Bexhill delights

Gallery outside the Café of the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill

Bexhill boasts, I understand, the highest proportion of centenarians in the UK.  Unsurprisingly, this makes it one of the less exciting towns along the south coast.  However, it also boasts the De La Warr Pavilion, an Art Deco gem that has a popular art gallery as well as an auditorium regularly filled not only for the visiting Z-list pop-stars that blight seaside towns but also movies and live transmissions from opera houses and the National Theatre.  

Since it's a short, if painfully slow, drive from Hastings, we go over from time to time.  The other day we went to see the two exhibitions that are on, of works by Alison Turnbull and Matt Calderwood. 

The Pavilion's website says that Alison Turnbull is known for the intricate abstract paintings and drawings she creates from found materials, such as diagrams, plans, charts and maps. The exhibition presents new and recent works exploring ideas around observation, orientation and perspective.

In the course of my current MA my tutor, Eoghan Walls, has been emphasising the importance in contemporary poetry of the concrete and specific. As a result, there's a curious culture shock for me, now, in encountering conceptual works of visual art that are said to be "exploring ideas".  I've always been interested in contemporary art, though I find much of it baffling.  A curator friend of mine encouraged me, many years ago, not to be too analytical, but to "follow the clues".  I found this less helpful than picking up on what I came to think of as resonance - there were times when I hadn't the vaguest idea of what the artist was doing, but found myself thinking of it several days later.  

But I'm afraid it wasn't working with Alison Turnbull's carefully planned and detailed paintings, meticulously executed though they were.  Sometimes, I'm afraid, it's just a question of taste.  

On an upper level of the Pavilion, Matt Calderwood had assembled a group of structures that had stood outside in the open for a number of months and bore the effects of weather.  The Pavilion website says: Exposure Sculpture (2013) are geometric structures made from welded steel clothed in billboard paper. Located on the roof during the summer months, they have now been reassembled in the gallery space and reveal the results from the four months' exposure to the elements during the outdoor installation prior to the exhibition.  Sorry, Mr Calderwood, I don't get this either.  

Don't get me wrong.  I'm delighted to have been to these exhibitions and would like to understand a bit better what these artists are getting at.  In both cases the artists have given talks in the Pavilion, explaining their intentions,  It's a pity there's no recording of these presentations on the website.  It doesn't mean that understanding their intention better would necessarily make me like what they're dong.  But at least I'd be better informed.

As it is, I'm afraid we had to take refuge in the Trattoria Italiana, a bustling restaurant on the seafront, before ambling along the front in the sun.  There are worse ways of spending the day.    

Antony Mair

Gearing up for the Piano Concerto Competition

The first three weeks of March in Hastings are devoted to the Hastings Musical Festival, which has been going for more than a century.  It's not a festival like those in Edinburgh or Brighton, but consists of a series of competitions for performers in music and dance.   In recent years the jewel in the crown of the Festival has been the Hastings International Piano Concerto Competition, which takes place in the first week of March, the final being on Saturday March 8th.

Last year we were in the audience for the final, which was an amazing event.  This year we have foolishly volunteered to help with the running of the Competition, together with about twenty others.  Not, you will understand, in any highfalutin fashion: our tasks will be restricted to guiding contestants from rehearsal venues to the stage of the White Rock Theatre for their performance.  On the night of the final we are likely to be selling programmes.

So today saw the small volunteer army being inducted to the mysteries of the White Rock Theatre, better known for performances by popstar lookalikes and the occasional dire production of classical opera and ballet.  There's the usual labyrinth of backstage corridors and small dressing-rooms, and that strange feeling, when you come on stage, of the auditorium being somehow smaller than you thought it would be.  We were given a slightly bewildering list of instructions by our masters, and I left hoping that I would be able to deliver my charges safely to the venue for their allotted time without accident or mishap.  No doubt all will come right on the night.  At least on the final evening we shall be doing some fairly brainless activity rather than shepherding our virtuosos to the Yamaha grand.  I'm just hoping we'll be able to hear the performances as well.

Antony Mair

A lull between storms

Storm damage in Hill Street, Hastings Old Town

The past few weeks haven't been much fun, weatherwise.  Those of you living outside the UK may have seen the odd snap of people wading through waist-high waters in their living-rooms.  Or perhaps not - the UK media have given zero coverage to the disappearance of beaches and threats to coastal buildings down France's Atlantic coast.  For those of you ignorant of what's been happening, I can tell you that there are swathes of the British countryside seriously under water.  Hastings being built on largely hilly ground, we haven't had the flood problem.  But my God have we had gales.  The Shoebox and its nextdoor neighbour the Matchbox comprise a building two sides of which are built of a timber frame fronted by tiles.  The south-west facing wall is brick with a cement render.  In the winds - which have reached around 80 mph but who's measuring precisely? - the building moves, particularly noticeably on the top floor.  More importantly, the people who put the cement render on instead of a limestone one, around a century ago, seem to have ignored the fact that cement is inflexible.  So when the building moves, cracks form in the render.  And when the rain is being hurled against the cracked wall at 80 mph it gets in.

