Homo Longis

It is not known with any certainty when the Long Man first gazed down from Windover Hill on the South Downs, just north of Eastbourne. Local legend says that the faceless and unclothed figure, supported by two staffs, was a prehistoric fertility symbol sanitised by the prudish Victorians; for some, he was originally a helmeted and armed Roman or Anglo-Saxon warrior; while others insist that he was the work of artistic medieval monks from nearby Wilmington Priory. Whatever the genesis of the Long Man, with his 235-foot frame he is an enigmatic giant, standing guard over the village of Wilmington and travellers on the busy A27 beyond.

Having seen him from a distance many times, I naively thought that his outline was downland chalk; but walking right up to him for the first time last week, I discovered that he is in fact painted concrete. This was confirmed by The Sussex Archaeological Society website: the Long Man has been made from pre-cast blocks since 1969, replacing yellow Victorian brick. Prior to that, he was only visible as a grass outline – another of his names is the Green Man - accentuated in certain lights or by a dusting of snow. This is supported by the earliest pictorial record of the Wilmington Giant, an 18th century illustration by the surveyor, John Rowley. His drawing, from 1710, suggests that the figure was an impression in the grass rather than a solid outline; it also reveals that there were once facial features and a helmet-shaped head gives some credence to the idea of a first millennial warrior.

The most enduring interpretation, though, is as an ancient Pagan site of worship. At dawn each May Day, or Beltane, Morris Men still perform their ritualistic dance, and there are regular gatherings throughout the year to celebrate other festivals in the neo-Pagan calendar. However, there is no evidence to suggest that there was any connection between those who observe pre-Christian rites at the Long Man, and an incident in 2010 when an erect phallus - in the style of Dorset’s Cerne Abbas Giant - was added to the Long Man a few days before the summer solstice with a football pitch marking machine.

Funny Guy

Standing in the queue to get a beer at the De La Warr Pavilion last night, I started to get beard envy. My permanent three-day stubble was no match for the thick, dark lustre of the hipster beards that seemed to be on display everywhere I looked. If I were to attempt such fulsome whiskers, they would be a very unedifying grey and ginger piebald affair. Luckily, American singer-songwriter John Grant seems to be the sort of person who would not be impressed by tributes to his own facial hirsuteness. If the lyrically acid put downs directed at those who have wronged the Denver musician are anything to go by, he is not one to suffer fools gladly.

In ‘Black Belt’, from his 2013 album Pale Green Ghosts, he addresses one of his past tormentors: “You are supercilious, pretty and ridiculous…Etch-a-Sketch your way out of this one, reject.” Coming halfway through a beautiful set at the De La Warr, it was a perfect example of the second-person accusations that fill Grant’s lyrics as he seeks to come to terms with a past of growing up gay, failed relationships, drink and drugs, and a present of being HIV-positive. But set to a thumping electronic beat, it was musically atypical: most of the songs are tender piano-led ballads, with sweeping classical crescendos and sudden bursts of retro synthesiser.

Grant’s relocation to make music in Reykjavik, after the demise of his band The Czars, is well documented. He seems to be at home there and has acquired new friends: the five Icelandic musicians that worked on his last album are all introduced by name with perfect pronunciation. But there are no backing vocals from Sinead O’Connor: she is at home, Grant tells us, waiting to pass a kidney stone. Ouch. I know this from experience.

Despite the deeply personal confessional balladry, and Grant’s rich baritone voice, it is not all sombre. The bitterness is often contrasted with moments of absurd humour. ‘GMF’ is driven by a melody that could have been written by the Carpenters but is hilariously juxtaposed by potty-mouthed lyrics. I sing along to the chorus -"I am the greatest motherfucker that you're ever gonna meet" – with others queuing for another beer, one of whom tells me the song is a favourite with the community choir she sings in. Referring to a time when he suffered from low self-esteem, he dedicates the song to those people who seem to have too much of it. And there are funny couplets: “I should've practiced my scales/I should not be attracted to males”.

In the heartbreakingly stunning ‘Glacier’, the penultimate song in the set at Bexhill, the pathetic metaphor descends hilariously to bathos: “This pain/ it is a glacier moving through you/ and carving out deep valleys/ and creating spectacular landscapes/ and nourishing the ground with precious minerals/ and other stuff”. Grant closes the set with the title track from his first solo album, ‘Queen of Denmark’, with the frustrated and self-deprecating line, “I had it all the way up to my hairline/ which keeps receding like my self-confidence”. And then he goes and encores with Abba’s ‘Angeleyes’; funny guy.

Water Torture

And then the sun returned. After the wettest winter, last weekend saw some bright and fresh days that resembled something like spring. Getting back on to the allotment to dig in the winter top-dressing of cow manure was rewarding – but hard - work. Now that the downpours have abated a little, the perpetual wind has been quick to dry off the surface; but that only masks the heaviness of the soil less than half a spade’s length down.

