Brothers in the Dust

In Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, the ghost of Christmas present admonishes Scrooge for his lack of charity to those less well off than he. “O God! To hear the insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust!”, he exclaims at Scrooge’s declaration that the poor should die to decrease the surplus population. Dickens’s leaf was metaphorical but in Eastbourne, twenty years after Dickens wrote those words, there was a more literal leaf that sought to raise those less well off out of the dust.

Today, on a slightly down-at-heel stretch of Seaside, the road that runs behind Eastbourne’s coastal Royal Parade, sits an imposing buff and red brick building. Topped with a four-faced clock tower and a high pitched roof with a gothic arched window at its gable end, it manages to appear both civic and sacred at the same time. Squashed between Senlac House - where future motorists come to sit their driving theory test - and a National Tyres garage, its signage advertises that it is home to an academy of performing arts and a community arts centre; but this was not always the case.

Leaf Hall – the town’s oldest public building - was named after William Laidler Leaf, Victorian philanthropist and evangelical Christian, who had a holiday home on the town’s Grand Parade. Leaf was aware that the dwellings to the east of the pier were in stark contrast to the hotels, houses and apartments occupied by the wealthy; and he noticed that the occupants were largely unemployed and virtually destitute when the holidaymakers, that the resort’s trade relied upon, left at the end of the season. Wishing to alleviate poverty and, more importantly for Leaf, keep the idle out of the pubs, he persuaded William Cavendish, the 7th Duke of Devonshire and the town’s largest landowner, to donate a space where Leaf could build a venue to sustain and educate the working classes.

The architect was Robert Blessley, who also designed Eastbourne’s Grand Hotel, and construction began in 1863. The building’s commanding exterior was intended to inspire reverence in its users and, once inside, respect for its lecture hall, library and reading room. Books could be borrowed for tuppence a week, at a time when the town had no public library, and penny lectures could accommodate audiences of up to 200. But the focus was not just improvement: there was also a large kitchen and serving room and, in the harsh winters of the 1880s, Leaf Hall dispensed 3,000 pints of soup and 3,000 loaves each week.

Despite these philanthropic endeavours, the people Leaf most wanted to reach were put off by his support for the temperance movement. Allowing the Band of Hope and the Salvation Army to base themselves at the hall, attendance amongst working men dwindled and the building became a target for violence organised by local publicans keen to protect their trade. In fact, this was to be the start of the Eastbourne Riots (an oxymoron if ever there was one – or a Half Man Half Biscuit song) of the 1890s when Sunday processions by the Sally Army would be violently disrupted by paid hooligans and large crowds would gather to watch the spectacle.

As the new century began, Leaf Hall lost its missionary zeal and concentrated instead on being a proto-foodbank and a pre-NHS medical centre where local doctors provided free care to those who could not normally afford their fees. With the advent of the welfare state after the Second World War, Leaf Hall’s philanthropy became largely redundant; although now, in the twenty-first century, the town is hosting a foodbank again.

One Tree Hill

High up to my right, I can see the oak on One Tree Hill, its shape unbalanced by the constant battering of the south-westerlies that curve across the Downs and pick up speed as they race inland. At this time of year, with animals in their winter quarters and walkers in their towns and cities, the tree is once again the solitary occupant of the hill. Despite its name, it is not so much a hill as a ridge or a barrow; lying between Lime End and Comphurst Farms, it runs parallel to the footpath behind Strawberry Field and shadows me as I make my way through the first hard morning frost of the winter. I have never seen it up close, but the tree has become a comfort to me; I feel its benevolence and protection whenever I pass and it has my admiration whether skeletal in winter or showing off the full bloom of its crown in high summer.

