyone has been bandying references to Schedule 7 as if we all know it intimately.  But we don't.

Schedule 7 empowers the police to question people at airports for the purpose of determining whether they appear to be a person who is or has been concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.  The definition of "terrorism" includes the use or threat of action where that use or threat is designed to influence the government, and the action involved endangers another person's life, or creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public.

David Miranda, it is alleged, may have been transporting electronic files of information leaked by Edward Snowden.  Mr Snowden has been leaking a substantial amount of information relating to wide-ranging monitoring, by the US and other governments, of electronic communications.  The only way in which he can be considered to be committing an act of terrorism is that his disclosures are endangering people's lives.  Sir Malcolm considers that the disclosures reveal techniques that terrorists can now circumvent, and hence they are damaging.    

I have a dual reaction to this.  First, it's the first I've heard of Mr Snowden being described as a terrorist.  By extension, Guardian reporters, and any of us who relay anything they publish, become terrorists too.  Secondly, the lesson for whistleblowers is that they have to be highly selective in what they leak.  It was never a level playing-field when it came to individuals alleging abuse by large organisations.  It looks as if  it's just tipped further in the wrong direction.   

Antony Mair

The millefeuille rediscovered

One of my sad disappointments in recent years has been the decline of the millefeuille.  Sad creature that I am, I've always had a weakness for pâtisseries.  When I spent a year in Heidelberg in the sixties, on a very meagre wage, my weekly treat was a gooey cake - of the Black Forest Gâteau type - in one of the town's cafés, where I was surrounded by buxom ladies in Tyrolean hats tucking into whipped cream.  In later years, the existence of the Pâtisserie Bordelaise in Ribérac was sufficient inducement for me to buy my first holiday home nearby.

The millefeuille, with its delicious combination of puff pastry, crême patissière and sticky icing on top, is a staging-point fairly close to the terminus of heaven.  But I've noticed in recent years that the name has been degraded.  Having placed my order in any one of a variety of rather self-important eateries, I've been dismayed to receive two pieces of shortbread with strawberries and cream in the middle.  I have felt like bursting into the kitchen and asking whether education in maths has now declined to the point where people can't distinguish between deux/two and mille/a thousand.  But, being a middle-class English male I've just eaten the pathetic substitute for what I was expecting, in a state of seething resentment.

However, I'm happy to say that the millefeuille lives on.  The other evening we were in London and, after the theatre, had dinner at The Delaunay in the Aldwych.  I'd not been before, but was familiar with its sister-restaurant The Wolseley, in Piccadilly - a bustling grand brasserie with a Central European flavour to the food.  The Delaunay has taken the formula a stage further.  Inspired, its website says, by the grand café tradition of Europe, it serves food throughout the day.  Germanic leanings are shown by the use of the German word Konditorei for their pâtisserie section.

I'd wolfed a particularly delicious steak tartare - always a mistake late at night because of its particular indigestibility, but one can't always be sensible - and was quietly groaning and thinking of the taxi back to our lodgings when I noticed a millefeuille on the menu.  Fearing disappointment yet again, I quizzed the waiter, who gave me a rundown on the Delaunay version, which involved puff pastry, a lemon cream and some praline.  A masterpiece of the patissier's art arrived shortly after I had succumbed to temptation, and was placed reverently before me.  It was perfect in every way - the puff pastry with a slight biscuity texture, the lemon cream tangy, the praline giving it a slight crunch.  Heaven on a plate.

I am therefore delighted to report that rumours of the millefeuille's demise are largely exaggerated, and that in the opulent surroundings of The Delaunay it continues to thrive.

Antony Mair

The pleasures of portraits

"Inner Dialogue" by Jamie Routley

(by kind permission of the artist)

I had to go to London the other day, and had arranged to meet a friend for lunch at the National Portrait Gallery restaurant - handy for Charing Cross, where the train arrives.  Arriving a little ahead of time, I visited  the BP Portrait Award exhibition, which was a total delight.  

Portraits don't really lend themselves to some of the excesses of contemporary art.  Picasso probably bent the genre as much as he could, with dislocated body parts, but you could still see, more or less, that it was a picture of a human figure.  The BP portraits are largely figurative, though there's the odd gimmick - Agnes Toth's painting of Drummond Money-Coutts, the Magician, for example, is a triple portrait, three-quarter face, full face and profile, while Daniel Coves has his sitter with her back to the artist in Net No. 10.  I found  some of the "straight" portraits very powerful - the prizewinning Das Berliner Zimmer, for example, by Owen Normand, or Mark Fairnington's hyperrealistic The Rose and the Bee.

The pleasure of portraits lies in the painter's ability to get under the sitter's skin.  At their best (Goya's portraits of the Spanish royal family, for example) they have a way of revealing more about the sitter than is entirely comfortable.  It's that combination of detachment and intimacy that makes portraits irresistible, whatever the technique.

