Trouble in Paradise

Rushlake Green, a small village to the south-east of Heathfield , has a number of features that make it stand out from other similar places in East Sussex in these days of long distance commuting and second homes. It has a village hall and a pub, the Horse and Groom, things which even the most gentrified villages have managed to hang on to; but it also has – and these are those less typical aspects – a separate village shop and post office. Even more unusually, it has some genuine social housing: a supported scheme of homes for rent for older people right in the middle of the village. And obviously all of these rarities are interdependent; and that’s what makes a real community: people who need and patronise services that meet the demands of those who live there. (In another larger village near me an art and design shop opened; nothing against art and design but it wasn’t quite what car-less people needed to assist them in the daily struggle to access basic services.)

So, Rushlake Green is a real place as well as being delightfully picturesque; but there is trouble in paradise - of course it would be stupid to assume that such a good state of affairs would be allowed to exist unhindered. There was first a threat to the village shop when the owner, whose family had run the business for 90 years, retired in 2008. A campaign to establish a community shop in its place gathered support but eventually new owners came forward and took over the post office and village store as they were. Now, to keep both services viable, the owners want to sell part of the premises as residential accommodation and subsume the post office into the shop; except this is not that straightforward. Post Office Limited has set down a number of requirements that would adversely affect the cost of moving and the ability to provide a service from within the shop.

As a result, there is again a threat to a service that is well-used by both those who depend on it because they are unable to go elsewhere, and those who have mobility but find the service convenient. It is likely that the intransigence of Post Office Limited can be explained by their current pre-privatisation state. In April of this year it became independent of Royal Mail – a nicely self- contained service ripe for a sell-off as a thrusting business with little time for elderly supported housing residents. It is currently unclear how this situation will be resolved but perhaps it is time to dust off those plans for a community shop.

Cylinder Sound

The only energy a hand-powered cylinder mower uses is your own; and if you have an area of grass to cut that is not too extensive it would be madness to use anything that relies on unsustainable sources. We bought one for about £20 a few years ago but it was pretty cheaply made and, after using it to mow uneven allotment paths as well as in the garden, it started to fall apart.

Having learnt that you have to use them regularly and on fairly even grass, we upped our investment to the forty quid mark and went for one made by a well-known lawnmower manufacturer. By happy accident, when I was researching this particular model, I realised that a previous version of it, dating from as early as the 1930s, was the mower that my granddad used to let me ride precariously on the front of as a kid – this was before the invention of modern parental anxiety - as he pushed it up and down to create that bowling green effect in his back garden.

The current version is sturdy but light and provides an excellent opportunity for regular exercise; but the best thing about it is there is no more delightful sound on a summer’s day than the gentle whirr of a push-mower - much more pleasing than the insistent whine of electric or the deafening thrum of petrol.

If You Go Down To The Woods Today...

It would be churlish in the extreme to complain about the hot summer weather that has finally arrived now the Gulf Stream has buggered off to where it belongs. Its perfect timing in coinciding with the start of the school holidays has meant that the fear of having a houseful of demob happy children, rained in with nowhere to go, has not been realised. But it is bloomin’ hot; and when 8 a.m. starts, a full paddling pool and plenty of ice cream are still not enough to keep the kids cool, there is only one place to go: the woods.

Sussex abounds with woodland and, in stifling heat at the height of summer, the dense canopy of trees never allows the air to warm up. Enter a forest and its benign earthiness will calm the most fevered brow. Even if sprogs and dogs insist on tearing about, nature will provide shade and still, cool air to stop them overheating.

According to the latest figures, 13% of Britain’s landscape is forest and woodland. After years of decline, this is the highest it has been since the 1930s and is despite the best efforts of the coalition government and their plans to privatise the public forests of England and Wales. This policy succeeded in uniting the forces of Conservatism – the Daily Telegraph and members of genteel charities such as the National Trust and the RSPB – with more traditionally radical campaigners like the Socialist Workers Party and the Ramblers. Its hasty scrapping last year was precipitated by how many Conservatives opposed this idiot idea; but the Tories in the government had every right to be caught out by the strength of feeling from its own supporters for there has long been a contradiction in Conservatism that did not prevent the erosion of the fabric of Britain last time they were in power.

The fundamental dichotomy at the heart of Conservatism – the free market and tradition – is something that has puzzled me for a long time. Slavery to the free market and deregulation means that the look of Britain has been transformed in the last thirty years: gone are the traditional liveries of our national and local public services and in their stead are the logos of a thousand faceless contractors. The free market idea that the cheapest price is best, with no regard for quality or aesthetics, delivers a world where the appearance of ‘phone boxes and buses is no longer consistent, the postman doesn’t deliver twice and water and electricity is supplied by the French (a situation, I would have thought, that fills your average Tory Europhobe with horror). If the consistency of public services has been lost, the opposite has occurred in private sector services.

