Viva Brighton April 2015 Issue #26
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vivabrighton<br />
<strong>Issue</strong> 26. Apr <strong>2015</strong><br />
editorial<br />
...................................................................................<br />
It’s long been a cliché to refer to <strong>Brighton</strong> as ‘London-on-Sea’, suggesting<br />
all the sophisticated benefits of an urban area, with the extra<br />
benefit of the beach and ocean. But have you ever heard it called<br />
‘London-on-the-Downs’. Thought not.Yet <strong>Brighton</strong> is as connected<br />
with the rural land behind it as it is with the sea in front, and while the<br />
town originated as a fishing village, it’s got plenty of agricultural heritage<br />
too. Check out the James Gray collection of old photos, and you’ll<br />
see turn-of-the-twentieth-century farmers, at work in Hangleton, who look like they belong<br />
in a Thomas Hardy novel; one of the city’s best-loved gig venues is still known as ‘the Corn<br />
Exchange’. In fact, the Downs that provide the backdrop to the city are by-and-large a big area<br />
of wild-in-nature farmland, mainly used for grazing sheep and cattle, criss-crossed with ancient<br />
footpaths. The <strong>Brighton</strong> and Lewes Downs, between the Adur and the Ouse, has recently been<br />
recognised by UNESCO as a ‘biosphere reserve’; the South Downs National Park nestles up<br />
to the eastern city limits. Beyond the Downs, viewable from Devil’s Dyke, lies the vast Weald.<br />
So in this month’s issue, to celebrate the onset of spring, we’ve turned our backs on the sea, and<br />
explored what’s going on north of the city: our <strong>April</strong> theme is ‘Land’. And our message? It’s easy<br />
in a city like <strong>Brighton</strong> to move in small urban circles, ignoring the fresh-aired splendours a short<br />
hop away. The hills are alive, in effect: go explore them. Enjoy the issue…<br />
The Team<br />
.....................<br />
EDITOR: Alex Leith alex@vivabrighton.com<br />
DEPUTY EDITOR: Steve Ramsey steveramsey@vivabrighton.com<br />
ART DIRECTOR: Katie Moorman katie@vivabrighton.com<br />
PHOTOGRAPHER AT LARGE: Adam Bronkhorst<br />
EDITORIAL ASSISTANT: Rebecca Cunningham<br />
ADVERTISING: Anya Zervudachi anya@vivabrighton.com, Nick Metcalf nickmetcalf@vivabrighton.com,<br />
CONTRIBUTORS: Black Mustard, Joe Decie, Nione Meakin, Chloë King, John Helmer,<br />
Ben Bailey, Lizzie Enfield, Rebecca Hattersley, Lucy Williams, Jim Stephenson and Yoram Allon<br />
PUBLISHERS: Nick Williams nick@vivabrighton.com, Lizzie Lower lizzie@vivamagazines.com<br />
DIRECTORS: Alex Leith, Nick Williams, Lizzie Lower, Becky Ramsden<br />
<strong>Viva</strong> is based at 52 Ship Street, <strong>Brighton</strong>, East Sussex BN1 1AF<br />
For advertising enquiries call 07596 337 828<br />
Every care has been taken to ensure the accuracy of our content. We cannot be held responsible for any omissions, errors or alterations.
contents<br />
...............................<br />
Bits and bobs.<br />
7-23. This month’s cover, Mr Benn,<br />
<strong>Viva</strong> Pecha Kucha, Flow Magazine,<br />
The Robin Hood, Secrets of the<br />
Pavilion, Bob Copper on the buses,<br />
and much more.<br />
15<br />
Photography.<br />
25-29. Murray Ballard explores<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong>’s rural hinterland.<br />
Columns.<br />
30-33. Chloë King’s early-onset midlife<br />
crisis, Lizzie Enfield’s children’s<br />
frozen pastries, and John Helmer’s<br />
amazing technicolour dreamcoat.<br />
My <strong>Brighton</strong>.<br />
34-35. Huw Morgan, from the Sussex<br />
Wildlife Society, on park life and his<br />
Zap Club past.<br />
28<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong> in history.<br />
36-37. Racketeering and bribes: the<br />
Police Corruption case of 1957.<br />
In town this month.<br />
39-53. Ben Bailey’s <strong>Brighton</strong> roundup,<br />
the Yamato Drummers of Japan,<br />
Polar Bear, Lordi, Mariana Sadovska,<br />
Noisy Neighbours, comedians Charmaine<br />
Davies and Jane Postlethwaite,<br />
and Yoram Allon’s new cinema<br />
round-up.<br />
Art and Literature.<br />
54-69. <strong>Brighton</strong> Festival guest director<br />
Ali Smith, Flash Fact short story,<br />
Sally O’Reilly’s Dark Aemelia, Marcus<br />
Coates’ Dawn Chorus, Katty McMurray<br />
by the sea and Dan Bowden on<br />
gig posters. Plus designer Fiona<br />
Howard, the William Morris of the<br />
South Downs (and LA), philosophical<br />
designs by Fina Boutique and the<br />
....4 ....
contents<br />
...............................<br />
41<br />
two’s company creations of Sarah<br />
Squared.<br />
The Way we Work.<br />
70-75. Adam Bronkhorst gets his<br />
desert boots dirty photographing<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong> land-workers in situ.<br />
76<br />
Food.<br />
76-87. Authentic Chinese at the<br />
Sichuan Garden, brill brill at the Salt<br />
Room, restaurant updates, Foodies<br />
Festival, Foodshed and Fin and Farm<br />
(that’s a lot of ‘f’s).<br />
Features.<br />
88-98. A cuppa with Tim Richardson<br />
from Taboo, Elderflower Fields<br />
Festival wildlife walk, Planet Feed, the<br />
lowdown on hydroponics, a bluffer’s<br />
guide to the Albion, <strong>Brighton</strong> Marathon,<br />
Preston Park Velodrome, and a<br />
breeze up the Downs, Victorian style.<br />
78<br />
97<br />
....5 ....
this month’s cover art<br />
..........................................<br />
This month we approached<br />
Mike Wolff (aka Mr Doodle)<br />
and asked him to come up with a<br />
vibrant, spring-themed cover for<br />
our ‘Land’ issue. “When I was<br />
given the theme ‘Land’ I immediately<br />
thought of writing ‘<strong>Viva</strong>’<br />
in leaves. I’m not sure why...”<br />
he explains. If you’ve already<br />
paid a visit to his shop Wolff<br />
and Badger in the new <strong>Brighton</strong><br />
Laines Market, you might recognise<br />
some of the little monsters hiding all over<br />
the front cover. And the giant fuzzy octopus doing<br />
the gardening? “I can’t remember why I decided<br />
to draw the octopus,” says Mike, “I think I must<br />
have had a conversation with someone about octopuses<br />
while I was working on it. My doodles<br />
are mostly a stream of consciousness; once I start<br />
drawing, things just appear.” We<br />
loved all of the little details and<br />
the elements of <strong>Brighton</strong> – some<br />
obvious, some less obvious – which<br />
appear, the longer you look at the<br />
cover. “The design captures what<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong> is to me: vibrant, interesting,<br />
full of life.” It’s quite difficult to<br />
think of <strong>Brighton</strong> without thinking<br />
of the Royal Pavilion, and so it has<br />
become a frequenter of the <strong>Viva</strong><br />
<strong>Brighton</strong> front cover. “I couldn’t<br />
not include the Pavilion,” he says. “Lots of cities<br />
have landmarks which are iconic and you’d recognise<br />
them, but ours is just such a joy to draw.”<br />
You’ll be hearing plenty more about Wolff and<br />
Badger (including the reason behind the name)<br />
in next month’s issue, but until then you can find<br />
more of Mike’s work at mrdoodle.com.<br />
....7 ....
NOT LONDON
Detail © Matthew Smith (Australia) Sailing By<br />
BRIGHTON MUSEUM & ART GALLERY<br />
2 MAY TO 6 SEPT <strong>2015</strong><br />
100 awe-inspiring images, from fascinating animal<br />
behaviour to breath-taking wild landscapes.<br />
Royal Pavilion Gardens, <strong>Brighton</strong> BN1 1EE • Admission fee payable<br />
www.brightonmuseums.org.uk • 03000 290902<br />
See this fantastic exhibition for FREE by becoming a member,<br />
join today and we’ll invite you to the exclusive opening night<br />
Memberships ( from £20) last all year and include some great benefits.<br />
Join in <strong>Brighton</strong> Museum, by telephone or online at pavilionfoundation.org<br />
Wildlife Photographer of the Year is co-owned by<br />
the Natural History Museum and BBC Worldwide.
its and bogs<br />
...............................<br />
magazine of thE month<br />
In late February, someone said to me in the<br />
shop ‘What is it about Flow? I don’t get it’.<br />
By the end of the same day we had sold seven<br />
copies of the magazine and nine copies<br />
of the Flow annual (which had arrived just<br />
a day earlier).<br />
Started in the Netherlands by two women,<br />
Flow is described on the cover as ‘a magazine<br />
for paper lovers’. You’ll also find the sort-of<br />
tagline ‘Simplify Your Life, Feel Connected,<br />
Live Mindfully and Spoil Yourself.’ On its<br />
website, Flow is described as ‘a magazine for<br />
women who live busy but happy lives and<br />
who want to make different kinds of choices.’<br />
Well, Flow is all of these things.<br />
I must admit that I don’t totally get the ‘for<br />
women’ bit. I love the articles in the current<br />
edition about how to argue well in a<br />
relationship, how women stand up to domestic<br />
violence in Pakistan, mindfulness,<br />
the American pre-selfie photographer Vivian<br />
Maier, the singer-songwriter Gregory<br />
Page, portrait artists, the small losses in life<br />
and more.<br />
What Flow does brilliantly is wrap all of this<br />
interesting, important stuff in a beautifully<br />
accessible format that is a delight to have<br />
around. Most issues contain little surprise<br />
gifts. The current one has a small book taking<br />
us through the early stages of hand lettering<br />
and a grown-up paper doll clothing kit.<br />
It’s no surprise to me that people rush to<br />
buy Flow and no surprise that some people<br />
buy two – one to look at and one to break<br />
apart and use. <strong>Issue</strong> after issue, the founders<br />
manage to make Flow serious, whimsical,<br />
interesting and delightful. It’s a heck of<br />
a package.<br />
Martin Skelton, magazinebrighton owner<br />
toilet graffito #3<br />
Name that toilet! With thanks to our toilet-graffiti<br />
correspondents Fan Fan and Thomas.<br />
Last month’s answer: Northern Lights<br />
....11....
pub: the robin hood<br />
It takes me approximately<br />
four seconds<br />
to cross the road<br />
between my house<br />
and the Robin<br />
Hood, so it’s accurate<br />
to call it my ‘local’.<br />
The first time<br />
I had a pint there<br />
was the first day I<br />
moved into my flat,<br />
and landlord Chris<br />
Dodd informed me<br />
in quick succession<br />
that it was Britain’s<br />
only charity pub,<br />
and that sadly this<br />
didn’t make my<br />
beer tax deductible.<br />
This hasn’t stopped<br />
me from returning there on an extremely regular<br />
basis: it’s one of the friendliest boozers I’ve ever<br />
come across, a public house in the real meaning of<br />
the term: in effect, an extension of my living room.<br />
The place is owned by entrepreneur Martin Webb.<br />
Webb (with now-Tory-MP Simon Kirby) was, until<br />
2002, part owner of the C-Side chain of <strong>Brighton</strong><br />
pubs. The pair sold the chain for £15m, and split<br />
the profits. Shortly afterwards Webb bought the<br />
‘Hood’. As a thank you to the city that had helped<br />
him make his fortune, he made it Britain’s only charity<br />
pub: all the yearly profit, after running costs are<br />
paid, goes to local causes. The name ‘Robin Hood’<br />
is, by the way, a fortuitous coincidence: in fact it has<br />
been called that since it was built in 1852.<br />
Another very-regular there is pub restorer Neil<br />
Hayward, who refurbished<br />
the interior<br />
when it was bought<br />
by Webb, and lives<br />
above it. He’s studied<br />
the history of the<br />
place, and tells me<br />
we’re lucky it’s still<br />
there. On the 9th<br />
<strong>April</strong> 1941, a Nazi<br />
bomb destroyed<br />
the two next-door<br />
buildings on Norfolk<br />
Place, accounting<br />
for the incongruous<br />
redbrick building at<br />
no. 4, and the pub’s<br />
higgledy-piggledy<br />
shape. This left a gap<br />
in the terrace and<br />
what is now the eastern half of the pub was in the<br />
post-war years a courtyard, where the clientele<br />
would drink beer sitting on beer barrels. Before its<br />
subsequent extension in the eighties, Neil tells me,<br />
the interior was tiny. After that extension, particularly<br />
in the long tenancy of Brian Hayes, the Hood<br />
became known as a ‘rugby pub’, and the Robin<br />
Hood XV was one of the best teams in <strong>Brighton</strong>.<br />
It’s still a great place to watch the Six Nations,<br />
and other international games, if you like a bit of<br />
atmosphere. But there are many more reasons to<br />
go: fine beer, pleasant bar staff, £5.95 pizza, board<br />
games, a popular Monday Night quiz… and the<br />
warm feeling that however much cash you spend in<br />
there, a portion of it will go to a good cause.<br />
Alex Leith, painting by Jay Collins
Joe decie<br />
...............................<br />
....13....
its and bobs<br />
...............................<br />
Pecha Kucha ‘Talent Pool’<br />
Visual mini-talks from <strong>Brighton</strong> creatives<br />
In February we<br />
were delighted<br />
to be invited by<br />
the artist and<br />
illustrator Zara<br />
Wood, ‘Woody’, to<br />
co-curate a Pecha<br />
Kucha night with<br />
her, which will be<br />
taking place at the<br />
Velo Café on the<br />
evening of May 7th.<br />
Woody is no stranger to the format, having first<br />
given a PK talk at the ICA in London, back<br />
in 2003, and then having been invited by its<br />
originators, architect partners Astrid Klein and<br />
Mark Dytham, to do a presentation at one of<br />
their monthly events at Superdeluxe in Tokyo,<br />
in 2007.<br />
“Pecha Kucha was started up by Astrid and<br />
Mark to give a platform to designers and other<br />
creative people to offer a short presentation<br />
of their work,” she explains. “Participants are<br />
asked to prepare a slideshow of twenty carefully<br />
chosen images, which are each shown for<br />
twenty seconds, during which they are expected<br />
to explain what the audience is seeing. There<br />
is no pause between slides, so it’s engaging and<br />
full of energy: each presenter’s slot lasts a total<br />
of just six minutes and forty seconds.”<br />
Pecha Kucha means ‘chit chat’ in Japanese, and<br />
Astrid and Mark have kept arm’s-length control<br />
of the format since starting it up in 2003. In the<br />
twelve years since the first presentation, there<br />
have been events in over 800 cities worldwide,<br />
including a number in <strong>Brighton</strong>. Alongside<br />
the regular talk nights,<br />
there are the one-off<br />
events like this one,<br />
which is ‘powered by<br />
Pecha Kucha’.<br />
There is often a theme<br />
to the evenings: we<br />
have called this event<br />
‘Talent Pool’, and its<br />
purpose is to showcase<br />
the range of the creative<br />
talent that makes <strong>Brighton</strong> <strong>Brighton</strong>. The<br />
line-up includes Open Market sign designer<br />
Lucy Williams, bonfire sculptor Keith Pettit,<br />
creative competition ‘comper’ Di Coke, Royal<br />
Pavilion historian Alexandra Loske, synesthetic<br />
Instagram star Philippa Stanton, ‘Collector’s<br />
Edition’ author and art director Stuart Tolley,<br />
glass-artist Su Wilson, Kid-ethic art director<br />
and book-cover designer Mark Swan, and<br />
the MakerClub founders on <strong>Brighton</strong>’s new<br />
MakerLab. There will also be a yet-to-beconfirmed<br />
locally based photographer.<br />
“An exciting line-up in an exciting regenerated<br />
area of <strong>Brighton</strong> at the Velo café bar,”<br />
says Woody, “and the audience will get the<br />
chance to mingle with the participants after the<br />
presentations. I expect they’ll have a lot to talk<br />
about.”<br />
Alex Leith<br />
Talent Pool, powered by Pecha Kucha, at the<br />
Velo Café on May 7th, will be hosted by Woody<br />
and <strong>Viva</strong>’s Alex Leith. Doors open 6.30pm with<br />
the talks running, with a break, between 7pm-<br />
9pm. Early-bird tickets £5 from zarawood.com<br />
or vivabrighton.com.<br />
....15....
its and bobs<br />
...............................<br />
miniclicks<br />
Three photographers who deal with abstraction have been<br />
invited to The Old Market (27th <strong>April</strong>, 7pm start) by <strong>Viva</strong>’s Jim<br />
Stephenson, in his long-running Miniclicks series, to give illustrated<br />
talks explaining their philosophy. London-based Dafna<br />
Talmor deals with ‘Constructed Landscapes’, creating C-type<br />
prints made of collages and montages of colour negatives. Different<br />
natural scenes are juxtaposed; sometimes there’s a gap of<br />
blackness, as if the earth has cracked. Man-made constructions<br />
are notable by their absence: there’s an ancient, almost primeval<br />
look to things. <strong>Brighton</strong> University-educated Esme Horne,<br />
meanwhile, is interested in the process of photography: ‘Working<br />
in the darkroom,’ explains Jim, ‘she encourages the chance<br />
aspect of engaging with the simple elements of light, a lens<br />
and photographic paper’. The results are colourful, and rather<br />
delicately beautiful. Finally Lucia Pizzani has been experimenting<br />
with ferrotypes – a Victorian method of exposing collodion<br />
emulsified plates to light (see above); she’ll explain her methodology and the philosophy behind it.<br />
FOUR-LINE POEM: ‘Land’ by Leon Freeman<br />
what ties the sky, sea to sand<br />
who bore our fruits, on whom we stand<br />
impoverished now with tin cans and rubber wrist bands.<br />
Where were you when they branded our land?<br />
....16....
its and bobs<br />
...............................<br />
jj waller’s brighton<br />
“Knowing it was a very low tide, I inveigled an invite to take a twilight reflection picture<br />
from the Wheel,” says JJ. “The shot I envisaged didn’t emerge, probably to do with<br />
some scientific refraction principle, ‘angle v height’ or something. Fortunately, although<br />
I had missed the twilight I would have preferred, I encountered this scene walking on<br />
the sands, actually achieving the opposite reflection to which I had first imagined. Once<br />
again though the human presence won the day. Schmultzy but nice.”<br />
....17....
its and bobs<br />
...............................<br />
Secrets of the pavilion:<br />
No crouching tigers, but many hidden dragons<br />
In the January issue I wrote about the largest object<br />
in the Royal Pavilion, the magnificent Dragon<br />
Chandelier in the Banqueting Room, designed by<br />
the mysterious and elusive artist Robert Jones, one<br />
of the principal interior decorators of the Pavilion,<br />
responsible for many of the final designs after 1815.<br />
This month I would like to draw attention to other,<br />
rarely seen or noticed dragons designed by Jones.<br />
Dragons are one of the most popular motifs in the<br />
decorative schemes of the Pavilion interiors and<br />
can be found in two - or three - dimensional form<br />
in almost every room in the building. Most of these<br />
dragons are the creations of European designers<br />
and bear little resemblance to this most powerful<br />
and positive of Chinese mythological creatures.<br />
However, they are charming and playful designs<br />
that give us an insight into the creative minds of<br />
George IV’s designers, who were trying to conjure<br />
up a vision of the Far East for their patron in the<br />
early 19th century.<br />
In the Red Drawing Room, the first room to the<br />
right off the Green Entrance Hall, Jones included<br />
dragons in the pattern of the so-called Dragon<br />
Wallpaper, which was inspired by Chinese Imperial<br />
robes and painted by hand in white on a rich<br />
vermilion red ground with a glaze of transparent<br />
carmine. These wallpaper dragons are stylised<br />
and easily visible, and George IV liked the pattern<br />
so much that he asked for it to be repeated as a<br />
block-printed version in different colours (green<br />
and yellow) in other rooms of the Pavilion. But in<br />
the Red Drawing Room Jones also sneaked in other,<br />
more subtle, dragons, that would reveal themselves<br />
to visitors only on close inspection, or perhaps by<br />
chance. Once you have spotted them you see them<br />
everywhere and you look around the room in search<br />
....18....
its and bobs<br />
...............................<br />
of more delightful discoveries. These dragons are<br />
painted into the woodgrain effect of all doors and<br />
wood-panelled surfaces, such as window casements,<br />
shutters and skirting boards. Small dragons or<br />
snake-like, phantastical creatures emerge from paint<br />
surfaces that imitate satinwood. They are full of<br />
movement, fluid even, and give a vivid impression<br />
of how they were created, with the artist’s brush<br />
wandering, painting a first tentative little creature,<br />
then more and more.<br />
Woodgraining, marbling and trompe l’oeil effects<br />
were popular features in eighteenth and nineteenth<br />
century interior decorating. By means of painting<br />
artists imitated other, usually more precious, materials<br />
and surfaces, such as marble or exotic woods.<br />
In the Pavilion, a building that plays with your<br />
senses by incorporating optical illusions, imitations<br />
and oriental phantasy worlds, we find many of these<br />
pretend surfaces, skilfully executed by the Craces,<br />
Robert Jones and their assistants. Pink marbled<br />
surfaces, for example, are found in the niches of the<br />
Long Gallery, while imitation bamboo is dotted<br />
around the entire building. Nowhere though is the<br />
technique of woodgraining executed so playfully<br />
and effectively as in the Red Drawing Room.<br />
We cannot say for certain whether Jones himself<br />
painted the dozens of squirming dragons into the<br />
woodgrain of this room, but it is likely that his<br />
brush indeed ‘wandered’ and painted a first dragon,<br />
possibly with no intention to make this a design<br />
feature. An apocryphal story claims that George IV<br />
saw Jones doing this and<br />
was so delighted by the<br />
creatures that he ordered<br />
him to include them everywhere<br />
in the room. It<br />
is a lovely story, but there<br />
is no evidence that this<br />
happened. Very little is<br />
known about the important<br />
figure Robert Jones, but some of his Pavilion<br />
accounts survive. These confirm that he worked<br />
extensively on the Red Drawing Room decorations<br />
between 1820 and 1822, but no mention is made<br />
of the hidden dragons in the woodgraining, only<br />
generic references to the richness of the design<br />
scheme, the quality of the pigments used, and the<br />
highly decorated and varnished surfaces. Unlike<br />
the Dragon Wallpaper, which is a 20th-century<br />
reproduction, the wooden surfaces in this room are<br />
largely original. In the mid-19th century many of<br />
them were covered in a brown copal varnish, but<br />
these dark layers were beginning to be removed<br />
in the 1920s, revealing Robert Jones’ delightful<br />
dragons once again.<br />
The Red Drawing Room is not on the normal<br />
visitor route through the building, but is used for<br />
special events and occasions, including wedding<br />
ceremonies.<br />
Alexandra Loske, Art Historian and Curator<br />
....19....
