Eyeless in Bexhill

I had been playing the eponymously titled debut album by Eyes & No Eyes for the past week and I was intrigued to hear how they would replicate their impressive sound in the confines of a record shop in-store performance. But at Bexhill’s Music’s Not Dead yesterday, replete with drums and amplification, they demonstrated the full range of their tender sonic landscape.

Playing six tracks from the album, they opened with the wintery Hidden Thieves – “the snow it falls upon your street/betrays the movements of my feet” – with singer and guitarist Tristram Bawtree evoking the vocal fragility of Nick Drake over a mesh of guitar and cello. Cellist Becca Mears underpins the band’s sound in the same way that John Cale used strings to create the sonorous and brooding cacophony of the Velvet Underground. With shifting time signatures and improvised lead-ins, the set veers from genre to genre – folk, psychedelia, be-bop – but never quite settling in any.

At the centre of their set is Rust, with Thomas Heather’s thrilling drums and Marcus Hamblett’s intricate bass combining to create the sort of exciting experimental rhythms that New Order discovered in their earliest work, post-Joy Division. On Old Crow, Bawtree belies his youth sounding positively world-weary – “the things I’ve seen, boy/you won’t believe” – and set closer, and album opener, the sprawling Breathe In has the band at its most mournful and powerful. Bawtree’s guitar work is by turns delicate and abrasive as the song builds to a pulsing climax.

I am sure that Eyes & No Eyes would be even more impressive in a larger venue. However, being charmingly vague about future live dates, the Brighton band could only recall one imminent gig, next week at Bethnal Green’s Sebright Arms; but on the second day of their "two-day tour of East Sussex” (they had played the Café des Artistes in Lewes the night before) there was plenty of evidence that there will be an opportunity to see them on a bigger stage quite soon.

Picture by Dave Stubbings

Orwell in Eastbourne

By its very nature as an old and established seaside resort, Eastbourne can boast some high-profile cultural connections: literary giants Charles Dickens and Lewis Carroll were regular visitors; the artist Eric Ravilious was a life-long resident and the biologist T.H. Huxley retired there, as did the journalist and literary critic, Cyril Connolly. But Connolly had lived in the town earlier in his life, at a residence he shared with a more renowned contemporary. If you walk along Summerdown Road, one of the well-heeled, tree-lined streets of the Old Town area, you will eventually come across a detached house with two rectangular blue plaques, one of which contains Connolly’s name and that of the writer, George Orwell.

The house, formerly the Headmaster’s lodge, is all that remains of St. Cyprian’s preparatory school. The main school building, where the two writers boarded between 1911 and 1916, stood to the rear of the house. It was destroyed by fire in 1939 and, subsequently, the school was closed and the playing fields sold to Eastbourne College. That less is made of Orwell’s connection to the town is probably due to the fact that he hated his time at St. Cyprian’s and, in a long autobiographical essay, laid his feelings bare. Such, Such Were the Joys – the ironic title coming from one of Blake’s Songs of Innocence, The Echoing Green – was published after his death to a polarised reception.

Writing over 25 years after the experience, Orwell’s detailing of a life of insanitary conditions, inhospitable dormitories and inedible food was recognised by some, but not by all. And it was his view of the violent regime of Mr and Mrs Wilkes, nicknamed Sambo and Flip, handing out humiliating punishments to some and lavish praise to others, that most divided former pupils. Accusing the Wilkes of fawning over the students from rich families, Orwell felt that as a scholarship boy he was cruelly treated. When he first arrived at the school as a seven-year-old, he was beaten with a riding crop so viciously that it broke. But it was his realisation that paranoia and fear were deliberately deployed by those supposed to be taking care of him that made Orwell understand the power of hierarchies. Friendless and spied upon, loneliness and a broken spirit were the outcomes.