Business is now dominated by a limited number of huge global concerns that have ensured the virtual end of the independent sector. This has changed the face of the High Street from the variety and range of retailers thirty years ago, to the proliferation of multiples such as McDonalds and Starbucks that we have today. In her book ‘Eating Air’, Pauline Melville notes that “all the things that people feared from communism: bland uniformity, cloned cities and omnipresent surveillance have been brought about by capitalism and nobody recognises it”. It was the policies of Thatcher, Major and Blair that sacrificed the service landscape of Britain in the name of competition but perhaps the prospect of being greeted by the words “This forest is managed by Capita and sponsored by Coca Cola” has finally woken Conservatives up to their duty to conserve.

Whether it is Ashdown Forest or Abbots Wood, Friston Forest or Darwell Wood, or any of the hundred smaller woods, there are plenty of dark, shady havens to choose from. There was a time when there was a lot more forest and woodland in Sussex. 1500 years ago, before clearance for agriculture and settlement, the huge wild wood forest of Anderida covered an area greater than what remains of it now, Ashdown Forest. This woodland is often cited as the reason that Sussex was the last county in England to convert to Christianity – it was cut off from the rest of England by its expanse and density. I like to think that this reluctance to give up Paganism was more down to the ‘we wunt be druv’ nature of the Sussex spirit, in existence even then; but if it’s not, shame there were not more trees.

Hang On A Minute...

This coming weekend sees the start of the artist Richard Wilson’s ‘Hang On A Minute Lads, I’ve Got A Great Idea’ at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill. Following Anthony Gormley’s ‘Critical Mass’ in 2010, there is now the chance to experience more rooftop art. This time, in homage to the conclusion of the 1969 film ‘The Italian Job’, you get to see a full sized-replica of a coach balanced precariously on the edge of the building’s roof. The title of the exhibition is the film’s final line, delivered as the camera zooms out to the panorama of the Italian Alps leaving the Mini-driving heisters balanced on the fulcrum of a dilemma against a pile of gold bullion. Wilson’s obsession with the film, and its iconic use of Mini Coopers, Michael Caine and football supporters abroad, has led to the work being commissioned as part of the British Cultural Olympiad; the exhibition runs until September and is free.

There is also an open invitation to Friday evening’s launch party, with music throughout the building from DJ Stephen Mallinder. When I saw that name I also thought “hang on a minute”; then it came to me: Stephen ‘Mal’ Mallinder, founder member of Sheffield Dada-inspired electronic industrialists, Caberet Voltaire. It also sent me scurrying to a box of 7” singles where I found their ‘Extended Play’ EP, their first release on Rough Trade from 1978. Including ‘Do the Mussolini (Headkick)’ and an esoteric cover of the Velvet Underground’s ‘Here She Comes Now’, this EP, together with another 7” in my box - the first Mute Records release from the same year, The Normal’s ‘TVOD/Warm Leatherette’ - signalled independent music’s move away from the rama lama of landfill punk. I’m sure Mallinder - now relocated to Brighton from Sheffield, via Australia - will be playing equally adventurous music on Friday; and it’s good to see that there is room for avant-garde musical experimentation in the British cultural landscape as well as your run of the mill coach hanging from the side of a building.

The Honeyed Taste

Apple, Orange, the Blackberry: the world of consumer technology loves a bit of fruit. Using the name of clean and fresh natural produce, these corporate giants are hoping for a little piece of nature’s reflected glory. Some fruit, I assume, is off limits. Nobody with any sanity is going to condemn their product from the off by naming it after a farting sound or laying it open to accusations that things have gone pear-shaped. But I expect that in some silicon valley, plans for the Strawberry and the Cherry are well advanced.

I am not sure where the gooseberry – or “goosegogs” as my Dad called them - would fit into all this but its slang definition as an unwanted third party could damn any product as surplus to requirements; the one that takes a back seat when the Microsoft Peach and the Sony Ericsson Pineapple are getting together; hanging around when it’s not wanted. At the moment, however, the gooseberry is anything but unwanted. After a windy, soggy spring that seems to be turning into an equally damp and squally summer, I have hardly any produce to show for my labours in the veg patch and allotment. There has been the rhubarb and the usual crop for the salad bowl but this has been greatly diminished by stunted lettuce, rocket and spinach leaves and diminutive radishes. This time last year we had already been cooking with our own broad beans, peas and courgettes. This year, the winds have battered these plants and the lack of sunshine has prevented them from coming on; which is why I am grateful to the gooseberry.