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its and bobs<br />
...............................<br />
five minutes with: RAY BROOKS, The voice behind Mr Benn<br />
In 1968 I got a phone call out of the blue by the children’s illustrator Donald<br />
McKee. He said ‘would you like to do the voiceover for a TV show they are<br />
making of one of my books? It’s called Mr Benn’. I’d never heard of it. I said ‘yes’.<br />
The Mr Benn series is genius. There were only thirteen episodes, but kids of a<br />
certain generation remember them all their lives. He dresses up in a fancy dress<br />
shop, and has ‘adventures’ connected to the style of the costume he puts on, if<br />
you’re not familiar with it.<br />
I often give talks about my career – I’ve been appearing in films and on TV for<br />
years. In an early talk I mentioned Mr Benn, and said ‘as if by magic’ (which<br />
was the introduction line to the shopkeeper character, and something of a<br />
catchphrase) and everybody stood up and started applauding. I knew I was onto<br />
something. So now I base my talks on ‘the enduring magic’ of Mr Benn.<br />
Sometimes I meet someone for the first time, and they say ‘you’re Mr Benn, aren’t you?’ It’s not my face, and<br />
they don’t know my name: it’s my voice. I was brought up in <strong>Brighton</strong>. My mother was a bus conductor. She<br />
said ‘Ray, I’m going to send you to elocution lessons’. My teacher was called Pat Donovan, and I adored her.<br />
She’s responsible for my voice. As If by Magic - The Genius of Mr Benn, <strong>Brighton</strong> Little Theatre, <strong>April</strong> 12
its and bobs<br />
...............................<br />
spread the word<br />
The Specky Wren<br />
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charleston festival competition<br />
Charleston Festival returns next month,<br />
from 15-25 May, with a cultural cornucopia<br />
of literature, art and ideas. With speakers<br />
from Stoppard (pictured) to Hambling,<br />
themes from Magna Carta to phone hacking,<br />
and their first original musical commission<br />
the festival promises to be more thoughtprovoking<br />
than ever. Win a pair of tickets<br />
to a performance of your choice (subject to<br />
availability), by answering this question: Family<br />
Romances is the theme of David Nicholls<br />
and Polly Samson’s event at the festival on<br />
May 15. Which of Thomas Hardy’s novels<br />
has Nicholls recently adapted for the screen?<br />
Email hello@vivamagazines.com with ‘Charleston Festival Comp’ in the subject line, stating your answer,<br />
plus your top three preferences for performances you’d like to see, or write to <strong>Viva</strong> at 151B High St, Lewes,<br />
BN7 1XU. The winner’s name will be drawn from all correct submissions on <strong>April</strong> 24. charleston.org.uk<br />
Photo by Matt Humphrey <strong>2015</strong><br />
....23....
photography<br />
..........................................<br />
Murray Ballard<br />
One-planet photographer<br />
This month in <strong>Viva</strong>’s regular<br />
photo feature, Miniclick<br />
takes a look at the work<br />
of <strong>Brighton</strong> photographer<br />
Murray Ballard, and the<br />
project he completed with<br />
FotoDocument looking at the<br />
protection and restoration<br />
of biodiversity and natural<br />
habitats in <strong>Brighton</strong>.<br />
How did you come to work on this project?<br />
I applied to an open call by FotoDocument. In<br />
2013 <strong>Brighton</strong> and Hove became the world’s first<br />
One Planet City and they were commissioning ten<br />
photographers to produce an essay for each of the<br />
One Planet Living principles.<br />
One of the main reasons I applied is because I<br />
wanted to work on a project closer to home. More<br />
often than not my photography has involved<br />
travelling far afield. It might sound odd, but I actually<br />
find it quite difficult to take photographs in<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong>. Having lived here for nearly ten years,<br />
it’s become almost too familiar, which makes it<br />
harder to see pictures. I thought if I got a commission<br />
it would give me some structure and force me<br />
to produce a finished piece of work.<br />
Were you surprised at the amount of activity<br />
in <strong>Brighton</strong> and Hove? Definitely. I had no idea<br />
there was so much going on. Before I started<br />
photographing I met up with Rich Howath, the<br />
Biosphere’s Project Officer, who suggested a long<br />
list of relevant subjects. I narrowed them down<br />
according to their environmental importance and<br />
how visually interesting I thought they would be.<br />
What drove the choice to focus mainly on the<br />
people, rather than the landscape/flora/fauna?<br />
Nearly every time I was out photographing with<br />
an ecologist or ranger they’d show<br />
me lots of phone pictures of interesting<br />
plants and wildlife they’d<br />
found. Quite early on I realised I<br />
couldn’t compete with this sort of<br />
wildlife photography. I don’t have<br />
their specialist knowledge, not to<br />
mention the chances of being in<br />
the right place, at the right time, to<br />
get these sorts of pictures.<br />
Fortunately this coincided with me understanding<br />
how highly managed our landscape is, and that<br />
it’s been continually changed and adapted by us<br />
humans for thousands of years according to our<br />
needs and values. I decided to take a broader view<br />
and photograph the work being carried out by<br />
farmers, conservationists and volunteers. As well as<br />
people using the landscape for leisure, rather than<br />
photographing specific flora and fauna.<br />
Has the project had any affect on how you live<br />
now? Any plans to start keeping bees? Without<br />
wanting to sound too corny, this project has definitely<br />
given me a much greater appreciation for<br />
where I live. I had no idea how special the downland<br />
around <strong>Brighton</strong> is. A ranger told me David<br />
Bellamy once described chalk grassland as being<br />
‘Britain’s tropical rainforest’ because potentially<br />
you can find up to forty different species of plant<br />
in a single square metre, which is quite incredible.<br />
It’s funny you mention bees. Yesterday I exchanged<br />
a jar of honey for a print with one of the beekeepers<br />
I photographed. I’ve got no plans to keep bees,<br />
but my Dad has been building up to it for years<br />
- going on courses, buying equipment… When he<br />
retires he’s planning on getting a hive. Maybe one<br />
day I’ll follow in his footsteps. Jim Stephenson<br />
murrayballard.com<br />
....25....
photography<br />
...............................<br />
Wildflower planting, Craven Wood, Whitehawk Hill<br />
Stuart (with his cows), Bevendean Farm<br />
....26....
photography<br />
...............................<br />
Fencing, National Trust Working Holiday, Devil’s Dyke<br />
Charcoal Burning, Saddlescombe Farm<br />
....27....
photography<br />
...............................<br />
Whitehawk Camp Community Archaeology Project<br />
Moth Trapping, Race Hill, Whitehawk Hill<br />
....28....
photography<br />
...............................<br />
Devil’s Dyke<br />
Elderflower Picking, Stanmer Organics<br />
....29....
column<br />
...........................................<br />
John Helmer<br />
High school musical<br />
Assailed by lateral rain, we struggle up the steps to<br />
Poppy’s school. Inside the door is an improvised<br />
bar run by our friendly neighbours Clara and<br />
Andy (who plays his bagpipes in the back garden).<br />
I buy a couple of Merlots in plastic cups and order<br />
two more for the interval: the school is performing<br />
Joseph and His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat<br />
tonight, and I can’t sit through an Andrew Lloyd<br />
Webber musical without medication.<br />
Poppy and her friends won’t actually occupy seats<br />
adjacent to grown-ups, of course, so I settle myself<br />
four rows ahead along with another friend, Marit,<br />
who is mother of one of Poppy’s besties (Kate<br />
somehow got out of this one).<br />
The chorus bounces on. I’ll give this to the Lord,<br />
he does crisp exposition. Within minutes Joseph<br />
has donned the multi-coloured dressing gown –<br />
having decided, like a retiring 70s football manager,<br />
that his sheepskin days are over.<br />
‘I can’t understand what’s happening,’<br />
whispers Marit. I explain that it’s not<br />
because she’s Norwegian: ‘the acoustics<br />
in here are rubbish’ (I don’t want to say<br />
anything about clear diction being a<br />
thing of the past because that would<br />
come across like I’m one of those parents<br />
who goes round on open evenings<br />
correcting spellings with a red pen).<br />
‘But why is there no talking between<br />
the songs to let you know what’s going<br />
on?’<br />
‘It’s called a “sung-through” musical.’<br />
Yes, I have all the terminology. This is<br />
because Kate used to work for a company<br />
that produced musicals just like this when we<br />
were first together. Full disclosure: she worked for<br />
the Lord.<br />
Interval. Clara and Andy’s pop-up bar has repopped-up<br />
on the first floor. ‘Did you hear Steve<br />
Strange died?’ says Andy. Andy usually has at least<br />
one earbud plugged into his beloved iPod, and as<br />
we speak he is listening to Visage.<br />
‘Always thought he was a bit of a cock,’ I say,<br />
ungenerously.<br />
Even I can’t fault the production downstairs,<br />
though. Pharaoh-as-Elvis is a real laugh, as are the<br />
inexplicable Apache dancers and the Ishmaelites<br />
dressed as Madness. Inappropriate titters come<br />
from four rows back when Joseph gets jiggy with<br />
Mrs Potiphar under a sheet. And when the kids<br />
start building a pyramid out of Fed-ex boxes I<br />
remember exactly why I love school productions.<br />
By the time the lights come on at the end, Marit is<br />
completely won over.<br />
‘I thought that was absolutely brilliant,’ she says,<br />
eyes shining; ‘how about you?’<br />
For me, Joseph evokes all the worst parts of the<br />
Seventies. Flared jeans with neatly ironed creases.<br />
Hand-knitted waistcoats in rainbow colours … And<br />
then there’s the music itself: jazz, rock, and blues so<br />
thinly watered down that if it were a urine sample<br />
your urologist would say you were dead.<br />
But as the children caper home down the road<br />
ahead of us, dancing and singing, the feeling comes<br />
over me – just as it does on Red Nose Day and<br />
at Christmas – that perhaps sometimes critical<br />
scruples are a bit beside the point.<br />
‘I think the kids did a great job.’<br />
....30....
column<br />
...........................................<br />
Lizzie Enfield<br />
Notes from North Village<br />
‘I can’t babysit tonight because I have to do<br />
Zumba’ and ‘I’m going to be late because the<br />
muscles of the sailor are taking ages to dry’ are<br />
very ‘North Village’ excuses for failing to meet<br />
the terms and conditions of babysitting contracts.<br />
Some are so strict that I know of a 17 year old<br />
who missed the final of a rock competition,<br />
because he was already committed. He’s the bass<br />
player. I doubt Bill Wyman ever missed a Stones<br />
gig because of childcare. But commitment’s<br />
clearly a good thing and the Zumba and bicep<br />
excuses are examples of commitment to a greater<br />
cause - the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme.<br />
I know. It took me a while to make the connections<br />
between ‘sailor’s muscles taking ages to dry’<br />
and fostering self-development and community<br />
spirit. But, the sailor is a giant papier-mache<br />
model which will be carried aloft, with pride, as<br />
part of Pride.<br />
Who knows what the Duke would make of it?<br />
(Note to editor, do you send copies of <strong>Viva</strong> to<br />
the Palace?) (Note to readers, I want the editor<br />
to keep this note in the copy. It’s not a mistake. I<br />
mean to invite you into the conversation, make<br />
you feel part of the team, as if you’re in the pub<br />
with Alex Leith, which, if you’ve ever been to a<br />
pub in <strong>Brighton</strong> you probably have been – he<br />
likes a pub).<br />
Anyway, back to the D of E.<br />
I’m sure, when I was a teenager, it was all about<br />
pain, hardship, orienteering in the dark, getting<br />
lost and freezing to death - not making models<br />
for Pride, doing keep-fit and navigating your way<br />
home from school using Google Maps on your<br />
iPhone.<br />
“It is hard,” Zumba child says. “The class is full of<br />
middle-aged women, like you, with no coordination.<br />
It’s painful to watch”.<br />
She is skating on the sort of ice she ought to be<br />
doing an expedition over.<br />
“Anyway, we have to do expeditions sometime.”<br />
I’m made aware of when, via a string of requests.<br />
“Can you wash my onesie?” “Can you give me<br />
a lift to school? I’m late ‘cos I’ve been making<br />
bunting for the tent.”<br />
“Can you buy ingredients for a stir-fry? And get<br />
tofu too because Cole Thompson is veggie?”<br />
“Shall I get caviar, in case anyone is pescatarian?”<br />
“No, just tofu.”<br />
The irony is lost on her.<br />
But, tofu stir-fry? I’m sure, we had to fry whatever<br />
we managed to forage from the land in lard.<br />
(Note to editor, I have completed the theme<br />
challenge).<br />
(Note to readers, the theme of this month’s issue<br />
is land. I thought ‘Ed’ said “lard.” I’ve got both in.<br />
I get two points).<br />
Anyway… The camping<br />
trip takes place. They<br />
walk for miles. They<br />
get blisters. The popup<br />
tent leaks and it’s<br />
“really, really cold…”<br />
“So cold… that our<br />
pain au chocolat<br />
froze…”<br />
And while I’m scoring<br />
points, I think mine has<br />
been proven.<br />
....31....
column<br />
......................................<br />
Chloë King<br />
An early midlife crisis?<br />
Being a fan of Guardian<br />
live-blogger Stuart<br />
Heritage, you can<br />
appreciate how much<br />
I enjoyed finding out<br />
we have something<br />
in common. On<br />
Friday, my counsellor<br />
offered her diagnosis<br />
of my occasionally<br />
all-enveloping sense of<br />
ennui. At 32, she says<br />
I’m going through a<br />
midlife crisis. “At last,”<br />
I thought, “a proper<br />
Illustration by Chloë King<br />
search term to plug into Google!” This, of course, is<br />
exactly what I did next; only to discover that Stuart<br />
wrote about having a ‘midlife crisis’ last March, aged<br />
33. The find resulted in a feeling of connection, which<br />
due to my frame of mind was quickly repressed. Not<br />
only is Stuart merely speculating about his condition,<br />
he is writing in a national newspaper, a year ago, and<br />
has over 28 thousand more Twitter followers than me.<br />
Pah. I could teach Stuart something about inadequacy.<br />
Much of what I’m reading about midlife crises just<br />
reinforces the illustration I have in my head: a kind<br />
of male-centred Beryl Cook painting in which my<br />
dad appears in full biking leathers and his friend Mike<br />
is cataloguing his chattels on iPhoto. My dad’s crisis<br />
stopped short of an extramarital affair, but he did join<br />
a Wine Club and purchase a Suzuki Bandit 600. By<br />
comparison, I’m newly married and the owner of a<br />
too-new red Skoda Fabia, nicknamed ‘Labia’. With a<br />
meagre 1.4 litre engine, my midlife crisis seems not<br />
only premature, but lacking thrills.<br />
NHS Choices covers the topic under ‘Male Menopause’<br />
and ‘Male Midlife Crisis’:<br />
two headings I’m a little<br />
alienated by. It says they happen<br />
to around 20% of people,<br />
mostly men, between the ages<br />
of 35 and 50. The Telegraph<br />
says signs include listening to<br />
BBC 6 Music (check), excessively<br />
reminiscing about one’s<br />
childhood (check), and looking<br />
up medical symptoms on<br />
the internet (check). Speaking<br />
from the privileged position<br />
of experience, I can add to<br />
this list: total bafflement at<br />
which direction to take your life next.<br />
At this point, happily, Facebook algorithms put my<br />
attention in the direction of a TED Talk by the<br />
Slovenian philosopher and sociologist Renata Salecl.<br />
In ‘Our unhealthy obsession with choice,’ Renata<br />
explains how choice, personal freedom, and the idea<br />
of self-making has been elevated to an ideal. She says<br />
our fixation on individual choice prevents us from<br />
thinking about social changes and leads to feelings of<br />
anxiety (check), guilt (check) and inadequacy (check).<br />
“Instead of making social critiques,” she says, “we are<br />
more and more engaging in self-critique, sometimes<br />
to the point of self-destruction.”<br />
I’m now wondering whether my early midlife crisis<br />
might be better described as having too many options?<br />
If this is the case, Renata says I can overcome<br />
anxiety by accepting that my choices are irrational and<br />
heavily influenced by those around me. I need to stop<br />
taking choice so seriously. In other words: I’m spending<br />
too much time fondling fruit at the supermarket,<br />
when what I really need is a box scheme.<br />
....33....
Photo by Adam Bronkhorst<br />
....34....
interview<br />
..........................................<br />
mybrighton: Huw Morgan<br />
Sussex Wildlife Trust officer<br />
Are you local? Yes. I’ve been living here for the<br />
best part of 40 years. I was brought up in Patcham,<br />
which was a great place to grow up, because it was<br />
so near the countryside, and because there were so<br />
many kids of a similar age around. We used to go off<br />
for the whole day unattended, making camps in the<br />
woods or crashing about on our BMXs.<br />
Have you been here ever since? Apart from a year<br />
in Australia and a year in New Zealand. It was after<br />
that trip, when I was about 25, that I decided to pack<br />
in working as an ad salesperson – which I hated –<br />
and do something that suited me more. I saw an ad<br />
saying the East Sussex County Council were running<br />
trainee volunteer Ranger courses, so I got on<br />
one. I haven’t looked back. First I worked at Buchan<br />
Country Park, near Crawley, then eight years ago I<br />
started at the Sussex Wildlife Trust.<br />
What do you do? I’m the People and Wildlife Officer<br />
for <strong>Brighton</strong> and Hove. My job is to encourage<br />
people to visit the countryside, to increase their<br />
awareness of wildlife, and to teach them about<br />
conservation. I work with all sorts of groups - from<br />
adult offenders on probation to kids from deprived<br />
areas of <strong>Brighton</strong> - on a variety of sites, teaching<br />
them bush craft, conservation techniques, tree planting<br />
and all sorts of other skills.<br />
What do you do outside work? In the eighties and<br />
nineties it used to be all about going into the clubs<br />
in town. The Zap, and the Escape. Now I have two<br />
teenage stepchildren and a five-year-old daughter,<br />
so that’s all in the past. I like surfing, though. That<br />
scene has grown immensely in the last twenty years.<br />
I usually go from a place east of the Marina. It’s not<br />
exactly Hawaii, but it’s good enough for me.<br />
Is that how you’d spend an ideal Sunday afternoon?<br />
If not surfing, mountain biking on the South<br />
Downs Way. Then a good Sunday roast with the<br />
family. I like the Jolly Poacher on Ditchling Road. I<br />
used to eat a lot in the Jolly Sportsman in East Chiltington,<br />
and was delighted when the owner’s son<br />
opened a similar place 15 minutes from where I live.<br />
I’ll wash the roast beef down with a pint of Guinness<br />
or a pale ale. My days of 5% lager are long gone.<br />
Where do you do your shopping? On pay-day<br />
weekends I’ll go to Waitrose, otherwise to Asda.<br />
And it’s Asda for clothes, nowadays, from that<br />
up-and-coming designer called George. In the old<br />
days, when I was living with my parents and had<br />
more disposable income, I’d get designer stuff from<br />
boutiques in North Laine. Mind you, even now I’d<br />
never skimp on a pair of trainers – I get them from<br />
Size in North Street.<br />
Where should readers go to enjoy a bit of accessible<br />
countryside in <strong>April</strong>? Stanmer Park is a good<br />
bet, where our offices are. It’s a good bet all year<br />
round, actually, but particularly in the spring, when<br />
the whole place bursts into life, with the trees blossoming<br />
and the birds nesting. As well as the formal<br />
park gardens and amenities – there’s a café and a bar<br />
and a restaurant – there’s so much wilderness and<br />
woodland to explore. And to make it all easier, from<br />
the beginning of the month the Council are running<br />
buses right into the heart of the park.<br />
In a nutshell, what do you like about <strong>Brighton</strong>?<br />
The accessibility of the sea and the Downs. The<br />
variety of things to do. The tolerance of the people.<br />
Where would you live if you didn’t live here?<br />
Biarritz. I love the Basque Country coast. AL<br />
....35....