Self-portaits - of which there are a number in the exhibition - take the process in a different direction.  None of us really knows who we are.  Our identity is a muddle of preconceptions and suppressions. The artist's painting of himself, consequently, engenders questioning and uncertainty.  The intimacy of an ordinary portrait is compounded by the onlooker's intrusion on a dialogue between the artist and his image of himself.  For this reason I particularly liked Jamie Routley's Inner Dialogue, where the artist appears to be looking back at the spectator but is in fact looking into a mirror opposite another mirror, so that there is an infinite series of reflections.  The personal props - books, ornaments, the butterfly as an image of an instant of time captured,  and the hourglass as an image of time passing - contribute further to the feelings of intimacy and intrusion.     

Hurry along and see it.  Oh, and lunch on the 3rd floor was good too.

Antony Mair   

National Portrait Gallery - north front

Don Pasquale at Glyndebourne

 Picnicking on the lawn at Glyndebourne

After the seaside jollifications of Hastings Old Town Carnival, we found ourselves at Glyndebourne on Sunday for a performance of Don Pasquale, with the skittish Danielle de Niese in the star - indeed the only - female role.  After a slight scare about the possibility of rain - which sends assembled picnickers under cover where they camp like refugees in dinner jackets - the weather was miraculous.  The result was one of those perfect afternoons where the misery of the world can be ignored for at least a few hours.  The gardens stretched on all sides in a profusion of greenery, with pastoral views worthy of Capability Browne.  The vast majority of people were togged up in dinner jackets and smart frocks, which is always a tad surreal, but is part of the scene.  The grey pound was being burnt in fistfuls, as champagne was poured and foie gras consumed on picnic tables lugged in from substantial estate cars parked a few hundred yards away.

I find myself wondering on such occasions what would happen if a bomb were to fall or a fire to break out - captains of industry, leading members of the Bar and the judiciary, senior civil servants would be wiped out in a trice.  There is an overwhelming atmosphere of privilege that is an essential part of the Glyndebourne experience - and of course each of us who attends enjoys basking in the environment, for however brief a period.  

Even those with the largest chip on their pink shoulder would be ravished by the music.  Whatever one may feel about the bruising expense of the evening, with tickets ranging from £100 to £250 apiece, the singing, orchestral playing and the productions are world class.  Don Pasquale is a fairly daft plot with characters  difficult to empathise with (though I did wonder whether some of the audience could identify with the concept of an elderly gent being ripped off by an unscrupulous younger woman).  The music is fabulous, with a tune every minute.  And the best of it all is that it's just three quarters of an hour away from Hastings.

Antony Mair   

Bust of Sir George Christie, founder of Glyndebourne

Hastings Old Town Carnival - the fun continues

In the pink at the Pram Race

Two young ladies don toppers and seaboots for the Seaboot race

By the time you get to Wednesday in Carnival Week you feel yourself flagging a bit.  We've had the Whelk-eating competition and the Seaboot race.  We went on one of the Old Town walks run by the Hastings Preservation Society yesterday, which was an interesting foray into the early nineteenth century and the Napoleonic Wars, when there was a serious risk of invasion by the French.  (Military forces were billeted in the town, bringing new prosperity and - this is England, where property has always been a bit of an obsession - a rash of new building.)  We followed that with a cream tea in All Saints Church.  Then there was the Winkle Club's putting competition on the miniature golf course, where we put up a seriously poor performance. 

The high point of Wednesday in Carnival Week is the Pram Race.  Forget any image this may conjure up of people pushing old-fashioned perambulators or even buggies through the streets.  "Pram" has become a flexible term, meaning virtually any pushable device on wheels.  Teams assemble to choose a theme and then dress in appropriate costumes, pushing their "pram" in the centre.  This year's themes varied from space age, with a small space capsule, through Monopoly, Carmen Miranda lookalikes, doctors and nurses, the Navy, to Worzel Gummidge and his friends.

The competitive element, which makes it a race, involves teams calling in at every one of the numerous pubs on a route through the Old Town, where they have to give the correct answer to a question.  When I was in the Dragon, someone dressed as a pumpkin (I think) lurched up to the bar and was required to give the height of the owner, the immensely tall and genial Paddy, to the nearest half-inch.  "Six foot six and a half" he said.  "Wrong", howled the bar staff, which meant that the pumpkin had to down a shot of alcohol.

By this stage the noise level, and the crowds, had risen to levels of a miniature Rio.   George Street was awash with people in costumes and full make-up.  Yet again the propensity of large men to cross-dress was to the fore.  The buzz of talk and general hubbub of the participants was accompanied by a background of rattling collecting tins for the local charities.  We'd taken a fairly good supply of small coins, but these were rapidly exhausted.  In spite of a fairly constant flow of alcohol the mood was still genial when we left around 9 pm.  A couple of hours later, when I took the dogs for their last walk of the day, there were some rather bedraggled Cinderellas still downing pints outside the pubs.  Hopefully by that time the collecting tins were full.