Thanksgiving

St. George’s Church, in the Kemptown area of Brighton, was built in 1826 at the behest of Thomas Read Kemp. Kemp was building homes above the eastern cliffs in the early 19th century and, not content with knocking up a significant residential area and naming it after himself, he needed the pinnacle of any Georgian vanity development, a parish church. Not that the church belonged to the parish, or even the diocese. In those days, building a church was an investment opportunity with guaranteed rental income and the possibility of selling on at a profit. It was not until the end of the century when, after 50 years of private ownership by the Peel family, it was sold to a trust on behalf of the local congregation.

Fast-forward through a century of Christian worship to the diversification of the present day, and it is also a thriving community centre, café and music venue. Local promoters, Melting Vinyl, have been staging events at the 550-capacity brick and stucco neoclassical church for the past 13 years and the fantastic acoustics have lent themselves to the delicate and emotional sounds of Sigur Ros, Bonnie Prince Billy, Iron and Wine, Tindersticks and Edwyn Collins.

On Thursday night, Sharon Van Etten, an artist who wears her heart not just on her sleeve but as a jagged, broken crown upon her head, fitted perfectly into that roster of special performers. With their tender harmonies and slow-moving arcing melodies, Van Etten’s piano and acoustic guitar-led folk and country-tinged songs are so fragile and moving that, at times, they feel as though they will overwhelm you completely.

Van Etten’s breakthrough album, Tramp, produced by The National’s Aaron Dessner, first brought her to wider attention in this country in 2012. If The National’s involvement gives you some clue to the emotional timbre of her music, her support slot on Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds 2013 North American tour should confirm it. The New Jersey-born but Brooklyn-based singer is currently touring her fourth studio album, this year’s Are We There, and it is this that she mostly draws on for her set at St. George's.

With a four-piece band of keyboards, guitar, bass and drums behind her, Van Etten’s ability to describe the pain of everyday life on a grand scale gives her music an epic (the title of her second album) quality. Opening with the first two tracks from the new album, the tone of yearning and heartache is immediately established. On Afraid Of Nothing, she longingly sings “I can’t wait ‘til we’re afraid of nothing” and on Taking Chances, in her familiar second person, she reflects, “About to leave/Even I’ve taken my chances on you”. But sometimes the desire breaks through, as on the intoxicating Tarifa, when she simply declares “everyone else pales”.

In the middle of the set, Van Etten appears a little disconcerted: a broken guitarist’s string and being away from the States on Thanksgiving the explanation. But she is soon back in her stride, creating beautiful harmonies with keyboard player Heather Woods Broderick. In the gorgeous church setting, her repentance on Our Love – “I am a sinner/I have sinned” – seems wholly appropriate, as does the penance she catalogues on Your Love Is Killing Me: “Cut my tongue so I can’t talk to you/Burn my skin so I can’t feel you/Stab my eyes so I can’t see you”.

When Van Etten returns, seated alone at the piano for a solitary encore of the overwrought “I Love You But I’m Lost”, the audience gets to its feet and crowds round the altar utterly rapt as she leaves us with “tear stains on the last page”. If those church-building men from the 19th century were so full of self-esteem and certainty, I am happy to give thanks to be living in a time when some of us are not afraid to show that we are mostly full of confusion and doubt.

Picture by Jason Smith

Butternut Mountain

For the past few years I have been trying to grow butternut squashes with only modest success. When the kids were little, they preferred the more eye-catching pumpkin because of its Halloween association; but the butternut, with its comparative solidity and sweet nutty flavour, was always superior for us grown-ups. However, as the kids’ taste buds have developed, butternut soup, roasts and risotto have all become a key part of the family diet. And this year, for the first time, I have finally grown enough to see us through the winter. Twice over.

Winter squashes, such as butternut, are originally sub-tropical: they are not keen on frosts and prefer a minimum temperature of 10C. This means that the outdoor growing window begins at the start of summer and ends with arrival of the first autumn frosts. This year, the weather has been so mild that the growing season survived the one slight frost in October and extended into early November. This probably explains our bumper crop of nearly sixty fruits from half a dozen plants; that, and the cow manure. Butternuts love a rich soil and I top-dressed the plot with a whole load of muck from a dairy farmer in the previous autumn, digging it in in the spring.

Plants can be grown from seed in a greenhouse in March or April or bought from a nursery in May, as I did. Either way, they can be planted out in June, well clear of any cold snaps. If there is one group of plants that I always water regularly on the allotment and vegetable patch it is the Cucurbits: if cucumbers, courgettes and marrows need to be well-irrigated, pumpkins and butternuts more so. And it is not just plenty of moisture that they need; some require quite a bit of room. The vines and tendrils will stretch up to ten metres from the plants, so training them to double-back is essential if space is at a premium.