For two months, the less quick-draining corner of my plot has been saturated; torturously, this was where the rotation plan had led the overwintering garlic to be planted. It may have survived its aquatic gestation but I am not counting on it: this week I am digging some sand and shingle in with the cow muck on a corner of the higher ground, and putting in some new Cristo garlic cloves. It could be worse: the fruit farm where I have my allotment is estimating that it will lose 1,000 trees as a result of the roots’ prolonged submersion in standing water.

February is, of course, when the sowing and planting begins: broad beans are already on their way in large-celled seed trays in the greenhouse; I have not planted straight into the soil in an attempt to foil those light-fingered field mice. Seed potatoes are quietly chitting in egg boxes in the shed: I have gone for Foremost as my first earlies and the ever-reliable, rose-red Desiree as a main crop. And Sweet Million tomato and Cayenne chilli pepper seedlings are starting to show their tips on a bright, warm windowsill indoors. Next up is more back-breaking digging, followed by the strangely enjoyable donkey work of planting potatoes and onions.

Siren's Call

All Saints is an imposing church on the corner of The Drive and Eaton Road in Hove. Built as part of the late 19th century Gothic revival, its sandstone exterior and roof of Sussex oak provide it with a subtlety lacking in other Victorian churches with their brutal flint and brick. Once inside, the wide nave and gracefully tall arcades at either side give it a cathedral-like quality; an ideal space, then, for Anna Calvi to project the soaring sound of her swirling and slashing guitar playing and the perfect pitch of her voice.

Calvi, whose superb second album One Breath was released last autumn, completed a short series of British dates in Sussex on Tuesday night before heading across the Channel to play in France, Germany, Switzerland and, her father’s homeland, Italy. Opening with Suzanne and I, one of the two tracks from her eponymous debut album that featured Brian Eno, she then moved on to a trio of the most impressive songs from One Breath: the infectious refrain of Suddenly, the alluring siren’s call of Sing To Me and Cry, a track where Calvi effortlessly moves from Duane Eddy’s twang to Hendrix’s virtuosity. Reverting to her debut album for several songs, and a cover of Elvis’s Surrender, she then continued with the latest album: the menacing break-up song Piece by Piece was followed by the peerless and plaintive Carry Me Over.

Backed by an understated drummer and two multi-instrumentalists – one with hand-pumped harmonium the like of which I have not seen since Nico’s attempts to soothe the warring punks and skins on the Siouxsie and the Banshees tour of 1978 – the sound is complex and clear, and Calvi’s sometimes whispered vocals are listened to in respectful silence by the audience (the lack of an alcohol licence is clearly the best deterrent for gig-chatterers). And the austerity of her image - kohl-eyed mute meets the black and red of the male flamenco dancer – adds to this to create a taut and dramatic atmosphere.

The mood is punctured temporarily when Calvi speaks to announce a Bruce Springsteen cover. But when she dismisses the band and performs a bare-boned version of Fire, the tone of brooding menace is quickly restored. Once the band returns, the final few songs of the evening contain Calvi’s first three singles: 2011’s Desire and Blackout are followed by the set closer, her improbable re-working of the 1951 Frankie Laine hit, Jezebel. And, given the lyrics in this ecclesiastical setting, “if ever the devil was born/without a pair of horns/it was you”, deliciously incongruous.

People's Pier

When Hastings Pier burnt down in 2010 it had already been closed to the public for four years. If the deserted structure was a harsh reminder that it had seen better days, its blackened and twisted wreckage rendered it a metaphor for the irreversible decline of seaside towns.

Built in 1872, its twin peaks of popularity were between the twentieth century wars, and again in the 1960s and 70s when the end of pier pavilion played host to gigs by a number of high-profile acts. The final Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd performance took place there and the Rolling Stones, The Who, Jimi Hendrix, the Sex Pistols and The Clash all played the pier. After that time, a rapidly changing succession of owners ensured that the pier fell into a spiral of disrepair before closing in 2006.

However, a local campaign to resurrect the pier that had begun after its closure, was given fresh impetus by the fire; now the pier is in local community ownership and on the verge of renovation. With the help of volunteers, fundraisers and local authorities, the Hastings Pier Charity (HCP) has raised £11.4m from the Heritage Lottery Fund and over £2m from other public and institutional sources. But with a funding gap still to fill, a community share scheme has been launched to enable real local involvement in the new Hastings Pier.

HCP is trying to attract 3,000 ordinary people – be they residents of Hastings, St. Leonards, East Sussex or just lovers of Hastings Pier – to become community shareholders in the People’s Pier. It is hoped the community share scheme will raise £500,000 to develop additional facilities on the pier, such as a children’s play area and a microbrewery.