As the footpath rises, I can see beyond the hill to Flowers Green and the row of cottages behind the nursery’s now empty pumpkin field. Three summers ago, I worked in the garden of the house at the far end of the terrace, clearing nettles and brambles and cutting back hazel so that the owner could regain the view. Whether he felt the same pull of the lonely oak, I never had the chance to ask. He was rarely at home and was a late payer; I sensed that he was dissatisfied with my work as I was not engaged the following summer. His garden only stands out in my memory because a friend surprised me there one day: walking home, he had seen my vehicle outside and wandered in; we sat under the apple trees and shared my lunch.

Having, as usual, become disorientated on the Levels – the tributaries and irrigation channels continually diverting me from my objective – I abandon my plan to walk to the coast and turn and head for home by another route. At one point, the path is blocked by a tree freshly fallen in the week’s storms and I have to head across open fields. From a different perspective, the oak on One Tree Hill looks even more majestic and, when I approach it from a track that I am sure is not public (the spirit of Kinder Scout lives on), it is much larger than I imagined. Despite the sun now being as high as it will manage all day, the cattle trough in its shade is still topped with a sheet of ice and it feels a degree of two cooler up here than it did on the lower ground; the reality of its exposed position gives me a new respect for my sentinel tree.

1979 Now

A couple of years ago, I started writing a novel set in 1977. This meant researching/refreshing my memory of the events and music of that year and, even when it was completed and then published, I didn’t stop. I carried on tracking time and as 2017 rolled into 2018 there were LPs from 1978 to dig out and play; this year, I’ve been enjoying a vintage age for music 40 years in arrears with all that 1979 has to offer by listening to LPs from The Cure, The Raincoats, Wire, The Fall (two), Skids, Tubeway Army, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Gang of Four, The Clash, Specials, PiL, Adam and the Ants, Joy Division, The Slits, Linton Kwesi Johnson, The Members and, of course, Bowie and Iggy.

Having said that, I don’t live entirely in the musical past: I buy a couple of dozen new albums annually and mostly see current bands live, with this year’s crop including Sleaford Mods, Yak, Rozi Plain, Fontaines DC, The Stroppies, Cate Le Bon, Callum Easter, Chastity Belt, Vic Godard, Edwyn Collins, The Murder Capital and Kate Tempest; but I often feel that I didn’t appreciate the quality of the times I was living through in my youth and failed to pay enough attention. So, I’m paying attention now and it is well worth it.

1979 is arguably the finest year there has ever been for popular music of my taste but it also has some interesting political parallels with our current position. Then, as now, the leader of the country was a blonde maverick, adored by their supporters but loathed by their enemies, about to usher in a right-wing project – monetarism then, Brexit now – that would disproportionately damage the most vulnerable in society. Then, as probably now, they were at the start of a 10-year period of power that would transform the landscape of our country.

The difference is that Thatcher’s reign came after a time when eleven of the preceding fifteen years had seen Labour governments delivering liberal social reforms and legislating to enshrine employment rights and to support women, gay people and ethnic minority groups, measures that would offer some protection against the worst excesses of the free-market agenda. Unfortunately, the start of Johnson’s administration follows on from nine years of suffering that we have already had under Cameron and May’s austere Tory governments: NHS, education and local authority cuts; hostile environment; Universal Credit; and no action on climate change, homelessness and racism. With all this as the foundation, I think that what we are in for in the twenties will be much worse than what we endured in the eighties.

I have no solutions to offer of my own. Once again, just as in 1979, people of my class have voted in large numbers for a Conservative Party that does not have their best interests at heart. All I can do is put my faith in the hope that the Labour Party stops eating itself and holds the government closely to account; that, and turn up the music. Happy New Year.

Enduring Spirit

On tour to celebrate the 40th anniversary of their eponymous debut LP, The Raincoats should be assured of its legacy if last night's gig at the Komedia in Brighton was anything to go by. Amongst the expected middle-aged audience was a healthy contingent of young people - and young women in particular - and they seemed to know the words to the songs as well as us oldies. Part of that may be down to the album's enthusiastic endorsement by the late Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love's Hole covering one of their songs; but even that was 25 years ago so I like to think it's more an enduring spirit that has been handed down through punk and riot grrrl and still has currency today.

