Good Friday - Hastings Old Town Market

Marsh Produce stall at the Old Town Market

 

We all have a romantic view of markets: stalls loaded with fresh produce, people drifting past in the sunshine, cheerful stallholders with a bit of backchat.  The reality is a little different, particularly in the coldest March since 1962.  Snowflakes were drifting in the air as the first Old Town market opened on the Stade.  A series of covered stalls had been erected, peddling a variety of goodies: cider from Battle, freshly baked bread and cakes, hand-made soaps.  Then there were the others who always seem to be in markets these days, selling craft ornaments in anything from spun glass to macramé or specialising in technicoloured toys.  

 

Although it was Good Friday and a Bank Holiday, attendance seemed a little thin on the ground.  There's another small market in the town centre on Thursdays, which arguably does better on the food front.  But these are early days, and we can but hope that as the weather improves some more people appear.

 

There's certainly an opening for fresh produce.  After the horsemeat scandal, I took to looking more closely at food labels.  I recently purchased a pack of "ready-to-eat prunes" - stoned and soaked.  The reverse of the packet gave a breakdown of the contents: only 84% was prunes, the balance comprising water and potassium sorbate.

 

Potassium sorbate is the most frequently used preservative, inhibiting mould.  It appears generally to be harmless, but on reflection I think I'd prefer not to be eating it when what I want are the prunes.  Mould can be avoided by eating them quickly!  Memories took me back to stalls in Ribérac, where you could find prunes from Agen, which were bought loose: glistening and beautiful.  That's the sort of thing I want to find in a market.  With a bit of luck we'll get them one day on the Stade.

 

Antony Mair

Hastings drummers

Last Sunday the weather was cold and rainy - as it seems to have been for weeks, though the rain has now eased off and it's just cold, cold, cold.  But on Sunday morning I was distracted by the sound of drumming coming from the Stade, below the house; and when I was giving the dogs their morning walk in that direction I came across the Section 5 drumming group doing their bit in the wind and rain, in order to promote a small bazaar.  This consisted of varioius stalls in a windswept marquee erected for the purpose, together with others in the comparative comfort of the Stade Hall - all for the benefit of St. Michael's Hospice. 

Compared with the last time I saw the drummers, in the gloom of Hastings Bonfire Night, when they were in full red and black fig, including make-up, they seemed fairly innocuous.  When they are in full regalia they are decidedly sinister, with a fancy dress that combines elements of Pearlie Kings and Morris dancers with more than a touch of Dracula.  The drumming is insistent and loud - you can see the blue side wall of our house peeping over the fishermen's hut top left in the picture, which gives you an idea of how far the sound carries. 

But it was a worthy cause, and I came away with some delicious home-made cupcakes from an amiable lady enduring the cold and wet.  I managed to resist the fudge on the neighbouring stall, on the feeble pretext that I have been intending to make some myself - which I still have to do.  So the drummers did their bit.  If you want to hear them, click here for a clip of what they were like last May Day.   

Antony Mair

Musical heaven - Hastings International Piano Concerto Competition

Tae Hyung-Kim receives his prize from Petula Clark

- photograph courtesy of the Hastings International Piano Concerto Competition website

 

It's a few days after the event, but the joys of the Hastings International Piano Concerto Competition are still vivid in my memory of a wonderful evening last Saturday.  Hastings is not great when it comes to classical music - events are comparatively few and far between, but this was well worth the wait.  A packed house at the White Rock Theatre listened spellbound to three immensely talented finalists, each accompanied by the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra.

 

The Italian Michelle Candotti is only sixteen years old, but gave a virtuoso performance of Chopin's Concerto No. 1 in E minor.  It's immensely difficult, and she seemed techincally faultless.  We were then treated to Jean-Paul Gasparian from France, all of seventeen years old, but already an experienced performer, giving a flamboyant performance of Liszt's show-off Concerto No. 1.  This was already treat enough, but the icing on the cake came with Tae Hyung-Kim and Beethoven's Emperor Concerto.  The emotional power in his playing was astonishing - the slow movement in particular was heart-rending and brought tears to the eyes.  He won the main prize from the judges and the subsidiary prize awarded to the player who has most impressed the audience - determined by the degree of applause, foot-stamping, cheering etc that greets each name as it is announced at the end of the concert.

 

The Competition is part of the Hastings Musical Festival, which covers a wide range of events: Petula Clark, President of the Festival, presented the prize.  The artistic director, Frank Wibaut, gave a brief speech of thanks, in the course of which he recommended attendance at the earlier heats of the Competition - which I shall certainly try to do next year.  However, I hope we shall not have to wait until then for some more classical music of this standard in our seaside town.

