Looking back, looking ahead

The Roman god Janus, looking back to the past and forward to the future

I write this in the midst of a howling southwesterly gale, which seems to have been going on for about a week.  I thought this sort of thing only happened at Land's End or the Shetland Islands, but evidently not.  The northwest corner of the Matchbox is timber-framed on both walls, as a result of which, when the wind screams off the sea, there is distinct movement in the top bedroom, where we have been sleeping - not to mention a roar down the chimney.  We keep reminding ourselves that the building has stood for more than two centuries, but it takes a bit of getting used to.

It's been a year of immense transition: moving country, settling in a town we didn't know, refurbishing the Shoebox and Matchbox, getting to know new people.  It's seven months since we left France, and only now do I feel we're beginning to settle.  We hope to move back into the Shoebox at the beginning of February, and by that stage we should be approaching normality.

In the wider world, I find it impossible not to feel concerned about what is happening.  We have lost faith in our churches, our policemen and the media.  The guardians of civilised standards appear to be falling away, one by one.  I have little faith, either, in our squabbling and posturing politicians.  More fundamentally, I sense that the growth model of capitalism - on which global "economic recovery" is based - is now obsolete.  What I am hoping for in the New Year is for a wind as strong as our current gale to blow out the cobwebs of old concepts and bring back originality, flair and some lateral thinking.  And then for some calm and some sunshine.

A very happy New Year to you all.

Antony Mair 

Happy Yule

 

 

Until recently I had always thought that references to "Yule" and "Yuletide" were folksy Disney-speak, going with logs, real or chocolate.  "Christmas" was the obvious term for the festival celebrated on 25th December, with all its Christian connotations and origins.  I knew that the Fathers of the Church latched onto the symbolism of the arrival of Christ and the period just after the winter solstice; and that the early Church grafted its festivals onto pre-existing pagan ones.  But I'd never really put it all together.

The Celts and Druids had a tradition where the waning year was represented by the Holly King, who did battle with the Oak King, representing the waxing year, who would reign until midsummer.  The Oak King is behind the custom of burning the Yule log - "Yule" being a Germanic pagan festival in the same period. It has been suggested that the word is linked to the word "Wheel". 

The period after the solstice was - and is - usually the coldest and hardest in the year.  There was no food available for animals and to avoid the cost of feeding them through the winter they would be slaughtered.  This gave an excuse for a gastronomic binge.

So there you have it - holly, Yuletide log, and lots of eating and drinking.  Sound familiar?   "Yule" seems to bring pagans and Disney together, which is an apt summary of what happens in the UK at this time of year.  So that's what I wish you all: a very happy Yule.

Antony Mair

Last days of scaffolding

I have almost forgotten when the scaffolding first went up: but apparently it will be coming down this weekend at the front - the back still has it since the new windows at No. 8 need painting, which can only happen after the Christmas break.  The picture above shows it at its most picturesque: but for the past couple of days it has been like living behind Niagara Falls, due to the amount of rain.  In fact, we woke this morning to find that the well in the basement of both houses seemed to be filling up, rather alarmingly.  An emergency drain-clearing company was called out, and a certain amount of prodding and pumping took place.  The water is slowly subsiding.  Our new friend Steve the Drainage Man is to come back for a more detailed inspection when it has drained away.

Living with builders has been more than wearing.  There have been times when the only place to escape has been the basement kitchen of No. 8, due to painters at windows and joiners wherever the painters aren't - if you see what I mean.  No. 7 has had the second coat of lime plaster drying throughout, but today the final coat has gone on and I am actually organising a painter to come in and redecorate at the beginning of January.  Phew.  I am hoping we shall be able to move back there at the beginning of February - there are just the small matters of a new bathroom to be installed, bookshelves in the study, redecoration throughout, and something done to the battered floorboards. 

Boundaries are a concept foreign to builders: they display great curiosity about us and our lives, and somehow expect us to be interested in theirs.  The idea that they are simply there to perform a service for us without necessarily becoming our nearest and dearest is entirely alien.  One of the joiners came into the kitchen one day and asked what I was preparing for dinner.  He then told me what he would be cooking that evening.  It's difficult at this point not to say "shouldn't you be getting back to that window?"

Roll on February!

Antony Mair

 

Meanwhile, Santa's on his way...at the Dolphin, at any rate!

The end of the world...but not for Nigella

Something going wrong in the Christmas season?