Not that we can complain.  We knew there was a problem and it'll get fixed - rather expensively - this summer.  Quite apart from the dire straits of those in Somerset and the Thames Valley, many of our neighbours have far more to grouse about: leaky roofs and crumbling chimneystacks result in soaked attics, boundary walls have been blown down, a landslip behind a row of houses on the front pinned the occupants in their basements.  And the house shown above lost most of its outside wall into a diminutive side garden.   

Today we have had a brief reprieve.  A cloudless sky with a gentle breeze.  We've been told more wind and rain are on their way.  It was terrible to begin with - but do you know?  we're actually getting used to it.  Even so, I'll be glad when it's over.

Antony Mair

Antisocial media

Translation: Last week we had a power cut.  My PC immediately gave up.  So I chatted to my family for a couple of hours.  They seem like really nice people.

I sometimes - actually every day - feel like a dinosaur, surrounded by evolving species that will survive and flourish long after I have become even more fossilised than at present.  Social media is/are something that I engage with on the periphery.  Yes, of course I email like everyone else.  It's Facebook, Twitter, texting and the various derivatives that cause me a degree of unease.

Before even getting into my specific objections, let me vent some brief spleen about the radio and television fashion for asking for input from viewers and listeners.  Time was when Radio 4's Any Answers and Points of View were the only moments of feedback from the Great British Public.  It was a great opportunity for those on the not-so-far right wing to air their grievances.  Now there scarcely seems to be a programme without a request for input of some sort - whether it's texting your vote for a contestant on a reality programme or giving a view on a particular topic.  In the latter case the invitation is usually expressed as "We'd love to hear from you" - one of the grosser instances of media insincerity.  Can I really suppose that the glamorous presenter in the television studio, tired after a day of interviewing evasive politicians, with the programme producer babbling into his/her earpiece, is really waiting for my uninformed input from Hastings?  I don't think so.

My objections to Facebook and its lookalikes are more specific:

1  the sacrifice of privacy is far greater than users appreciate.  You're concerned about the UK becoming a police state, with a greater concentration of CCTV than anywhere else in Europe?  Perhaps you don't realise how much your Facebook entries are revealing about your behaviour, tastes, opinions etc. - all ripe for exploitation via those "you may be interested in..." emails suggesting you buy anything from underpants to holidays.

2   the extent of posing and posturing has reached absurd levels.  Most of us lead fairly humdrum lives, which are rich in their own way.  I like to wonder what Jane Austen would have done with a Facebook page: "At Bath, in the Pump Room";  "Meeting a dear friend visiting the village".  Ok - but do I really want to see groups of alcoholised people gurning at a camera lens?  or the one liner of some wannabe who drops into the Ritz merely to mention it on Facebook?

3  Facebook interaction has become a synthetic and pathetic substitute for socialising.  Instead of people meeting and talking (without photographing each other or the food on their plates) there are banks of autistic saddoes staring at their computer screens and sending text messages to "friends" who would cease to be so if they actually spent real time with them.

"It's good to talk", the old BT ad used to say.  GCHQ may be listening in, of course, but at least there's a real voice at the end of the line.

Antony Mair

Idiocy in Westminster

The Palace of Westminster - courtesy Wikimedia Commons

There have been reports in the paper recently about young people's disaffection with Parliament and their consequent failure to vote.  The young aren't the only people disaffected with our present government.  I worry - though not very much - about becoming Disgruntled of Hastings, like those crotchety pensioners writing in from Tunbridge Wells, but have recently been thinking of the most obvious bits of Parliamentary idiocy.

Let's start with the so-called Bedroom Tax.  It all sounded so logical: council house tenants hogging accommodation too large for them needed to be induced to move to smaller homes, so as to free up the larger ones for those on the waiting list.  To incentivise them, remove some of their benefit if they stay in the over-large house or flat.  Nobody seems to have checked the availability of the smaller houses or flats that make the system work.  The result is that people are not moving, because there's nowhere for them to go.  They're merely being deprived of money that in many cases is needed to live on.

Of course there's an obvious solution, which is to build more public housing.  Which brings us to idiocy item number two: the Help to Buy scheme, i.e. government assistance to people wanting to get onto the housing ladder and buy their first property.  When everyone predicted that this would result in rocketing house prices and increased personal debt, the emollient tones of senior civil servants and members of Parliament chimed in to say that wasn't a danger and if it was something would be done.  Even the Bank of England appeared to belittle the likelihood of a housing bubble.  Hoho.  What do we now have?  housing prices rising everywhere, but particularly in London and the south-east.  Meanwhile those suffering from the bedroom tax are visiting food banks to stay alive.