 

Antony Mair 

 

 

No hiding place on the Net

Rob Eastoe, the Googling plumber

 

Sally Bercow et al. found out the hard way that tweets can land you in trouble.  For my part I have found that  blogs are not perhaps quite so invisible as I thought.  Every now and again I receive an email from someone unknown saying "I came across your blog..."   Over the past week, however, two other instances have graphically illustrated how nobody is invisible on the Net.

 

The first was when I was discussing with our plumber Rob Eastoe, pictured above, the niceties of the new shower he was erecting in our bathroom.  Having given my two-pennorth, I said that that had exhausted my expertise on the subject, and that I would return next door.  To which he replied "And I expect you'll write about it on Hastings Postcards".  He had come across the blog while idly surfing.  Fortunately I have no reason to say anything unkind about him.  And just in case he reads this, let me add that he is of course the Best Plumber in Hastings. 

 

The other instance followed my post the other day about our Stanza meeting in Brighton and the incident on the train.  Robin Houghton did a similar piece (though rather wittier) on her own blog, mentioning that we had been talking about the poet Ian Duhig.  The following day Ian Duhig tweeted a link to Robin's blog, which he had picked up on the Net, commenting that this was what happened when his poems were discussed in public.  This in turn was retweeted by Ruth Padel.  Fortunately I had been talking to Robin about him in the context of a fine poem he had had published in Poetry London, so no harm was done.

Bloggers, tweeters, Facebook followers, all sacrifice privacy to a certain extent.  We like to think we know what boundaries we have set.  But it sometimes comes as a surprise to find that what we have made public is just that: accessible to anyone and everyone.  As Sally Bercow has found out.

Antony Mair








   

The Dolphin Inn - CAMRA award winner

 

The Dolphin Inn, Rock-a-Nore, Hastings

 

At the end of our street, a long flight of steps leads down to Rock-a-Nore, the road that runs behind Hastings' iconic fishermen's huts.  The steps come down beside the Dolphin Inn, shown above.  I frequently take this route for the dogs' early morning walk, and shortly after we moved in I got to know the landlord, Mark, since he's usually tidying up the terrace outside the pub when I pass.  He's always been a cheery soul, with a ready smile.  We're not beer drinkers,so I've apologised to him for not frequenting his pub, but he doesn't seem to mind. 

 

A couple of days ago I bumped into him and he told me that they had just learnt they had been awarded the CAMRA award for South Coast Pub of the Year, coming first out of some 280 possible candidates.  He had said on a previous occasion that Hastings is a real ale hub, which he has obviously taken advantage of.  But the award is given on more general criteria, including ambiance and welcome, so it's a great achievement. 

 

It hadn't occurred to me before, but the real ale drinkers in Hastings are part of the general community that appreciates good things to eat and drink - the fish that can be bought beside and opposite the Dolphin are wonderfully fresh, for example, and there are all sorts of goodies to be had in the local shops if you're a foodie.  What's good about all of this is that it shows the full range of interests that the town can cater for - from highbrow stuff in the Jerwood Gallery through to real ale and fish and chips like you've never had before.  

 

Congratulations to Mark and his team!

 

Antony Mair

 

 

Seagulls queuing for a snack

A dog's life

Balzac, royal dog of Madagascar

 

I lost it last Friday.  It had not been the easiest of mornings: the alarm clock had somehow slipped, so that I overslept and was unable to have my usual shower before the arrival of the builders.  That was a bad start.  Things gently slid downhill, with torrential rain and the ferrying to and fro of cups of tea and the attempt to keep No. 8 tidy.  The last straw, however, was when I saw that the dogs' water bowl was empty and went to refill it.  Balzac, dog no. 1 (i.e. pack leader with a vengeance) looked at me from his basket with incomparable disdain and contempt.  It didn't help my self-esteem.  Something snapped at that point. 

 

I have to explain to people that Balzac is a Coton de Tulear, companion dog to the aristocracy of Madagascar.  You would have thought that by now the snootiness of the bloodline would be a tad diluted.  It appears not.  Together with his small Shi-tsu companion Oscar, this dog is fed and watered at regular intervals; taken out three times a day for small excursions round the neighbourhood; ferried to and from the beauty parlour every few weeks.  The rest of the time is spent lying in one of his baskets, surveying his environment with total contempt, if not simply closing his eyes and ignoring it.

 

I have tried in vain to assert my superiority over this animal.  If I arm myself with morsels of food he makes some effort to be obedient in order to earn a reward.  But, contrary to all training manuals I have read, the lesson does not seem to sink in, and without the temptation of food he relapses into his natural state of selfish indiscipline.

 

The nub of the matter is that this dog has been taking total advantage of me for years, and I have encouraged him to do so.  Solutions on a postcard please, sent to the Dog Kennel.  Balzac will have moved into the main house by then and locked me out. 