 

Christmas is always a tad surreal, but seems particularly so this year.  People who have never previously heard of Central America are now muttering knowledgeably about the Mayan calendar and imminent Armageddon.  The other night we heard a programme on the dreaded Radio 4 about American "survivalists" who have constructed bunkers into which they intend to retreat on Thursday night.  Appearing on Radio 4 usually requires removal of any sense of humour, and the survivalists fitted the bill.  I considered the possibility of our also retiring to a bunker, if we can find one at this late stage, but rejected it on the basis that a post-Armageddon social life restricted to dinners with survivalists is too dire to contemplate.

 

One person who must share this point of view is gastro-celeb Nigella Lawson, currently featuring in a cookery series called Nigellisima.  (So no hint of a personality cult there.)  At a time of austerity, belt-tightening and turnip-cooking, Nigella has decided to swim against the culinary flow.  Between shots of a glitteringly festive London we had romantic pictures of Venice, with mouthwatering goodies on display.  Her recipes feature a cornucopia of exotic ingredients: marsala and mascarpone abounded, though a winter salad, constructed from three varieties of radicchio, was included to cut the richness.  Nigella prepared the last in a silk dress cut low over her shapely bosom, arching her elegant brows as she smiled into the lens.  At the end we saw a gathering of London glitterati sampling her dishes.  Not a turnip or survivalist in sight.  I'm not sure what the Great British Public thought of it, as they watched with a tray of microwaved Iceland produce on their laps, but we enjoyed it. 

 

Actually, I might get in touch with her and see whether she's retiring to a bunker, and, if so, where.

 

Antony Mair

Santa looks for a cab to avoid infestation

 

 

High camp in Hastings and Bexhill

 Aida - Act IV

 

Verdi's magnificent opera "Aida", which we saw on Saturday at the Hastings Odeon via the Met Opera HD transmission, has its camp moments - particularly in the Met's production.  Close-ups of Olga Borodina as Amneris brought Mrs Slocum to mind at times, from the old sitcom "Are you being served", and the barechested soldiers looked as if they had just popped in between the gym and a Gay Pride march.  This grandest of grand operas seemed, curiously, to work best in the last Act, with the intimate beauty of the entombed lovers.  But it was still a feast for the eyes and ears all the way through.  Alas, we were only ten in the auditorium.  Those who are unable to get into the London cinemas for these showings should come down here to boost the numbers.

 

A very different performance yesterday afternoon, at Bexhill's De la Warr Pavilion: the London Gay Men's Chorus's Christmas show.  I didn't know what to expect, but as things turned out I loved every minute of it and found myself positively weeping with delight at the combination of camp comedy and undiluted professionalism. 

 

After a dismal week with builders, the weekend lifted the spirits: better weather also helped, so we hope to be ready for the week ahead.

 

Antony Mair

 

Christmas cheer

Every month I attend a meeting of the so-called Hastings Poets and we read out poems we've written on a particular theme.  Experience has taught me that the participants enjoy light verse more than cutting-edge contemporary efforts, so I try to do something they enjoy.  For our next meeting the theme is a poem in the voice of a pet or other animal, and it occurred to me it would be nice to do something seasonal.  Research revealed that Santa Claus and his reindeer had their origin in the Norse legend of Odin's midwinter hunt through the sky on an eight-legged horse called Sleipnir.  This gave me the idea for the following, which I hope you all enjoy!

A REINDEER’S LAMENT

You may think I look cute as a reindeer

with my red nose and antlers and stuff

but I can’t take much more of this sleigh gear:

                I tell you, enough is enough.

 

I started in life as one Sleipnir

                the eight-legged horse of the god,

and was ridden by Odin the hunter

                leaving death in the paths that I trod;

 

then the Christians arrived and poor Odin

                was changed to a holy old saint

and the warrior garments he rode in

                were abandoned for something more quaint.

 

Then came Disney and Coca-damn-Cola

                determined to make us all jolly –

it’s enough to make me bipolar

                seeing tinsel all over the holly.

 

Poor old Odin’s in scarlet as Santa

                with a beard and white fur on his hood;

the power he showed in our canter

                has all disappeared now for good

 

and I got four legs and a headdress

                with antlers as wide as a tree;

they covered my nostrils with redness

                to make me revoltingly twee.

 

Now Odin’s tucked up with his sleighbells

                and I’m left alone up ahead;

if he’s ok wrapped up in sables

                I’d personally rather be dead.

 

Our fame is worldwide and our faces

                confront us on posters and cards,

on mugs and on plates, in strange places

                like underpants, roofs and back yards:

 

in my heart though I’ve still not adapted

                to life as a reindeer with presents

and this Santa scene that they’ve contrapted

                is something designed for the peasants:

 

in my soul I’m still noble, still coursing

                with Odin the god on my back

so let me get back to some horsing

                and accept that this reindeer thing’s cack.

Antony Mair

Meanwhile, back in the war zone...

