Downland: part two

Below him, to his right, Ridler could still make out the bulk of the tithe barn at Alciston and the lights from The Rose that were beginning to flicker through the pervading gloom. The thought of sitting, musing, a pint of Tamplin’s on a rough wooden table in front of him, appealed. To gaze out of the propped bar door into the warm summer evening, exchange a nod – perhaps a word – with others as they arrived would be the simplest of pleasures; but the reality would be far from this fantasy. Glances, stares, suspicion, alarm, hostility, anger, violence: walking into the bar of a public house would guarantee a starting point at any of the increments on this scale of reaction. Further away he could see the village of Ripe; in the pub there he might be begrudgingly tolerated – not that he had ever tried to test the idea. Perhaps even in the inn at Chalvington to its east, the response would not escalate beyond the stares; but away from home, even a few paltry miles, would make all the difference. Ridler walked on; surefooted, upright and bareheaded. The local pubs had embraced the Writer when he first came to Downland but his turmoil inside had begun to show on the outside and – like Ridler - he had become a spectacle to be judged.

Nearing the Beacon, Ridler felt a sense of relief: he needed to be out on the Downs, needed to be nearer the sky, be able to feel the air, be able to see the world as far as he could, but he always had a sense that no sooner than he felt free, the counter of confinement tugged at him and he had to return to the fetters he had forged for himself. For over twenty years, he had had to live with the limits of his decision to become a spectacle. He had no regret: he and Gladys had lived well during those years – but a price had to be paid. And he had quickly learned that price. Despite all the attention, the gazes of fascination at the World Fair, there was also opprobrium. In Times Square, he had not seen the man as any different from the amused and opened-mouthed throng who parted as he – literally head and shoulders above them - and Gladys, sightseeing, moved through them. Not different until Ridler felt a smart on the side of his face, felt the droplets of blood on his chin and saw the man, flick-knife hanging lazily, mouthing angry words back at him as he melted into the crowd. Never since had he put himself so close to so many people; and never since had he ventured out without scarf and hat to conceal. Except here - the Downs – where the warmth of the summer air, like balm to a wound, caressed and soothed his skin.

Licht und Blindheit

Peter Hook’s decision to trawl through his back catalogue and tour whole albums has seen him fall out with his New Order colleagues. Next month, with his band, the Light, he will perform New Order’s Movement and Power, Corruption and Lies on stage. But for the moment he is still mining the rich seam of Joy Division material. Billed as an Unknown Pleasures gig, his turn at Concorde 2 on Brighton’s chilly Madeira Drive on Wednesday night turned out to contain a lot more.

The one vinyl album I own that has been most worn through continually playing is Joy Division’s debut. I was 17 years old when it was released and it sounded like nothing ever made before. And I’ve never really stopped playing it – these songs are hard-wired into my consciousness – and it still sounds unique despite the scores of bands who have subsequently been inspired by its sound. At the gig, there are countless men of a certain age and Peter Saville’s sleeve design – a diagrammatic representation of the radio waves emitted from a collapsed star - is everywhere: it forms the stage backdrop, it’s on posters and it's on T-shirts, including one worn by one of the support band, Manchester’s Tiny Phillips. But there are a lot of younger people in the audience, testament to Joy Division’s continuing influence.

Expecting the bass line from Disorder when the band take the stage, it’s a surprise when they begin with the patient, swirling build-up of Dead Souls, the B-side of the 1980 Licht und Blindheit single for the French label Sordide Sentimental. After the subtleties of the opener, there are a couple of early songs - No Love Lost and Leaders of Men – from the cusp of Warsaw/Joy Division, and Digital from 1978’s A Factory Sample EP. The sense that Hook was always the most boisterous member of Joy Division/New Order seems to be borne out as he crunches through these early songs. He handles the vocals well, despite the occasional lapse into bellowing; he is sure of the lyrics and delivers them with passion. Perhaps this should not be a shock: it was a toss-up who should take the vocal duties after Curtis’s death and Hook lost out to Bernard Sumner. I love the fragility of Barney’s voice but listen to Hook’s lead vocals on Dreams Never End and Doubts Even Here from New Order’s debut album and consider whether the right decision was made.

