Hastings poets, the Dordogne and new technology

Renovation target - but not the subject of what follows!!

 

The Hastings poetry group I belong to meets monthly and we read things we've written on a given theme.  The group isn't particularly highbrow and the members like some light verse thrown in with the heavier stuff.

 

The theme for this week's meeting is "A Memorable Room".  I had great difficulty with it, but interpreted it widely and remembered vividly certain houses that Paul and I visited in the Dordogne for valuations.  They were ruins that had been lovingly "restored" by their doting British owners - usually without the benefit of any prior experience, knowledge of local requirements or indeed understanding of the native domestic architecture.  It was often difficult to break the news gently to these well-meaning people that they had got it all wrong. 

 

I am not sufficiently proud of my achievement to set it out on the page - but thought I might try an experiment with it on this occasion by attaching it as an audio file.   This is the first time I've tried this, and when I listened to it it sounded as if I was speaking at the bottom of a bathtub, but if you like the idea, let me know!  Click here to listen - it will bring up a new screen and you then click on the arrow in the top left corner (and switch the sound on on your computer if you haven't already done so!).

 

Antony Mair

 

Radio 4 - dull, dull, dull

Broadcasting House - temple of dullness

Forgive another little rant.  My father spent the major part of his working life working for the Beeb, and until his death in 1971 I always regarded the Corporation as a hive of creativity and – if not enlightenment – ideas.  On weekends before we went to France I would usually have Radio 4 on in the kitchen, and considered myself something of a fan.  Now, however, I am dismayed to find it – well, dull.

Take an example of the schedule for yesterday, Monday November 26.  After the Today programme, which I’ve moaned about enough in the past (please please John Humphreys do us a favour and retire), there’s Start the Week.  This used to be a jolly magazine programme: it has now become leaden.   At 945, fifteen minutes of fiction, followed at 10 am by the earnestness of Woman’s Hour (actually Woman’s Forty-Five Minutes, since the last fifteen are devoted to a fifteen minute drama).  At 11 am, to lift the spirits: “After a cancer diagnosis, musician Nile Rodgers walks the streets of New York”.  Wow.  At 11.30, Episode 3 of “55 and over”, discussing the prospect of having children as an older person.  Just the thing to listen to after a cancer diagnosis.  12 noon, and we’re into “You and Yours”, the consumer programme that I was already finding insufferably smug eight years ago.  This takes us up to the weather forecast for a few minutes before The World at One – something of a repeat of the Today programme, in which Martha Kearney hectors politicians.

Not much of a laugh in any of this.  I’ll spare you the rest of the day, which continues in similarly turgid vein.  At 6.30 pm there is at last a comedy show – and guess what, it’s “I’m Sorry, I haven’t a Clue”, which started in – wait for it – 1972.   As far as I can see this is the only comedy slot in the entire day.

The BBC has, of course, larger fish to fry with the problems of Newsnight accusing the wrong people of nefarious activity: but it would be nice to have some freshness and dynamism back on Radio 4.   If it were possible to switch it off more than I switch it on that’s probably what I’d be doing.

Antony Mair 

 

Hastings Herring Fair

One of my former clients used to travel over to Rotterdam each year for the local herring festival, invited by a local insurance broker.  The impression I got was of an alcoholic binge involving more aquavit than herring.  By contrast, Hastings' first Herring Fair was pretty staid.  The event wasn't helped by the weather: yesterday we had pouring rain followed by gale-force winds howling in from the sea in the evening; today we were lucky to escape with intermittent torrential showers.  True to form, however, the British public put on their waterproofs and their best foot forward.  On the Stade Open Space marquees had been erected for a variety of stallholders, ranging from the fishmongers and restaurateurs to local gift shops.  It made for a pleasant if modest outing in the course of the weekend.

Behind this event lies a lot of work to support the local fishing community.  There has been a fishery at Hastings for more than a thousand years, and many of today's fishing families can trace their forebears in the fishing industry over hundreds of years.  Hastings has the largest beach-launched fishing fleet in the country, and is proud of its fishing traditions.

