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

Eastbourne's Towner Gallery

The Towner Gallery, Eastbourne

In the current edition of the Hastings Observer there is a letter from a disgruntled Hastings resident, complaining about Hastings' Jerwood Gallery:  "Jerwood came to Hastings to regenerate the town and as such it has failed and we, the council tax payers of the town, are picking up the tab".

I've no particular axe to grind in the griping that goes on about the Jerwood.  But I know two things: first, that it's unlikely that any contemporary art gallery will succeed in regenerating a town on its own - it can only be one of a number of factors.  If anyone thought that Hastings would suddenly spring into prosperity as a result of the Jerwood they had to be bonkers.  The second thing I know is that the local community of Hastings residents dislike change - or, I should say, any change that takes them outside their comfort zone. 

The Jerwood is one of a string of recently-opened contemporary art venues along the south coast, including the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, the Towner Gallery in Eastbourne, and the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill.  We visited the Towner Gallery on Sunday.  It describes itself as "the contemporary art museum for south east England", which is flying a bit high in the circumstances.  On the first floor there was an installation by the Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota.  It consists of five panelled doors that each opens into a series of passages that wind between floor-to-ceiling cobwebs made out of black wool, lit by bare light bulbs behind.  The introductory panel said that the woollen cocoons arise from the artist’s desire to ‘draw in the air’ and represent her own physical anxieties.  We were invited to enter the space and project our own fears and anxieties.  Mmmm.

On the first floor two or three small rooms lit by artificial light had some pieces from the permanent collection, focussing mainly on landscape.  We were underwhelmed.

Lunch in the café comprised sandwiches or processed snacks warmed in a microwave.  I don't think the Michelin inspectors would be impressed.

The Towner is part of Eastbourne Borough Council and is funded by them and by the Arts Council.  Entry is free.  Frankly, I'd rather pay and go to the Jerwood any day.

Antony Mair  

Installation by Chiharu Shiota at the Towner Gallery, Eastbourne

More Opera at Hastings Odeon

1899 poster for Puccini's "Tosca"

Attendances for live transmissions of opera in Hastings Odeon are gradually climbing.  Last night there were 24, which is double the number we had last year.  Obviously the message is slowly getting through to the Hastings cognoscenti that these are performances worth going to.

Last week gave us the opportunity of sampling the Royal Opera House's Vêpres Siciliennes as well as the Met's Tosca.  We hadn't seen a transmission from the ROH before, and it was interesting to make the comparison.  It trumped the Met in a number of ways.  First, we were spared the gooey love-ins that pass for interviews with the stars: Kasper Holten, Director of Opera at Covent Garden, acted as guide to the opera, giving a brief synopsis before each act, and at the same time a bit of background to the production itself.  Secondly, I have to say that the production was more challenging and stylish than what we usually see from the Met (I'm excluding the Met's Ring Cycle, which was extraordinary in a number of ways).  I sometimes have the feeling with the Met that they throw a lot of money at a production, with lavish staging and world class singers but at times err a little on the conservative side.  

What let Covent Garden down in the end was, alas, the quality of the sound.  The music seemed to be coming through a fine sheet.  And if I'm to be honest, the director's take on the opera, involving a conceptual overlay of interference with artistic freedom, integrated with the already complex plot, resulted in great style but also an element of the pretentious.  The last act in particular, with conspirator numero uno in a large hooped dress killing people with the end of a flagstaff, tipped into the absurd - and they seemed to have forgotten the final part, when - at the last minute - loyal Sicilians spill onto the stage and slaughter the French.  

The Met's "Tosca" was not without its silliness, either.  In the first act the Madonna, who is supposed to be dominating proceedings from her altar, had been banished to somewhere in the wings, and Cavarodossi's portrait of Mary Magdalen was a dreadful piece of soft porn.  In the second act the villainous Scarpia was depicted in his office with three simpering whores clambering over him, which clashed with his singing that he prefers sex where the woman resists.  The concentration of evil that is the essence of his character didn't come across so well as when he's alone.  His office also seemed to be furnished with Ikea sofas, which didn't seem entirely in period.

But the singing and acting were wonderful: the three principals, Roberto Alagna, Patricia Racette and George Gagnidze, were magnificent and even survived the intermission love-ins with Renée Fleming with a degree of dignity.  With such quality down the road, I'm hoping that the Hastings audience will grow.