The well-replicated rawness of those old Warsaw songs makes me fear for the tender songs on Unknown Pleasures; but his handling of the delicacy of Candidate and Insight allays my fears. The band includes another bassist, enabling Hook to selectively concentrate on the intricate bass melodies that are perhaps the most important element in producer Martin Hannett’s creation of the Joy Divison sound. And with samples of the album’s original production augmenting the songs, the spliced tape intro to New Dawn Fades gives me an emotional catch in the throat.

Once they have finished Unknown Pleasures in its entirety, that’s not it: Atrocity Exhibition, A Means to an End, Isolation, 24 Hours and The Eternal all signal that perhaps Hook’s next project will be playing all of Joy Division’s second album, Closer, live. Finishing with two singles, Transmission and the obligatory Love Will Tear Us Apart, Hook has played for nearly two hours. There has been criticism of his motivation for touring this material but Hook clearly loves these songs and seems lost in the moment on stage. And who could deny someone who was instrumental in creating such iconic music the chance to let it see the light again after so long?

What's in a Name?

Carter’s Corner Place, near Hellingly, is divided up into three different homes these days; but in the second half of the twentieth century it was the country pile of Lord Hailsham, or Quintin Hogg, most well known as the Tories’ tub-thumping right wing Lord Chancellor during the Thatcherite 1980s. He had inherited it from his father, the first Lord Hailsham. A fairly unremarkable house, it was originally built in 1602, for the Barton family, of red and grey brick with a tiled roof and casement windows with stone mullions and transoms. It was enlarged by the first Lord Hailsham in the 1920s.

By far the most interesting thing about the house is what happened there on Saturday 2nd April 1932. Quintin Hogg shared a mother with his half-brother Edward Marjoribanks. Myssie Marjoribanks had divorced her husband Archibald and remarried to Lord Hailsham. In one of those ubiquitous pieces of nonsense the nobility indulge in, the comically upper class surname Marjoribanks was actually pronounced Marchbanks. Edward was Tory MP for Eastbourne and had come down from London with his half-brother to stay with his mother and stepfather for the weekend.

On Monday 4th April, the Manchester Guardian, a name my dad insisted on using for the paper until the day he died some forty years after they had dropped the ‘Manchester’ (similarly, he never got used to the Home Service becoming Radio 4), carried the following story:

'We regret to announce the death, under tragic circumstances, of Mr. Edward Marjoribanks, M.P., one of the most promising of the younger Conservatives. Mr. Marjoribanks was found by his stepfather, Lord Hailsham (Secretary for War), shot dead in the billiard-room of the latter's house, Carter's Corner Place, near Hailsham, on Saturday night. Lord Hailsham, who was greatly distressed, sent at once for a doctor and the police.

'Mr. Marjoribanks, who was 32 years of age, had recently been suffering from the effects of overwork, and particularly from insomnia.

'Mr. Marjoribanks was found lying partly across a chair with a gunshot wound in his chest.Near the body was a double-barrelled sporting gun. Adjoining the billiard room is a small anteroom, which is used as a gun-room, and it is believed that it was here that the gun was discharged. Marks on the floor and walls indicate that Mr. Marjoribanks was standing in the gunroom when he received the wound.

'He fell to the floor, but apparently, retaining consciousness, staggered or crawled through the open doorway into the billiard-room, collapsed across the chair, and died immediately. Only one barrel of the gun had been discharged. On the floor, it is understood, two live cartridges were found.

'Mr. Marjoribanks was to have passed the weekend at Lord Hailsham's home before returning to Westminster for the resumption of the House of Commons sittings tomorrow. In addition to his duties at Westminster he had been engaged with unremitting energy on the completion of a life of Lord Carson which he was writing, and the strain had been obviously telling on him. He left London on Monday with Mr. Quintin McGarel Hogg (Lord Hailsham's son) to spend a quiet week-end in the country. While at Carter's Corner Place he had been passing the time quietly on the beautiful estate, which lies on a hill off the Battle-Lewes Road outside Hailsham. Mr. Marjoribanks had been seen about the house earlier in the day, and had taken meals with his stepfather.'

The sad truth, of course, was that Marjoribanks had not "received the wound" but had committed suicide. Similarly, he had not been "suffering from the effects of overwork" but had just been jilted by his fiancée. This was something that had happened to him before: an earlier marriage engagement had also been broken off against his wishes.