ighton in history<br />
..........................................<br />
What a racket<br />
The 1957 <strong>Brighton</strong> Police corruption case<br />
A photo of the whistleblower and ex-convict Alan<br />
Roy Bennett, walking from his Rolls Royce to<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong> Magistrates Court in 1957, shows him with<br />
a neat moustache, wearing a smart suit, a bowler hat<br />
and leather gloves. He has a handkerchief in his top<br />
pocket. He looks pensive.<br />
Bennett was a key witness in the magistrates’ hearing,<br />
and subsequent Old Bailey trial, of the <strong>Brighton</strong><br />
Police Corruption case, described by its judge as<br />
‘one of the most serious tried in this or any other<br />
criminal court for a long time’. The defendants<br />
were <strong>Brighton</strong>’s Chief Constable Charles Ridge,<br />
CID officers Trevor Heath and John Hammersley,<br />
and two civilians accused of being accomplices in a<br />
conspiracy to solicit and accept bribes between 1949<br />
and 1957. All five denied the charges.<br />
Bennett was an RAF deserter who’d been in prison<br />
nine times; he’d been convicted of burglary, theft,<br />
receiving stolen goods, and ‘stealing by trick’, among<br />
other things. His aliases had included Alan Brown,<br />
Austen Ferguson and Poyner. A defence solicitor<br />
described him as a ‘snake’.<br />
But his last conviction was in 1949. He was now a<br />
businessman. Questioned in court about his record,<br />
he shouted: ‘Don’t judge me on what I was years<br />
ago… I have paid for my convictions.’<br />
Since 1949 he had ‘completely changed his fortunes,’<br />
local historian WH Johnson writes. ‘He and his wife<br />
had worked hard and from their now considerable<br />
bank balance bought the Astor Hotel,’ on Kings<br />
Road. He opened a club in the basement in March<br />
1955. ‘But business was slow,’ Johnson writes. ‘He<br />
had to shut at 10.30pm, when the night was just<br />
starting for real drinkers.’<br />
Bennett claimed he’d been approached by another<br />
bar manager, Anthony Lyons (one of the defendants),<br />
who brokered a deal with the police: for £20 a<br />
week (equivalent to £450 in today’s money) the Astor<br />
Club would be left alone. Bennett testified that he<br />
made ‘six or seven’ weekly payments to Ridge, and<br />
to Heath ‘many times’. Bennett’s wife, Wenche, was<br />
unhappy about the arrangement, and told him so.<br />
The club started opening till 3-4am, and got a reputation<br />
for violence, being nicknamed ‘The Bucket<br />
of Blood’. It was seemingly left alone by the police.<br />
Wenche claimed that Heath phoned her on two<br />
occasions warning her to close the club for the night,<br />
presumably when it was due to be raided.<br />
Bennett shut the club down after about six months,<br />
but claimed that Heath still pursued him for money.<br />
For example, when police in Leeds apparently<br />
wanted to speak to Bennett over a dodgy cheque, the<br />
problem disappeared when he paid £15; and after<br />
being told Bournemouth police were inquiring about<br />
him over a jewellery theft, he paid £20, though he<br />
had a solid alibi.<br />
Bennett finally reported <strong>Brighton</strong> Police to Scotland<br />
Yard in June 1957. They took his claims seriously,<br />
and sent a team to Lewes; from there, they investigated<br />
‘under conditions of greatest secrecy,’ the<br />
Gazette later reported.<br />
After moving to <strong>Brighton</strong> Town Hall, the investigators<br />
drew up an extensive case, helped by a secretary<br />
who, for security reasons, was ‘taken everywhere by<br />
yard car, and never leaves the Town Hall without an<br />
escort,’ the Herald reported.<br />
According to David Rowland’s book Bent Cops, one<br />
witness was threatened by four ‘tough guys’; they<br />
pressed a razor against her face, and said that if she<br />
gave the wrong sort of testimony, the Soho Don<br />
....36....
Photo courtesy of David Rowland<br />
Billy Howard would ‘cut ya tongue out and then<br />
chop you into little bits’.<br />
She still testified, as did many others. There was the<br />
burlesque club owner who accused Hammersley of<br />
saying that incriminating evidence could be ‘thrown<br />
in the sea’ for £250; the illegal abortionist, and an<br />
accomplice, who both said they paid bribes; a junior<br />
policeman who claimed Heath had offered him<br />
a £10-a-week protection-money deal with a local<br />
club owner; James Swaby, a man with 13 convictions,<br />
who said Heath solicited bribes from him; a<br />
detective-constable who backed up part of Swaby’s<br />
story; a man who claimed to have seen Bennett give<br />
money in an envelope to Heath, and, on another<br />
occasion, money hidden in a newspaper, to someone<br />
who looked like Ridge.<br />
Then there was Ernest Waite, described by the<br />
Solicitor General as ‘a greengrocer, a fruiterer, an<br />
undischarged bankrupt, a receiver of stolen goods,<br />
and obviously a scoundrel’. He claimed that Hammersley<br />
and Heath let him deal in stolen goods, as<br />
long as they came from outside <strong>Brighton</strong>. Waite<br />
said he had a ‘sort of freedom of the town’, adding<br />
that ‘it was through Mr Hammersley’s contact that I<br />
got the stolen goods’. In return, Waite said, he gave<br />
money to both policemen, who also used to visit his<br />
shop regularly, take ‘two or three pounds worth of<br />
stuff, give me a ten-shilling note and wait for the<br />
change.’<br />
One defence solicitor described the prosecution<br />
evidence as ‘rotten’. Another said that if a TV show<br />
had this plot ‘you would switch the set off as you<br />
would not believe it.’<br />
The trial closed at the end of February 1958. Lyons<br />
was acquitted, while the other civilian defendant got<br />
three years in prison. Ridge heard his verdict ‘white<br />
faced, with beads of sweat on his forehead,’ the<br />
Gazette reported. Found not guilty, he left the court<br />
‘looking dazed’.<br />
Hammersley and Heath were sentenced to five<br />
years’ imprisonment each. Months earlier, they<br />
had been photographed smiling on the way to the<br />
magistrates’ court (see above), perhaps confident<br />
that, though they were guilty, they could not be<br />
convicted on the evidence of such dubious characters<br />
as Waite, Swaby and Alan Roy Bennett.<br />
Steve Ramsey<br />
Further reading: Bent Cops by David Rowland<br />
....37....
Squarepusher<br />
Fri 8 May<br />
GoGo Penguin<br />
Fri 8 May<br />
Anna Calvi<br />
Sat 9 May<br />
DakhaBrakha<br />
Sun 10 May<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong> ad_Layout 1 23/01/<strong>2015</strong> 17:03 Page 1<br />
Kate Tempest, George<br />
the Poet, Hollie McNish<br />
Thu 14 May<br />
Saint Etienne: How We<br />
Used to Live<br />
Thu 21 May<br />
Est.1976<br />
www.hobgoblin.com<br />
NOW IN BRIGHTON!<br />
The ALADDIN’S CAVE of MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS<br />
Cats Eyes’ live score for<br />
The Duke of Burgundy<br />
Fri 22 May<br />
Tricky<br />
Sat 23 May<br />
Laurie Anderson<br />
Sun 24 May<br />
Full programme at<br />
brightonfestival.org<br />
Guitars, Banjos, Mandolins, Ukuleles, Harps, Fiddles,<br />
Autoharps, Dulcimers, Concertinas & Accordions,<br />
Woodwind & Brass, Huge whistle selection. Drums,<br />
Cajons, Bodhrans, Djembes, Shakers & much more,<br />
Keyboards, Amps, Accessories & Books for all.<br />
108 Queens Rd, <strong>Brighton</strong> BN1 3XF<br />
01273 760022 | www.hobgoblin.com/brighton<br />
Expert staff are always on hand to<br />
give you free, friendly advice.
grasshopper<br />
Smells like teen spirit<br />
They’ve released two EPs, played almost 70 gigs and<br />
opened for The Charlatans at Worthing Pavilion<br />
last month – and they’re still in their mid teens. We<br />
spoke to singer Javi Fedrick about being in a band<br />
when you’re too young to legally enter many venues.<br />
How was the gig with The Charlatans? We had<br />
the best time. I’d probably say it’s the biggest gig<br />
we’ve ever played, and we had the awesome Innerstrings<br />
Psychedelic Lightshow doing visuals for us,<br />
which made it really special.<br />
How did it come about? Tim Burgess heard our<br />
music last year and offered us a few festival slots<br />
before he even knew our ages (he thought it was<br />
hilarious once he found out). Then on Christmas<br />
Eve we got a phone call from his manager who asked<br />
us if we were interested in supporting them at their<br />
only South Coast show… No brainer!<br />
How old are you all? I’m 15, my brother Luis is<br />
13, and the two girls (Em and Rachel) are both 17.<br />
We’ve all been in <strong>Brighton</strong> for all of our (short) lives.<br />
Do you feel lucky growing up here? It’s a really<br />
brilliant place to live in, as there’s so much creative<br />
stuff going on. I’m still too young to get into a lot of<br />
gigs, but I think the young/DIY scene in <strong>Brighton</strong> is<br />
really strong, so I’d say if you can’t get into a gig, put<br />
on your own one with your friends.<br />
Do you think you’ve inspired any other young<br />
bands to start playing? I‘m sure we haven’t been<br />
responsible for the formation of any other bands,<br />
but when we first started, there was an amazing DIY<br />
youth scene headed by AMI <strong>Brighton</strong>, which had a<br />
monthly residency at the (sadly now lost) Blind Tiger<br />
Club. There was a really supportive atmosphere<br />
at those gigs, and I know lots of young bands had<br />
their first few gigs there, and are now getting some<br />
really brilliant support slots/festivals.<br />
What sort of music do you make? Someone once<br />
described our music as “a blend of post-punk-surfshoegaze<br />
gorgeousness”. I think that sums up our<br />
sound as well as anything else.<br />
Do you find your age works against you or is it<br />
an advantage? We’re not particularly interested in<br />
aping our musical heroes, and as a result there’ve<br />
been a few times when people have tried to ‘direct’<br />
what we’re doing, and we have to be quite assertive<br />
about saying that we’d rather do our own thing.<br />
Our SoundCloud is there so that people can decide<br />
if they like us or not without knowing how old we<br />
are, which is how we like it. We’re always upfront<br />
about our ages when we’re offered gigs (because of<br />
licensing laws), but usually promoters treat us as they<br />
would any other band (minus the alcohol on the<br />
rider!). Interview by Ben Bailey<br />
grasshopper are headlining an autism charity gig at<br />
The Joker on Thur 2 and supporting Sonic Jesus at<br />
The Hope & Ruin on Tues 14.<br />
....39....
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..........................................<br />
Ben Bailey rounds up the <strong>Brighton</strong> music scene<br />
ELECTROWORX<br />
Fri 3, Hope & Ruin, 7.30pm, Free<br />
This showcase of homegrown<br />
electronica makes<br />
a point of promising<br />
much more than blokes<br />
staring at laptops. From<br />
the improvised ambient<br />
synths of Champion<br />
Fever to the reworked<br />
trip-hop of Adolescent and Pollen’s looped<br />
mash-ups, the night’s emphasis is a fusion of live<br />
instrumentation and experimental electronic<br />
sounds. Curated by <strong>Brighton</strong>’s bitbin, a composer<br />
and performer who emerged from a decade of engineering<br />
work with his own synthesis of twitchy<br />
ambient beats and epic Boards Of Canada chord<br />
changes, the line-up is interspersed by modular<br />
synth sets by VCOADSR and topped off with live<br />
audio-reactive visuals.<br />
ALMIGHTY PLANETS<br />
Fri 3, Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar, 11pm<br />
Things seemed to be going well for Almighty<br />
Planets when they supported Young Fathers at<br />
The Haunt for Wire’s DRILL festival back in<br />
December. Now, without warning, they’ve decided<br />
to call it a day. The eight-piece funk and soul band<br />
haven’t given a reason for the split, issuing only a<br />
‘thank you’ missive declaring a blow-out farewell<br />
show at Sticky Mike’s. After eight years stoking up<br />
a party wherever they went (including a previous<br />
stint as BOY COM), the band’s demise will be a<br />
shame for fans of fun-loving funk and hip hop,<br />
especially after the departure of similarly spirited<br />
Mean Poppa Lean the year before last. Let’s hope<br />
they go out with a big bang.<br />
BLACK SUNDAY VIII<br />
Sun 5, Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar, 2.30pm, £6.50<br />
“A band drenched in metal, brutality and malevolence.”<br />
That’s how <strong>Brighton</strong> thrash band King<br />
Leviathan describe themselves in the run up to<br />
this all-day mini metalfest. Now in its eighth year,<br />
Black Sunday has become a calling of the banners<br />
for South Coast headbangers – offering a mix of<br />
death metal, industrial thrash and the fifty shades<br />
of black in between. The full bill includes XVLTR,<br />
They Live, Bleed Again, Last Days Of Rome,<br />
Hawka Hurricane, Enslavement, Aperitas and<br />
Tellurium. The headline slot goes to Eastbourne’s<br />
Vehement whose two-part metal epic entitled<br />
Carrion Rule and Oceans Of Rot could possibly be<br />
inspired by their hometown.<br />
MOK<br />
Wed 15, Green Door Store, 7pm, £3<br />
In the not-toodistant<br />
future your<br />
grandchildren will<br />
need to be sat down<br />
and taught about<br />
these things we used<br />
to call albums. Four<br />
years in and hip hop new-wavers MOK still show<br />
no inclination to put out a record – instead releasing<br />
a string of video-assisted standalone singles,<br />
each more polished and ambitious than the last.<br />
The newest, Cutloose, sees the band return to their<br />
house-party roots, only this time with a decidedly<br />
dark twist on their pop sensibilities. An euphoric<br />
coming-up chorus alternates with a manic break<br />
suggesting anxiety attacks, random nosebleeds<br />
and the kind of chemical disorientation that your<br />
grandchildren will probably know only too well.<br />
....41....
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Concerts<br />
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Anna Tilbrook (piano)<br />
Phillip Dukes (viola)<br />
Benjamin Hulett (tenor)<br />
Schubert, Britten,<br />
Vaughan Williams, Gurney<br />
Sat. June 20 – 7pm<br />
Louis Schwizgebel (piano)<br />
BBC New Generation Artist<br />
Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann,<br />
Schubert<br />
Sat. July 18 – 7pm<br />
Esther Yoo (violin)<br />
BBC New Generation Artist<br />
Robert Koenig (piano accompanist)<br />
J.S.Bach, Beethoven, Debussy<br />
Glazunov, Tchaikovsky<br />
House open May/June & August<br />
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<strong>2015</strong><br />
For tickets & information:<br />
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music<br />
...........................<br />
Yamato Drummers<br />
Beat poets<br />
“Basically, we are always<br />
together, except the<br />
time when you’re in the<br />
toilet,” says Gen Hidaka,<br />
one of the Yamato<br />
Drummers of Japan.<br />
The group was started<br />
by Masa Ogawa in<br />
1993, after his mother<br />
found a big Taiko drum<br />
in a shrine and suggested<br />
he do something<br />
with it; they’ve since<br />
performed to more<br />
than six million people<br />
in fifty-odd countries.<br />
In mid-March, Hidaka spoke to me from the Netherlands,<br />
where he and another member of the group<br />
have been teaching. Their latest tour hadn’t yet<br />
started, so the rest of them were probably in a village<br />
called Asuka, where they all live in the same house.<br />
“We sometimes argue, but it’s really important<br />
for us to understand each other more, and more<br />
deeply. We believe that to make one sound on stage,<br />
you must understand each other. That’s why we’re<br />
always together.”<br />
Though, of course, they do practice a lot, “we consider<br />
it’s more important for us to live together, and<br />
talk together, than practicing Taiko… When I joined<br />
Yamato I had no Taiko experience or knowledge at<br />
all. They said as long as you can live together with<br />
us, you can join. There was no drumming exam, or<br />
physical test; they only asked me if I could cooperate<br />
and live together with them.”<br />
Hidaka had been a business-management student<br />
when, as a birthday present, a friend took him to see<br />
the Drummers. “The next day, or something, I was<br />
calling the head office<br />
of Yamato and asking if<br />
I could join.”<br />
So he went to live in<br />
Asuka, adopting the<br />
group’s exhaustingsounding<br />
routine. “In<br />
the morning we get up<br />
together at like 6.30 or<br />
7am, then we go running<br />
for about 10 kilometres,<br />
then we clean<br />
the house, also we cook<br />
and eat together. After<br />
that, we usually go to<br />
the mountains and do<br />
some weight training. Then, in the afternoon, we<br />
start rehearsing Taiko drumming, until like midnight,<br />
[or] until the neighbours complain.<br />
“I don’t feel like we have no free time. Sometimes<br />
we go together to the sea and go fishing, or go to do<br />
the shopping. We enjoy that. When we are on tour,<br />
every city we go to, we go running in the morning,<br />
then we can see the city; it’s like sightseeing for us.<br />
“Because we are always together, we don’t really<br />
have time to spend with [our families]. We write letters<br />
to them, especially when we are on tour. That’s<br />
how we communicate with our families, basically.”<br />
‘I have never seen personal discipline or work discipline<br />
like it,’ an assistant on their European tour told<br />
the Times in 2001. ‘It’s frightening.’<br />
Hidaka says “sometimes I might feel like, ‘Oh, I cannot<br />
continue drumming anymore’, or ‘I’m too tired<br />
today’, or ‘I’m not good enough’, but we support<br />
each other and encourage each other - ‘Hey, don’t<br />
give up now’. Then we do more.” Steve Ramsey<br />
Sun 26 Apr, Theatre Royal, 7.45pm<br />
....43....
music<br />
..............................<br />
Polar Bear<br />
Hard-to-classify jazzers<br />
Photo Kristy Campbell<br />
Noted for his drumming talents and his Sideshow<br />
Bob hairdo, Seb Rochford was a key member of<br />
the Hendrix-covering jazz/punk band Acoustic<br />
Ladyland. They’re no longer active, but he’s coming<br />
to <strong>Brighton</strong> this month with Polar Bear, which has<br />
three of the same members, two Mercury nominations,<br />
and a jazz-like sound that no-one seems quite<br />
sure how to describe.<br />
You’ve said you wanted to play drums ‘ever since<br />
I was four years old or so’. Was that a typical<br />
four-year-old’s enthusiasm for anything you can<br />
hit and make a noise with, or were you really<br />
into music at that point? Yeah, I’ve been very, very,<br />
very into music for as long as I can remember.<br />
In your teens, according to Time Out, you<br />
‘played with indie, metal and hardcore outfits’.<br />
How did you start moving from that towards<br />
jazz? My mum played me jazz from when I was a<br />
baby, so I was always hearing it, although I couldn’t<br />
connect to it for a long time. Seeing it live really<br />
changed things for me; she took me to see [saxophonist]<br />
Andy Sheppard, which I really enjoyed a<br />
lot. That started me listening to it at home. For any<br />
style of music, for me it’s just about finding the door<br />
in. Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington were also<br />
very important doors for me into jazz.<br />
What were your early years in London like,<br />
when you were carrying your whole drumkit on<br />
the Tube to gigs, and trying to get established?<br />
I was really broke when I first came to London and<br />
did anything I could to play and get inspiration,<br />
finding out where the free gigs were and walking to<br />
them if I didn’t have any money. I carried my drums<br />
on the Tube, stands in a rucksack, drums packed<br />
inside each other in my arms and cymbals on my<br />
shoulder. I did this for three or four years.<br />
Did you do any non-musical jobs to get by? Or<br />
any unrewarding jobs as a drummer-for-hire?<br />
When I first came, once a week I would sing nursery<br />
rhymes with children in Ealing, and also play piano<br />
with a man who had Down’s Syndrome. After the<br />
positive effect the music was having on him, they<br />
increased it to twice a week. I learnt a lot from<br />
spending time with him. These two things enabled<br />
me to survive very basically, but still gave me plenty<br />
of time to practise. When I saw the standard in<br />
London I thought I really had to practise a huge<br />
amount if people were going to want to play with<br />
me. Because I didn’t study in London, I felt like it<br />
took me a bit longer to meet people, but was lucky<br />
that, at the first jam session I went to, I met an amazing<br />
musician called Rachel Musson, who took my<br />
number and asked me to have a jam with her. This is<br />
who I started Polar Bear with. Steve Ramsey<br />
Polar Bear + Leafcutter John, Wed 15 <strong>April</strong>, Komedia,<br />
7.30pm, £15<br />
....44....
music<br />
.........................................<br />
Lordi<br />
Eurovision’s scariest winners<br />
“It’s not easy to find a person who would say ‘eh,<br />
Lordi, I think they’re quite ok’,” says Mr Lordi,<br />
frontman of the 2006 Eurovision winners. “It’s usually<br />
either ‘oh, that band fucking sucks, those idiots,<br />
those rubber-masked clowns’, or they just love us.”<br />
While fans of Lordi are “super loyal and fanatic,”<br />
the costumes mean that many people “will not<br />
give a fair chance to our music… The image is our<br />
blessing and our curse.<br />
“It’s a more extreme version of my own idols - Kiss,<br />
Alice Cooper, Twisted Sister - with quite a lot of<br />
the horror genre/monster image in the mix.”<br />
Mr Lordi, whose childhood dream was to be Gene<br />
Simmons, started his band in 1992, and even then<br />
was singing in English. “For me, English has always<br />
been the only language in rock and roll.”<br />
The next ten years were a “really frustrating”<br />
period, in which Lordi were unable to get a record<br />
deal, as they refused to change either their sound or<br />
their look. “Like any teen, you think you’re the king<br />
of the world and know everything about everything.<br />
When the labels were telling me that I should do<br />
this or change that, I got really mad… Whenever I<br />
had some negative response, I would not ever send<br />
them anything again.<br />
“The main problem for the labels was that the music<br />
and the image didn’t match, they thought. Two<br />
of the labels said the music is alright but you have<br />
to lose the image, the image is so stupid, it doesn’t<br />
fit the music at all.<br />
“Or they said the image is cool but you’ve got to<br />
start playing death metal, because the image is<br />
way too hard for your poppy music. We refused to<br />
change either of those things, and they were invited<br />
to take it or leave it, and usually they left it.<br />
“It took ten years for the first people to actually see<br />
that this poppy 80s-oriented hard rock, with this<br />
kind of extreme image, actually could work.”<br />
Did they at least spend those ten years building up<br />
a good live fan base? “No, actually not. I thought,<br />
from an early stage, this was the kind of band that<br />
should not be watered down by performing in small<br />
pubs and clubs. My plan was that when we started<br />
performing, it had to be in decent venues, and the<br />
people who came, they had to be willing to pay for<br />
the ticket because they wanted to see us, and hear<br />
us, and they had to know the songs already.<br />
“Against the wishes of the record label, we put out<br />
the single first, then the video, and waited for, I<br />
don’t know, four months before the album came<br />
out. Only when the album had gone gold, that’s<br />
when we played our first show. It was sold out.<br />
People there wanted to see the band, and they<br />
already knew what we looked like and how we<br />
sounded. That was my plan, and it worked.” SR<br />
Lordi, Mon 6th <strong>April</strong>, Concorde 2, 7pm, £18.50<br />
....45....