However, the broad brush of the EU, with quotas and restrictions, has had a severe impact on the local fishing industry, and efforts are being made to promote their cause with Brussels.  I've held back from any volunteer work to date, feeling I wanted to be sure about anything I took on; but this is a cause I can fully sympathise with, and I'm seeing how I can become involved.  So be prepared to hear more about fish on the blog!

Antony Mair

Trial by the ill-informed

Slot machines on the front, Hastings -

when the rule of law goes out the window, life's just a lottery

 

The appointment of a new Director-General coincided with BBC trustees appearing before the House of Commons public accounts select committee to explain the settlement with George Entwistle.  Today the Guardian newspaper reports: "Labour MP Margaret Hodge, who chairs the committee, was scathing about the size of the payoff.  'It demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of how this is viewed in public given that it is licence fee payers' money,' she said. 'It is incredulous' (sic)."

 

Leaving to one side the fact that Ms Hodge appears not to know the difference between incredulous and incredible, I am concerned above all by the knee-jerk reaction coming from someone at this level.  On the 5 pm news on Radio 4 yesterday, when, predictably, twenty minutes were spent covering the appointment of the Director-General and grilling Lord Patten about his own performance - with needless and insulting aggression on the part of the interviewer - it emerged, unsurprisingly, that the settlement with George Entwistle had been negotiated in detail with the assistance of expert lawyers on both sides, and that the BBC had been advised that if they did not give him the amount now criticised as excessive, they would be likely to face a larger award in the courts.  So the BBC had no choice.  Perhaps Ms Hodge should bone up on the law.

 

Similar moralising has been evident in the Prime Minister's criticism of tax avoidance - described as "morally repugnant".  This in spite of the fact that avoidance is within the framework of the existing law.  No mention of companies' duty to their shareholders to maximise profits, or of the criticism that directors might receive for paying excessive tax when the amount concerned could go to dividends.  If Parliament's unhappy about the ability to avoid tax it should change the law and leave moralising to others better equipped.

 

If you take this together with the Twitter frenzy in the paedophile scandal there is a worrying trend in the direction of mob rule.  Fortunately Lord McAlpine has brought some sense into the equation by suing the media and tweeters right left and centre.  I would like someone equally powerful to remind MPs that they are the legislators and that, instead of criticising legal behaviour, it is within their power to change the law.  Without legal certainty, life's just a lottery and most of us lose out.

 

Antony Mair

 

 

Living with builders

Eric the kitchen fitter, hard at work

 





We're in our I'm not quite sure which week of building works - but it's probably been the most populated.  In No. 7 Tackleway, aka the Shoebox, we've had Eric and Dave fitting the new kitchen, Luke the electrician doing new lighting, and Paul putting down the foundations for the lath and plaster relining.  Meanwhile in No. 8 we've had Jamie measuring up for five new window-boxes (no, not the things you put flowers in, but the boxes that sash windows go into) and Brian painting the exterior.  Plus of course scaffolders, who make intermittent appearances to put up new or tweak existing structures, and Rob, the overseer, who also calls in with a cheery hello - usually to ask for cash. 

Needless to say, there are endless minor decisions: the exact positions of ceiling lights, bearing in mind the need to light pictures as well as fitting in with joists positioned in 1800 without apparent foresight; colours for the two front and back doors; preventing Brian from putting gloss paint on the interior of the windows etc. etc.

And, of course, we get to know the builders as they get to know us: Dave's love of sea fishing, Brian's feeling he's come down in the world, being now employed by someone else after being self-employed for thirty years; Paul's problems with selling his house.  My small friend is adept at keeping them all happy with endless supplies of tea and coffee, and everyone seems very cheerful.  But I am beginning to dread that moment when there's a knock on the door at 8 am, or having a morning bath with a painter at the window!

