A Blot on the Landscape

In Edgar Allan Poe's 1840 short story, The Man of the Crowd, an unnamed narrator follows a man on foot through the streets of London. His quarry constantly immerses himself into the crowded labyrinthine streets, seemingly walking with purpose but without apparent destination. People-watching from a cafe, the narrator is first attracted to the man as the only member of the crowd he cannot categorise: "a countenance which at once arrested and absorbed my whole attention, on account of the absolute idiosyncrasy of his expression". He follows him from early evening until the following morning, observing the onward march and constant doubling-back of his relentless search for the most populated areas, whether in the sophisticated heart of the city or the outlying slums. Exhausted by his following of "the decrepit old man", the narrator concludes his pursuit observing, "he refuses to be alone; he is the man of the crowd".

Twenty years later, it was Charles Baudelaire, in The Painter of Modern Life, who defined the flaneur as the idling urban walker, "at the centre of the world, yet hidden from the world". Baudelaire recognised the urban spectator/spectacle who "everywhere rejoices in his incognito" but is, at the same time, "the lover of life who makes the whole world his family". If this idea resulted in the image of a Parisian dandy, with top hat and elaborate walking cane, then it finally fell to Walter Benjamin, the early 20th century German Marxist literary critic, to credibly determine the flaneur as the pedestrian private investigator of the city, as restless and inquisitive as Poe's man of the crowd.

When I lived, worked and studied in London I did a lot of walking: whether to get from A to B more interestingly, to kill time or out of the sheer boredom of being skint, I have at various times explored and wandered the streets of Vauxhall, Westminster, Soho, Bloomsbury, the Old Kent Road, the Harrow Road and latterly, with sleeping babies in pushchairs, the Thames between Deptford and Woolwich. Whilst never claiming to be a flaneur, staying above ground and on foot gave me a sense of the geography of the city which, on my rare returns, I realise I have never lost.

When writer Iain Sinclair published his seminal work, Lights Out for the Territory, at the back end of the 20th century, it seemed as if the flaneur had returned to London as the psychogeographer. And I felt my abstract wanderings were legitimised by Sinclair’s exploration of the urban landscape and his attention to the details of the secrets of the city. His chapter on one of my local parks at the time, Maryon Park in Charlton, location of key scenes from Antonioni’s 1966 film, Blow-Up, made me feel less of a bore for constantly going on about it to anyone who would listen.

Leaving London 10 years ago, I quickly realised that - to paraphrase Springsteeen - it’s hard to be a flaneur in the countryside. I do plenty of walking on the Downs and the coast, but once you leave the designated footpaths you cannot always walk where you want to – get orf moi land! – and you tend to arouse suspicion if you wander around without a dog. My wife thinks I am mad if I ever go walking and do not take the long-legged dog with me but sometimes, and you will have to forgive me here, I want to be alone. Once, walking through the out-of-the-way hamlet of Brownbread Street on my way to Harry H. Corbett’s grave in Penhurst, I was regarded all the way through by several pairs of narrowed eyes. Being a stranger, not dressed for walking and lacking a crowd to hide me from the world, I was suspect. And everybody drives in the countryside; the only reason for a pedestrian to be on country lanes is if their car has broken down.

In the spirit of Iain Sinclair’s 2002 book, London Orbital, in which he charts the former Victorian asylum buildings he encounters walking around the M25, I head off west from my home for the site of Hellingly Hospital, four miles away. Hellingly Hospital was a large asylum – so large it had its own railway - that treated psychiatric patients from 1903 until closure in 1994. The abandoned complex of buildings quickly fell to disrepair and vandalism and became something of a favourite with connoisseurs of derelict buildings. I had visited it once before when I first moved to Sussex and found the deserted and dilapidated Edwardian red-brick buildings, set amongst overgrown vegetation, a moving and melancholy sight.

A mile outside Herstmonceux, the footpath alongside the road ends and I have to negotiate a verge-less half-mile stretch of the national-speed-limit A271 with cars speeding towards me. Headlights flash me several times before I decide to leave the main road and take the Old Road at Magham Down before I am blinded or killed. I knew that most of the old hospital buildings had been demolished and the site is now a new housing development, Roebuck Park; but when I arrive at Hellingly, try as I might, I cannot seem to get to where the few remaining original hospital buildings, and a new secure unit, are. When I get home and consult a map, I realise that I should have just kept following the main route through the development; but I keep turning off and losing myself in deserted cul-de-sacs and closes of new homes. Every time a car passes me, I turn heads and I realise that there is no such thing as the rural flaneur: I am not the man of the crowd, I am a blot on the landscape.