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music<br />
...........................<br />
Mariana Sadovska<br />
Björk meets Pete Seeger<br />
Mariana Sadovska, now known as the ‘Ukrainian<br />
Björk’, was on holiday, hiking in the Carpathian<br />
Mountains. She wasn’t a musician back then, and<br />
hadn’t planned to become one. But in the mountains,<br />
by chance, she heard a woman singing.<br />
“It was this traditional, authentic voice; raw, not<br />
polished, not trained in a school, just like how<br />
women sing in the Carpathian Mountains. I fell so<br />
much in love. From that moment, I didn’t understand<br />
why, but I really wanted to get in touch with<br />
such music.<br />
“I was already travelling a lot in the villages, and<br />
I never could give a clear answer for why I was<br />
doing it; I just felt that I wanted to get to know this<br />
culture.”<br />
Growing up in western Ukraine in the 70s and 80s,<br />
Sadovska had spoken Ukrainian, “but I knew that<br />
in the east, it was different. To speak Ukrainian<br />
was not cool; it was like a village language. If you<br />
wanted a prestigious job, you’d better speak Russian.<br />
All this authentic culture was exchanged for<br />
a very strange creation, Soviet folklore. They were<br />
trying to replace it, and in some places they managed<br />
to do it. I grew up with the feeling that they<br />
managed to do it everywhere.”<br />
Also, “young people were moving to the cities…<br />
this traditional passage [of songs], from grandmother<br />
to mother, from mother to daughter,<br />
was broken. It was very much seen as something<br />
uncool.”<br />
After discovering that her own mother hadn’t<br />
really learned the songs of the previous generation,<br />
Sadovska recorded her grandmother and<br />
grandmother’s sister singing them, just for her own<br />
interest, with no thought of becoming a singer or<br />
folk-song collector.<br />
She’d studied classical piano, but decided against<br />
it as a career, and went to work for a theatre group<br />
which had a philosophical interest in “the theatrical<br />
element in life, and especially in rituals, and traditional<br />
life… Anywhere where we were going to<br />
perform, we were trying to get in touch with their<br />
traditional culture.”<br />
So it seemed like a natural progression when, after<br />
her encounter in the Carpathians, Sadovska spent<br />
15 years travelling around rural areas of Ukraine,<br />
collecting traditional songs. Her subjects were keen<br />
to pass them on, as if they “couldn’t die before they<br />
gave their songs to somebody”.<br />
She found love songs, and sad songs, but also ritual<br />
songs: to bring the spring, to prevent rain during<br />
harvest time, or to bless a newly married couple.<br />
“To discover that this culture did survive the Soviet<br />
era and has nothing to do with the Soviet era -<br />
this culture reaches to a very ancient time, before<br />
Christianity - it’s like suddenly finding gold in the<br />
earth. That’s how I felt. And I felt it was my task to<br />
share it with the world outside Ukraine. I always<br />
wanted to be a kind of messenger of my culture.”<br />
Steve Ramsey<br />
Sadovska will perform traditional Ukrainian songs in<br />
a modern style, dueting with a ‘German percussionist<br />
and electronica specialist’, Wed 22nd <strong>April</strong>,<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong> Dome Studio Theatre, 7.30pm, £12/£10<br />
....47....
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Annoying the Neighbours<br />
‘Some people really push the boundaries’<br />
“I started hearing this buzzing sound late at night,<br />
which kind of got worse as the night went on,” says<br />
Louise Wallinger. She thought it was some kind of<br />
electrical or mechanical fault in the building. But<br />
this was a block of flats with “quite a few anti-social<br />
behaviour problems”, and when people from the<br />
local council came round, they thought someone<br />
might have been making the noise on purpose.<br />
“They offered to send a professional witness, who<br />
would sit in my flat at night and try and work out<br />
what it was.” This gave Wallinger an idea.<br />
She works in the field of verbatim theatre, in which<br />
plays are constructed from the edited text of interviews.<br />
So she decided to talk to people whose job it<br />
was to deal with neighbour issues; and to interview<br />
normal people about their neighbours.<br />
“I don’t think I’ve had a performance yet where<br />
someone hasn’t been telling me about their neighbours<br />
afterwards. It is something that people can<br />
really relate to. Because, partly, it’s about diplomacy,<br />
and the things we have to do in order to live next<br />
door to people.<br />
“I found that some people will really push the<br />
boundaries, and it’s quite amazing what other<br />
people put up with in order to still kind of rub<br />
along with their neighbours.<br />
One story involves a woman who had been unexpectedly<br />
at home, naked: it was a bad time to find<br />
out that her neighbour had been using their spare<br />
key to let themselves in. “But she never actually<br />
asked for the key back, because she says it would<br />
have been so embarrassing.<br />
“There’s another woman whose neighbour just<br />
comes round and sits in her garden, just outside her<br />
living room window, to smoke a fag. At first, she<br />
tried to get her to stop, then just started to live with<br />
it, in the hope that she went away. So it seems that<br />
there are people who haven’t quite learnt the rules<br />
of how to get along.”<br />
Other neighbours are intentionally obnoxious: she<br />
was told about a guy “who sellotaped about 20 different<br />
alarm clocks to his ceiling, to go off at different<br />
times during the day, to annoy the neighbours,<br />
and left Westlife playing on repeat all day.”<br />
“I think problems with neighbours can really blight<br />
people’s lives,” Wallinger says. And yet, lots of the<br />
stories in Annoying the Neighbours are funny. “Or<br />
even if they weren’t funny to start with, with the<br />
passage of time, people are seeing the humour in<br />
them. So some of it is quite serious, but a lot of it<br />
does come across in quite a humorous way.”<br />
As for her own problem, Wallinger never actually<br />
had to call in a professional witness. She discovered<br />
the noise was caused by a faulty light on the outside<br />
of the building. She no longer lives there, by the<br />
way – and, in answer to the inevitable question, she<br />
says her current neighbours are “all very nice”. SR<br />
Annoying the Neighbours, in a double bill with Martin<br />
Stewart’s play Pyramids of Margate, Sat 11 <strong>April</strong>,<br />
Otherplace at the Basement, 8pm<br />
....49....
comedy<br />
.........................................<br />
Jane Postlethwaite<br />
Hove comedian, made in Cumbria<br />
I arrange to meet Jane Postlethwaite – for the first<br />
time – in the Hove Place pub, and she sends me a<br />
text beforehand to leave me in no doubt as to which<br />
person to approach when I arrive. ‘I’m the tall lady,’<br />
she writes, ‘black coat and BOOTHS black bag in<br />
hand!’<br />
There’s no need, actually, because I’ve seen a You-<br />
Tube video of her performing on stage, in the guise<br />
of ‘Kirsty Bird’, a falcon expert. Jane’s a comedian,<br />
based in Hove, preparing a show for the Fringe.<br />
The ‘BOOTHS’ bag is relevant; Booths is a food<br />
store chain, much loved in the North West of<br />
England, but virtually unknown down here. Jane is<br />
from the Lake District – Kirkby-in-Furness to be<br />
exact – and her show, called Made in Cumbria, is an<br />
attempt to challenge any stereotypical preconceptions<br />
the audience might have about Northerners.<br />
The clip has made me smile, and so I fondly wave<br />
when I walk in, forgetting for a second she hasn’t a<br />
clue what I look like. She is tall, and very striking,<br />
and drinking tea. She buys me a pint and we find a<br />
table. I tell her I was born in Newcastle, of Geordie<br />
parents, and we talk all things North.<br />
“I’ve seen a lot of acts that put on Northern accents,”<br />
she says. “They make their character a bit<br />
stupid, to get a laugh. I find it a bit patronising,<br />
to tell you the truth. So I’m developing a number<br />
of characters that have a real Northern sense of<br />
humour, which I find has a lot of depth, and intelligence,<br />
and something of a dark side.”<br />
The characters include Karroll Kavannagh, a<br />
‘female Bear Grylls-type survival expert’, the ‘first<br />
Northern female astronaut’, and a children’s author,<br />
much influenced by Beatrix Potter. Jane talks about<br />
the dark side of Beatrix Potter’s work, which her<br />
character will explore: “I mean, she makes the animals<br />
wear clothes. And they’re punished for losing<br />
them. And Squirrel Nutkin gets his tail bitten off.<br />
And Peter Rabbit’s dad is eaten by Mr McGregor.”<br />
The more we talk, the more I realise that Jane is<br />
serious about her comedy. She tells me about her<br />
musical ear, which allows her to mimic any accent<br />
she hears. About how she’s studied books on the<br />
nature of humour. About how she ‘lives’ her characters,<br />
one at a time, to work out what makes them<br />
tick. And about her ambitions for the future. “I’m<br />
developing the show for the Fringe this year,” she<br />
tells me (she’s been signed up by Laughing Horse,<br />
and has four shows) “and I’m hoping this will lead<br />
to some Edinburgh shows next year.”<br />
Which leads, indirectly, to a pertinent question. If<br />
her shows are aimed, in part, at educating Southerners<br />
about the depths of Northern humour, how<br />
would they go down up North? She pauses, for the<br />
first time, to think about this. “I’d love to find out,”<br />
she says. And you can bet that she will. Alex Leith<br />
Jane performs at Funny Women, 8pm Saturday 25<br />
<strong>April</strong> at Komedia. Check Fringe programme for<br />
Laughing Horse gigs in May<br />
....50....
the lowdown on...<br />
................................<br />
Compering<br />
Tonight’s host is Charmaine Davies<br />
As a stand-up comedian<br />
you can usually do your<br />
acts and bugger off. As a<br />
compere you’re there all<br />
night. The whole thing is<br />
your responsibility.<br />
The compere’s role is to<br />
hold the whole thing together,<br />
and to introduce<br />
the acts. One thing is getting<br />
out the house rules:<br />
no phones, don’t talk over<br />
the acts, that sort of thing.<br />
A bit like an air hostess<br />
before the flight. That’s what I did in the five<br />
minutes I had a proper job. I used to do the<br />
safety announcements in a porn voice.<br />
When you start out you have a ‘cold’ room.<br />
Your job is to warm it up, so the crowd are<br />
receptive to the first act. If that act dies, you<br />
have to warm the room up again.<br />
If an act goes badly, the compere can<br />
always pick things up again. If the compere<br />
is shit, the acts hardly stand a chance.<br />
Interaction with the crowd is a useful prop.<br />
Where are you from? What do you do? Why are<br />
you sitting in the front row? HAVE YOU NEVER<br />
BEEN TO A COMEDY NIGHT BEFORE?<br />
You can take the piss a bit but you can never<br />
be horrible to a crowd member. If you do<br />
that, you will lose the rest of the audience.<br />
You have to get the audience to relate to<br />
you, and think that you’re their mate. You<br />
have to be a little humble, too. If you’re an<br />
arrogant shit, they’ll hate you, too.<br />
Every crowd has a different vibe. It’s your<br />
job to feel that vibe, and to set the tone accordingly.<br />
Only experience<br />
can help you with that skill.<br />
The problem with compering<br />
a regular show is<br />
that you see a lot of the<br />
same faces back every time,<br />
and you have to make sure<br />
you have new material every<br />
time. I try to keep it topical,<br />
by referring to the news, or<br />
Big Brother. Impressions<br />
come in handy. Joan Rivers,<br />
Cher, Cheryl Cole.<br />
I’m constantly preparing<br />
material: like every comedian I have scraps of<br />
paper all round my house. An idea can come<br />
to you anywhere, a little lightbulb suddenly<br />
flashes. They always seem funny when you<br />
think them up. As you step onto the stage you<br />
start to doubt it. But it’s too late then…<br />
Organising comedians is a little like herding<br />
cats; there’s a hell of a lot of preparation<br />
that goes into a comedy night. And it’s more<br />
than just getting them there and warming<br />
up for them. Sometimes you have to be a<br />
counsellor to the performers, too: a shoulder<br />
to cry on.<br />
Before the gig I’ll have a glass of wine,<br />
but no more. You have to be on your toes.<br />
You want the crowd to be a little drunk, but<br />
not too drunk, or it all becomes an exercise in<br />
crowd control. After the gig, anything goes.<br />
As told to Alex Leith<br />
Charmaine will be compering at Victory<br />
Comedy, Duke St, 15 <strong>April</strong>; Comedy Next Door<br />
at The Dorset, 29th <strong>April</strong>; Funny Fursdays at<br />
Hotel Pelirocco, 30th <strong>April</strong><br />
....51....
CINEMA<br />
..........................................<br />
Savage Beauty<br />
Revenge: a dish best served hot<br />
It is rare indeed for a portmanteau film, made up<br />
of different stories whose connections are not immediately<br />
obvious and whose styles vary dramatically,<br />
to succeed in generating the kind of sustained<br />
resonance of an effective feature-length film. But<br />
with Wild Tales, Argentine writer/director Damián<br />
Szifrón has created a dark and often surreal set of<br />
blackly comic films that certainly come together<br />
to be more than the sum of their parts. Their<br />
common denominator, happened upon from wildly<br />
different sources and sets of circumstances, is the<br />
glory of revenge, the need to retaliate with violence<br />
to the many slights and aggravations of daily life.<br />
Wild Tales – whose original Spanish title is closer to<br />
‘Savage Tales’ – plays at the Duke of York’s during<br />
<strong>April</strong>, and consists of six episodes, each with a different<br />
cast but all about revenge for offenses real<br />
or imagined: passengers on a jet realise too late<br />
that they are vicariously connected to one vengeful<br />
person from their past; on a stormy night, a waitress<br />
at a diner recognises a customer as the sleazy<br />
developer who foreclosed on her family’s home,<br />
and finds herself in a position to avenge; two men<br />
on a deserted highway, one in an Audi, the other<br />
in a jalopy, are gripped by extreme road rage; a<br />
demolitions engineer finds his car towed from<br />
an unmarked parking spot in front of the bakery<br />
where he has just bought a cake for his daughter’s<br />
birthday party and takes on those responsible in<br />
the only way he knows how; a rich family tries to<br />
cover up a fatal hit-and-run accident with the help<br />
of their lawyer and corrupt authorities, bringing<br />
wrath upon their heads; a bride realizes at her<br />
wedding that her new husband has been cheating<br />
on her, with devastating consequences for all.<br />
All the episodes, except for the first, that describes<br />
a situation crafted with a great amount of planning<br />
and deliberation, describe hot-headed vengeful<br />
acts. As Szifrón has said, “what separates civilization<br />
from barbarism is a complex battery of social<br />
inhibitors; what differentiates us from animals is<br />
our capacity to restrain ourselves. Most of us live<br />
with the frustration of having to repress ourselves,<br />
but some people explode. This is a movie about<br />
those who explode, and we can all understand why<br />
they do.”<br />
The last episode in particular, itself a tour de force<br />
of filmmaking, seems to manifest the core impulse<br />
of the film, which Szifrón has described as “the<br />
desire for freedom, and how this lack of freedom,<br />
and the rage and the anguish it produces, can cause<br />
us to run completely off the rails.”<br />
Deservedly nominated for the Academy Award for<br />
Best Foreign Language Film, it will be interesting<br />
to see if this successful and innovative film spurs<br />
other filmmakers to explore certain themes in a<br />
similar fashion, by refracting their light through<br />
the prism of a multi-faceted work. Catch it while<br />
you can on the big screen, before it attains welldeserved<br />
cult status. Yoram Allon<br />
....52....
cinema<br />
..........................................<br />
Yoram Allon takes a look at other film highlights<br />
<strong>April</strong> sees lots of fantastic stuff happening at the<br />
wonderful Emporium, most prominently their<br />
‘Seaside Celluloid’ mini film festival celebrating<br />
our city on screen, running 10th–12th <strong>April</strong>.<br />
This includes a rare screening of Jigsaw (1962),<br />
starring Jack Warner as a detective trying to<br />
solve a murder, piecing together fragments of<br />
her life from scenes across <strong>Brighton</strong> & Hove.<br />
Also presented are Mona Lisa (1986), Neil<br />
Jordan’s classic BAFTA-winning crime drama<br />
starring Bob Hoskins and Michael Caine; Me<br />
Without You (2001), a refreshingly different buddy<br />
movie starring Michelle Williams and Anna<br />
Friel; and, of course, Quadrophenia (1979), the<br />
most famous of all ‘Mods and Rockers’ movies,<br />
part-shot in <strong>Brighton</strong> and starring Phil Daniels,<br />
Lesley Ash and Sting, based on The Who’s rock<br />
opera. Most glorious of all is another chance<br />
to see 20,000 Days on Earth (2014), a fictive<br />
24-hours in the life of musician, songwriter,<br />
author, screenwriter, composer, actor and Hove<br />
resident Nick Cave; directed by experimental<br />
filmmakers Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, this<br />
fascinating and innovative film won the Directing<br />
Award in World Cinema Documentary at<br />
Sundance, as well as many other plaudits including<br />
a BAFTA nomination, and simply has to be<br />
seen and heard.<br />
Elsewhere, the Sundance-winning documentary<br />
Dark Horse: The Incredible True Story of Dream<br />
Alliance comes to the Duke’s at Komedia cinema<br />
from 17th <strong>April</strong>. This tells the extraordinary story<br />
of Dream Alliance, a horse born and bred by a<br />
syndicate in a depressed South Wales mining village<br />
who, against all the odds, conquered the world<br />
of horse racing. The film, which director Louise<br />
Osmond describes as “Rocky … with a horse”,<br />
follows the determination of Jan Vokes and her<br />
husband Brian who, with the help of £10 a week<br />
from 23 of their friends in the town of Cefn Fforest<br />
to cover the horse’s food and training, ready our<br />
equine hero for the Grand National at Aintree in<br />
2010. Strange but true.<br />
Lastly, Noah Baumbach (writer/director of The<br />
Squid and the Whale (2005) and Frances Ha (2012),<br />
amongst other indie successes) is back with a new<br />
comedy drama, While We’re Young, starring Ben<br />
Stiller, Naomi Watts and Amanda Seyfried. This<br />
sharply-crafted and engaging movie focuses on a<br />
middle-aged couple befriending a disarming young<br />
couple, and discovering their inner twentysomethings,<br />
to the consternation and condescension of<br />
their supposed friends. In a time of ubiquitous 30-<br />
year band reunions (The Wonder Stuff? Inspiral<br />
Carpets?!), this film seems strangely attuned to the<br />
current zeitgeist of needing to rewind in order to<br />
move forward.<br />
....53....