 Main bedroom in No. 7 aka the Shoebox

 

It is Friday afternoon, and there is a storm raging outside, the rain driving horizontally against the flank wall of the Shoebox.  We are spending a quiet afternoon next door in the Matchbox, with the wind howling down the chimneys.  It has not been a good week.

 

The Shoebox being currently uninhabitable due to replastering works in all rooms above the lower ground floor, we are living next door in the Matchbox, which would otherwise be let to tenants.  It seemed sensible to take advantage of the period between tenants to have some work done on the Matchbox, and a few days ago I showed you a picture of what the hole in the wall looked like when the window was taken out.  From then on, things went downhill.  The following day the old window on the top floor was removed and the new one hoisted up to the top of the scaffolding - for the joiner then to find that he had made a mistake in the measurements and that the new box was ten centimetres too short. 

 

That night we slept in the equivalent of a cupboard, the hole in the wall having been boarded up while a new window was prepared.  It was then discovered that the two windows on the side of the building could not be repaired as planned since they were rotten, so they will also have to be replaced.  The scaffolding put up for the repairs, in our longsuffering neighbours' side passage, had to come down again. 

 

Meanwhile two painters just about old enough to be my great-grandchildren have been wandering around daubing bare wood with primer and paint in a well-meaning way.  Since this is Paul's house I am leaving all dealings with workmen to him.  Phew!  Storms, predicted since the beginning of the week and now materialising, have prevented any work continuing.  So we are rejoicing in the absence of stress with a siesta after a glass of wine with lunch.  Battle recommences on Monday.

 

Antony Mair

 

   

The power of the Press

I have always enjoyed local newspapers.  When we were in France the Sud-Ouest, an excellent paper, combined national and local news, so wasn't a local paper like the Hastings & St. Leonard's Observer (take the catchy name, for a start).  The Observer, as it is affectionately known locally, is a true local paper full of local stories - what the French press refer to as "faits divers".  In the last issue my favourite headline was "Brute jailed for stabbing his fiancée" - the word "brute" being repeated twice in the opening paragraphs.  Or possibly "Woman 'hit' man in car park attack", reporting a road rage incident outside a Tesco Express.

And then there are the ads, both commercial and private.  My recent favourite was the one-eighth page advertisement with the irresistible invitation: "Get your dentures fixed for Christmas!"

Such is the readership that, after our recent visit to the Met Opera HD transmission of Clemenza di Tito at the local Odeon, where we were part of an audience of 13, I thought it would be a good idea to write to the Observer in order to spread the news of this easy access to opera.  So I did, and, bless them, they printed my immortal prose as the second letter on the page, without cuts.  We then went to the next HD transmission - this time Verdi's Ballo in Maschera.  A headcount of the audience showed we were 12.  The Odeon didn't help their cause by having the subtitles in Russian rather than English for the first half, but the singing was still fantastic.  This Saturday we have Aida.  I may have to leave some leaflets in the Old Town launderette, which seems to be one of the main places for finding out what's on.  Watch this space.

Antony Mair

Still living with builders

 

Window out on the second floor

 

We have now been back in the UK for a little more than six months - and it looks as if it will be at least a couple more months before life gets back to something approaching normality.  The picture above shows the view from the first floor of No. 8 Tackleway, aka the Matchbox, when the old window-frame was removed.  The back of the house is of a timber construction, hung with tiles: and when you see it exposed, it's decidedly scary.  We keep on saying "Well, it's stood for a couple of hundred years so it's not going to fall down now", but it's difficult to be quite so sangine when a gale force wind is hurling itself at the building, straight off the sea.

 

In All Saints Street, which runs parallel with Tackleway lower down the hill, the houses nearest the shore are half-timbered, and I found myself looking at them on return from the dog-walk this morning, thinking that they were miracles of solidity by comparison with what the Georgians put up.  Not - it appears - that the Victorians in Hastings were much better: our next door neighbours say that the bricks their house is built from were cast-offs from the construction of a railway tunnel, having been found not to be up to the grade.

 

At dinner with new acquaintance the other night our hosts said they were planning a move from their listed home up the road to a new-build, with energy-efficient heating, triple glazing etc.  It does seem tempting: but then I catch the views of the sea and the Old Town from the windows and think we'll carry on in our matchbox and shoebox for the moment... 

 

Are UK supermarkets more expensive than their French counterparts?

Priory Meadow - Hastings Shopping Centre

 

When we first returned to the UK, six months ago, I found the supermarket experience radically different from what I had known in France.  This was mainly due to the packaging - scandalous in its profusion of plastic, particularly for fruit and vegetables - and the vast range of processed food.  As I looked at what people unloaded from their trolleys at the checkout, I concluded that many people cooked little from scratch.  "Convenience" foods have taken over.  I have the impression that half the population is watching television programmes devoted to haute cuisine with a tray of microwaved food on their lap. 