All community shareholders will be members of HCP and, effectively, owners of the pier. Able to attend the AGM and vote and stand for the Board of Directors, all owners will have one vote, irrespective of the number of community shares they have bought. But these are not shares to make a profit - they cannot be sold on. However, if the pier is making a profit in the future, community shareholders could apply to get their investment back. More importantly, though, it is about having a long term stake in a community asset.

Community shares are available at £1 each for a minimum stake of £100 from Hastings Pier Charity. The offer is open until 5th April 2014.

The Old Songs

This year will mark the tenth anniversary of the death of Bob Copper, the most well-known member of the Copper Family of Rottingdean. The family’s earliest mention in the parish records dates from the 1590s, although they were probably living and working in the area as farm labourers, carters, shepherds and publicans much earlier.

The Coppers’ tradition of unaccompanied singing of traditional Sussex songs may stretch back just as far, but it was in the late 19th century when James ‘Brasser’ Copper, and his brother Thomas, were discovered singing their rural repetoire by Kate Lee of the Folk Song Society. James wrote down the songs that he knew for the society but continued to pass them down orally to his children, Jim and John. In 1936, Jim recorded dozens of songs in a handwritten book that he dedicated and passed on to his son, Bob.

The songs – whether created or collected - are filled with the richness of local life on the seaward side of the Downs, or draw on universal themes of the rural working class. The Seasons Round charts the ever-turning agricultural calendar:

Now harvest being over bad weather comes on,
We will send for the thresher to thresh out our corn.
His hand-staff he'll handle, his swingel he'll swing,
Till the very next harvest we'll all meet again.

Others tell of farmers and fishermen, lads and lovers, shepherds, soldiers and sailors. Claudy Banks, the first song that ‘Brasser’ transcribed for the Folk Song Society, is a ballad that tells the ageless tale of a returned sailor not recognised by the true love he left behind.

In the 1950s, the Coppers came to wider public attention with Jim and John regularly giving high-profile performances with their respective sons, Bob and Ron. Recorded and broadcast by the BBC, they attracted the attention of the American field collector of folk music, Alan Lomax, who had moved to England after being named in the United States as a communist sympathiser. Jim and John both died in the mid-fifties and when the Folk Song Society’s successor, the English Folk Dance and Song Society, released the LP Traditional Songs From Rottingdean in 1963, the Coppers’ place in the emerging English folk renaissance was firmly established.

In the 1970s, Bob further cemented the Coppers’ reputation with a trilogy of books documenting the family’s vocal tradition, the first of which, A Song For Every Season, won the Robert Pitman Literary Prize of 1971. After brother Ron’s death in the late seventies, Bob heralded a new dawn by broadening family involvement to include his children, John and Jill. The definitive modern collection of their recorded songs, Come Write Me Down, was released in 2001 and by the time of Bob’s death in 2004, at the age of 89, the performing family had swelled to include John and Jill’s respective children. The Copper Family still perform regularly, and carry with them to every gig Jim’s handwritten songbook from 1936.

Sea Power

When the Devil’s Chimney, a 200ft high chalk tower that was part of the Beachy Head cliffs, collapsed into the sea in April 2001, there were several theories as to the cause: the rough seas that had been battering the rock-face throughout the preceding winter; driving rain that had penetrated the chalk and then frozen and expanded, causing the cliff to crack; a curse that had existed since Aleister Crowley, the fin de siecle occultist, had climbed the tower in 1894.

Discounting the third theory, the Environment Agency was certain that climate change was responsible for the first two. Increasingly stormy winters had accounted for the collapse of an even larger section of Beachy Head two years earlier, and the sudden disappearance of the Devil’s Chimney was part of an emerging pattern. But since those events at the turn of the century, coastal erosion at Beachy Head has been within expected limits for an undefended rock formation. However, at other points of the East Sussex shore, it has been a different story.

Slightly to the west at Birling Gap - a dip in the high coastline - several cottages on the low cliffs have been lost to gradual erosion in recent decades, and the turn of this year brought a more dramatic alteration to the cliff-face. The powerful swelling sea that buffeted the south coast at New Year, claimed a 3-metre section of chalk, making the cliff edges unstable and closing the already precarious steps down to the beach. Much more spectacularly, at Rock-a-Nore to the east of Hastings, the sandstone cliffs suffered a dramatic collapse after days of heavy seas pounding their base. The remarkable day-time rock fall was captured on film by eyewitnesses.

The effect of the continuing winds, whipping up the power of the sea, is that the craggy East Sussex coastline has become a treacherous place and coastal paths have had to be closed, limiting access to cliff and shore in many places. Perhaps walking the more sedate coastal plain of West Sussex is the way forward for the rest of this wild winter.