ighton festival<br />
..........................................<br />
Ali Smith<br />
The world seen through art-tinted glasses<br />
“Art makes us better, happier human beings,”<br />
says Ali Smith, a smile crossing her face, a glint<br />
in her eye.<br />
I’m sitting under the artificial lighting of the<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong> Dome Studios, after the press launch<br />
of this year’s <strong>Brighton</strong> Festival, with a pen<br />
in my hand, struggling to keep up with the<br />
rapid-talking Scottish author. She’s the Guest<br />
Director of this year’s Festival, and she’s been<br />
very hands on. Words are pouring out of her.<br />
Nobody writes this fast.<br />
“Art is exciting, it catches you out and it can<br />
change your life. It gives you space from whatever<br />
is happening around you and allows you to<br />
see where you are going, and where you could<br />
be, and where you have been. And that is just<br />
the starting point.”<br />
Then, without pause: “When we start an art<br />
discussion, it allows us to let things happen<br />
which are bigger than ourselves. All the books<br />
we ever read and all the places we ever visited<br />
enter and pass through us when we come in<br />
contact with other works.”<br />
The author of six novels, four collections of<br />
short stories, as well as two audacious works<br />
of non-fiction, and plays, Ali Smith has proved<br />
that the only predictable element about her<br />
work is the certainty of reinvention. In 2007,<br />
she partnered with the Scottish band Trashcan<br />
Sinatras and wrote the lyrics to Half An Apple,<br />
a love song about keeping half an apple spare<br />
for a lost loved one. In 2013 she became patron<br />
for Visual Verse, an online anthology of art and<br />
words that challenges writers to produce a<br />
short piece in response to an image within an<br />
hour – “an intense, good way to get primeval<br />
feelings out on paper.” Last year, two versions<br />
of her dual-narrative novel How To Be Both<br />
were published simultaneously, winning her the<br />
Goldsmith Prize for original fiction.<br />
Smith’s belief in the power of merging artistic<br />
expressions is evident throughout the festival’s<br />
programme; the event crosses between art<br />
forms, invites us to take another look and<br />
rediscover our surroundings, including nature.<br />
“Cambridge, where I live, is very close to the<br />
countryside, so within five minutes I can be<br />
out of the traffic. That is very important to me<br />
and it should be to everyone. It’s important to<br />
recognise the constraints that are on us, and<br />
the openness of what life really is. We all live<br />
close to pavements, buildings, and other people,<br />
and it’s imperative to negotiate a little bit of a<br />
breather for ourselves. Nature gives us that.”<br />
Looking at her informal khaki jacket and her<br />
wide-legged jeans, it’s easy to imagine Smith<br />
in her wellies, happily trudging through mud.<br />
“I love all the landscapes,” she says. “I think<br />
it comes from being Scottish and living in a<br />
place where the landscape changes very fast.<br />
You can travel half an hour and you are in lush<br />
green Scotland; travel half an hour past that<br />
and you are in a place where there are no trees<br />
and nothing but stags and moss and heather,<br />
and you can travel again until you are on a<br />
cliff edge. We live on a versatile island. And it’s<br />
....54....
interesting to see that so many of the arts in<br />
the UK today are turning towards nature. Why<br />
are we questioning the integrity of building<br />
over green land, and why are we talking about<br />
things like fracking and the ways in which we<br />
use our environment? The arts are looking at it<br />
all and asking ‘wait a minute, what about this?’<br />
It’s going to be very interesting to see where it<br />
all leads us.”<br />
Contributing to the organisation of the largest<br />
multi-art spectacular in Europe means that<br />
Smith has been spending a great deal of time<br />
in <strong>Brighton</strong>. “There’s something about edges<br />
which is very fertile for us as human beings and<br />
I love <strong>Brighton</strong> precisely because it reminds<br />
you about the edge of land… land crossing<br />
into another. We congregate at those edges.<br />
Which is why a town like <strong>Brighton</strong> is ancient<br />
and modern at the same time. Everything about<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong> pulls you towards light and the great<br />
open possibility of the sea. It’s a melting pot of<br />
different energies.”<br />
As a guest director, Smith was also able to pull<br />
in many of her favourite artists, like fellow<br />
authors Jeannette Winterson and Margaret<br />
Atwood, the Mercury-nominated folk singer<br />
Sam Lee and the French film director Agnès<br />
Varda. “In Inverness, where I grew up, there<br />
was basically no theatre – there was a tiny<br />
theatre at the back of the bus station which<br />
occasionally put on a play. And then when I was<br />
about 14, somebody opened a theatre in the<br />
middle of town. I would go every week, and one<br />
Photo by Vis Frankowski<br />
Sunday I saw an Agnès Varda film. It was then<br />
I realised that Paris was possible in Inverness,<br />
that France was possible in Inverness, and that<br />
the rest of the world was possible. Art does that.<br />
It builds bridges.”<br />
I furtively look down at my watch: I have time<br />
for one last question. “Tell me something about<br />
yourself not many people know,” I ask. “I’m<br />
very secretive,” she replies, and immediately<br />
starts laughing (possibly at my disappointment).<br />
“Not really. I’m actually not secretive at all. I<br />
have no secrets. Let me think… I can play the<br />
mouth organ! I learnt to play She Wore a Yellow<br />
Ribbon as a child. The film had just been on TV<br />
so I taught myself that tune, then Oh Susanna.”<br />
Is she any good? “I play when I know the<br />
neighbours are out.” Barbara Doherty/BM<br />
....55....
flash fact competition<br />
...................................<br />
Busted<br />
by Cathy Herbert<br />
My sister’s wiping away dust that isn’t there. There<br />
isn’t any because she has a cleaner (a cleaner! for a<br />
one-bedroom flat!).<br />
If there were any dust, though, I’d write this in it:<br />
Treachery - Beware.<br />
Her face in the mirror is a brave shade of pale.<br />
Like she’s had a hard time.<br />
This evening it will be my sister’s birthday party<br />
and I’m helping out. Not a particularly special<br />
birthday – 27 – but she always marks the occasion.<br />
She always makes a fuss of other people’s birthdays,<br />
too.<br />
Outside the French windows, her boyfriend Sam is<br />
pushing and pulling a pair of shears.<br />
‘I asked Sam to cut back the ivy,’ my sister says.<br />
She must sense that I’d prefer it just us two. ‘It’s<br />
unstoppable otherwise.’<br />
‘Is that a good or a bad thing?’ I ask. ‘Would Darwin<br />
approve, do you think?’<br />
She does boss-eyes.<br />
I’ve brought fairy lights to hang round. Only, I<br />
must have put them away in a hurry. They drop<br />
out the box in a wodge and neither of us can find<br />
an end in the tangle. We have to sit down.<br />
After a few minutes, she stops. She nods towards<br />
the window. ‘Two years we’ve been together.’<br />
‘That long?’<br />
‘Nearly. But he’s been weird, lately, distant.’ She<br />
gasps, then laughs on the outbreath. ‘Do you think<br />
he’s building up to something?’<br />
Illustration by Lucy Williams<br />
I pick at a hard knot of flex. It won’t give.<br />
‘No need to look so stricken, Kit-Kat,’ she says. ‘I<br />
can always pop out and buy a new set.’<br />
‘Take them onto the patio,’ she tells me, at last.<br />
Pleased. She flicks the kettle. ‘I’ll make us all a nice<br />
cup of tea.’<br />
The fresh air hits and my blood rushes to meet it.<br />
I march over to Sam and slide in the gap between<br />
him and the wall. He puts down the shears. I don’t<br />
say a single word. We’ve been talking for weeks,<br />
and where’s it got us?<br />
Except, here’s the thing. When I let myself look at<br />
him – like we’re alone – I am either too weak, or<br />
too strong. I may have stopped breathing. He takes<br />
my hand, I feel the ivy at my back, and I close my<br />
eyes.<br />
A smash lights up the dark – three cups on steaming<br />
concrete, teaspoons, the clatter of an upturning<br />
tray. The other breakage makes no noise at all.<br />
Next month’s prompt is ‘The First Time’. True life<br />
stories of no more than 400 words, in by 16 <strong>April</strong><br />
please. The winning entry gets published here and<br />
receives a £25 book token from Kemptown Bookshop.<br />
Please send entries to barbara@blackmustard.co.uk<br />
....56....
literature<br />
..........................................<br />
DARK AEMILIA by Sally O’Reilly<br />
Shakespeare’s muse?<br />
‘Double, double, toil and trouble;<br />
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.’<br />
Shakespeare’s three witches<br />
shadow the narrative of Dark<br />
Aemilia, <strong>Brighton</strong>-based author<br />
Sally O’Reilly’s first historical novel.<br />
“I had wanted to write a version of<br />
Macbeth from Lady Macbeth’s point<br />
of view but I struggled with the 11th<br />
century,” says O’Reilly, who has<br />
published two contemporary novels,<br />
and teaches creative writing for the OU. “Then I<br />
thought about setting my novel when the play was<br />
written.” Looking into primary sources from the<br />
turn of the 17th century - Macbeth was first staged<br />
in London in 1606 - O’Reilly stumbled upon Aemilia<br />
Bassano, a courtier’s mistress, England’s first<br />
female professional poet and, possibly (according to<br />
some scholars), muse for Shakespeare’s ‘Dark Lady’<br />
sonnets. O’Reilly had her heroine. “If you can read<br />
someone’s writing, you can get inside their head,”<br />
the author says of Bassano, whose single volume of<br />
poems was published in 1611. “I felt such a strong<br />
connection with her.”<br />
O’Reilly was able to trace the real life Bassano<br />
through her appearances in the diaries of the<br />
16th-century physician and astrologer<br />
Simon Forman, who kept annotated<br />
records of the comings and goings<br />
of his clients. “Historical fiction is<br />
a compromise,” says the author. “A<br />
negotiation between fact and fiction. Of<br />
course one is anachronistically projecting<br />
a modern viewpoint, but if the story<br />
and characters feel authentic, then the<br />
reader will make the leap.” O’Reilly has<br />
Aemilia ‘lie with’ Shakespeare, and the<br />
ensuing erotically charged tug o’ love between the<br />
bard and the dark-eyed female poet is laced with<br />
sorcery and the occult. ‘I am a witch for the modern<br />
age,’ begins the novel in Bassano’s beguiling voice.<br />
Does O’Reilly believe in witches? “Not in the<br />
tall-hat-plus-cat sense, no. But I had my Tarot cards<br />
read in the North Laine recently by a woman who<br />
had an amazing atmosphere about her - she was<br />
no-nonsense, no frills, no customer service. But she<br />
had an incredible way of reading people - reading<br />
me, anyway. Maybe that is the fascination for me - a<br />
good witch will take female intuition to the max. In<br />
that sense, there is a bit of witchcraft in all women.”<br />
Dark Aemilia by Sally O’Reilly (Myriad Editions) is<br />
published in paperback on 23rd <strong>April</strong>.<br />
bookends<br />
Mary Portas, the instantly recognizable, orange-haired champion of High Street retailers, is coming to<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong> in <strong>April</strong>. Shop Girl, her keenly awaited memoir, tells of the young Mary Newton growing up<br />
in a Watford semi, constantly in trouble – eating Chappie for a bet, setting fire to the school – whilst<br />
dreaming of being an actress. The ever-entertaining Queen of Shops will be reading from her book and<br />
explaining how, due to a family tragedy, her thespian dreams were diverted into the window displays of<br />
Harvey Nicholls. Amongst the mannequins, handbags and frocks, she found her true calling.<br />
Ropetackle Arts Centre, Shoreham, 7pm, 1st <strong>April</strong>, £8.00, ropetacklecentre.co.uk, 01273 464440<br />
....57....
Panoramic<br />
An exhibition by Richard Billingham<br />
25 <strong>April</strong> - 28 June <strong>2015</strong><br />
townereastbourne.org.uk<br />
In association with the Anthony Reynolds Gallery<br />
Towner is registered charity no. 1156762<br />
FREE<br />
NARRATIVE WORKSHOPS<br />
at the <strong>Brighton</strong> Health and Wellbeing Centre<br />
The BHWC on Western Road is one of the first NHS GP surgeries in the country to<br />
integrate alternative therapists within the practice, as well as offering a Healing<br />
Arts programme.<br />
Narrative Workshops involve writing exercises, reading and group discussions,<br />
encouraging self-reflection and personal development. Describing events, thoughts<br />
and feelings can have a surprising effect on your wellbeing. The physical act of<br />
writing acts on the mind like meditation. Your breathing slows down and words flow<br />
freely from your head. Writing can relieve stress and boost your immune system,<br />
helping you cope with illness, trauma, addiction, depression or anxiety.<br />
NEW TERM STARTS 7th MAY <strong>2015</strong> • Thursdays 10am-12pm<br />
DROP IN SESSION SATURDAY 11th APRIL <strong>2015</strong> 10am-1pm<br />
Led by authors Imogen Lycett Green and Barbara Doherty at BHWC<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong> Health and Wellbeing Centre<br />
An integrated NHS GP Practice and Healing Arts Centre<br />
Winner ‘Innovators of the Year’ General Practice Awards 2014<br />
www.brightonhealthandwellbeingcentre.co.uk<br />
www.blackmustard.co.uk
art<br />
..........................................<br />
Dawn Chorus<br />
Marcus Coates’ zoomorphic project<br />
Marcus Coates is an artist who likes pretending to<br />
be an animal. He often wears headgear made from<br />
stuffed animal heads, and performs in a trance. One<br />
project saw him tied up at the top of a Scotch Pine,<br />
to try and gauge a hawk’s-eye view of the world; in<br />
another he was buried under the earth in a remote<br />
field. The Guardian have called him an ‘urban shaman’;<br />
the Sunday Times a ‘rural geek’.<br />
“About 15 years ago I started getting interested<br />
in the culture of birdsong,” he tells me, down the<br />
phone. “I found out that it is part aggressive – birds<br />
singing to defend their territory; and part romantic<br />
– birds serenading potential mates.” He started<br />
recording birdsong, then slowing it down on his<br />
computer. “I realised that when the birdsong was<br />
slowed down 16 times, the human voice was capable<br />
of reproducing the sounds.” He filmed people<br />
recreating the slowed-down sounds, then sped the<br />
film up 16 times. The results sounded just like real<br />
birdsong.<br />
Next up he spent a week in woodland in Northumberland<br />
with ‘world-renowned wildlife sound<br />
recordist’ Jeff Sample, recording the dawn chorus,<br />
between 3am and 9am, using 14 different microphones.<br />
They picked the most interesting morning’s<br />
chorus they’d recorded, featuring 19 different<br />
species of birds, and Marcus set to work moving the<br />
project into its next stage.<br />
“I went to Bristol doing auditions with singers.<br />
“Some birds, like the robin, require quite a tonal<br />
range, and some improvisation, while others, like<br />
the chiff chaff, are much simpler.” He chose a<br />
number of adept singers, who practiced reproducing<br />
the sounds until they were proficient, then picked<br />
locations ‘in their natural habitat’ for filming. These<br />
included the office, the bedroom, and the bath.<br />
We are well used to seeing ‘anthropomorphic’<br />
representations in culture: the resulting footage<br />
represents the opposite. “The official term is<br />
‘zoomorphic’” he explains. “Not only did the singers<br />
sound exactly like birds, but they started to look like<br />
them, too, with their sped-up fidgeting and breathing<br />
patterns.”<br />
The installation he has made of the recordings, with<br />
19 screens featuring 19 different sped-up singers,<br />
exactly replicating a section of that morning’s chorus,<br />
has been touring art galleries since 2007, and<br />
is being housed throughout the spring by Fabrica,<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong>’s home for such large-scale experimental<br />
art. To conclude our interview, I ask Marcus if he’s<br />
ever played the human birdsong back to real birds,<br />
to see their reaction. No, is the answer: that might<br />
disturb their well-being. But perhaps one internet<br />
pundit’s remark, in the comments section of a<br />
YouTube clip of Dawn Chorus, is indicative of the<br />
veracity of the sound: ‘My cat went mental.”<br />
Alex Leith<br />
Fabrica Gallery, 3rd <strong>April</strong>-24th May<br />
....59....
ART<br />
............................<br />
FOCUS ON:<br />
‘Lunch by the Sea’<br />
by Katty McMurray<br />
28x28cm, oil on canvas<br />
Is this a picture of an actual lunch? It is, actually.<br />
All my paintings start with sketches. I’d been commissioned<br />
to do some sketches for a large painting<br />
of a lunch in Riddle and Finns to send to America,<br />
and this is a study from one of those. I sketch all the<br />
time, and as we’re based on the seafront, that tends<br />
to be the subject.<br />
Your sketches have an interesting line… I’ve<br />
always sketched the same way, even as a child. I<br />
don’t take the pencil off the page, and I look at<br />
what I’m sketching rather than the paper (though I<br />
do look down occasionally, to see that it’s all in the<br />
right place!)<br />
So all these elements were actually in your line<br />
of vision? They were. The fish were my client’s<br />
whitebait! You could see the West Pier, and there<br />
was a sailing boat – though it wasn’t red. The tablecloth<br />
wasn’t that colour, either. That I’ve added in<br />
order to bring to mind deckchairs.<br />
How do you turn the sketch into a painting? I<br />
have a studio adjoining my house, where I do all<br />
my painting. First I sketch out the details in a wash,<br />
then I start to add the colour building it up layer by<br />
layer, I use Michael Harding oil paints, which are<br />
the best. The colours, all hand-made, are so rich. I<br />
work on a number of paintings at the same time. So<br />
the same colours appear in a collection – I like to<br />
limit my palette, mixing all the colours from five or<br />
six different tubes - I think this gives the paintings a<br />
sense of calm - I’ve had the same apron for 25 years,<br />
and you can see which colours I’m into from what’s<br />
splashed over it.<br />
Which artists have influenced you? As a child<br />
I was taken to a gallery in St Ives, and saw some<br />
sketches by Ben Nicholson and Peter Lanyon.<br />
These inspired me and since then I’ve been sketching<br />
almost constantly. I get through three or four<br />
sketchbooks a week. My loft is full of them.<br />
Why is your gallery called ‘Two Kats and a<br />
Cow’? I set it up with Kathryn Matthews - another<br />
Kat - and John Marshall, who paints cows. We came<br />
up with the name after a few too many one night in<br />
Fortune of War. We moved into the space 15 years<br />
ago, and it’s gradually turned from a studio for the<br />
three of us with a little gallery space at the front, to<br />
a dedicated gallery.<br />
Which painting would you hang from your<br />
desert island palm tree? One of the simple St Ives<br />
School sketches. I’d be able to imagine it as a different<br />
painting every day. Alex Leith<br />
Two Kats and a Cow Gallery, 167 Kings Road Arches.<br />
01273 776746 / twokatsandacowgallery.co.uk<br />
....61....
....62....
ART<br />
.....................................<br />
FOCUS ON: The Jim Jones Revue gig poster<br />
by Dan Bowden/Needs More Snakes<br />
A2 Screen print<br />
How did you get into screen printing gig<br />
posters? I was in a couple of <strong>Brighton</strong>-based<br />
punk bands that nobody will remember, and<br />
I started doing t-shirt design and zines for<br />
other, bigger, punk bands. This led to the<br />
poster designs.<br />
They are one-offs, to sell at individual<br />
gigs? That’s right. They are official, in that<br />
the bands endorse them and often have some<br />
creative input into them. Then they are sold<br />
at the gig, and afterwards on my website and<br />
sometimes by the bands’ merch departments.<br />
Sometimes I’m the guy at the table at the<br />
back of Concorde 2, or the Haunt; for bigger<br />
gigs like at the Brixton Academy the merch<br />
guys sell them and I can enjoy the gig.<br />
What sort of bands?<br />
The vast majority of my posters are for bands<br />
that I like, of varying degrees of fame. I’ve<br />
done posters for Mudhoney, The Hives,<br />
Rocket from the Crypt, Mclusky, Swans, The<br />
Polyphonic Spree…<br />
Do you contact the bands, or do they<br />
contact you? At first it was all me contacting<br />
them, but after a while it goes both ways, and<br />
it’s about half and half now.<br />
Tell us about the process of making this<br />
one… It was the Jim Jones Revue’s last ever<br />
tour, so I decided to represent that with a<br />
‘Day of the Dead’ look. I pencil-sketched the<br />
figures, then filled them out with pen and ink.<br />
I did the same with the flowers around the<br />
figures, though some of these were replicated<br />
on Photoshop to create the border. I usually<br />
hand-draw my fonts – I’m a bit of a font nut<br />
– but I downloaded this one, as it looked just<br />
right. It’s called Carnival Freakshow. There<br />
are two colours – black and metallic gold - so<br />
I prepared two different layers, ready for<br />
printing.<br />
Do you print them yourself? I used to go to<br />
a place in Portslade, but now I have a son my<br />
free time is too precious so I got it printed up<br />
by Broadside Printers in Exeter. They do a<br />
much better job than I could.<br />
Do you listen to music while you’re working?<br />
I like to listen to the band who I’m designing<br />
for, as it helps to get me in the right mood.<br />
Who have you been inspired by?<br />
I like to draw inspiration from classic<br />
psychedelic poster art, tattoo art, and old<br />
skate graphics as well as other contemporary<br />
artists. Spencer from Petting Zoo is brilliant;<br />
I love WeThreeClub’s lettering and colours;<br />
Vince Ray’s rock ‘n’ roll clichés; Tom J Newells<br />
minimal colour palette, amongst others....<br />
Take us to a gallery… The Black Heart bar<br />
in Camden has got loads of great gig posters<br />
on the wall by UK Poster Association artists.<br />
Interview by Alex Leith<br />
A selection of Dan’s gig posters are on display<br />
at Hotel Pelirocco, Regency Square, throughout<br />
<strong>April</strong><br />
....63....