The Raincoats were born from the west London squatting scene of the late seventies: inspired by The Slits, Gina Birch (bass and vocals) and Ana da Silva (guitar and vocals) started the band having met at Hornsey Art College. After some initial line-up changes, they became an all-female group in 1978 when they were joined by Vicky Aspinall on violin and Palmolive from The Slits on drums. They started from a point of little musical ability but were undeterred: as Gina advised last night, "write some lyrics, put them to a couple of chords - but be inventive." And The Raincoats were: at a time when so many bands were opting for rama-lama punk as a template, they were different and surprising; it was no wonder that disillusioned Pistol John Lydon was an early fan.

Only Ana and Gina from the line-up that recorded The Raincoats were present last night - Anne Wood and Vice Cooler were on violin and drums, respectively - as they played the original LP in its entirety book-ended with outstanding debut single Fairytale in the Supermarket at the start and songs from the Extended Play EP at the end. Still sounding angular and lo-fi but with uplifting harmonies, they worked through the tracks chronologically and it was a joy to hear songs such as Off Duty Trip, The Void and, my particular favourite, the Velvety nag of the discomfiting In Love, with its lyrics of turmoil: "I can't do a thing today/I can't see anyway/I haven't eaten all day." I last saw the band in early 1980 at the Electric Ballroom in Camden and it was such a treat to hear them live again, not in a nostalgic way but as confirmation that in the era of my youth there were people producing such distinctive and life-affirming music.

Charming and disarming in their interactions with the audience, the band were candid about the demands of playing live: Ana revealed the difficulty of getting their cover of The Kinks' Lola right (they did) and Gina, switching to guitar for a couple of songs, confessed that it was hard to sing when playing the bass. It was just this sort of honesty that made The Raincoats so refreshing and opened up the way in music for countless others. The honesty continued to the end of the night when Ana said, "This is the last song, we're not pretending, we have no encore, we have no more songs." And as they took a bow to rapturous applause, they were joined onstage by 'fifth-Beatle' Shirley O'Loughlin, The Raincoats' manager since the start.

Wise Heads

For quite some time now my late night listening has invariably been I Used To Spend So Much Time Alone, the 2017 album by Chastity Belt. Its understated guitar tones and introspective lyrics are perfect for that time of the day when everyone has gone to bed and the house is finally quiet. This year's eponymously titled successor is already set to follow suit as a midnight favourite.

The Seattle four-piece - Julia Shapiro (guitar and lead vocals), Lydia Lund (guitar and vocals), Annie Truscott (bass and vocals) and Gretchen Grimm (drums and vocals) - are actually on their fourth album, the first two being more rooted in the sound of Washington state's Riot Grrrl movement. On stage at Patterns in Brighton last night, coming towards the end of a 19-date European tour, that experience showed as they delivered a brilliant and hypnotic set mainly drawn from this year's release, but with a few diversions back into their third album.

Music magazine Louder Than War called Chastity Belt 'the spiritual granddaughters of the mighty Raincoats' but they have a more accomplished sound than those art-punk legends and on songs such as It Takes Time, Drown and Ann's Jam the harmonised vocals and the delicate guitar interplay between Shapiro and Lund put their sound somewhere between The Sundays and The Durutti Column; and underlining their ability, Shapiro and Grimm swapped roles for Stuck and Apart in the middle of the set.

When 2017's Different Now, probably their breakthrough track, was played towards the end, the crowd sang along to the guitar motif which made Shapiro smile. The song's lyrics are empowering and forward-looking - 'You'll find in time/All the answers that you seek' - but they can also be reflective and, when they sang 'When you were young/Nothing ever turns out like you think' on Elena, wistful; but mostly I was left with the impression that these women have wise heads on young shoulders. They finished the night with Pissed Pants, the new album's final track and the closest they came to rocking out.