Some of Orwell’s time in Eastbourne found its way into his fiction: in his ‘fairy tale’, Animal Farm, the local village is named after Willingdon, just to the north of town; its pub, The Red Lion, is where Farmer Jones gets drunk; and Manor Farm, where the revolution takes place, is based on Chalk Farm on the edge of the Downs. If Orwell used simple landmarks that he would have come across on ‘character-building’ walks for settings in Animal Farm, the area had a more profound effect on his final novel. The Last Man in Europe was Orwell’s original title for Nineteen Eighty-Four, and it perhaps gives us a further clue to how he felt about his time in Eastbourne. Exposed as a young child to an authoritarian regime that was, by turns, caring and violent, the sense of isolation and powerlessness that Winston Smith feels in Orwell’s most well-known novel can be traced back, in Such, Such Were the Joys, to his five long years at St. Cyprian’s.

Doing Politics

In last week’s European election in the Wealden area of East Sussex, where I live, the UK Independence Party (UKIP) came top of the poll. With 16,000 votes, UKIP were just ahead of the Conservatives; the Greens, Labour and the Lib Dems mustered 10,000 votes between them. The change from 2009 seems to be that UKIP have taken a couple of thousand votes from the Tories and, probably, some of the protest vote that previously went to the Lib Dems and the Greens. I am under no illusions about this; I live in a deeply conservative area. Although not far from London, it falls in a large gap between the main routes out of the capital down to Brighton and Hastings. It is very easy to become frightened of things like Europe and multi-culturalism when you have little experience of them.

UKIP’s ‘success’ should be put in context, though: because of the low national turnout, only 9% of registered voters supported them; but that is still more than each of the main political parties. The ‘Russell Brand effect’ has been blamed for spreading political apathy amongst potentially progressive voters: his admission that he has never voted has been cited as a validation of failing to engage in the political process and a contributory factor in letting UKIP in. In recent years I have been an advocate of not voting as I felt that the choice between three privileged, middle-aged men in navy blue business suits is no choice at all. Little did I know that another one would come along - this one in a mustard-coloured suit with a pint in his hand - and convince some people that he offers an alternative.

However, UKIP are not an alternative; they are a negative, backward looking party. There has been no successful political philosophy that advocates a return to the conditions of the past – only disastrous failures such as the Nazis and the Khymer Rouge. And because of that, UKIP do need to be challenged and confronted. There were two things this week to re-invigorate the political will. Firstly, David Runciman, in his essay exploring the choice between boring old politics and the revolutionary allure of technology, said “only politics can rescue you from bad politics”; and quoting Malcolm Gladwell’s appropriation of Gil Scott Heron’s aphorism – “the revolution will not be tweeted” - he made the point that, whilst social media is a powerful tool, “political change requires more lasting and durable connections”. Secondly, the leader of Podemos (We Can), the new anti-austerity party that managed to come third in the elections in Spain, explained the party’s philosophy as “citizens doing politics”. Pablo Inglesias added, “if the citizens don’t get involved in politics, others will”. Others, such as ex-public schoolboy commodities brokers posing as men of the people. The situation is clear: if we are going to deal with the ‘bad politics’ of UKIP, to stop their attacks on the welfare state and society’s weakest, we need to be ‘doing politics’, not just tweeting to the converted.

Exhortations to ‘get involved’ can often sound cliched and meaningless; but to ‘do politics’, to build on the support of the 25% that didn’t vote for reactionary parties in my area, and to capture the imaginations of the 62% that didn’t vote at all, means engaging with the process by joining a political party. The Green Party has branches in Hastings, Lewes and Brighton, and the Socialist Party is also active in Brighton. Let’s not bother with the Lib Dems, but how about this for a radical idea? The Labour Party: the largest progressive political party that has a history of building a fairer society and opposition to the repression of minorities. It is the only political party I have ever been a member of but its continuation of Thatcherite privatisation and vanity warmongering drove me away. How about getting involved with them again? Pushing from the bottom to promote those positive ideas that we know are popular with a majority of people: large-scale building of social housing and common ownership of utilities and infrastructure. So...?

Songs of Innocence, Songs of Experience

When Ben Watt explained the genesis of the title of his new solo album, Hendra, tracing it back through his half-sister’s house and road in Somerset to the old Cornish word ‘hendre’, meaning ‘home’ or ‘home farm’, I understood why the singer, guitarist, producer, DJ and record label-owner had just arrived from the Charleston Festival. Performing in Bexhill yesterday evening, his gift for telling stories, either through song or speech, was plain to hear. At Charleston, the East Sussex home of the Bloomsbury group, he had been reading from Romany and Tom, the written story of his parents’ lives. Having now added literature to his oeuvre, with two published books, the former Everything But The Girl musician has established himself as a true polymath. And the fact that the wonderful Music’s Not Dead record shop, already promoting gigs at Eras of Style and the De La Warr Pavilion in the town, had persuaded Ben Watt to do an in-store is testament to their importance to live music in Sussex.

