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.  

Hastings Carnival Week gets going...

 Hastings Carnival Week is a wonderful annual miscellany of local events, including open gardens and studios, Carnival Queens, a spectacular pram race (of which more in a few days' time), historical walks round the Old Town and quaint goings-on with whelk-eating, tugs-of-war, seaboot races etc.  Needless to say, there is ample opportunity for the locals to dress up, which they enjoy more than anything else.

But we started the programme yesterday in fairly sedate style, with a visit to Torfield Allotments, tucked away behind a belt of trees along the Old London Road.  Neat rows of fruit and vegetables, and a cluster of people gathered round a barbecue.  It made me think of chef Nigel Slater's television programmes, and the savouring of freshly grown produce.  We were welcomed by the chairman of the Allotments, who asked us if we knew Scott and Ashley.  We didn't.  (I don't know why heterosexual people always ask us if we know other gay people.  We sometimes feel like replying by asking whether they know Bob and Sarah, a representative straight couple. But they mean well, so we don't.)

Then back to the centre of the Old Town, where we came across the carnival procession - actually the first of several processions through the week.  The purpose of this appeared to be to parade the newly-crowned Carnival Queen with her two attendants.  More dressing-up here, including the character depicted on the left, who has a tendency to wander round dressed as Popeye, and obviously felt he needed to be part of the day's antics.

The Carnival Queen duly drove by, with her ladies-in-waiting.  A charming smile and a wave clearly modelled on that of the Royals, though the carriage would probably not have made it to the Royal Mews.  The gals were shielded from the general hoi polloi with some green mesh - possibly to repel any drunken boarders spilling out from the neighbouring hostelries.

They were followed by a couple of drumming groups and - last but very much not least - a group of drum majorettes.  I have to confess here to a weakness for drum majorettes - the very name brings a smile to my lips - I think it's the "ette" bit, like "dinette" and "kitchenette" it has a nice retro feel.  The girls went by with the tall ones in front and the tinies at the back (they're the best, because they're a bit clueless and wave their batons around in a rather abstracted way).

And that was that.  We found our way back via Courthouse Street, where there was a raffle and a ribbon laid down the centre of the street on which you put a coin for charity, and then to All Saints Street, which is just  below our own street of Tackleway.  All Saints Street has its own contribution to make, in the form of a competition for the Best Dressed Window.  This year the theme is "Wonders of the Deep", which results in a variety of curious assemblages in the windows.  It's all part of life's rich pattern here on the south coast.

Antony Mair

Hastings Old Town - centre of creativity

 Works by Jo Redpath 

When we told friends in France that we were moving to Hastings, there were mixed reactions.  The usual one was "Why Hastings?" asked with an air of perplexity.  That was easily dealt with - it had happened entirely by chance.  But one friend followed it up with - "but there won't be any cultural life there".  I know what she meant: there's no theatre to speak of and precious little in the way of classical music.  But I am constantly struck by the way in which we are surrounded by creative people of one sort or another.  This impression was reinforced by a visit to the studio of Jo Redpath, who recently moved to our street from Santiago de Compostela.  She acquired a house sandwiched between a converted hall belonging to Roland Jarvis, a rather distinguished artist who is also a master horologist, and a house belonging to a couple known to me only as Bob and Clare, whose artistic efforts are most in evidence in the costumes they put together for Jack-in-the-Green, the annual festival celebrated in Hastings at the beginning of May.

This little clutch of artists is at the other end of our street.  But from my study windows I look onto the back of a house belonging to Ken Edwards, poet, publisher and bass guitarist with local group The Moors.  And just round the corner is the home of Polo Piatti, composer and founder of the International Composers' Festival. 

Across the valley, against West Hill, we look out on the home of artist Gus Cummins RA.  At the Peasmarsh Festival recently we met another eminent artist, Laetitia Yhap,  

The town is awash with media folk, whether photographers such as Grace Lau or stylists such as Alastair Hendy.  In short, creative energy abounds.  These are all people I've become aware of over the past twelve months.  I have little doubt that there are many more we still have to come across.  Nice though it would be to have theatre and classical music on our doorstep, there's something very satisfying about being in close proximity to creators in the arts, not just performers and consumers.

Antony Mair