....64....
design<br />
..........................................<br />
Fiona Howard<br />
‘You can smell my work’<br />
“Venice Beach is absolutely bonkers,” says textile<br />
designer Fiona Howard, who is almost as at home<br />
in Los Angeles as Hove. “…It’s a bit like <strong>Brighton</strong>,<br />
but in America.”<br />
Fiona, who grew up in Sussex, now divides her<br />
time between the two cities. Over 27 years she has<br />
worked for many of the biggest names in interiors.<br />
Her US clients include Crate & Barrel, while in the<br />
UK her best-known pattern is Sanderson’s ‘Dandelion<br />
Clocks’. The design is sold so prolifically<br />
they reprint it in batches of 5,000 metres at a time,<br />
licensed for everything from rugs and lampshades<br />
to stationery and ceramics.<br />
“I think it kept [Sanderson] going through the<br />
recession,” says Fiona jovially. “They’ve made so<br />
much money out of that design - it’s taken on a life<br />
of its own. The design was chosen from Fiona’s<br />
portfolio in 2006 for a flat fee. “It hit the mid-century<br />
theme just at the beginning,” she says. “I don’t<br />
think I saw it coming.”<br />
Sanderson, the company that brought William Morris<br />
to so many front rooms, seems to have cropped<br />
up again and again in Fiona’s life. She grew up<br />
surrounded by Morris fabrics and wallpapers – “it<br />
was the seventies” – and she recalls visiting their print<br />
rooms as a student, admiring original Morris wood<br />
blocks she later learnt had been thrown in a skip.<br />
Ironically, Fiona passed up a student work placement<br />
with Sanderson. It’s still a huge regret. “I<br />
thought, ‘it’s my summer holidays, why would I<br />
want to give up two weeks and not be paid?’ how<br />
stupid could I have been?”<br />
I can’t help but think Fiona probably got the best<br />
deal. She continues to work with Sanderson, her<br />
name displayed proudly on the selvedge of ‘Maple’,<br />
a design that mimics the clean lines and colourful<br />
blocks of fifties home furnishings. As well, she has<br />
the freedom to pursue her own brand, which she<br />
says will soon be launched Stateside.<br />
Much of Fiona’s work is informed by organic shapes<br />
that catch her eye in gardens, books, or objects<br />
found in flea markets: “I’m always drawing,” she<br />
says. “William Morris’s designs flow together so<br />
beautifully. The structure is amazing: he gets all the<br />
elements worked out. That’s something I try to do:<br />
work out a structure before I fill it in with leaves,<br />
flowers or birds. I pick things up wherever I go, lay<br />
them out and try to make some sense of them… I<br />
colour all of my papers by hand and leave them to<br />
dry all over the kitchen floor.”<br />
Fiona’s designs are finished using techniques including<br />
monoprint, lino and paper cutting. She feels fortunate<br />
to have learnt these skills before the digital<br />
takeover, which for her seems “a little bit soulless.”<br />
“You can smell my work - it’s the oil paint and<br />
handmade papers. My clients ask, ‘how did you do<br />
that?’ because they don’t often see the lovely handcrafted<br />
traditional way of designing anymore. I’m so<br />
pleased I stuck with it; I get so much pleasure out of<br />
it.” Chloë King www.fionahoward.com<br />
....65....
Create Unique Gifts<br />
Hand and Footprints<br />
The Painting<br />
Pottery Cafe<br />
Gift Vouchers<br />
Throwing Lessons<br />
31 North Road, <strong>Brighton</strong>, BN1 1YB www.paintingpotterycafe.co.uk<br />
hello@paintingpotterycafe.co.uk 01273 628952
Photos by Matt Grover<br />
trade secrets<br />
..........................................<br />
Fina Boutique<br />
Stockbroker-turned-designer<br />
Why did you launch Fina Boutique? I used to<br />
work as a stockbroker, with people who made<br />
the Wolf of Wall Street look like Paddington<br />
Bear. One day I walked out thinking, this world<br />
is soulless. I knew I needed to do something<br />
creative. I would spend a lot of time engrossed<br />
in philosophical discussions with a good friend<br />
of mine, an Indian doctor who came into my life<br />
unexpectedly. Eventually I came to this idea that<br />
the meditative experience could be incorporated<br />
into everyday life. A few years ago I suffered<br />
from some heart problems. I found myself lying<br />
in a hospital bed staring up at the ceiling and<br />
thinking, if I do get out of here, I’m going to<br />
create something out of all these ideas.<br />
What is the concept behind your brand?<br />
‘Fina’ comes from the abbreviation of ‘first nature’,<br />
which is a central theme in two fables I’ve<br />
written. The ideas and messages which inspire<br />
my collections are rooted in these fables. I want<br />
to get away from the idea of being a brand,<br />
but rather a conceptualisation of our mission<br />
statement: to live in a boutique world, which is<br />
creative and original, but also sincere and serene.<br />
How does this message translate into the<br />
graphic design? I’m not a graphic designer, so<br />
from the base concept of each collection, I commission<br />
illustrators and artists to come up with<br />
an image which depicts that message. I’m always<br />
looking to work with more emerging designers<br />
and illustrators and to expand my network of<br />
contacts for future collections.<br />
What message inspires your ‘No Glory’<br />
collection? Fashion can only be reflective of<br />
culture, and modern culture has become very<br />
retrospective, so I came to this concept that<br />
there is no glory in old orthodoxies. The collection<br />
is made up of three ideas: no glory in the<br />
dollar, no glory in suicide and no glory in God.<br />
The messages behind them are strong and will<br />
probably cause some disruption along the way,<br />
but it’s never my intention to cause consternation<br />
for the sake of it. The designs have to<br />
convey something - that’s the real motivation<br />
behind Fina Boutique.<br />
Rebecca Cunningham<br />
....67....
ighton maker<br />
................................<br />
Sarah Squared<br />
Off-beat jewellery<br />
How did Sarah Squared begin? Sarah Meredith:<br />
We were both based at Super+Super, working on<br />
our own individual projects - I make jewellery<br />
under the name Rock Cakes (rockcakes.com) and<br />
Sarah is an illustrator (sarahedmondsillustration.<br />
com). I suggested that maybe one day we should do<br />
a collaborative project and she said, ‘ok, meeting in<br />
half an hour?’ We instantly got on better than I’ve<br />
instantly got on with anyone before; we both have a<br />
kind of wholesome, non-digital approach, we both<br />
grew up in the countryside and we both subscribe<br />
to Oh Comely magazine.<br />
What was the inspiration for your first collection?<br />
Sarah Edmonds: We started by writing down<br />
lots of ideas and brainstorming animals we liked,<br />
autumnal things, nerdy packed-lunches, pork pies...<br />
We wanted to do jewellery, prints, cushions and<br />
packaging all in the space of about three months!<br />
Lots of ideas were dropped because they didn’t<br />
quite fit, and we came up with a range of vegetables,<br />
bread and jam (food you’d eat at your gran’s) and<br />
the library van - that’s been a favourite. Then to<br />
choose the colours, B&Q have this wall of colour<br />
wonder, with hundreds of swatches of different<br />
paints. We each went separately and picked colours,<br />
then brought our palette collections together. There<br />
were a few we didn’t agree on (Sarah chose a lot of<br />
pinks) but we came to a colour scheme which was<br />
retro, with a modern twist.<br />
Describe the making process. Sarah M: We<br />
started by sketching the objects by hand – we have<br />
similar styles of strong colours and lines – and scanning<br />
these to import them into Illustrator so that<br />
they could be laser-cut. This was the only digital<br />
bit (Sarah E: We’re embracing digital to bring back<br />
the analogue!) and next we had to sand everything<br />
down. We had about one day before we were selling<br />
at a craft fair in London, so we just kept sanding<br />
until our hands were bleeding! We wanted each one<br />
to have as much care and attention as possible, so it<br />
didn’t just look like one out of a huge batch. Sarah is<br />
really good at mixing colours, so she would mix up<br />
the paints and then we’d paint all of the reds, and<br />
then all of the greens, it was a bit like colour-bynumbers.<br />
What do you have in mind for your next collection?<br />
Sarah E: Our current products are very<br />
autumnal, so we’re planning to come up with a<br />
capsule collection every six months to add to our<br />
range. We’re starting work on a little additional<br />
collection for Artists’ Open Houses in May, which<br />
will be themed on summer and adventure. We’re<br />
thinking of a campervan, a tent, a log fire, a forest of<br />
little trees...<br />
Rebecca Cunningham.<br />
See more from Sarah Squared at Artists’ Open<br />
Houses in May (21a Brunswick Square) or visit etsy.<br />
com/shop/wearesarahsquared.<br />
....69....
the way we work<br />
This month Adam Bronkhorst visitied a number of urban growers in<br />
the community gardens and allotments around <strong>Brighton</strong> and Hove.<br />
You’d be surprised at how many of these little havens are dotted around<br />
our city. We’ve asked each of them for their top tip on spring gardening.<br />
www.adambronkhorst.com<br />
Deborah Kalinke at The Garden House.<br />
Deborah’s top tip: “The right plant in the right place!”<br />
gardenhousebrighton.co.uk<br />
....70....
the way we work<br />
Mei Wah Tang at Hanover VEG.<br />
Mei Wah’s top tip: “Be prepared. Know what you’re going to sow and when.”<br />
Hanover Community Centre, 33 Southover Street, hasl.org.uk<br />
....71....
the way we work<br />
Joe Garcia at Brighthelm Community Garden.<br />
Joe’s top tip: “Composting. Make sure you compost your food waste and put it down early.”<br />
Brighthelm Church and Community Centre, North Road, brighthelm.org.uk<br />
....72....
the way we work<br />
Sara Padhi at the Carers Centre Garden Group.<br />
Sara’s top tip: “Feed the birds. They will still have your seeds, but they<br />
eat the little insects which live on your plants.”<br />
Cravenvale Allotments, Beresford Road, thecarerscentre.org
the way we work<br />
Joi Jones at The Secret Garden.<br />
Joi’s top tip: “Get on top of the weeding early, before it takes hold. They’ll just be<br />
starting to pop up now so get weeding and mulching before the weather warms up.”<br />
Situated behind St Leonard’s Church, New Church Road.
the way we work<br />
Emma Houldsworth at Plot 22.<br />
Emma’s top tip: “Start sowing your seeds, don’t leave it too late!”<br />
Weald allotments, Hove, plot22.org<br />
....75....
Food & Drink<br />
As we keep mentioning, <strong>Brighton</strong> was voted, by Conde Naste<br />
Traveller readers, no less, ‘Best UK city for restaurants and bars’.<br />
To celebrate, we’ve created this space, a directory for bars, restaurants<br />
and other food-and-drink-related establishments who wish to<br />
appear in our ever-expanding food section, alongside our incognito<br />
reviews, and our head-chef recipes. This month we’re joined by<br />
some of our favourite eateries, in the city and beyond. To appear<br />
in this space in future issues please contact anya@vivabrighton.com.<br />
Directory<br />
29 Tidy Street, 01273 673744m, rockolacoffeebar.com<br />
Rockola<br />
Named by customers<br />
as <strong>Brighton</strong>’s best kept<br />
secret, Rockola is tucked<br />
away just off Trafalgar<br />
Street. With its 50s/60sstyle<br />
decor, and owner’s<br />
private collection of<br />
memorobilia, Rockola<br />
is the perfect place to send you back to a bygone<br />
era. With food ranging from home-made burgers<br />
& breakfasts to pancakes, waffles, wraps and thick<br />
shakes, Rockola has something for everyone, including<br />
vegans and veggies. Also it has an original<br />
1960s jukebox with a selection of 200 songs, and<br />
it is FREE to play. Open 10.30-4.30 Mon-Fri,<br />
and 9.30-4.30 Sat. Friday nights are Burger<br />
Nights and include the massive Elvis Burger (6-<br />
9pm). And you can BYO.<br />
71 East Street, 01273 729051 terreaterre.co.uk<br />
Terre à Terre<br />
Make Easter mighty! Visit Terre à Terre, the<br />
local go-to for the most creative vegetarian<br />
food in <strong>Brighton</strong> and always delivered with<br />
a cheeky little pun! Open seven days a week<br />
offering lunch and dinner options from small<br />
plates, sharing tapas to three-course set meals<br />
and not forgetting their magnificent afternoon<br />
tea menu, multi-tiered savoury, sweet<br />
and traditional delights available from 3 till<br />
5pm daily and lots of chocolate goodies!<br />
No.32<br />
No.32 has it all and more in this all-in-one venue. A restaurant, bar and<br />
club in the heart of <strong>Brighton</strong>, serving freshly made food and drink seven<br />
days a week. From traditional grills to fashionable burgers to freshly<br />
made cocktails. With the sound of great music from local DJs you can<br />
eat, drink and dance at this all-encompassing modern setting, so come<br />
and visit us for an evening to remember!<br />
Burgers, grills, bites, platters, sandwiches, salads. Modern & classic<br />
cocktails. Craft & draught beers. Happy hour Sundays - Fridays 5-7pm.<br />
No.32 is a restaurant, bar and exclusive late night venue in <strong>Brighton</strong> with<br />
regular live music and special events.<br />
32 Duke Street, 01273 773388, no32dukestreet.com
advertorial<br />
Boho Gelato<br />
6 Pool Valley, 01273 727205<br />
Ranging from Vanilla to Violet, Mango to Mojito and Apple<br />
to Avocado, Boho’s flavours are made daily on the premises<br />
using locally produced milk and cream, and fresh ingredients.<br />
24 flavours are available at any time (taken from their<br />
list of now over 400) and for vegans, Boho Gelato always<br />
stock at least five non-dairy flavours. Gelato and sorbet<br />
is served in cups or cones or take away boxes.They were<br />
recently included in the Telegraph’s top ten ice creams in the<br />
UK and last summer were featured in Waitrose magazine.<br />
bohogelato.co.uk<br />
Saint Andrew’s Lane, Lewes, 01273 488600<br />
209 High Street, Lewes, 01273 472769<br />
Pelham House, Lewes<br />
A beautiful 16th-century four-star town house<br />
hotel that has been exquisitely restored to create<br />
an elegant venue. With beautiful gardens, a<br />
stylish restaurant and plenty of private dining<br />
and meeting rooms, it is the perfect venue for<br />
both small and larger parties.<br />
www.pelhamhouse.com<br />
Facebook: Pelham.house<br />
Twitter: @pelhamlewes<br />
Flint Owl Bakery, Lewes<br />
Our breads contain organic stone-ground flours,<br />
spring water, sea salt and that’s it. No improvers of<br />
any kind. Long fermentations bring characteristic<br />
flavours and a natural shelf life. We wholesale<br />
our craft breads and viennoiserie in <strong>Brighton</strong> &<br />
Hove and deliver six days a week. Contact: info@<br />
flintowlbakery.com. Visit us at our shop/cafe on<br />
Lewes High Street where you can buy our full<br />
range of breads, croissants, cakes, salads and enjoy<br />
Square Mile coffee in our courtyard garden.<br />
Ten Green Bottles<br />
Wine shop or bar? Both, actually... wine to take away<br />
or drink in, nibbles and food available. Many wines<br />
imported direct from artisan producers. We also offer<br />
relaxed, fun, informal private wine-tasting sessions from<br />
just two people up to 30 and for any level of wine knowledge - we encourage you<br />
to ask questions and set the pace. We also offer tastings in your home or office,<br />
and will come to you with everything you’ll need for a fun, informative and even<br />
competitive evening. The best-value destination for great wine in <strong>Brighton</strong>!<br />
9 Jubilee Street, 01273 567176, tengreenbottles.com
food review<br />
...........................................<br />
Sichuan Garden<br />
Where spicy means spicy<br />
On Sichuan Garden’s receipts, the names of your<br />
dishes are printed in Chinese. The cutlery is<br />
chopsticks and a spoon. And ‘Griddle Cooked Boar<br />
Intestines’ hardly sounds like something invented to<br />
suit western tastes. So I understand why my friend<br />
Wu Fang recommended the place as authentic.<br />
We went one Saturday evening last summer, and<br />
were seated in a corner, on velvety pink rhinestone-studded<br />
chairs, possibly the most kitsch<br />
thing I saw that day (and it was Pride day).<br />
Fang confidently ordered Salmon Fish Head and<br />
Tofu Soup as a starter, which apparently tasted<br />
much nicer in real life than it did in my imagination;<br />
my safe option, Emerald Soup (tofu, egg, and<br />
spinach), turned out to be excellent.<br />
My soupy main course (#139), contained lean,<br />
tasty noodles, and several big pieces of seafood,<br />
some of which I couldn’t identify, but generally<br />
Photo by Wu Fang<br />
enjoyed. I wimped out of eating the huge shellfish;<br />
Fang assured me they were nice.<br />
She ordered Spicy Hand Tooled Noodles, which<br />
she’d had before. Once I’d finished, she commandeered<br />
the remainder of my soup, to dunk<br />
her noodles in. They were, she said, much spicier<br />
than last time. She was struggling, coughing,<br />
and blowing her nose, while protesting that the<br />
underlying taste was so good that it was worth the<br />
spice-related suffering. I tried some. Fang took a<br />
picture of me crying.<br />
We went back recently and found it pretty much<br />
as we remembered: kitsch chairs, lean food,<br />
authentic feel. I’d certainly recommend the place.<br />
Just pay attention while ordering. Steve Ramsey<br />
Sichuan Garden, 58 Queens Road, 203505
food review<br />
...........................................<br />
The Salt Room<br />
A brill meal, by the sea<br />
I love ordering things<br />
I’ve never eaten before,<br />
especially when I<br />
haven’t a clue what<br />
they’ll look like. So,<br />
on my first visit to the<br />
Salt Room, on an inordinately<br />
warm March<br />
afternoon, I go for the<br />
only main on the specials<br />
board. It’s ‘brill’,<br />
and I’m using the<br />
inverted commas there to denote that that’s the<br />
name of the fish species, rather than a description<br />
of its quality, which will come later in this review.<br />
It comes with clams, mussels and samphire, three<br />
of my favourite edible things. And new potatoes.<br />
The Salt Room opened in February, in the space<br />
where the Metropole used to house their rather<br />
lame ‘Bar 106’. It’s been given a big makeover, with<br />
all the requisites for a slick two-thousand-andteens<br />
eatery: exposed brickwork, wooden cladding<br />
(with paint splashes), pendant LED lights. It’s the<br />
sister restaurant to the Coal Shed, majoring on<br />
fish, and offers a fine view of the sea, if you manage<br />
to get a table on the upper mezzanine.<br />
We don’t get a table on the upper mezzanine.<br />
When we sit down, as a matter of fact, we’re the<br />
only people down below, which is no hardship,<br />
but which does cause a good deal of table-position<br />
envy in the first five minutes of our visit.<br />
As I’m doing a review (incognito as ever) I decide<br />
not, like my two companions, to go for the lunchtime<br />
deal, which offers two courses for £12.95. I<br />
decide to ignore the à la carte menu, as well, opting<br />
to go for everything on the blackboard: there’s<br />
‘potted dressed handpicked<br />
crab’ (I think<br />
that’s the right adjective<br />
order) as a starter, at £8.<br />
The brill costs £18.<br />
The crab ensemble is<br />
significantly bigger than<br />
the portions my two<br />
companions get, and is<br />
served on an asymmetrical<br />
platter, in a jam<br />
jar, smothered in clotted<br />
egg yolk, inverse-speared by a stem of asparagus.<br />
It’s accompanied by a thin-cut salad of some sort,<br />
and two crisp breads. For once I don’t finish first,<br />
and am able to pass round the jar. It’s good dressed<br />
crab: everyone says ‘yum’.<br />
The arrival of the brill is quite a moment. It turns<br />
out to be a vast brown-skinned flatfish, which fills<br />
a large oval plate, the circumference of which is<br />
garnished with the extras. It’s not the most photogenic<br />
of meals I’ve had – I have to be careful with<br />
the angle of my camera – but it’s certainly one of<br />
the more memorable. The fish is meatier than I’d<br />
expect: its flesh slides happily off its bones; its roe<br />
is stupendous. Flipping it over, halfway through,<br />
with a fish knife, provides my friends with quite a<br />
spectacle.<br />
We’ve been drinking a fine £19 Sauvignon Blanc;<br />
we sensibly opt out of a second bottle, but when<br />
we see espresso Martinis on the ‘afters’ menu, we<br />
can’t resist. These, too, are exquisite. Knowing that<br />
a second would put paid to any notion of work in<br />
the afternoon, we pay the bill, and head, happy,<br />
into spring outside. Alex Leith<br />
106 Kings Road, 01273 929488<br />
....79....