Arriving with a trio of guitars – “one of these is older than me” – and an amp, Watt treated the packed shop to an eight-song set, mostly drawn from Hendra. Having spent the past ten years immersed in the world of dance and electronica with his Buzzin’ Fly label, he is now on the more traditional ground of singer-songwriter and has been working with Bernard Butler and Dave Gilmour. Performing without a band, and experimenting with some open and interesting tunings, yesterday was a reminder of what a distinctive guitarist he is; and his plaintive voice perfectly suits his songs of grief and loss. His half-sister having inspired some of the album – he played the title track and The Levels, both dealing with the aftermath of her death – others, such as Golden Ratio, are inspired by the landscape. Although, Forget, which tells of walking on the Sussex Downs, was omitted due to its reliance on piano.

Growing older and having to leave the past behind is clearly another preoccupation: the beautiful Bricks and Wood, which didn’t make it onto the album, tells the story of an impromptu visit that Watt and his half-brother made to the now-derelict family home; and Young Man’s Game – “one more chance to leave a mark” - is a paean to the limits of middle-age. But the past doesn’t get left behind entirely. Defining his new material as songs of experience, Watt also reached back to his songs of innocence. Two tracks from his last solo album, 1983’s North Marine Drive, were played with that distinctive jazz-folk guitar sound of his debut all those years ago: the title track - inspired by the Scarborough coastal road, and to a lesser extent, a residential street in Bridlington, Watt tells us - and set-closer, the gorgeous Some Things Don’t Matter – “this boy, caught up in the wheels of fate” – that is, perhaps, rather a song of prescience.

Picture by Dave Stubbings

Going Underground

Looking north-east from where I live, away from the Downs and instead to the ridge above Battle, there is a dark, imposing hump on the horizon. Not quite as striking as Firle Beacon to the south-west, its covering of dense woodland makes it an ominous prospect, nevertheless. However, Darwell Wood, an ancient broadleaved woodland between the villages of Netherfield to the south, and Mountfield to the north, is a different prospect up close.

This privately-owned – but with public access - wood offers beautiful walks under a dense canopy of oak and hornbeam. A Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), it is home to many species of breeding birds, including woodpeckers and nightjars. At this time of year there are displays of wild garlic and bluebells, and the paths are criss-crossed by many streams that flow into the Darwell Reservoir. But it is not just natural history that makes the wood a fascinating place.

When the reservoir was created in 1949, Darwell Furnace Farm, along with a number of cottages, was consigned to an aqueous grave to supply water to Hastings. As the name of the farm suggests, this site had previously been part of the Wealden iron industry that was active from before the Roman invasion, peaked in Tudor times and finally declined in the 19th century, when it could not compete with the new Ironmasters of the Midlands and the North.

However, Darwell Wood did not stop being part of Sussex’s industry. From 1876, the soft mineral, gypsum, was mined at Mountfield and, from the 1960s, at Brightling to the west. The sulphate was transported from Brightling, to the British Gypsum plant at Mountfield, by an overhead cableway that ran through the wood. In 1989, this was replaced by a covered conveyor belt that snakes three miles through the trees to this day. Mining ceased at Mountfield in 1993, but the Brightling mine is estimated to have at least another twenty years of life providing the raw materials for the cement and plasterboard industry, and employment for 130 people.

The modern countryside very often seems to be the preserve of NIMBYs desperate to protect chocolate-box views and pastoral scenery without a thought for the infrastructure of jobs and services that ordinary people require. A few years ago, whilst walking in Somerset with friends, we came down from the Mendip Hills through Mells, a village replete with Range Rovers and Farrow and Ball paintwork, and stumbled upon the extensive remains of Fussells’ Victorian iron works in woodland on the banks of the river. It was hidden away - an embarrassment that was not part of the bucolic narrative – because rural industry, particularly in the south, is something that most like to pretend does not exist. But the countryside is not natural: it is a landscape shaped by people who have worked the land, over-ground and underground.