In the Realm of the Unmentionable

I had intended to complete the East Sussex Coastal Culture Trail – Towner Gallery, De La Warr Pavilion, Jerwood Gallery – during the summer; but having been to Eastbourne and Bexhill, we never managed to take the kids down to Hastings to see the Quentin Bake exhibition at the Jerwood before the holidays ran out. Then, when the October half-term rolled around, Blake had been replaced by the Chapman brothers and a day out to the William Morris interiors at the National Trust’s Standen House seemed more appropriate.

However, on the final day of 2014, with the kids unravelling in the post-Christmas dog days, we headed down to the Rock-a-Nore area at the eastern end of Hastings for our first visit to the Jerwood Gallery. The gallery was opened in March 2012 and the black-tiled exterior and the low, clean lines of the structure blend in well with the surrounding Net Shops - tall black wooden sheds that house the fishermen’s gear.

The proposal for the gallery was not without opposition: many local residents felt that it would lead to gentrification of the area and the loss of a coach car park would adversely affect local commerce. With a hotel and apartment block having just been built nearby, there may be something in the former fear; but as for the latter, on the day we visited the gallery it seemed to have attracted plenty of people to the surrounding businesses.

Local residents also receive a 60% reduction in entrance prices to the Jerwood, which does not receive any public funding, and on the first Tuesday of each month admission is free between 4pm and 8pm. Relying on sponsorship, donations and admission income to run the gallery and exhibitions, I thought the £20 cost of a family ticket was good considering it was for two adults and three kids; four quid each for what we experienced was excellent value (so often at attractions family tickets only cover two children; it was a refreshing change for us that the outnumbered had been thought of).

As a gallery of contemporary British art, there is a notable permanent collection of sculpture and paintings featuring works by Elisabeth Frink, Lucien Freud, LS Lowry, Stanley Spencer and Walter Sickert. And there is much art with a local connection: Frank Brangwyn’s 1925, From My Window at Ditchling; Frank Truefitt’s Victorian watercolour, Hastings; John Piper’s snappily titled, Beach and Starfish Seven Sister's Cliff Eastbourne, from between the wars; and one of the kids was particularly drawn to the primary vibrancy of American Anglophile Alfred Cohen’s, Sunset Over Fairlight.

But it was the Chapman brothers’ exhibition, In the Realm of the Unmentionable, that was the talking point afterwards. Having grown up in Hastings and attended a local comprehensive school, Jake and Dinos Chapman were back in the town having followed a route that took in the Royal College of Art, Gilbert and George’s studio and a Turner Prize nomination. With a reputation for provocative art that deals with themes of identity and mortality, Jake Chapman’s recent declaration that it was a waste of time taking children to art galleries and the caveat at the entrance that some of the content could be unsuitable for children, we were slightly nervous about going in. We need not have worried: the kids were fascinated by the art and, although the seven-year-old pronounced some of it as “wrong”, they all slept well that night.

The centrepiece of the exhibition, The Sum of All Evil, is four glass cases arranged as a cross that contain a miniature landscape populated with toy Nazi soldiers, crucified Hitlers and Ronald McDonalds, mountains of corpses, and mutated and mutilated naked forms. The sheer scale and detail of this hellish vision is quite breath-taking; the kids could only tear themselves away when they noticed Family Portrait, a group of eyeless shop mannequins with their eyeballs in their hands. There are more conventional drawings and etchings on display but there is a sense, with their corruptions of traditional portraiture and join-the-dots drawings, that the brothers are happiest poking fun at the established art world. And when one of the rooms, with its ceiling lowered to a spine-bending five feet, contains only a dull fruit bowl still-life signed A.Hitler, the joke seems to be on all of us.

When we retired across the street for fish ‘n’ chips at the heaving Fish Hut, debate centred around one piece: The Sum of All Evil. The eleven-year-old said he found it “disturbing”, the ten-year-old said it was “cool” and the seven-year-old said, “who is Ronald McDonald?” We might have exposed our kids to some troubling images, but we must be doing something right.

In The Realm of the Unmentionable runs until Wednesday 7th January 2015.
Be quick, now.

Hard as Iron

Walking from Stunts Green to Cowbeech and back again this morning, the ground was unyielding underfoot. After three consecutive nights of frost, and with temperatures barely getting above freezing in shaded areas during the day, the earth stood hard as iron. The long-legged dog took this all in his stride but the little-legged dog struggled: the deep ruts from tractor tyres on the farm tracks had been frozen into hurdles, the clods thrown up by horses’ hooves on the bridle paths had become boulders and the boggy field at the foot of Kiln Wood was an icy no-man’s land. I could tell by his Scottish Terrier grumbling and chuntering, as he tried to negotiate all of these obstacles, that he was not happy. It was only when we got onto the worn-smooth paths of Scrip Wood that he was able to make any progress without complaining about the weather, and I was able to enjoy the sight of the blanched north faces of the sloping fields, hidden from the eastern sun.