Earlier in the evening we were treated to the lo-fi guitar pop of Sad Girls Club, who surprised us with a fun cover of Britney Spears' Toxic. They were followed by Gang, whose half an hour on stage seemed to consist of one song, or it could have been twelve such was the variety of time signatures on offer; they also had a nice line in Monty Python vocals.

What Presence

There can be nothing more uplifting than the presence of a smiling and laughing Edwyn Collins, 14 years on from a life-changing stroke, on stage in Brighton last night as he and his band ran through a spellbinding set of songs that stretched all the way from Orange Juice's debut single to his current solo album. Despite being left with a physical weakness on his right side and asphasia that has slowed his speech, Edwyn has not stopped making music and performing live; and a happy upside to his condition is that his singing voice is as robust and fluent as ever.

Opening with the up-tempo title track from 2010's Losing Sleep, and following with the punky Outside from this year's Badbea, told us that this would be a rousing evening and the sound was excellent from the start. When your band has as its core long-time writing and recording collaborators Carwyn Ellis (bass) and Sean Read (keys/sax) from Colorama and The Rockingbirds, respectively, and is augmented by Andy Hackett (another Rockingbird) and Barrie Cadogan from Little Barrie on guitars, you know you're in safe hands.

The set quickly dipped back into Edwyn's Orange Juice past with a sublime version of What Presence?! from the band's final LP and there were further treats from that era: that trio of Postcard Records singles from 1980 - Falling and Laughing, Blue Boy and Simply Thrilled Honey - as well as I Guess I'm Just A Little Too Sensitive, the glorious Rip It Up and In A Nutshell from 1982's classic LP, You Can't Hide Your Love Forever. But it was another track from that album that reminded me how tender and sophisticated Edwyn's Orange Juice songs were. Intuition Told Me Part 1 may only be a minute long but it's lyrics - "smiled lopsidedly, decidedly awkward, he asked her" - can melt your heart in that time.

Between the songs from the Orange Juice days and half a dozen tracks from the classy new album - particularly It's All About You and I Guess We Were Young - there were other gems: In Your Eyes, from Losing Sleep, which saw Edwyn's son William come on stage to sing The Drums' Jonathan Pierce's part; early solo single, the rocking Don't Shilly Shally; the poignant recuperation song, Home Again; and, of course, A Girl Like You, which was introduced playfully and with good humour by Edwyn, as every song throughout a wonderful evening had been.

True Faith

I’ve hardly written about football since I started this blog. Before then, I probably thought about my team as often as men are supposed to think about sex; but these days, when it comes to football, I am the possessor of a long-held personal faith rather than someone who regularly and devoutly practices an organised religion. I’m a bit like that about sex, too. However, I have been prompted to reflect on my association with football because 30th August will mark the fiftieth anniversary of my first match at The Den to watch Millwall. That day, taken by my dad at the age of seven because I had started to express a fondness for the black and white striped shirts of Newcastle United from pictures in the newspaper, we lost one-nil to Leicester City and I left the ground feeling unimpressed by what I had seen; but it was to be the start of a relationship with a club that has at times defined me, has often exhilarated me but has also, on occasions, made me downright bloody miserable.

I am a third-generation Millwall supporter: my paternal grandad began attending matches in 1910 when the club relocated from the Isle of Dogs to a site south of the River Thames near his home in New Cross; he started taking his son to games in the 1930s and my dad would tell me regularly of the great FA Cup run of 1937 that saw Third Division South Millwall defeat Chelsea, Derby County and Manchester City - all First Division clubs – in front of 40,000 plus crowds at The Den before losing in the semi-final to Sunderland.

After that first match in 1969, I went to most home games with my dad (apart from the 1970/71 season when he disappeared for a year) until I started going with my mates in 75/76. That season was also my first as a season ticket holder - something that I continued up until I moved out of London in 2005 – and was remarkable because it was my first taste of success with promotion to Division Two and it was achieved, in no small part, thanks to the contributions of two skilful young black players, Trevor Lee and Phil Walker, who had been signed from non-league early in the season. This was a rarity then and predated West Brom’s ground-breaking trio of black signings by a couple of years; it was a bold and progressive move by the club and sent out a positive message to the local community at a time when the National Front was on the rise.