 

Antony Mair

 

 

No packaging - go to Queens Arcade

Greengrocer's in Queens Arcade, Hastings

 

Outside Queens Arcade, in Hastings town centre, there is a sign saying "Shopping Mall".  This is misleading.  Shopping malls are expanses of sheet marble, are full of chain stores, and have become soulless temples of consumerism. Arcades, on the other hand, are intimate, with small shops on a human scale.  There is no merit in being a mall.  An arcade wins out every time.

 

The horsemeat scandal may bring us back to small traders whom we can trust, in preference to the supermarket monoliths.  Apart from dubious labelling, however, I have another gripe about supermarkets: their overpackaging of fruit and vegetables.  I understand why they need to do this: the packs of four ready-to-eat pears, the carefully graded runner beans, the organic blueberries, are all flown in from places like Chile and Morocco, and have to be protected on their long journeys.  But unpacking the shopping at home and landing up with a pile of plastic packaging on a weekly basis is enough to make the most hardened consumerist think something's wrong.

 

So the answer for me has become: go to the greengrocer in the arcade.  I can take the fruit and vegetable straight off the stall, transfer it to my basket and then to the shopping bag without any packaging at all - bypassing even a paper bag if I feel like it.  And I have the added satisfaction of supporting a small trader.  It's enough to make one feel positively smug. 

 

Antony Mair   

 

 

Cardinal sins

Former Cardinal Keith O'Brien

To say I have been saddened by the recent events surrounding Cardinal O'Brien would be an understatement.  When people who know him say they are "saddened" they seem to be referring to their regret at his fall from grace - in every sense.  But my sadness is different and more wide-ranging, covering a number of aspects of this whole sorry affair.

First, and most obviously, I am saddened by the extent of suffering undergone by the four complainants.  It is difficult for non-Catholics to understand the intimacy of the relationship between a person and their spiritual counsellor.  I remember how deeply shocked I was, twenty or so years ago, to encounter, in a gay nightclub in London's West End, a priest to whom I had been going for confession at Westminster Cathedral.  Part of the shock arose from the fact that he was gay, when the whole Church seemed to be fulminating against homosexuality; but part from the feeling that my trust, in confiding to him my own difficulties in this area, had been betrayed.  For a seminarian, finding himself the target of advances from his spiritual mentor could well be traumatic.

Secondly, I am saddened by the suffering that the Cardinal himself must have gone through in living this double life and suppressing, for the whole of his time as a priest, this most important part of his nature.  It's difficult enough being gay and coming out to friends and families.  I can hardly imagine how difficult it would be to live with this hidden conflict on a daily basis until late in life, in a role that involves preaching publicly against your own nature.

Thirdly, however, and above all, I am saddened by the stupidity, the waste, and the pain that emerges from the whole sorry saga.  On the radio yesterday, the former Cardinal, Cormac Murphy O'Connor, appeared to be expressing a view that this was just a blip, and the Church just needed to hold together and carry on.  No, your ex-eminence.  It is time for the Church to acknowledge openly that a vow of celibacy puts intolerable strains on too many priests for it to remain acceptable; that to continue with it will give rise to continued concealed relationships, both hetero- and homosexual, and a heightened risk of paedophilia, laying the Church open to ongoing charges of hypocrisy; that priests should be treated as individuals with sexual needs that do not need to be ruthlessly suppressed; and that women should be admitted into the Church's hierarchy with full equality.  Forget problems of belief in God; the main problem at the moment is belief in the Church.

I was reminded of something I wrote in 2005 following the death of the last Pope, John Paul II.  It's not great literature, but let me share it with you.

 

THE POPE DYING

As uniformly reverential tones
spoke of the Pope's last hours, I knelt and scrubbed
the kitchen floor.  The grout, the grimy stones,
emerged immaculate from where I rubbed.
And as I knelt, a homosexual man
quite arguably excommunicate,
I wondered if His Holiness might ban
my cleaning as an inappropriate
activity - as work for women, say,
reserved for Polish nuns, while he, John Paul,
pontificated through each holy day
(that's what men always had done, after all).
And then I wondered, as the stone shone clean,
if, after death, the Pontiff might look down
on worlds more richly varied than he'd seen,
where love takes different forms; and if he'd frown
at something that he'd missed; and if there'd creep
some thought that he'd been wrong; and if he'd weep.


Antony Mair

 

    

Brighton-in-Wonderland

Caxton Arms, Brighton

 

I only recently discovered that the raised tables they have in bars, at a height appropriate for barstools, are called "poseur" tables.  I thought of this last night, when I went to Brighton for a meeting of the Stanza Poetry Group.  This takes place each month, in the basement room of the Caxton Arms, near the station.  We push together tables of the kind mentioned, then perch on bar stools round them, read our poems to each other and comment on what's read out.  It can sometimes be a bit bruising, when you realise that your carefully crafted verses are in fact rubbish, but so long as you don't think you're a direct literary descendant of Shakespeare the process is useful.