As we came back through the wood and passed the allotments, I was in two minds about the frost: the low temperatures might have finally killed off the legion of slugs on my plot but the winter digging-over, which I had aimed to finish before the year expired, was going to have to be postponed yet again. Having only recently harvested the last of the leeks, there is still a whole corner to be dug. Despite it being bathed in a bright but low sun, it’s unlikely that the earth will have warmed enough by tomorrow and, with another frost forecast for tonight, it looks as though I will be spared some New Year’s Eve digging. I had never envisaged seeing out the final afternoon of 2014 with heavy spadework, so my plan to be warming myself in the kitchen, as the interregnum between Christmas and New Year runs out, seems to be safe. And the little-legged dog will be with me.

Wan Light

Today is the winter solstice, when the Earth’s axis is furthest from the sun and, in the northern hemisphere, we experience the shortest day and the longest night of the year. But the solstice is not the point at which sunrise is at its latest, and sunset at its soonest. The earliest lighting up time occurred two weeks ago, and the latest morning appearance of the sun will not be seen for another two weeks. That is why mornings will continue to get darker into the New Year and why Celts and Pagans believed that the solstice marked the beginning of a period of time in which the sun stood still.

For 12 days, candles would be lit and an oak log kept burning to banish the darkness. Homes would be decorated with greenery, particularly mistletoe, and people would wait for the rebirth of the sun. They called this festival, Yule. There was nothing else to do at this lowest point of the calendar but eat the cured meat and pickled vegetables that had been preserved for the occasion earlier in the year. Oh, and drink. A lot. It sounds quite familiar.

When Christianity turned up, its main celebration was Easter. Having incorporated some of the Norse and Roman celebrations of the winter solstice, such as a decorated tree and gift-giving, Yule continued to be observed unaffected by Christianity until around 350 AD when Pope Julius I plumped for December 25th as the date of Jesus's birth; Christmas was born. It took a while longer to take hold in Sussex, of course, as the county was the last to convert to the new-fangled religion in the late 7th century.

Now, despite living in an established Christian state, hardly any of us go to church but most of us celebrate Christmas. There is nothing hypocritical in this; imagine what this time of year would be like if we did not have a fortnight of feasting and frolicking. It matters not what it is called; when the light fades outside, we need it blazing inside.

Second Class Post

On my drive home from work a few times recently, I became involved in a Mexican stand-off with a large TNT delivery truck in the narrow country lanes around the village of Bodle Street Green. With barely enough room for two cars to pass each other, this nine ton truck caused the closest you could ever get to gridlock on the road from Rushlake Green. Cursing modern satellite navigation technology for sending inappropriate vehicles along the most direct route, I thought no more about it until a later evening when I saw the TNT truck parked up at the top of Sandhill Lane. As I passed, I saw that the driver was emptying the Royal Mail post box and carrying out the last collection of the day.

Since Royal Mail was privatised on the cheap in 2013, by former Labour councillor and now coalition Liberal Democrat Business Secretary, Vince Cable, most of us will not have noticed too much change - except that the profit made by Royal Mail does not now benefit us as taxpayers but benefits anonymous shareholders instead (when I say “benefit”, this is a moot point: it was announced in November that profits have fallen 21% in the last six months).

What I was seeing on my journey home was one of the less visible signs of privatisation: parts of the service being sub-contracted out. But we will probably all be seeing more visible signs – or not – soon, as Royal Mail has warned that daily postal deliveries may not be sustainable in the face of competition from other private companies. Curiously, the private company Royal Mail says it is most threatened by is Whistl (sic), the mono-vowelled re-branding of TNT Post UK, a wholly owned subsidiary of PostNL, operators of the Dutch postal service. TNT has long been a friend of the privatisers and most famously drove their trucks through the Wapping picket lines to distribute Murdoch’s newspapers during the 1986 strike.

I am sure there is a perfectly good reason why Royal Mail’s biggest competitors were carrying out postal collections from rural post boxes on its behalf, but it seems a little strange to me. However, this is not the strangest thing about it: I was used to seeing postmen in their red-liveried Royal Mail vans, carrying out the last collection of the day from a string of post boxes attached to telegraph poles, embedded in hedgerows or, in one case, part of a garden wall – a very British image. And what strikes me as odd is that the forces of conservatism, the very people I would expect to uphold this idyllic scene, are prepared to forego it in pursuit of profit. However, this is all irrelevant now: despite the government’s assurances that privatisation would not affect the service, it is becoming distinctly second class. Late afternoon collections from post boxes in my area have ended; if you want to catch the last post, you have got to get down to the post office.

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.