In the churchyard of All Saints in Herstmonceux, his modest grave is on the far side looking across the Pevensey Levels towards Hailsham. When I came across it during a walk, the relative youth of the occupant prompted me to investigate further; that and the ludicrous surname.

Downland: part one

The Downs. The solemn, swollen hills; the perpetual sward of the south, stretching from Winchester in the west to Eastbourne in the east. Undulating, by turns it slopes and sheers to the sea in the south; the covering of ancient woodland cleared millennia ago, ovine-manicured grassland now dominates. At the eastern edge, its northerly face gazes down onto the villages under its shadow and to the distant settlements of the Weald. The Downs: the grass below, above, the vaulted sky. The Downs. And on a day in June 1958, between its silhouetted escarpment and the orange-tinged archipelago of late evening altocumulus cloud, a tall figure could be seen. Avoiding the main path, occasionally obscured by gorse, it was restlessly heading west, intent on descent before the sun finally set. The open landscape of chalk and grass spread before him, the benign breeze faced him; the intersection of stile-less farmers’ fences his only obstacle. He had seen no others since before he had begun his climb when he crossed the Lewes Road and his form, illuminated in the half-lights of a speeding Morris Oxford, had startled the driver into swerve and skid. More anxious than usual on this day to be off the Downs, Ridler’s object – the Beacon – was still some two miles distant. For the past year, he had avoided the nightwalking that had sustained him during his first seven in Downland. Now, he preferred only the interregnum - dusk and twilight - but the risk of capture in the gaze of others was always present. It had been like this before, but in those years from the summer of 1950 he had found some acceptance and, from it, a freedom. The Writer had changed that a year ago to the day and Ridler had barely understood; but he had resolved to remove the risk of a repetition of the events of that previous June.

Foodbank

Foodbank, a network of emergency food provision, has reported a 100% increase in the number of people it has fed in this country in the last year. This is not surprising considering that 13 million people now live below the poverty line in the UK and the Tory and Liberal Democrat coalition wages war on the most vulnerable in society.

There are 250 Foodbanks nationwide and here in East Sussex there are centres in Eastbourne, Hailsham and Hastings, with two more planned in Bexhill and Heathfield. The scheme is run by the Trussell Trust, an organisation working to combat poverty and exclusion. That they are a Christian charity should not put anyone off: in a climate of aggressive government policy against the needy, where there is a deliberate will to remove the safety net of the welfare state from millions, Foodbanks are providing an important lifeline for people in crisis.

Where a Foodbank is established, food is donated by individuals, businesses and local organisations. Collections are also made at supermarkets where shoppers are asked to buy an extra item or two. Volunteers then check that food is in date and pack it into boxes ready for people in need. Professionals such as doctors, health visitors, social workers and Citizens’ Advice Bureau staff identify people in crisis and issue them with a voucher that can be redeemed for three days emergency food. Some Foodbanks also run a rural delivery service, which takes emergency foodboxes to clients living in rural areas who cannot afford to get to a centre.

Mostly, Foodbanks are being used by the working poor, the unemployed and the elderly who need to bridge the gap until the next payday, benefit or pension payment. And it’s not just about food: if Foodbanks keep people away from the clutches of so called ‘payday loan’ companies and their ensnaring rates of interest, they must be a good thing.

If you want to donate or volunteer, or are in need of help yourself, local Foodbanks can be found through www.trusselltrust.org/foodbank-projects or at the following locations in East Sussex:

Sheriff Place
Rear of Link Shop
1 George Street
Hailsham
BN27 1AD
01323 844428

Albury House
1 Cornfield Lane
Eastbourne
BN21 4NE
01323 409925

The Hastings Centre
The Ridge
Hastings
TN34 2SA
07970 810008

Roadblock

The long running saga of the Bexhill-Hastings Link Road (BHLR) looks to be coming to a sorry end as construction of this pointless road is now due to begin, cutting a swathe through Combe Haven Valley.

Following the process of local consultation in 2004 and a public enquiry in 2009, the current government is now making the scheme happen with approval of the compulsory purchase of the land and George Osborne's decision to contribute £56m towards the project. The Hastings Alliance, the campaign group formed to oppose the BHLR, failed earlier this month in its High Court application for a judicial review of the government's funding decision, and now construction is due to start in January of next year.