This is stupid, but not necessarily nasty, unlike the increasingly aggressive attitude to immigrants.  UKIP has a frightening tendency to voice prejudices that should be kept quiet if not stifled altogether, and the Tories are now joining in.  Figures show that immigrant workers use less public services than the natives, and therefore contribute more in net terms to the economy.  Without immigrant labor many jobs would not get done because the unemployed Brits find them unacceptable (care home workers, carwash attendants, fruit-pickers etc.).  Nonetheless, the government is reinforcing the view, held by many, that immigrants are taking jobs from the natives and leaching the economy.  The British don't like to be compared with Germans in the 1930s, but the parallels are fairly clear.  So watch out, all minorities.

I could go on, but won't.  It doesn't make me want to withhold my vote.  But, for the first time since I was in Germany in 1968, I may join people protesting in the streets.  

Antony Mair

The decline of the gay ghetto

Not having been away since June last year, we decided to escape over Christmas and get a bit of sun in the Canaries.  We've done this before on a couple of occasions from France, and know the ropes, so we rented a small apartment and off we went.  As you can see from the picture above, with the not particularly attractive view from our rabbit hutch, the skies were generally kind to us, even if the evenings were chilly.

The dunes of Maspalomas

We go to Playa del Ingles, in Gran Canaria, which is a bit like a Spanish Blackpool - I don't know Benidorm, but imagine it's similar.  The one difference from Benidorm is that Playa is a bit of a gay centre, with a lot of bars and places catering mainly for what is called "the gay community".  It's all pretty relaxed, but if you're of a gay persuasion it's traditionally been good fun, with places catering for all tastes, from the raunchy to the more (but not very) sophisticated.

This time round, though, I thought I detected the beginning of a trend.  One or two of the places we'd gone to in the past were fuller than I recalled of distinctly elderly gents, and the atmosphere seemed less welcome and relaxed - even, dare I say it, a bit dull.  When we strolled around the enormous shopping centre called Yumbo (as in Yumbo the Elephant - geddit?) it was obvious that a lot of gay couples were going elsewhere, mixing with the general community.  

What we were witnessing was the gradual collapse of the gay ghetto that we grew up with, in a time when  society was less tolerant.  When being gay was stigmatised, the minority clung together and found solidarity in pubs and clubs frequented exclusively by their own kind.  Now that an increasing number of countries in Europe afford same-sex couples the same rights as their heterosexual counterparts, the need for solidarity is reduced.  Just as internet cafés have largely disappeared as a result of advanced technology, with fancy phones, tablets and Wi-fi, so the exclusively gay venues are faced with a decline in demand.  It's a positive change - but at the same time some of the more extravagant flamboyance and eccentricity of the gay scene, that provided colour and amusement, are likely to disappear, as we assimilate the ways of the majority.  The gay scene in Mykonos has been swept into oblivion; it looks as if it may be on the way out in Playa del Ingles as well. 

Antony Mair

The New Year blows in

Cliffs to the west of Rock-a-Nore, showing the part that collapsed into the sea

A sea view is terrific, but it does come at a price - namely the winter gales.  Usually we have them in October, but it won't have escaped the notice of anyone except those dwelling in caves that this year the end of December and beginning of January have been dominated by gales blasting their way across the UK, fuelled, it appears, by extreme weather conditions in the United States.  

We're now pretty used to it, but experiencing the full onslaught of the usual southwesterly in the Shoebox is quite scary.  The building that houses the Shoebox and its neighbour No. 8 is only attached in part to the next house along.  Two of the building's sides are timber-framed and tile-hung (in other words there's a framework of oak beams with tiles then hanging on a frame added to the outside face of the oak beams; a degree of further protection from the elements is afforded on the inside by a combination of tongue and groove panelling and lath and plaster walls).  The result of this is that the building is not so rigid as a fully brick-built structure.  In a gale there is distinct movement, which can be alarming on the upper floors.  I take comfort in the fact that it's stood upright for 200 years and is not about to collapse.

We were away for the major storm just before Christmas, but there's been quite a lot of wind blowing down the chimney and against the windows since our return.  Mercifully we had the windows draft-proofed when the rest of the building works were done a year ago - though the guarantee only covers winds up to sixty miles an hour, which isn't always enough.  There will doubtless be some repairing work to be done in the Spring, but so far we're surviving.

Which is more than can be said of the cliffs along the road from us.  Sodden from the torrential rain, the sandstone has been under massive pressure from the onslaught of waves at high tide.  A large chunk of it collapsed a couple of days ago.  A video of the rockface crumbling into the sea was broadcast on the South-East News and as a result there were streams of visitors yesterday looking at the sight from the car-park.  The car-park itself was a bit of a no-go area, since the waves were crashing over part of it, and washing shingle over the sea-wall.  This morning we woke to calm: a welcome lull after what seems endless days of wind, but as I type this the windows are being buffeted again and it looks as if there is more to come.  The only good thing about this weather is that sooner or later it comes to an end.

Antony Mair