Decent Thing

Once every three weeks on a Saturday, I go down to a warehouse on an industrial estate on the edge of a small East Sussex town and spend the morning sorting out tins of soup, baked beans and other non-perishable foodstuffs. I then transport stock, for the week ahead, to the distribution centre in the middle of town. I am joined in these tasks by three other people and we are all of us volunteers for the Trussell Trust, the Christian charity that operates Foodbank, the largest network dealing with food poverty in this country.

Food is donated to Foodbanks by individuals, businesses and local organisations. 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, or keep away from the clutches of payday loan companies. You cannot walk into a Foodbank off the street and get free food. You have to have been referred by an agency, such as a GP practice, health centre or Citizens Advice Bureau that has identified you as being in crisis and issued you with a voucher for three days of emergency food.

Last weekend, no doubt in response to the Trussell Trust’s recent revelation that it has provided a million food parcels to those in need in the last year, that bastion of investigative journalism, The Mail on Sunday (MoS), sent a reporter to a Citizens Advice Bureau in Nottingham to test the system. Having told a series of lies – he was unemployed, had two children, had fuel bills to pay - the intrepid reporter was given a voucher and then collected his food from the local Foodbank. The story was written up with the heading How MoS Reporter Got Three Days of Groceries…No Questions Asked, despite then detailing the questions about personal details, income and diet that the reporter was asked and dishonestly answered. The piece then put forward the specious argument that this one instance proves that Foodbanks are patronised by none but the undeserving poor. As a charity and not a statutory body, the Trussell Trust would not have the level of checks of a benefits agency; there is a clue in their name.

As well as being the sort of casuistry we expect from the DMG Media stable, it is such a low blow against good people. My fellow volunteers at Foodbank are all Christians from local churches. I am not a Christian; I volunteer because the previous pieces I have written about Foodbank have been the most read posts on this blog, and I thought I should do something practical instead of moaning about poverty from the comfort of my keyboard. All of the Foodbank volunteers I have met are kind, well-meaning people, mostly in their sixties, and small ‘c’ conservative in their views; they are doing what they would see as the decent, Christian thing – “I was hungry and you gave me food”.

Any system is open to deception but the process of obtaining help with food is not one that most people would expose themselves to lightly. There is stigma attached to accepting charity, and the admission that you are not able to feed your children is a particularly difficult one to make, even to the most sympathetic ears. However, some good has come of the Mail on Sunday’s plumbing of the depths. The social media backlash against the paper has manifested itself in increased donations to the Trussell Trust’s JustGiving campaign; since the story appeared, £50,000 has been donated in just two days.

What a Waste

I don’t know why I’m surprised that BBC2’s The Big Allotment Challenge was a big pile of stinking manure. After all, this is the broadcaster that has put competitive misery into making cakes and cooking dinner with the stressful The Great British Bake-Off and the dour MasterChef; but I thought allotments had moved on from the image of an old boy in his cycle clips gazing anxiously and admiringly at his highly polished giant onions ahead of the village show. However, halfway through Tuesday night’s programme, I stopped watching after the allotmenteers’ radishes were judged on their shape, perfection and uniformity. The judges didn’t even taste them – and this a salad vegetable that you eat raw.

I have blogged before about the forward-thinking site where I have my plot and how it is important as a source of food and community. There are annual prizes for the best-kept plots, to encourage people to keep on top of their allotments, but there are no competitions for the biggest or most pristine produce to intimidate beginners, or those who simply want to get cheap food out of the ground. Although plots are rented from the parish council, the day-to-day management of communal areas and the organising of community events are carried out by members of the allotment association.

The worst thing about The Big Allotment Challenge is that, in a contradictory age of food poverty and food waste, it perpetuates myths that growing food is difficult because it has to look perfect. Growing radishes is the simplest thing: throw some seeds on the earth, lightly cover them with soil and a few weeks later, tasty radishes. Supermarkets and growers waste tons of food every year because of their perception of the superficial demands of the customer. A programme like this should have been an opportunity to show that growing food is easy and inclusive. Sadly, that opportunity has been wasted too.