Viva Brighton Issue #45 November 2016

BITS AND BOBS
...............................
MAGAZINE OF THE MONTH: ERNEST
I like shopping. I like choosing
things for people (including me),
looking at how stuff is marketed
and sold, experiencing the many
different kinds of service, and
watching other people shop.
Let me qualify that. I can’t stand
anything that’s remotely like Oxford
Street in London after 11am
most mornings, wherever that
place is. So perhaps I should say I
like shopping when I can make it
relatively calm.
Which is probably why we always wanted to be in
Trafalgar Street. One minute from the station, full
of independent shops and close to hundreds more,
but mostly calm and relaxed... except when huge
lorries try to break the window of coffee@33 as
they turn into the street.
It suits us. I’m not sure we think of ourselves as
a ‘shopping’ destination; more a place to come to
for a reward when the shopping is done. A large
proportion of our mags are designed to be lingered
over, slowly and calmly over time.
ernest is a great example. It’s a
pocket-sized magazine about slow
adventures, slow food and slow
workmanship. It’s for the slightly
eccentric and curious, or, as they
say, ‘people who like a craft gin
cocktail and people who like
to whittle.’ It’s one of our very
best sellers. In the current issue,
themed around time, travel and
solar exploration, you can read
about Vancouver Island, cryonics,
the origins of the vindaloo, how to
make a herbal first-aid kit, the fisherman’s smock, a
futurist cookbook, bothying and much more.
And here’s the shopping link. One of the ways
ernest helps the people it admires is to build
directories of people who sell lovely, lovely things.
If - and I doubt this somehow - Brighton can’t fulfil
your seasonal shopping needs this year, ernest can
help. I’ve already spotted a beautiful egg cup, an
ash trivet and a lovely vase. Now, who can I gift
them to?
Martin Skelton, MagazineBrighton
TOILET GRAFFITO #22
Our toilet-graffiti correspondent can see the writing
on the wall. Or rather the lack of it. If publicans keep
up their campaign of tiling pub toilets, graffiti is going
to go the way of the Betamax, and our correspondent’s
livelihood with it.
In fact, we couldn’t have said it better that the subversive
genius who came up with this groutfiti: ‘can’t live
if living is with grout you’.
More power to you, whoever you are. We see what
you did there, and we salute you.
Last month’s answer: Fortune of War
....23....