Butternuts fall under the generic term of winter squash because of their late harvest and ability to be stored and consumed right through the darkest months. Once harvested, they should be allowed to cure outside for a week or two before being stored in a well-ventilated place at a temperature between 10C and 15C. An outdoor shed will become too cold once the lowest temperatures arrive; but if you can find the right conditions indoors, butternuts can keep for up to 6 months. Living in a small terraced cottage with too many children and animals, storage is an issue for us. This means that friends, family and work colleagues are currently reaping the rewards of the butternut mountain, which might just stave off a kids’ mutiny over the endless spicy butternut soup.

Ship Ahoy!

In the late afternoon drizzle, driving west out of Hastings towards Bexhill, a magnificent sight straight ahead of me distracts my gaze from the flat grey of the sea on my left. The bow and superstructure of an ocean-going liner, dazzling white in the November gloom, rises above me. Giving the impression that it has run aground on the St. Leonards’ shore, this vessel on the land side of the coast road is in fact the dry-docked, Art Deco edifice of Marine Court.

Built to a design based on the Queen Mary - pride of the Cunard White Star Line in the 1930s - Marine Court is a fourteen-storey building that is home to over 150 apartments. Known locally as The Ship, the design also features a tiered bridge and, at the eastern end, a restaurant and viewing platform that imitates the forecastle. The balconies on the steep elevation of the coastal side are reminiscent of the promenade decks of the Queen Mary.

The building has had a slightly perilous voyage since it was constructed in 1938: damaged by bombing during the Second World War, it was fully restored in the 1950s only to be the perennial loser in a constant battle to halt the erosive effects of the sea air on the facade. And architects Roger Pullen and Kenneth Dalgleish’s original nautical vision has been undermined over the years: a variety of replacement windows, alterations to residents’ balconies and a failure to maintain consistency in the ground floor shop fronts, have all disrupted the uniformity of design.

With the designation of Grade II listing in 1999, and the purchase of the freehold by the residents in 2010, Marine Court is finally getting the level of attention needed to preserve this iconic building. However, such work is expensive and the downside is that many residents are selling up as they cannot afford to pay their contributions towards the renovations required to maintain the building.

October Spawned a Monster

There is so much good music being put on at the De La Warr Pavilion at the moment, I feel as though I spend more time in Bexhill’s Modernist temple of culture than I do in my own home. There is nothing wrong in that only, having been there three times in twelve days already this month, my state of genteel poverty presents me with a dilemma over the forthcoming Belle and Sebastian gig.

Not actually a gig, my sojourn at the De La Warr started a fortnight ago at an interview and book event with Public Image Limited’s John Lydon, formerly Johnny Rotten of this Sex Pistols parish. Lydon was interviewed onstage by The Guardian’s Alex Petridis to promote his new ghosted autobiography, Anger is an Energy. When I say interviewed, Petridis only had to ask a few questions; getting John Lydon to talk has never been difficult. And he seems to know better these days that, when he is amongst friends, he doesn’t have to shock; having said that, he still gives good copy. He tells us that he believes in a society that looks after its weakest members; that Russell Brand is misguided and you must vote “for the least bad option”; that the best thing about Britain is its embracing of immigrants, like his Irish parents; and that punk had true gender equality. It would have been good to hear him play some music, but then I remembered that it was another interview with him, a long time ago, that caught my attention just as much as the Sex Pistols’ music. In a filmed piece with Janet Street-Porter for The London Weekend Show in November 1976, his expression of anger about the drudgery and low expectations society bestowed upon the young working class, resonated with my teenage self so much that – and I am not being hyperbolic here - it completely changed my outlook on life.

Three days later, and the De La Warr was hosting another Johnny. A few years after Lydon’s poetry had declared that there was “no future in England’s dreaming”, The Smiths gave us “the songs that saved your life” and, for many, their articulation of gauche awkwardness and personal desperation, was just as important and life-affirming as the Pistols. For all the pathos and bathos of Morrissey’s lyrics, what made The Smiths a great band was their cracking tunes. The architect of those, Johnny Marr, has spent most of the intervening years collaborating with others and being a general guitar for hire, but in the past 18 months he has released two solo albums. The title track from the most recent, Playland, is the impressive set-opener and then he does something unexpected: Panic is the second song in and, although I knew he would play Smiths songs, letting the audience know this early on settles things down – everybody goes on to enjoy themselves, most of all Marr, who is a virtuoso guitarist. When he takes off his jacket, very carefully folds it and places it on the drum riser, a friend remarks that it is a sure sign of a mature man. Upstarts from last year’s The Messenger album follows and then the set is made up mostly of songs from the new album, with a regular sprinkling of Smiths’ songs – Stop Me, Bigmouth Strikes Again (with lyrics archly changed from “Joan of Arc” to “Johnny Marr), There Is A Light That Never Goes Out – that are, inevitably, rapturously received. A version of Electronic’s Getting Away With It reminds me what an elegant song he penned with Barney Sumner and Neil Tennant, and the final encore, How Soon Is Now?, lets Marr show off that extraordinary guitar sound that used to frighten the life out of my oldest son when he was a baby.