....80....
ecipe<br />
..........................................<br />
Chocolate and sherry mousse<br />
One of <strong>Brighton</strong>’s youngest head chefs, Danny Frape, talks us through<br />
a chocolatey favourite on his menu at The Foragers this spring,<br />
served with raspberry sorbet and a chocolate tuile.<br />
I started working in kitchens straight out of school.<br />
I didn’t go to college, so everything I know now,<br />
I’ve learnt along the way. I got my first job cleaning<br />
mussels, and progressed from there to work as a<br />
sous chef at restaurants like the Chimney House<br />
and Dean’s Place hotel in Alfriston. Now, at 23, I’m<br />
the head chef of The Foragers.<br />
Some of my recipes I’ve picked up from other chefs<br />
that I’ve worked with, but a lot of them have come<br />
from trying things out myself. I usually start by<br />
choosing the main part of the dish, like the fish –<br />
something which is locally and ethically sourced<br />
– and then I look at what’s in season which might<br />
go well with it. I create the rest of the dish around<br />
that. When I’m at home I like just throwing loads<br />
of ingredients into a pan and seeing what works. If<br />
it tastes good, I’ll add it to my recipe book.<br />
One of my first jobs was at the Preston Park<br />
Tavern, which was given an award for sustainability<br />
- that’s something we’re big on here, and we’re<br />
always trying to improve. We only use fish which<br />
is sustainable to eat, and our eggs and meat come<br />
from free-roaming animals which can be traced<br />
back to the farm they were reared on.<br />
I wouldn’t say I have a philosophy of cooking; the<br />
most important thing for me is good produce. If<br />
you use bad ingredients, you’ll cook bad food - you<br />
really do get what you pay for.<br />
The dish I’m going to make today is from our<br />
spring dessert menu and it’s a customer favourite.<br />
This recipe makes about eight servings.<br />
Heat 50ml of milk in a pan with one bay leaf, just<br />
long enough to get the milk warm, then take it off<br />
the heat and leave it to infuse while you make the<br />
rest of the dessert. In a separate pan, gently warm<br />
50ml of dark rum – I use Appleton Estate – mixed<br />
with 50ml of Harveys Bristol Cream sherry.<br />
Separate eight eggs and whisk the whites together<br />
with 80g of caster sugar until they form stiff peaks.<br />
Melt 400g of dark chocolate - it needs to have a<br />
high cocoa content so it still tastes chocolatey when<br />
you’ve added all of the sugar and whites, so I use<br />
a 71%. Add the egg yolks, one at a time, whisking<br />
each one in completely before you add the next so<br />
the mixture doesn’t stiffen. Add one third of the egg<br />
whites and whisk gently, then fold in the other two<br />
thirds with a pinch of salt and pour into your ramekins.<br />
It needs about four hours in the fridge to set.<br />
The chocolate tuile is made by mixing together<br />
75g of softened butter, 180g of caster sugar, 15g<br />
of cocoa powder, 30g of plain flour and 90ml of<br />
orange juice. Spread the mixture thinly on a sheet<br />
of parchment paper and cook it at 170° until it’s dry<br />
and dark brown in colour.<br />
To make the sorbet, add a pint of raspberry purée<br />
(or whichever flavour you want) to a litre and a half<br />
of water. Add two tablespoons of liquid glucose,<br />
500g of caster sugar and the juice of a lemon, and<br />
bring the mixture to the boil. If you have an icecream<br />
maker you can use that, but otherwise pour<br />
the sorbet mixture into a container and place in the<br />
freezer, then take it out and stir it every hour.<br />
As told to Rebecca Cunningham. Photo by Lisa Devlin,<br />
whose food-photography website is cakefordinner.co.uk.<br />
....81....
Juice your way to better<br />
health-<br />
Workshops across<br />
Sussex<br />
<br />
www.juicingforhealth.org.uk
food news<br />
...........................................<br />
Edible Updates<br />
Refurbished pubs and underground caves<br />
Another pub makeover<br />
to report in the Blatchington<br />
Road area. Wave<br />
goodbye to the Red<br />
Lion, on Hove Place,<br />
and say hello to the Better<br />
Half, which plans to<br />
open mid-to-late <strong>April</strong>.<br />
Owner Simon Stern is<br />
turning the space into a traditional pub with a<br />
quirky Victorian feel about it – out go the fruit<br />
machines and pool tables; in comes an old fire<br />
place, saddle-leather seating in the banquette<br />
and booth areas, and refurbed toilets, which<br />
will feature vaulted ceilings and period-inspired<br />
décor. The (brand-new, copper-topped) bar will<br />
be well curated with popular and less familiar<br />
brands of beer, ale and cider, accompanied with<br />
quality house brand and specialist spirits, including<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong> Gin.<br />
Simon has drafted in chef Andy Keir (previously<br />
of Koba, where his Sunday roasts were<br />
declared second best in the whole of the UK<br />
by the Observer), who will be creating seasonal<br />
menus including ‘scallops with garlic prawns,<br />
crispy ham and curried aioli’, ‘swordfish steak<br />
and tropical fruit salsa’ and ‘spiced lamb cutlets<br />
with pomegranate molasses’. There will also<br />
be traditional pub fare, including a souped-up<br />
Ploughman’s, burgers and plenty of vegetarian<br />
options too. Coffee from Coffee@33 and<br />
pastries will be available in the morning.<br />
Further east, Hove Kitchen seemed to all but<br />
vanish overnight from its large corner spot on<br />
Western Road, but just as quickly brand-new<br />
family-run restaurant<br />
The Good Food Club<br />
appeared. ‘The Club’ has<br />
thoroughly refurbished<br />
the site, and is now serving<br />
predominately Britishstyle<br />
local and seasonal<br />
food. It’s divided into a bar<br />
for day time, serving coffee<br />
and cakes, a café for a relaxed lunch and finally<br />
a more formal dining room. There’s a meeting<br />
room for baby groups and yoga.<br />
The between-the-piers seafront food and drink<br />
scene, with a notable few exceptions, has generally<br />
been the preserve of clubs and identikit bars<br />
selling fish ‘n’ chips – but that is all starting to<br />
change. The latest addition to the stretch is The<br />
Tempest Inn, a Shakespeare-inspired pub that<br />
features its very own underground cave system.<br />
Downstairs there’ll be over a dozen different<br />
caves (or snugs) that you can hole up in with<br />
friends for the night, play smugglers and excise<br />
men, and enjoy a selection of craft beers and<br />
ales, along with some excellent spirits. Cocktails<br />
will include the Seagrog - a glass tankard of<br />
Kraken and ginger ale topped with ale foam.<br />
Food-wise, local produce is the order of the day,<br />
with bread from The Flourpot Bakery, local<br />
cheese from the Cheeseman, plus a catch of the<br />
day from local fishermen. For those who don’t<br />
fancy cave-dwelling, the Ariel Bar on ground<br />
level has a huge window looking out over the<br />
sea, and there is a patio with furniture that is<br />
positively flotsam like.<br />
Antonia Phillips @PigeonPR<br />
....83....
ook<br />
2 tickets<br />
from£11<br />
brighton<br />
hove lawns<br />
MAY 2-4<br />
0844 995 1111<br />
FOODIESFESTIVAL.COM<br />
shopping masterclasses tasting<br />
Chefs<br />
2 tickets from £11 by quoting VIVA241 at www.foodiesfestival.com
trade secrets<br />
...............................<br />
Sue Hitchen<br />
Foodies Festival founder<br />
It all started in Edinburgh ten years ago. The<br />
whole city lights up throughout the festival in August<br />
and I wanted to add a vibrant food and drink<br />
event to the line up. We had such a great response<br />
from participants and visitors that I knew it could<br />
be a success in other festival cities.<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong> was a natural next step. So we set<br />
up on Hove Lawns. This will be our sixth year.<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong> is such a fun festival; it’s the start of our<br />
year and our biggest event in terms of capacity.<br />
Then we’ll go to Birmingham, Richmond, Bristol,<br />
Alexandra Palace, Clapham Common, Tatton Park,<br />
Edinburgh, Harrogate and Oxford throughout the<br />
summer, with three further festivals in the winter.<br />
It’s a busy year and we’re a small core team, but we<br />
rely on local experts to manage each venue.<br />
The highlights of the <strong>Brighton</strong> Foodies Festival<br />
this year will be the local chefs. They are what<br />
make it really special. This year we’re delighted to<br />
welcome Andrew Mckenzie from Drakes of <strong>Brighton</strong><br />
and Dave Mothersill from The Coal Shed.<br />
We’ve also got John Whaite (winner of the GBBO)<br />
and Ping Coombes (winner of Master Chef). We’re<br />
adding a tasting theatre this year, which will offer<br />
visitors the chance to try new flavours and the<br />
expertise required to experience them. There’ll be<br />
oyster shucking, mushroom foraging, herb cocktails<br />
and raw food. <strong>Brighton</strong> won the national chilli<br />
eating competition last year and was the only city<br />
we visited to reach fourteen levels of chilli. We’re<br />
also introducing a BBQ competition.<br />
Food trends have changed over the years since<br />
the festival began. There’s a much bigger focus on<br />
street food now with more and more entrepreneurial<br />
cooks offering authentic cuisine from all over<br />
the world. Many of them have a really interesting<br />
back-story, sharing recipes and traditions learned<br />
from parents and grandparents. We’ve always<br />
championed them, encouraging them to come with<br />
us and share their flavours around the country,<br />
making the Street Food Avenue one of the most<br />
interesting parts of the festival. We’ve also noticed<br />
a growing trend towards raw and vegan diets. People<br />
are increasingly health conscious and careful<br />
about what they eat and are willing to rethink their<br />
eating habits entirely.<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong> rightly deserved its recent billing<br />
as the ‘best city for restaurants and bars’ in<br />
the UK. It’s been impressive to watch how the<br />
restaurant and food movements have advanced<br />
over the six years since we’ve been visiting with<br />
the festival. Another wonderful, if unexpected,<br />
foodie destination is Birmingham. There are some<br />
amazing things going on there with street food<br />
and experimental chefs and so we’ll be running a<br />
festival there for the first time this year.<br />
My favourite place to eat in <strong>Brighton</strong> is the<br />
Chilli Pickle. It has absolutely amazing food and a<br />
really relaxed vibe. I’ve eaten some of the best fish<br />
I’ve ever tasted there. Lizzie Lower<br />
www.foodiesfestival.com<br />
Hove Lawns 2-4 May<br />
....85....
talking shop<br />
................................<br />
Foodshed<br />
Micro-producer supporters<br />
How did Foodshed begin? The idea behind Foodshed<br />
came from visiting lots of events in <strong>Brighton</strong><br />
and meeting all these amazing micro-producers.<br />
Some of them tried to get their products into shops,<br />
but the shops wouldn’t pay them enough, and many<br />
of them couldn’t afford to set up their own market<br />
stalls, so I had the idea of setting up a shop where<br />
small-scale producers could rent a shelf to sell their<br />
products. It gives them a chance to try out new<br />
products and get feedback from the public, and we<br />
don’t take any commission from their sales. We also<br />
offer support with their branding and packaging, we<br />
do a lot of promotion via our website and they have<br />
the opportunity to rent a pop-up stall in the Open<br />
Market for free through us, so in some cases we are<br />
seeing businesses grow from scratch.<br />
What do you sell? About half of our shelves are<br />
rented out, offering local honeys and jams, coffee<br />
and tea. Our fresh fruit and veg comes from Ashurst<br />
Farm in Plumpton. We sell dried foods, herbs and<br />
spices by weight, so you only have to buy as much<br />
as you need. In the supermarkets you’d have to buy<br />
a whole bag, but doing it this way means you won’t<br />
end up with left-over ingredients that you don’t<br />
need, or if people are shopping on a budget, they<br />
can just buy enough for the meal they’re making.<br />
How does Foodshed benefit the local community?<br />
We love to work with local projects, like<br />
Emmaus, who currently use our garden space to sell<br />
their plants and pots. Another great local group is<br />
Synergy Creative Community, who work with people<br />
living with mental health conditions, and produce<br />
energy balls made from ingredients sourced<br />
by the Food Waste Collective. One of our aims is<br />
to become completely zero-waste. We’re almost<br />
there – all of our own containers are bio-degradable<br />
and only take about six months to decompose. We<br />
encourage our customers to re-use their packaging,<br />
and sell re-fills of soap and cleaning products. Any<br />
left-over fruit and veg is collected by Ashurst and<br />
composted, so nothing goes to waste.<br />
What events do you have coming up? We run<br />
regular craft and cookery workshops organised by<br />
members of staff, and we hold film nights which<br />
are normally followed by a Q&A with an expert on<br />
the subject. We’ve applied for funding to run some<br />
‘cook and crèche’ courses, because one area which<br />
is really lacking is childcare. Lots of parents would<br />
love to come and learn about cooking and nutrition,<br />
but can’t afford the childcare costs. This way, the<br />
children are taken care of, the parents can do the<br />
cooking and we all sit down and enjoy the food<br />
together at the end! Rebecca Cunningham<br />
Unit 9, The Open Market, foodshedbrighton.com<br />
....86....
food<br />
................................<br />
Fin & Farm<br />
Muir Jankowski<br />
What is Fin and Farm? It’s like a veggie box<br />
service, but we also sell a lot more fresh, seasonal,<br />
local produce, such as fruit juices, milk, charcuterie,<br />
cheese, wrapped spices, and meat. All the seasonal<br />
produce is sourced from Sussex, between Chichester<br />
and Hastings.<br />
Where’s your warehouse? We don’t have one! All<br />
our produce is collected and delivered in the same<br />
day in our refrigerated truck, which ensures freshness.<br />
Customers can order online, and there are up<br />
to two deliveries a week.<br />
Where does the ‘fin’ come in? We used to deliver<br />
fish, and we might do again, but we’ve decided to<br />
concentrate on other products.<br />
How many different products do you offer?<br />
Over a thousand any given month; this will increase<br />
in the summer, when there’s more diversity.<br />
Is the vegetable produce really dull in the<br />
winter? We try to avoid that ‘oh no, not another<br />
turnip’ syndrome. We offer peppers all year round<br />
(because one of the farms also has a farm in Spain)<br />
and salad leaves all year round, too. Local producers<br />
are very imaginative and there’s always a wide<br />
variety of vegetables on offer.<br />
Are you an ethical company? As ethical as we can<br />
be. We feel that we are supporting the local economy,<br />
and attempting to limit our carbon footprint<br />
at the same time. We offer a very fair and personal<br />
service to our producers, too, because we see them<br />
twice a week and offer them customer feedback.<br />
Who are your customers? A surprisingly diverse<br />
range of people from young singles to families to<br />
old couples. And a number of restaurants and pubs,<br />
such as Iydea, The Foragers, The Chimney House,<br />
Troll’s Pantry, Chilli Pepper, plus Limetree Kitchen<br />
and The Snowdrop (in Lewes).<br />
What’s your role in the company? My partner<br />
Nick and the third member of the team Jim do all<br />
the collecting, and delivering. They sometimes have<br />
to be up at 4.30 in the morning. My job is the nice<br />
one: administration and customer relations. I visit a<br />
lot of farms, and keep track of what we’re offering<br />
online. I spend most of my time on the internet<br />
looking at pictures of food.<br />
What problems do you encounter in the business?<br />
Usually the weather: droughts, floods or<br />
snow can cause havoc with crops and delivery.<br />
Once, donkeys trampled a field of carrots. We’ve<br />
never failed to make a delivery, though we’ve been<br />
late once or twice when it’s been snowing. On an<br />
early run, in January 2010, during that cold snap,<br />
Nick had to heroically jump out of the van and stop<br />
it sliding down Southover Street. It was a baptism<br />
of fire… or ice maybe.<br />
Give us a top cooking tip… Make a paste of<br />
smoked paprika and smoked salt mixed with maple<br />
syrup and spread this, with a little olive oil, on<br />
grilled slices of aubergine. This makes great fake<br />
bacon, for a creditable BLT. Alex Leith<br />
www.finandfarm.co.uk<br />
....87....
trade secrets<br />
...............................<br />
Planet Feed<br />
Food waste to fertilizer<br />
What is Planet Feed about?<br />
We’re in the early stages of<br />
developing genuinely sustainable<br />
local solutions for making<br />
top quality, natural fertilizers...<br />
out of our community’s food<br />
waste. For us, food waste is<br />
our raw material.<br />
Food waste is increasingly<br />
spoken of as a ‘valuable<br />
resource’, but too often it is<br />
then just treated like waste.<br />
Whether we bury it, burn it or<br />
turn it into biogas, the main<br />
focus still seems to be on ‘disposing’ of food waste.<br />
To me, this offers us the least bad option. Food<br />
waste often has to be transported long distances<br />
to be treated and there’s a heavy dependency on<br />
government subsidies for the renewable electricity<br />
generated. Our solution doesn’t require subsidies,<br />
will significantly reduce waste-miles, and will produce<br />
valuable, eco-friendly products that can offer<br />
local growers a viable alternative for the chemical<br />
fertilizers they currently use.<br />
We’re using innovative, small-scale technology<br />
to turn food waste into organic fertilizer in just<br />
2-3 days. Working closely with our technology<br />
partners, we’ve already run in-house trials that<br />
produced our first batches of liquid feed using an<br />
innovative new technology they have developed.<br />
And we then used it to cultivate some pretty impressive<br />
turnips in our first growing trials.<br />
We’re a social enterprise that will put the<br />
local community’s interests first in business<br />
areas that are typically dominated by large private<br />
companies. Rather than be driven primarily by<br />
delivering shareholder value, we plan to maximize<br />
the value to the community of<br />
the food we have to throw away,<br />
and to use profits generated to<br />
support local growing and waste<br />
reduction initiatives.<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong> is a good place to<br />
start. I developed a strong<br />
interest in environmental<br />
sustainability and food waste<br />
issues while living in Asia, so<br />
when I moved back to <strong>Brighton</strong><br />
in 2012, I was really surprised<br />
that food waste was not being<br />
collected here - especially given<br />
the city’s green credentials. There’s tremendous<br />
passion, opinion and activism around both food<br />
and waste issues here, and it seemed like a city ripe<br />
for looking at food waste as a resource rather than<br />
a problem!<br />
We plan to develop small-scale, local organic<br />
waste treatment capacity that can operate from<br />
small spaces close to where the waste is generated.<br />
On top of that, unlike large-scale, permanent waste<br />
treatment facilities, our solution is highly scalable<br />
and is easy to relocate. So, if a community actually<br />
achieves the ultimate goal of eliminating all its<br />
food waste, we can just pack it up and move to<br />
solve waste problems elsewhere.<br />
Ultimately, we’d love to be able to take all<br />
the city’s food waste – whether commercial or<br />
residential. That said, we’re going to focus on<br />
developing solutions for commercial food waste<br />
initially, and aim to run a full pilot project this year<br />
here in <strong>Brighton</strong>. We’re hoping to have our first<br />
fertilizers for sale in 2016. Lizzie Lower<br />
Learn more about Planet Feed at the Eco Technology<br />
Show <strong>2015</strong>, Amex Stadium, 11-12th June<br />
....88....
the lowdown on...<br />
....................................<br />
Hydroponics<br />
Growing without soil<br />
Plants don’t actually need soil<br />
to grow. In fact, they grow<br />
much faster without soil, in<br />
the right conditions. Supplying<br />
those conditions is the art<br />
of hydroponics, an increasingly<br />
popular way of growing<br />
various plants, including,<br />
allegedly, cannabis.<br />
Dave, manager of the<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong> branch of hydroponics<br />
shop UK Groworks, says “there are three<br />
basic methods of growing plants”: in soil, in<br />
coconut fibre, or in a water-based system. “Soil is<br />
the easiest, it’s the most forgiving, it’s the slowest.”<br />
It’s also fairly self-regulating; you don’t need<br />
to do much.<br />
But if you switch to one of the other two, you<br />
have to carefully monitor the pH and the amount<br />
of food the plant’s getting, as well as the humidity,<br />
light levels and temperature. Explaining<br />
why in detail, Dave made it sound like a delicate<br />
balancing act, in which a plant is basically looking<br />
for any excuse to stop growing and turn a<br />
funny colour.<br />
He admits there’s “a lot more effort required”<br />
with hydroponics, though actually it’s easy “if you<br />
know what you’re doing. Some people struggle<br />
with it, but it isn’t rocket science.”<br />
Dave talks me through the hydroponic systems<br />
the shop’s got on display. The first involves<br />
a bucket part-filled with water, in which the<br />
plant’s nutrients are dissolved, with an air pump<br />
submerged in it. The plant is suspended above<br />
the water line, but “as the bubbles come to the<br />
surface, it splashes the roots. They get lots of<br />
oxygen, and they’ll grow approximately five times<br />
faster than in soil.”<br />
Another method involves<br />
planting the seed in clay<br />
pellets in a bucket, which<br />
floods on a timer, periodically<br />
soaking the plant with a<br />
nutrient-and-water mix. “This<br />
will grow maybe three times<br />
faster than in soil.”<br />
It’s been said that the Hanging<br />
Gardens of Babylon used<br />
hydroponics; more recently, scientists had been<br />
using it as a way to study the roots of plants while<br />
they were growing. “Then some bright spark<br />
went: ‘Oh, I know what you could use that for!’<br />
What could you use it for? Dave pulls up pictures<br />
on his computer of Thanet Earth, a huge hydroponic<br />
vegetable factory that “provides, I think, a<br />
fifth of all the salad crop in the UK”. Hobbyists<br />
can grow veg indoors this way, though “artificial<br />
lights are expensive to run for producing food.<br />
“There are high-yielding crops like wasabi,<br />
which you can’t get fresh in this country; it’s a<br />
premium product. And there’s a massive thing for<br />
chillies. A guy came in recently saying he was setting<br />
up a shop in London that just sells chillies,<br />
and bought all sorts of equipment to do it.”<br />
And how about cannabis? Well, Dave points out,<br />
there’s not much he can do. “My motorbike can<br />
do 160mph. That would be breaking the law, on<br />
a public highway. I have that piece of equipment;<br />
how I use it is not the responsibility of the shop<br />
that sold it to me. I have no control over what<br />
people do with the equipment we sell. Who<br />
knows what people use it for?” Steve Ramsey<br />
UK Groworks, Unit 4, Belltower Industrial Estate,<br />
Whitehawk, 01273 624327<br />
....89....