 

When we lived in France there were many expats who complained about the cost of French supermarkets and had their groceries delivered from the UK.  It is almost impossible to do an item by item check on prices (such as I once did as between Lidl and Intermarché, which showed a quite startling divergence in favour of Lidl) so I landed up with a rough approximation, based on total costs each week.  And - surprise surprise - it is actually much the same.  There may be some things that are cheaper, while others are more expensive (razor-blades, for example, seem to cost an extortionate amount in both countries).  This is taking an exchange rate of 1.25 euros to the pound. 

 

Alcohol is still a bruising experience.  There is an astonishing range of wine on offer, from virtually every wine-producing country in the globe, but it seems difficult to get much under £5 per bottle.  Our "house red" used to be €4, about two-thirds the price - and there was quite a lot available for less.  I have worked out that a day trip to Calais with Eurotunnel pays for itself if you buy five dozen bottles to bring back - more than that and you're in profit.  An even better deal was obtained by someone I recently met, who got an early ferry to Calais for £22 which included car, two passengers, breakfast for two and two bottles of wine! so, since we're just along the coast from the Channel ports, a booze cruise is inevitable sooner or later.  There are better reasons for going to France than cheap wine, but that'll do for the moment!

 

Antony Mair

 

 

 

Contemporary Chinese art in London

"Art of Change - New Directions from China" at the Hayward Gallery, London



One of the things I missed in France was the ability to get to major art exhibitions - it was of course possible to schlep up to Angoulême and get the train to Paris, but it involved a three or four hour journey door to door, and you land up pretty whacked if you try to do that in a day.  Hastings' transport connections with London are not great - certainly not good enough for a daily commute - but it's possible to get a train that lands you in Charing Cross after an hour and a half or so, which makes a day up in the smoke a viable proposition.  Having managed to get to Bronze at the Royal Academy and the Pre-Raphaelites at the Tate, I was determined to see the Hayward exhibition devoted to contemporary Chinese art, and - thanks to an appointment with an osteopath in Shepherds Bush - was able to do so last Friday.

There are many occasions when I lament not having enough time: and the mere mention of China is enough to make me want to go there, read up about it, learn more and know more about this vast and very different country.  The experience of this exhibition gave me the same feeling: it is even less than a toe in the water of Chinese contemporary art, but served at least to introduce some artists other than the astonishing Ai Weiwei, known to Londoners after his installation of eight million handmade porcelain sunflower seeds at Tate Modern (see the Youtube clip of it by clicking here).  Art in China is, it seems, almost invariably political, which makes it a little more difficult, since we have a rather basic knowledge of Chinese politics, let alone day-to-day life in modern China.  But it was good to have the experience of some very powerful installations.

It's as much a breath of fresh air going up to London from little Hastings as it used to be to go to Bordeaux or Paris from little old Ribérac: when you live in the sticks you need to get out now and again!  and when there's some good art at the end of the line I find I come back full of renewed energy.  Thanks to the Chinese this time.

Antony Mair

Winter weather...

This morning on East Hill

 

 

It's been an excellent weekend: yesterday was a little dominated by the presence of a plasterer for the entire day in No. 7, putting on the first coat of lime plaster in six rooms of the Shoebox, but in the evening we had the joy of seeing "La Clemenza di Tito" beamed through to the Hastings Odeon from the Met in New York.  When we were in France we used to go and see the Met transmissions in Périgueux, which were always well attended - in fact you had to arrive fairly promptly not to find yourself too close to the screen.  Now we have the advantage of being able to walk fifteen minutes to the cinema instead - however, there were only 13 of us in the cinema, so we shall have to do some work to publicise the event and get other opera buffs along. 

 

Let me take advantage of this to give the Met a plug: the so-called HD (as in High Definition) transmissions are live broadcasts of performances by the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and enable you to see in close-up the world's best singers.  It is now transmitted to cinemas throughout the world.  Have a look on their website by clicking here.



 

Today, as you can see from the photo above, we have had beautiful winter weather: crisp and sunny.  For the first time for what seems an eternity we were able to take the dogs up for a walk on East Hill, behind the Shoebox, and enjoy the stunning views out to sea and across to Beachy Head.  I am having to get used to the early evenings after the Dordogne - it is dark by 4.30 and I am already counting the days to the 21st December, shortest day of the year, so that I can measure the daily increase in light after that.  But when you have a day of sunshine, however short, it's easier to put up with the long nights.

 

Antony Mair

 

 

Balzac was happy too...