If you can be fairly certain what you will get from Lydon and Marr, British Sea Power are a constant surprise. A long history of gigs in unlikely places, (only recently they played on a ferryboat to Brownsea Isand in Dorset), onstage bears and robots and diversions into instrumental film soundtracks all mark them out as one of the most innovative and idiosyncratic bands around. And last Friday night in Bexhill they presented Sea of Brass, a set of songs from their extensive 10-year repertoire rearranged for performance in collaboration with a full brass band. Touring the country with a variety of regional ensembles, London’s Redbridge Brass Band were present at the De La Warr. With the traditional BSP dressing of foliage, all 6 members of the band and the 28 members of the brass band, the stage was looking crammed; and if the visual senses had a lot to take in, the aural layers presented by the fullness of the sound were incredible. It was not unexpected to hear tender songs such as The Land Beyond, The Great Skua and Machineries of Joy working so well in this context but when the punk pounding of Atom features, and then a full ten-minute version of Lately, it is an absolute delight. I always enjoy British Sea Power when Phil Sumner’s trumpet and Abi Fry’s violin are high up in the mix and, with the guitars tempered for the occasion, they shine through and are beautifully complemented by the plaintive full brass. The whole thing is so bloody marvellous that it is hard to contain yourself: my brother-in-law, sitting next to me (the seats were in for this one), keeps throwing his arms up in the air in an almost involuntary spasm. They encore with Waving Flags, which is as amazing with brass as the version I saw them perform with the full London Bulgarian Choir at the Roundhouse in 2008.

At my age, it was a monster of a gig-going month and I was almost relieved my residency at the De La Warr had ended. But then talk of the Belle and Sebastian gig this Wednesday started, prompting me to ask myself the question: should I go and hear The Boy With The Arab Strap played live, or be a responsible parent and spend the money entertaining the kids during half-term?

In the Shade of the Downs

In almost spring-like weather, with a fast moving wind sending the rainclouds scudding across the blush of a late afternoon sky, we set off on a brisk, short walk before the October light faded. Starting at Firle, we followed the old coach road eastwards towards Selmeston, zigzagging across the thoroughfare to dodge the water-filled potholes that littered the route.

We three had not been out walking in the shade of the Downs for a few years. The last time we were together, Sussex Sedition was a fanzine containing condemnations of the political class, exhortations of an anarchist life of sufficiency and tips on punk vegetable growing. All concealed beneath benign and bucolic cover art, we would leave copies in pubs amongst the leaflets for visitor attractions, guides to local arts festivals and copies of the Friday Ad and Magnet magazine – guerrilla distribution. But then life got in the way: relocation and redeployment sent us our separate ways and the effort of print gave way to the ease of the blog.

At the foot of Firle Beacon, having left the folly of Firle Tower behind us, we encountered two walkers trying to find the most direct way down to Charleston Farmhouse. They headed off according to our directions, but we soon realised we had sent them on a longer route. Not soon enough, though: they were already out of sight when we spotted the quicker path. And, with another cloudburst breaking overhead, we took the shortcut ourselves.

Charleston was the country home of artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, and the meeting place of the Bloomsbury group that included writers Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster and Lytton Strachey. Now run by a trust, the house has a permanent collection of paintings, furnishings and ceramics, the garden is home to a diversity of sculptured forms and there is a splendid tea room. It was here that we were holed-up when the walkers we had met on the road came in, dripping wet and looking puzzled at our presence. We spluttered out an unconvincing tale, by way of an excuse, and hurried on our way.

A very short walk on from Charleston is Tilton House. This was once home to one of the Bloomsbury set’s regular - but unlikely - associates, the economist John Maynard Keynes. It was Keynes who went against free market thinking in the 1930s and pioneered the theory that only state intervention could sustain employment and secure recovery from depression. Keynesian economics had been adopted as the policy choice of most western governments by the middle of the 20th century and, having fallen out of favour during the rise of 1980s’ monetarism, returned to prominence in response to the global financial crisis of 2008.