From the mid-seventies, my dad attended matches sporadically – I think he felt he had successfully handed on the baton of support – with his last game being the final one at the old Den in 1993 before the club moved to a new all-seater stadium a quarter of a mile away. He did get to see them play in the top flight – the day we won promotion to the old First Division at Hull City in 1988 I went straight from Boothferry Park (well, via the pub) to his house and we stayed up until the early hours celebrating – but he never saw them at Wembley. When Millwall finally got to play at the original Wembley Stadium in the Auto Windscreens Shield Final against Wigan in 1999, he was nearing the end of his life in a nursing home; but he was lucid enough to read the programme and look at the photographs I took for him on the day.

These days Millwall never seem to stop playing at the new Wembley and those play-off finals, and the 2004 FA Cup Final at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff against Manchester United, are probably the peaks for a Millwall supporter. Although, my fondest memories are not necessarily those that resulted in success: I can still remember the names of the whole of the white-kitted 71/72 team and recall the dazzling football of Possee and Bridges that year more than I can remember the ache of disappointment when we missed promotion to Division 1 by a single point at the season’s end; and I’ll never forget taking the lead at Anfield, when we were finally in the First Division, and singing, “We’re gonna win the League”, to the amusement and bemusement of the home crowd.

Of course, there have been more troughs than peaks and for most of us the trials of being a Millwall supporter have not been confined solely to disappointments on the pitch. Travelling to away games, the police assume the worst of you and the inhabitants of every town or city you arrive in seem to want to kill you. I can’t think why. My most intense period of following Millwall away from home was in the 80s: at the end of the decade because we were playing all the big teams, at the start of the decade - when we were terrible - out of a perverted sense of loyalty. There was some sort of badge of honour to be earned from travelling to Plymouth for a night match, arriving late at half-time to find Millwall already one-nil up and then watching them capitulate to three home goals in the second-half before making the long journey back to London; or going to Newport County in January only to dish out abuse to your own disgraceful journeyman players, Sam Allardyce amongst them, who were all kicked out when George Graham took over as manager a few weeks later and saved us from relegation to Division Four; or being one of less than 50 fellow-travellers making the 600 mile round trip to Carlisle for a meaningless late-season game.

Now I no longer live in London, time and money means I only get to a handful of matches a season; and I’m having trouble handing the baton on to the fourth generation. Of my three kids, only my youngest son showed an interest in coming with me to games but his enthusiasm waned. It didn’t help that he started going when we had season after season of relegation battles in the Championship; in fact, he was eight when he first saw Millwall play but a combination of poor form and irregular attendance meant he was eleven when he first saw them win a match. Now he is older, his interest is returning and he says he wants to go this season; he was born in south-east London and, when he has so many peers at school who support Liverpool and Man City only because they are successful, he understands that Millwall means something to him.

We won’t be at the home game on 31st August against Hull to celebrate my 50th year as a Millwall supporter: a lack of forward planning means I’m already committed to spending the weekend in a field somewhere in Wiltshire drinking cider and listening to live music; but we will be at The Den for the anniversary of my second match. That was a couple of weeks later against Carlisle United and it was also the debut of eighteen-year-old Londoner Doug Allder on the left wing for Millwall. He tormented the Carlisle defence that day and created most of the goals as we came from behind in an exciting match to win 4-2 with the crowd roaring in full voice; and as cross after cross came in, a seven-year-old boy, behind the goal at the Ilderton Road end with his dad, was converted.

*The picture at the top shows Millwall supporters on the pitch after the final home game of the 1971/72 season against Preston. News of promotion rivals Birmingham's defeat had led us to believe we had been promoted to Division One. It turned out to be false and Birmingham went on to win their game in hand at Orient and were promoted instead. I am in the photograph at the bottom in the middle facing away from the celebration.