Seemingly unnoticed, my gooseberry bushes – which I only planted last autumn - suddenly appeared to be heaving with fruit. They have timed it perfectly to take the place of the rhubarb in the Sunday crumble and their sour taste, offset by the sugar, has been delicious – the kids loved it. The reason why gooseberries have done so well this year is simple: they do well every year but I just haven’t noticed. The gooseberry bush is indigenous to the cool northern European climate and they will thrive in pretty much any conditions in this country. When I was a child, I remember that my Dad used to grow them in the shade of the apple tree – proof that they can thrive with little or no direct sunlight. I also remember that any fruit that were still on the bush by the time the summer holidays started were not sour but deliciously sweet to eat raw. All I hope is that I can keep the birds away from them long enough for my kids to share the honeyed taste of goosegogs straight from the bush.

Sitting at the Sky's Edge

The last time Richard Hawley came to Sussex was in 2009. He played a sublime set - pretty much the whole of the recently released Truelove’s Gutter - to a full house at the De La Warr pavilion and was genuinely taken aback by the rapturous reception afforded a man who makes music completely on his own terms and looks and sounds like he just stepped out of 1960. With a new album - Standing at the Sky’s Edge - just released, Hawley is on the road again and due to play in Sussex, at the Dome in Brighton; but not until September. Not being able to wait that long, I took a trip to London on Friday night to see the start of his tour at the Kentish Town Forum. The last time I left Sussex for a gig was in March, just over the border into Kent, to see Nick Lowe at the Assembly Hall Theatre in Tunbridge Wells. The musical trajectories of these singer/songwriters seem to have been converging in recent years, both turning out aching, melancholic rock ‘n’ roll/alt. country ballads.

My heart sinks when I go to London now: every possible money-making opportunity seems to be being squeezed until the pips squeak. London has always been the heart of the capitalist machine but it seems that flimsy apartment blocks are springing up in every available space to sell the idea of “London living” and you cannot move for food concessions that will let you eat anything you want as long as it is expensive and poor. And the last time I went to the Forum it had no sponsor (who I won’t benefit by naming) incorporated into the name of the venue. However, my feeling of being exploited evaporated quickly when I realised that the support band were the magnificent Y Niwl.

Y Niwl (The Fog) are surf-rockers from North Wales. The spirits of Hank Marvin, Duane Eddy and Dick Dale are summoned up (even though none of these are dead) for a really loud set of reverb, tremolo and Farfisa. They, of course, played the magnificent Undegpedwar (Fourteen); this is a piece better known as the theme to Football Focus and a track that has one of the best accompanying videos you are likely to see. If John Peel were still alive, you just know he would adore Y Niwl. And throughout the whole set they did not sing nor say a word; unlike Richard Hawley.

Apart from the joy of hearing his music, going to a Richard Hawley gig will always reward you with some funny stories. Tonight is no exception: Hawley comes on stage in a wheelchair. He has broken his leg, he explains, and would love to say that it happened as a result of wild, excessive abandon. The prosaic truth is that he slipped on a marble staircase in leather-soled shoes - the high price of style. He is helped on to a stool – “sitting at the sky’s edge” – where he stays for the whole set.

Hawley’s new album is something of a departure. The carefully crafted minimalism has been replaced by psychedelic guitar rock that reflects the harder-edged socio-politics of some of the songs. The opening title track – of course Sky’s Edge is an area of Sheffield - catalogues the harsh economic realities for a cast of hometown characters in these coalition times. Many songs on the new album build towards blissed-out finales and the gorgeously mellow Don’t Stare at the Sun is no exception. But that voice - with its warm, faultless timbre - remains the same.

If the stage set of British Sea Power-style potted trees reflects the album’s cover shot looking up through branches to something higher, there is still plenty of room for Hawley’s back catalogue. Truelove’s Gutter – perhaps his high watermark album – is extensively trawled for Soldier On, For Your Lover Give Some Time and the peerless Remorse Code. Before he plays Tonight the Streets Are Ours, from Lady’s Bridge, he tells an anecdote about getting a phone call from Banksy asking permission to use the song in his film, Exit Through the Gift Shop. Hanging out the washing as penance for having one too many at lunchtime, the pissed and uncomprehending Hawley thinks he is talking to one of his mates who shares the same name. As always when I go to a gig, there is a song that suddenly leaps out at me. Tonight, The Ocean from Coles Corner strikes me as a work of staggering beauty that I feel ashamed for neglecting this long.

Hawley’s new material has probably broadened his appeal. There were a lot more young people in the audience than I have seen at previous gigs and, when my mate was in the toilet, a bloke complained to him that he wasn’t too keen on “all the slow stuff”. I did notice some attention spans shrinking and faces lit up by smart ‘phones during the more meditative songs, tweeting that they had seen Lauren Laverne in the bar, no doubt; but when it came to choosing the encore - we were given a choice between two quiet songs or one rock-out number – discretion won the day.

There's No Future...

...in England's dreaming.