Now a yoga retreat, Tilton is not open to the public; but we ventured past the ‘PRIVATE’ sign and up the drive, anyway, so that we could get a good look. No sooner had we taken in the Georgian façade, than a burly beard in a cheesecloth shirt bounded up and asked if he could help us. When we responded that we were fans of J.M. Keynes on a pilgrimage, he was immediately disarmed and shuffled back inside to his meditations. With the sun now low in the western sky, we headed back up the coach road to Firle, to contemplation of a more satisfying kind: a pint of Harveys at the Ram Inn.

The State We're In

We live in an age where politicians seek to claim the future by harking back to the past. UKIP present us with a return to a time when Britain stood alone and aloof in the world and the only foreign workers were at a safe distance, in far flung corners of the Empire. The coalition government, under the guise of financial probity, seeks to shrink the welfare state and invoke a positive image of an age of austerity. There are few people who lived through the inter-war years of the 20th century, now articulating their experiences. One who is, though, is nonagenarian Harry Leslie Smith, a staunch defender of the welfare state. In his recently published book, Harry’s Last Stand, he details the grinding poverty of life before the state’s safety net existed.

Reading Harry’s book made me think of my own father’s life. Had he not died in 1999, he would be a similar age to Harry. He was born in 1922 in Deptford, south-east London, the only child of an Irish mother and Scottish father. His parents had both come to London with siblings to escape the poverty of their homelands but discovered that life was only slightly better. They lived in two barely habitable rooms and his father worked, with little job security or reward, in the butchery trade; there was never enough work or food. When my father was a baby, he contracted polio. The doctor, that they had to pay to visit, said that he would probably die – an older infant sibling had previously succumbed to the disease. But his mother nursed him with drops of brandy and he survived - a withered upper arm being the permanent reminder of his narrow escape.

When my father was 15, his father died. A stomach-ache, that they could not afford to be treated by the doctor, turned out to be peritonitis. His mother, working in a variety of badly paid menial jobs, needed my father to work as well so they could support themselves. Then, during the Blitz of the Second World War, his mother was killed. She had been fixing the blackout curtain to the window, when an unexploded bomb from an earlier raid went off in the ruins of a house opposite. She was thrown across the room and had seemingly survived, but died two days later from internal injuries. His Aunt, not having heard any news from her sister during the bombing, travelled from safer south-west London to find her 18-year-old nephew had been sleeping through air raids under the kitchen table, alone in his damaged home. Taken in by his Aunt, he then joined the RAF and survived the war despite being sent on countless raids as part of the crew of Lancaster bombers.

With the end of the war, and the creation of the welfare state, my father’s life would, thankfully, never be the same again. Marrying my mother, he then brought up his own family of four children – all born safely in NHS hospitals and well-educated in state schools - in a newly-built council house. During some periods of unemployment he was supported by the state; he never thought of himself as a scrounger – he was just glad that he could feed his family when times were hard. When he had a stroke in retirement, he recovered in a dedicated NHS stroke unit and, when he was diagnosed with cancer, spent his final days receiving the best care in an NHS hospice. Not quite 'from the cradle to the grave' for my father, but hopefully it will be for his children. Sometimes it pays to remind ourselves that the state we're in is worth defending.

Austerity Isn't Working

With Members of Parliament having recently heard that they will be awarded a 10% pay rise next year, the rest of the workers in the public sector will reflect on their own lot. Having just come out of a three-year pay freeze, this year's and next year's 1% rises look positively generous by Gideon Osborne's earlier standards. But compared to MPs, it really isn't funny that workers in the NHS, education and public services have experienced a pay cut of up to 20%, in real terms, during the life of this government.

It is mostly women, in part-time work in the child and adult care sectors and administrative jobs in vital local services, who are disproportionately affected by government pay policy. The Child Poverty Action Group recently reported that 60% of children living in poverty in Britain today have at least one parent in work. Maintaining - and effectively reducing - low levels of pay does nothing to restore a healthy economy. The government's mantra of getting the deficit down rings hollow when Osborne is missing both his deficit reduction and borrowing targets this year - austerity isn't working.

With none of the various Tory parties prepared to stand up for the low-paid, it falls to workers and their unions to stand up for themselves. As next month promises industrial action by Unison and the PCS public sector unions, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) has announced a mass march and rally in central London on Saturday 18th October as part of its Britain Needs a Pay Rise campaign. Eastbourne Trades Council is arranging free train travel from East Sussex to London; local trade unionists and their families can book their places here and make their voices heard in the capital on the day.