We thought we'd be finished with everything by the end of the year, which looks increasingly optimistic: that's the other thing with builders - you start off assuming foolishly that they will be there every day for six weeks or so, and then learn that somewhere else someone else has the same idea, and that you're actually sharing the builders rather than monopolising them.  We wish ourselves bon courage on a regular basis and look forward to it all being over!

Antony Mair

We're not the only ones with scaffolding in the neighbourhood...

A weekend in Arundel

Yesterday we toddled along the coast to Arundel, this side of Chichester, to join friends for the birthday celebration of our friend Lucy Hards.  Arundel, which I had not visited for at least fifty years, is dominated by a fine castle, home of the Duke of Norfolk (although not his real home, since he lives in a house in the grounds, which is more convenient).  The town itself consists of a small number of streets full of elegant seventeenth and eighteenth century houses. 

Lucy's partner Emma had booked us into dinner at The Town House, pictured above.  If you are passing anywhere near Arundel, I thoroughly recommend a visit to this excellent restaurant - not only for the food, which was delicious, but also for the ceiling - not something I usually mention in restaurant reviews.  However, this one is exceptional: someone in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century installed a sixteenth century Florentine coffered ceiling, made from gilded walnut, which is something of great beauty.  It was a pleasure to be eating under it - and in my case the foie gras, halibut and honeycomb parfait were made even better for the experience.

I would like to be as complimentary about the Avisford Hilton, where we stayed the night.  They'd given us a great price, so I suppose I should have suspected we would not be in the lap of luxury.  It's a sprawling hotel two floors tall, and the staff were kind and willing.  The effect of the endless corridors was depressing, with doorclosers on every door giving a prison-like effect.  Our room was hopelessly overheated, which made sleep difficult, even with the window open and the heating turned off in both bedroom and bathroom.  The other guests looked as if they had been bumped off an overbooked flight to Alicante - snobbish I know, but it's not what you expect from a Hilton.  You'd have thought you couldn't go wrong for £89 for a room and breakfast, but it's not much good if you can't sleep!  What was particularly galling was that I subsequently discovered that we could have stayed in a nice room in The Town House for about the same amount -  grrr.

Antony Mair

Meanwhile, back in Tackleway...

Scaffolding on the front of No.s 7 and 8

 

Hastings Old Town is a maze of scaffolding at the moment: in addition to our two houses, and that of our neighbours at No. 11, who are doing a major refurbishment, there is a network of scaffold poles on another neighbour's house at the back, not to mention the Crown Inn behind.  "Elfen safety", is the recurring phrase.  Working off a ladder is so old-fashioned.

 

So, while paedophilia and energy price-rigging scandals rage in the UK; while the populations of EU countries take to the streets to protest against austerity, and missiles fly between Gaza and Israel, not to mention Syria; while the Americans fret about their fiscal cliff and China changes its leadership; we are preoccupied with the more domestic concerns of doing up the Shoebox and Matchbox.  In the Shoebox every room on the upper three floors now has the south-facing wall stripped back to the brick, so that slats can be fixed before the plastering starts - three coats of lime plaster, each taking a couple of weeks to dry.  On Monday a separate contingent of workmen is due to appear for the installation of the new kitchen in the basement, together with an electrician who is to redo lighting throughout.  In the Matchbox the façade is being painted to match the Shoebox and a number of sash windows have to have the boxes replaced, since they are suffering from rot.

 

The lessons we learnt when redoing our house in Ribérac can be summarised as: understand the old forms of construction so that repairs are consistent with the original logic;  don't take short cuts since it will prove more expensive in the long run; and keep up the maintenance rather than letting things decay.  Simple really.  But very different from the "botch and skimp" mentality that seems to be prevalent with a lot of houseowners.

 

The chaos will be continuing until the end of the year, which means that we acquire increasing intimacy with builders.  This has its amusing moments: such as when the carpenter innocently asked whether our dog Balzac is named after a Disney character; or when a kitchen installer said he was glad there was a loo nearby since he suffered from a bladder complaint -  the words "too much information" seem unknown in the construction business! 

 

Antony Mair