Antony Mair

Gilbert & Sullivan in Winchelsea

A scene from "Patience" produced by the Winchelsea Singers

I received a call from a cousin of mine a couple of weeks ago, asking whether we would come to a production of Gilbert & Sullivan's Patience in Winchelsea Village Hall.  This didn't augur well. I greatly enjoyed monthly play-reading evenings organised by some veterans of am.dram when we were in France, but have been subjected to enough wooden acting and poor diction in am.dram productions both here and in France to put me off in a major way.  However, my cousin is dear to me and naturally we agreed to go along.

My forebodings were increased by a performance of Madam Butterfly by Opera South East at the White Rock Theatre in Hastings, after we'd agreed to go to Winchelsea.  I vowed that I wouldn't write a review of the production, since it would be unkind to people who were doing their best.  Suffice it to say that we left at the interval.  

The production of Patience started with a number of handicaps.  The main one was the prominent part  played by a chorus of twenty "love-sick maidens" who could not be fitted on the diminutive stage.  A subsidiary problem was the fact that a number of the lovesick maidens were not in the first flush of youth - my dear cousin has just celebrated her 90th birthday and another much-loved cousin in the chorus is in her eighties.  Both redoubtable ladies of fine voices, but perhaps not entirely maidens.  

The solution found was for the said maidens to be seated in front of the stage, with their soloist members on the stage above them.  In practice it worked well.  To beef up the soloists, some members of Battle Light Opera were imported.  The village hall piano was wheeled into action, a backdrop painted and a bench moved onto the stage, and hey presto we were ready.

The great thing about Gilbert & Sullivan is that it is sufficiently lighthearted for it not to matter if the performance is not of Grade A category.  The dialogue and libretto are fun, and you're swept along by the good-humoured nonsense of it all.  A certain amount of playing to the gallery and ad-libbing went down well, and it all added to the enjoyment when the wig worn by one of the male leads proved a little mobile.  "Just a piece of fun", my cousin had said.  And she was entirely right.

Antony Mair   

The Press: an end to bullying and intrusion?

Photo courtesy of The Daily Telegraph website

To have read some reports of the newly-sealed Royal Charter you would think that politicians are thinly disguised fascists intent on muzzling a gloriously independent Press that is the envy of the world.  The full power of the Press has been manifest in their constant lobbying ever since the publication of the Leveson Report.  We forget that newspaper editors are intimates with, if not friends of, our top politicians; that journalists are the people interviewed on television and radio as experts in their field; and that they frequently count journalists on other newspapers as their friends.  None of this is intrinsically wrong, but it means that we are not dealing here with a group of highminded crusaders issuing informed opinions from their ivory towers, but highly influential opinion-formers with wide-ranging power.  

Just how low-minded some journalists can be has emerged with startling force in the court proceedings involving Rebekah Brooks and her colleagues on the former News of the World.  I was reminded of a dinner-party I was at, some thirty years ago, where there were a number of journalists present from the more eminent broadsheets.  When I suggested that a particular story being run by one of their employers was inaccurate (I can't now remember what it was) one of the hacks laughed and said "Journalism's not about the truth, Antony - it's about selling papers".  Much mirth from his colleagues, but I thought it wrong then and I still think it wrong.  Truthful journalism and selling newspapers are not mutually exclusive.  Nor, for the purposes of truthful journalism, do you need to resort to phone-hacking or payments to public officials for information.  

The Independent, more balanced in its views than some of its better-selling rivals, published the full text of the Royal Charter the other day, and I have been going through it with some care.  I had thought that the Charter set out the precise terms of a new regulatory body.  It does not.  Its main purpose is to establishment a Recognition Panel, which will have the function of recognising a new self-regulatory body.  The Charter then goes on to specify the requirements for the members of the Board of that body.  It should not include serving editors, for example, and a majority of the members must be independent of the Press.  In hearing complaints, the Board must balance the interests of freedom of speech against the interests of individuals.  They must act fairly and impartially.

In none of this - nor indeed in any of the other provisions of the Charter - do I discern the attack on press freedom that is heralded by some of the more alarmist journals.  There has been a serious attempt to distort and discredit efforts to implement the recommendations of Mr Justice Leveson with their full rigour - efforts that have redounded less to the credit of our Prime Minister than to the Hacked Off group of individuals who have been the victims of blatant bullying and intrusion.  

One of the objections of the Press to the Leveson Report was that the main abuses established were already breaches of the law.  Whether that is the case or not, the law was either out of reach of many persons affected or, in other instances, lacked teeth.  Hopefully the Charter is the start of a process that will see some rebalancing in favour of the individual, against a group of newspaper-sellers more powerful than we realise.  

Antony Mair