a coffee with...<br />
................................<br />
Tim Richardson<br />
Pioneer of couple-friendly sex shops<br />
“Normally it’s a great conversation stopper at a<br />
dinner party, but then they realise in fact it’s really<br />
juicy to have at a dinner party. The initial thing is:<br />
‘What do you do for a living?’; ‘I own sex shops’;<br />
‘Really! Oh my god…’ Then the questions start<br />
to come.”<br />
‘What are the customers like?’ is a common one.<br />
He says women make up about 40% of customers,<br />
and on the weekends it’s mostly couples. There’s a<br />
wide range of ages. He can never tell by people’s<br />
appearance or demeanour whether they’re into<br />
really kinky or more mainstream stuff. He’s no<br />
longer surprised by even the most bizarre customer<br />
requests.<br />
He’s become “desensitised” to the whole thing, he<br />
says, sitting in the stockroom of the Hove branch<br />
of Taboo. And anyway, apart from the fact Taboo<br />
is licensed by the local council, it’s just like any<br />
other business. “It’s like selling widgets or wing<br />
nuts”.<br />
Indeed, the stockroom looks just like an ordinary<br />
office, except for the two rows of DVDs, and the<br />
plastic storage units with eye-catching names on<br />
the shelves. Catching me looking, he talks me<br />
through their contents in a totally unaffected<br />
tone. “That’s where we keep the fannies…”<br />
***<br />
Richardson started Taboo about 11 years ago,<br />
with the shop near <strong>Brighton</strong> Station. He was<br />
hoping to set up a business, and “I just thought,<br />
‘people always need sex, they need food and they<br />
need sex’. I didn’t want to open a grocery store;<br />
that would be really boring.<br />
“When I opened Taboo, it was quite groundbreaking.<br />
I wanted to break that stereotypical<br />
image, of a seedy, dark, unpleasant, unwelcoming<br />
shop, and I wanted to make it female and couple<br />
friendly, somewhere that people would like to<br />
visit.”<br />
He opened a Hove branch in 2010 – “<strong>Brighton</strong><br />
and Hove residents are all kinky, but the Hove<br />
ones have got a little bit more money to spend” –<br />
then, more recently, Lust, on Gardner Street. It’s<br />
not a licensed sex shop, so only 30% of its stock<br />
can be sex related.<br />
“Lust was my next phase. After I’d done Taboo,<br />
I wanted to open a shop which would be even<br />
more accessible, where people wouldn’t necessarily<br />
know they’re in a sex shop till they’re inside.<br />
Then they’ve got past the part most people find<br />
difficult, which is walking in the door.<br />
“They’ll see a non-sex product in the window, like<br />
a Banksy mug or something, come in to buy that,<br />
and then leave with a butt plug. That’s the perfect<br />
sale, as far as I’m concerned: ‘Actually, now we’re<br />
here…’ It’s broadened their horizon a bit.”<br />
However, Richardson says, he gets customers in<br />
Taboo who wouldn’t have gone into a sex shop<br />
10-15 years ago, and various things that were considered<br />
fetishes back then are now mainstream:<br />
people’s horizons are pretty broad nowadays.<br />
Of course, the internet is a factor, and Fifty Shades<br />
was a “game changer”. But Richardson also credits<br />
an episode of Sex and the City, in which a major<br />
character admits to owning a rabbit vibrator, with<br />
igniting women’s interest in sex toys. “Suddenly<br />
every woman wanted a rabbit vibrator. That was a<br />
big turning point.”<br />
Fifty Shades “brought fetish behaviour, if you want<br />
to call it that, into the mainstream,” and even the<br />
....90....
fetish-club scene is moving in that direction. What,<br />
I must ask, happens at a fetish club?<br />
“Sometimes they’re quite dance based, like a dance<br />
club but wearing fetish clothing or latex or leather,<br />
or crazy outfits. You get a little bit of spanking<br />
going on, and various people roleplaying and doing<br />
stuff. Sometimes there’s actual sex going on, not on<br />
the dancefloor but in certain areas of the club. So<br />
it’s just like a crazy adult playground.<br />
“In some in Europe, there’s a lot of sex going on;<br />
not so much in England. The English are still a<br />
little bit reserved about having sex in a club environment.<br />
But generally it’s a mixture of dance, sex<br />
and fancy dress.”<br />
While <strong>Brighton</strong> was a good place to set up Taboo<br />
– “I wouldn’t want to have one of these shops in<br />
a little village in Somerset” – the city’s fetish-club<br />
scene “isn’t particularly huge. People think that<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong>, being this hedonistic city, is going to<br />
have fetish sex clubs going on every night, or every<br />
weekend, and it’s actually not true.”<br />
There is an annual <strong>Brighton</strong> Fetish Weekend,<br />
though, and “this Dungeon Bar that’s opened up in<br />
Regency Square. Have you heard about that? It’s<br />
got BDSM equipment in it, you can go and have a<br />
drink and spank someone…”<br />
Like Richardson’s dinner-party acquaintances, I<br />
was full of questions, though what I really wanted<br />
to know was why people are drawn to sex toys,<br />
dressing up, and fetish-like behaviour. “I think it’s in<br />
us all, really, to some degree. We’ve all kind of got<br />
it going on; it just depends whether you want to go<br />
inside yourself and explore that.<br />
“I’ve had customers over the years, they might start<br />
by coming in and buying a little sex toy, and then<br />
they’ll come back in a couple of weeks’ time and<br />
buy something else, and you can see their journey<br />
into their exploration of their sexual fantasies, or<br />
fetishes.”<br />
But why isn’t straightforward sex enough? “If you<br />
go to a funfair, you can go on the bumper cars, but<br />
you can go on the rollercoaster as well. So, what,<br />
are you just going to go on the bumper cars?” SR<br />
Taboo: 2 Surrey Street, <strong>Brighton</strong>, and 8 Blatchington<br />
Road, Hove (tabooshop.com). Lust: 43 Gardner<br />
Street (lust.co.uk). <strong>Brighton</strong> Fetish Weekend runs at<br />
Rialto Theatre from <strong>April</strong> 10th-12th; see brightonfetishweekend.co.uk<br />
and rialtotheatre.co.uk<br />
....91....
WILDLIFE<br />
......................<br />
Elderflower Fields Nature Walk<br />
Go wild in the country<br />
“Go on, eat it,” says<br />
Paul. He’s handed<br />
me some small nettle<br />
leaves, the first I’ve<br />
seen this year. “Pick<br />
the top four leaves,<br />
scrunch them up in<br />
your fingers to get<br />
rid of the sting, then<br />
eat them like a rabbit.<br />
Front teeth first, not<br />
just your molars, otherwise all you get is a bitter<br />
taste. There’s actually a lot of sweetness in them.”<br />
Paul is in charge of the environmental activities<br />
at the Elderflower Fields Festival, and we’re just<br />
finishing a tour of the site in Pippingford Park,<br />
near Nutley in the Ashdown Forest. Elderflower<br />
Fields is a family-friendly festival, about to clock<br />
up its fourth edition. As usual there’ll be plenty<br />
of music, food & drink and sporting activities,<br />
but Paul’s main job is to take both adults and kids<br />
round the site, showing them the abundant wildlife<br />
that will share the four-day adventure with the<br />
5,000 human visitors expected to attend, between<br />
May 22nd and 25th.<br />
He’s a brilliant teacher, it must be said. It’s March<br />
4th, four days into (meteorological) spring, and, in<br />
his words, ‘everything’s started to wake up.’ We’ve<br />
been walking round for an hour and a half, and every<br />
moment he’s enlightened me with a fascinatingly detailed<br />
fact about the surroundings, drawing questions<br />
from me, and giving out pithy, fact-full responses.<br />
It’s a fairly rugged-looking environment, part<br />
heath, part woodland, part open field, with native<br />
trees – plenty of silver birch, plenty of Scotch pine<br />
– to the fore. I learn that these two trees were ‘pioneer’<br />
trees, the first<br />
to take root in Britain<br />
after the Ice Age. I<br />
learn loads of things,<br />
in fact: the flight<br />
patterns of fieldfares,<br />
murmurating like<br />
starlings above us; the<br />
hybrid nature of the<br />
larch; how sap feeds<br />
trees; how medieval<br />
people made candles from rush stems; how to use<br />
sphagnum moss to carry water; how the hazel tree<br />
cross pollinates; why to be careful when you’re<br />
picking edible bull rush roots out of pond (accidentally<br />
eat their similar-looking neighbour, and<br />
you’ll end up in hospital).<br />
The second-best moment is finding a huge woodant<br />
nest, that’s just been disturbed by a woodpecker.<br />
He gets a worker ant to walk onto his finger,<br />
and shows how it bites him, raising itself up onto<br />
its back legs and spraying out formic acid onto his<br />
skin. Then, happy the creature is so small, I ask for<br />
it to be transferred onto my finger, and it has a go<br />
at me, too.<br />
The best moment? Eating the nettles, of course.<br />
Masticating in Paul’s approved manner I do indeed<br />
taste a pleasant sweetness, tempering the bitter<br />
aftertaste that follows. On my springtime country<br />
walks I’ll never be short of a snack again. Alex Leith<br />
So Sussex brings you the Elderflower Fields Festival,<br />
Pippingford Park, May 22-25, elderflowerfields.<br />
co.uk. Paul will be conducting bug hunts and nature<br />
walks throughout the Bank Holiday weekend, supported<br />
by the Sussex Wildlife Trust and Circle of<br />
Life Discovery<br />
....92....
health<br />
..........................................<br />
Marathon running<br />
A 26-mile cure-all tablet?<br />
What are the main<br />
health benefits of<br />
running a marathon?<br />
There are multiple<br />
health benefits, physical<br />
and mental. In the short<br />
term, running obviously<br />
can reduce weight, produce<br />
mental wellbeing,<br />
and make you physically<br />
fitter, which helps<br />
reduce your risk of getting infections, and reduces<br />
your risk of suffering when you have got chronic<br />
diseases. In the long term, running reduces the risk<br />
of cancer, heart disease, and stroke. It’s one of the<br />
healthiest things you can do.<br />
What about the risks? Running short distances is<br />
very safe. But marathon running can have medical<br />
complications. Anybody who’s not fit and healthy<br />
should speak to their GP before they start training.<br />
Any form of extended endurance exercise, unless<br />
you do it gradually, can be dangerous. You have to<br />
be gradually building up. I wouldn’t recommend<br />
doing a marathon if you haven’t been training.<br />
What is ‘the wall’? The medical research about<br />
‘the wall’ is very flaky. Basically, no-one’s sure<br />
exactly what it is. There used to be a theory that<br />
you ran out of glycogen, which the body breaks<br />
down into glucose, so your body starts burning up<br />
fat. But actually, when you test that evidence it’s<br />
not great. I think there’s a massive psychological<br />
element - that you’re just so blooming exhausted.<br />
Why do some people have tin foil put over<br />
them after the race? We get two problems which<br />
seem paradoxical together – people can get too<br />
hot, or too cold. The tin foil is if someone’s got<br />
too cold, to keep the heat in. You’re keeping your<br />
temperature up by<br />
running, and if it’s very<br />
cold and windy, and you<br />
stop, now you’re facing<br />
the wind and rain in just<br />
shorts and a t-shirt.<br />
What proportion of<br />
people don’t finish the<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong> Marathon<br />
due to injury or<br />
tiredness? I’d say the<br />
majority who don’t complete it, it’s not because<br />
they’re medically not well, just because they’re<br />
exhausted. The main reason for medically pulling<br />
out is because of heatstroke or injuries, which is a<br />
serious condition - if someone feels confused they<br />
have to stop for treatment. Probably about 1% of<br />
people stop for medical reasons.<br />
How have medical views on the health effects<br />
of marathons changed over the years? I think<br />
people have realised the benefits. It’s not just the<br />
running – when you’re training for a marathon,<br />
you eat healthier, you stop smoking… the<br />
research says half of smokers who do a marathon<br />
give up smoking afterwards, or whilst they’re<br />
training; that’s better than any intervention. Diet<br />
improves, binge drinking gets reduced, mental<br />
health and wellbeing gets improved. So instead<br />
of prescribing antidepressants a lot of GPs are<br />
prescribing exercise. It’s not just about running a<br />
marathon at all; exercise in general is a phenomenally<br />
impressive thing to improve health. If you<br />
could put exercise into a tablet, it would be the<br />
most valuable drug in the world.<br />
Steve Ramsey was talking to Rob Galloway<br />
The <strong>Brighton</strong> Marathon is on Sun 12th <strong>April</strong>. See<br />
brightonmarathon.co.uk<br />
....93....
*Based on an adult ticket at £465 on our 12 month free direct debit scheme.<br />
**On public transport within our extended travel zone.
football<br />
......................................<br />
Bluffer’s Guide to the Albion<br />
Ten bits of advice if you’re going to your first game<br />
Wear the colours.<br />
This is the easiest<br />
way to make you<br />
feel you’re part of<br />
things. What type?<br />
You can’t go wrong<br />
with a simple blueand-white<br />
bar scarf.<br />
They’re on sale in<br />
the club shop. And,<br />
especially now the<br />
weather’s getting warmer, buy a club shirt: I favour<br />
the orange third strip.<br />
Carefully plan your journey. There are extra<br />
vehicles and trains shuttling fans to and from <strong>Brighton</strong><br />
on match days, but services can get congested<br />
in the hour or so before kick-off (you can download<br />
an app for transport news). My advice is to set off a<br />
couple of hours early to get to the match. There are<br />
plenty of bars in the ground, and there’s always the<br />
Falmer Swan. Or cycle or walk there!<br />
Know when and what to chant. Most of the more<br />
guttural vocals happen in the North and West<br />
stands, but fans all around the ground are known to<br />
chant from time to time. A good start is picking up<br />
the words to club/county anthem Sussex by the Sea.<br />
Get to know your history. Go to the club<br />
museum. Look at old footage on YouTube. Read<br />
books such as Build a Bonfire and We Want Falmer.<br />
Understand that Peter Ward, even though he hasn’t<br />
played for the club for 33 years, is still one of the<br />
fans’ biggest heroes.<br />
Get the name right. Refer to the team as ‘The Albion’<br />
or ‘<strong>Brighton</strong>’. ‘Seagulls’ is used in newspapers,<br />
but not in common parlance. Except for chanting<br />
the word when we get a corner, and other opportune<br />
moments, that is.<br />
Develop a healthy<br />
dislike for Crystal<br />
Palace. Since the<br />
mid-seventies, the<br />
South Londoners have<br />
been <strong>Brighton</strong> fans’<br />
love-to-hate rivals. Our<br />
‘Seagulls’ nickname was<br />
originally a retort to<br />
their nickname chant of<br />
‘Eagles’.<br />
Gen up on the big game. Download an app for<br />
team (and travel) news, and other scores (there’s<br />
wi-fi access in the stadium). The club’s 84-page<br />
match-day magazine, Seagull, gives you plenty of<br />
information about the current team – and opposition<br />
– as well as delving back into the past. It’ll keep<br />
you company long after the game.<br />
Check out North Stand Chat fans’ forum on the<br />
web. Get acquainted with the burning issues of the<br />
day… and other stuff. Before long you’ll be hooked.<br />
Feel welcome. There’s a lot of banter about JCLs<br />
(Johnny come lately) but real Albion fans know that<br />
the bigger the average attendance, the more money<br />
the club have, and the more chance they have of<br />
being successful. You can be part of that.<br />
Learn to be irrational. If it’s in the opponents’<br />
box, it’s always a penalty. If he’s wearing blue and<br />
white, he’s never offside. It’s de rigueur to moan if<br />
decisions go against the Albion. It’s good to let off<br />
steam. Yoram Allon (pictured)<br />
Tickets (printable at home) are available from<br />
seagullstickets.com or from the club shop at the<br />
Amex. Home Albion games in <strong>April</strong>: Fri 3rd: Norwich<br />
(3pm); Fri 10th: Bournemouth (7.45pm); Tues 14th:<br />
Huddersfield (7.45pm); Sat 25th: Watford (3pm)<br />
....95....
Beautiful Provencal farmhouse cottage with pool and<br />
large garden in Luberon national park, near Avignon.<br />
5 mins to village. Available for rental. Sleeps 4.<br />
Wi-fi. Lewes owners. E.mail : ali@hahlo.demon.co.uk<br />
GARDEN DESIGN<br />
Call for a FREE consultation<br />
info@saraekstrand.co.uk<br />
01273 400695 / 0795 8102992<br />
www.saraekstrand.co.uk
icks and mortar<br />
..........................................<br />
Preston Park Velodrome<br />
England’s oldest track, under threat<br />
If you don’t live or work in the<br />
Preston Park area of <strong>Brighton</strong>, you<br />
might not have even noticed that the<br />
city has a velodrome.<br />
It’s not a flash, shiny, indoor track,<br />
like the ones recently built at great<br />
expense in London, Manchester,<br />
Derby or Newport. In fact, dug out<br />
by the army back in 1877, it’s the<br />
oldest in the country. And, ironically,<br />
in an era when cycling is enjoying a<br />
resurgence in popularity, it is under<br />
threat.<br />
Until this year there has been<br />
an organised track event at the<br />
Preston Park Velodrome, held every<br />
Wednesday, from <strong>April</strong> to August.<br />
The organisers were surprised when<br />
they were not not asked to put on<br />
the event this year round, by the<br />
country’s governing body, British<br />
Cycling. (Note: ‘not asked’, rather<br />
than ‘asked not to’).<br />
I meet cycling events organiser<br />
Rupert Rivett by the side of the<br />
track on a cold but sunny March<br />
afternoon, and he takes up the story.<br />
“We weren’t told directly that there<br />
would be no racing this year, we simply<br />
weren’t given the usual go-ahead.<br />
When we investigated we found out<br />
that British Cycling had deemed the<br />
place unsafe for racing. They have<br />
been dealing with the City Council,<br />
who own the track, but between<br />
them they have not been able to tell<br />
us exactly why.”<br />
Rivett, worried that the end of competitive racing might be the beginning<br />
of the end for the track as a whole, started a Facebook page,<br />
and a petition. He’s accumulated 4,000 likes on the former, and<br />
3,500 signatures on the latter: a lot of people care about the place.<br />
There’s good reason, on many levels. Preston Park Velodrome has a<br />
rich history of hosting big cycling events. In the fifties up to 10,000<br />
spectators would attend races, with the very best in the world competing:<br />
the likes of Reg Harris, twice Sports Personality of the year,<br />
and Dutch World Champion Arie van Vliet. You can only imagine<br />
the excitement as these two men belted round the track – in fact<br />
you can see it in the eyes of the crowd in photographs, if you dig<br />
around on the internet.<br />
“It’s also a great recreational facility,” continues Rupert. “Where<br />
else can you cycle a racing bike around, apart from the road? But<br />
nobody really looks after it, so it’s in a state of disrepair. The Council<br />
needs to invest in it: it could be a great asset to the city. But I fear<br />
the opposite is happening, and it is earmarked for destruction.”<br />
Before talking to Rupert I’ve taken a few spins round the track on<br />
my clunky town bike, enjoying rising up the ramps on the corners,<br />
and imagining I was Graeme Obrie. While we’re talking, a man<br />
teaches his child how to ride. As I leave, I see a much younger, fitter<br />
guy than me belting round the track on a much leaner, faster racing<br />
bike. And I think to myself that Rupert’s right: this marvellous<br />
structure needs nurturing, not neglect.<br />
Alex Leith<br />
Facebook page/petition on facebook.com/saveprestonparkcycletrack<br />
....97....
From the James Gray collection, the photographic archive of the Regency Society, regencysociety.org<br />
inside left: victorian wagonette<br />
...................................................................................<br />
Here’s a picture, from the James Gray Collection, of the late-Victorian equivalent of the Breeze Up the<br />
Downs bus rides the Council are currently running up to Devil’s Dyke. This is a ‘wagonette’, one of many<br />
which took people up to the Dyke, picking up their passengers, largely holidaymakers, near the Aquarium,<br />
and taking them up to the Devil’s Dyke Hotel. The journey took an hour and a half, and the ticket price<br />
was subsidised by a Mr Thacker, who ran the hotel. The two horses you can see were joined by a third at<br />
Old Shoreham Road, to help with the long pull up Dyke Road. You can imagine horses and passengers<br />
alike were relieved to have a refreshment stop at the Dyke Road Hotel (now the Dyke Pub and Kitchen).<br />
In 1887 the Devil’s Dyke Hotel was taken over by the ambitious JH Hubbard, who created a number<br />
of attractions for the increasing numbers of visitors to the Dyke. These included a cable car (or ‘aerial<br />
cableway’) across the valley, a funicular railway down the valley, a ‘gravity railway’, in effect an early form<br />
of the rollercoaster, two bandstands, a camera obscura, a giant statue of Britannia, a wooden model of a<br />
110-ton naval gun (!), and a whale skull. The hotel even produced its own magazine, The Devil’s Dyke Times.<br />
The place was hugely popular: visitors included William IV and Queen Victoria. In 1888 a railway line was<br />
built taking passengers from Aldrington to the top of the Dyke, which soon became more popular than the<br />
wagonettes – the journey time was reduced to 30 minutes.<br />
Perhaps, however, Mr Hubbard was too ambitious: by 1908 the funicular railway and the cable car were out<br />
of service, the whale skull had fallen apart, and the Dyke dropped out of fashion as an attraction. During<br />
WWI the site was taken over by the MOD: the camera obscura became a forward observation post; the<br />
steep-grade railway tracks were used for bomb testing. In 1928 it was bought by <strong>Brighton</strong> Corporation; in<br />
1995 it was acquired by the National Trust. You can, if you look closely, still see traces of the track of the<br />
funicular railway, which, at its height, took over 250,000 passengers a year up and down the valley.<br />
....98....
BY ARRANGEMENT WITH<br />
MANDY WARD<br />
ARTIST MANAGEMENT<br />
PAUL MERTON<br />
RICHARD VRANCH<br />
LEE SIMPSON<br />
SUKI WEBSTER<br />
AND MIKE McSHANE<br />
SATURDAY 30 MAY<br />
BRIGHTON Dome Concert Hall<br />
01273 709709 brightondome.org<br />
paulmerton.com<br />
comedystoreplayers.com<br />
mickperrin.com<br />
Photo: Caroline Webster