Building a meandering road through the countryside to link two towns that sit next to each other on the coast would appear to be utter folly. East Sussex County Council, however, is insistent that the road is essential for the regeneration of the towns as it would open up greenfield areas around North Bexhill and Hastings for new housing and business developments and would relieve the congested and polluted A259.

Improving existing housing in the two towns is a more worthwhile and job-creating investment, and any new business parks would struggle to be viable without greater stimulus to the wider local economy. And the Council should be aiming to create less traffic through improved public transport, not simply spreading it around and probably creating more.

The Hastings Alliance is supported by a range of well-known charities such as Friends of the Earth, the RSPB and the Campaign to Protect Rural England. Future opposition to the scheme would seem to lie outside of the formal process and these genteel campaigners; it will now fall to pressure groups the Combe Haven Defenders and Bexhill Link Road Resistance to toughen up opposition. Such crass road building is sending a chill wind from the recent past blowing through the Combe Haven Valley and also with it, perhaps, the spirit of the eco-warriors of the 1990s. Come January, direct action may be the only way to block this road.

National Poetry Day

Sussex

GOD gave all men all earth to love,
But since our hearts are small,
Ordained for each one spot should prove
Belovèd over all;
That, as He watched Creation’s birth,
So we, in godlike mood,
May of our love create our earth
And see that it is good.

So one shall Baltic pines content,
As one some Surrey glade,
Or one the palm-grove’s droned lament
Before Levuka’s Trade.
Each to his choice, and I rejoice
The lot has fallen to me
In a fair ground—in a fair ground—
Yea, Sussex by the sea!

No tender-hearted garden crowns,
No bosomed woods adorn
Our blunt, bow-headed, whale-backed Downs,
But gnarled and writhen thorn—
Bare slopes where chasing shadows skim,
And, through the gaps revealed,
Belt upon belt, the wooded, dim,
Blue goodness of the Weald.

Clean of officious fence or hedge,
Half-wild and wholly tame,
The wise turf cloaks the white cliff edge
As when the Romans came.
What sign of those that fought and died
At shift of sword and sword?
The barrow and the camp abide,
The sunlight and the sward.

Here leaps ashore the full Sou’west
All heavy-winged with brine,
Here lies above the folded crest
The Channel’s leaden line;
And here the sea-fogs lap and cling,
And here, each warning each,
The sheep-bells and the ship-bells ring
Along the hidden beach.

We have no waters to delight
Our broad and brookless vales—
Only the dewpond on the height
Unfed, that never fails—
Whereby no tattered herbage tells
Which way the season flies—
Only our close-bit thyme that smells
Like dawn in Paradise.

Here through the strong and shadeless days
The tinkling silence thrills;
Or little, lost, Down churches praise
The Lord who made the hills:
But here the Old Gods guard their round,
And, in her secret heart,
The heathen kingdom Wilfrid found
Dreams, as she dwells, apart.

Though all the rest were all my share,
With equal soul I’d see
Her nine-and-thirty sisters fair,
Yet none more fair than she.
Choose ye your need from Thames to Tweed,
And I will choose instead
Such lands as lie ’twixt Rake and Rye,
Black Down and Beachy Head.

I will go out against the sun
Where the rolled scarp retires,
And the Long Man of Wilmington
Looks naked toward the shires;
And east till doubling Rother crawls
To find the fickle tide,
By dry and sea-forgotten walls,
Our ports of stranded pride.

I will go north about the shaws
And the deep ghylls that breed
Huge oaks and old, the which we hold
No more than Sussex weed;
Or south where windy Piddinghoe’s
Begilded dolphin veers
And red beside wide-bankèd Ouse
Lie down our Sussex steers.

So to the land our hearts we give
Till the sure magic strike,
And Memory, Use, and Love make live
Us and our fields alike—
That deeper than our speech and thought,
Beyond our reason’s sway,
Clay of the pit whence we were wrought
Yearns to its fellow-clay.

God gives all men all earth to love,
But since man’s heart is small,
Ordains for each one spot shall prove
Beloved over all.
Each to his choice, and I rejoice
The lot has fallen to me
In a fair ground—in a fair ground—
Yea, Sussex by the sea!

Rudyard Kipling (1902)