 

Our leader Jo Grigg being away, last night's meeting was chaired by blogger guru and accomplished poet Robin Houghton.  The male/female ratio was unusually high, at seven men to two women.  It was also different from other meetings in that two performance poets came along - i.e. poets who write verse intended to be spoken in public rather than read.  But the most unusual contribution came from the man who distributed a beermat-sized card to each of us.  Each had a separate poem hand-written on it, rarely longer than a few lines, relating to an unhappy love affair.  We landed up reading them all out, in sequence.  It was a surprising and rather emotional experience.

 

I travelled back on the train with Robin, who lives in Lewes.  We were chatting about the evening and the poetry world in general, when a woman in a nearby seat, who had a fake fur coat and a slightly slurred voice, suddenly intervened and said "I've been listening to your conversation and wonder whether you'd be interested in this book", proffering a copy of a paperback entitled "Be Glad You're Neurotic" by one Louis Bisch.  She then got off at Lewes herself, leaving me wondering whether I was the odd person, rather than anyone else, and vaguely questioning whether the bizarre events of the evening had been linked to the name of the tables we'd been sitting at.  Nothing had been pose-y about it all, but perhaps that's just my perception.  Anyway, you always get surprises in this part of the world!

 

Antony Mair

 

 

 

 

     

The scaffolding goes...at last!

No.s 7 and 8 Tackleway

 

After almost four months, the scaffolding has at last come down from our two houses, both front and back.  Unimpeded light can now come in through the rather grubby windows.  The removal of the scaffolding precedes the imminent completion of our refurbishment project, with our move back into the Shoebox - that's No. 7, the one on the left - planned for next Tuesday. 

 

Crown Lane comes up into Tackleway, between No. 7 and the adjoining cottages, which are No.s 1 to 6 - you can see the corner of No. 6 on the lefthand side of the photograph above.  Crown Lane is the only means of access to Tackleway, which is a dead end.  This means all our neighbours pass us on their way to or from their houses, as do the endless dogwalkers and tourists going up the steps to East Hill opposite.  Hastings being a friendly place, people have commented freely - and favourably - on our twin purple front doors, with their new brassware.  I have to say that, after initial nerves, we're rather proud of them.  

 

It'll be good to get back to normal once we've moved back into the main house.  As I've said in the past to people who obsess about interior decor and their homes, a house is meant to be the framework for your life, not life itself.  I'm looking forward to having that perspective restored.

 

Antony Mair

Getting excited about a roundabout...

Pelham Roundabout, Hastings

 

Pelham Roundabout is on the seafront in Hastings, more or less on the border between Hastings Old Town and what is referred to as the New Town - basically the shopping centre, with a sterile mall and some struggling High Street chains.  It is edged on one side by a car park on the front, on another by an Italian restaurant and on the third by a branch of Iceland and an office block called Aquila House - Aquila being pronounced by the locals to rhyme with Godzilla.  We heard a few months ago, from a neighbour who works with the local Council, that the Fairlight Arts Trust, established by David and Sarah Kowitz, was putting up £100,000 for the refurbishment of the roundabout, which is at present a sterile feature with an undersized fountain  It was then pointed out by some bright spark that this was all a waste of money since, as a result of the pedestrianisation of one of the roads that used to come into the roundabot, the roundabout was superfluous, and I wondered whether the scheme would go ahead, or whether the roundabout would just be suppressed. 

 

It now transpires, not only that the roundabout is to go ahead, but that the amount contributed by the Trust is £120,000.  What is more, the roundabout is to be transformed into an iconic artwork.  Ho-hum, I thought cynically.  Then I read that the panel deciding what form the refurbishment would take included the artists Michael Craig-Martin and Gavin Turk.  Now Michael Craig-Martin is important not only because of his own work but also because of his time at Goldsmiths' College in London, when he was a significant influence on what are now known as the YBA, Young British Artists.  This loose group included Damien Hirst, Tracy Emin and - from the Royal College of Art - Gavin Turk. 

 

This is more like it, I thought.  Two artists have been shortlisted for the project: the Brazilian artist  Saint Clair Cemin and the younger British artist Henry Krokatsis.  Of the two, Krokatsis would probably be the more revolutionary choice, but both possibilities are exciting.  The designs of both are being unveiled for public view from March 8 to 10, and I now can't wait to see what they're proposing.  It looks as if Hastings is, once again, going to be in the news for its art!

 

Antony Mair