Viva Lewes Issue #134 November 2017

COLUMN
Lewes Out Loud
Plenty more Henty
In the final minutes of her
1955 movie, my favourite
songstress at that time, Doris
Day, belted out the Gus
Kahn lyrics to the title song
Love Me Or Leave Me as costar
James Cagney leaned
against the nearest bar.
The unforgettable words,
penned in 1928, have stayed
with me over the years,
poignantly pointing out as
they do, that ‘You might
find the night time, the
right time for kissing but
night time is my time for
just reminiscing’.
Wow! They don’t write
songs like that anymore, do
they... and, of course, regular
Viva readers will know how good I am at ‘just
reminiscing’. For example, mention ‘night time’
and I immediately recall the period I spent on
Radio 2 in the 1970s as a newsreader and weekly
presenter of the programme Night Ride.
Broadcasting House at midnight was a magical
place. One small intimate studio, subdued lighting
and a Europe-wide audience for a couple of hours
before closure at 2am. I was in my element, and listener
response was remarkable and personal. Today,
all-night radio is commonplace, thank goodness,
and I know many people use it to get to sleep or
share a problem or two with a reassuring voice.
Incidentally, it was very re-assuring to join colleague,
Michael Blencowe, on his special bat night
walk recently. I have to admit that, while I held a
bat detector tuned to the right frequency, not one
single ‘shout’ did I hear. But then I’ve searched for
whales unsuccessfully in the Atlantic and spent a
whole evening on a council
estate in Newfoundland,
with John Craven and others,
looking for scavenging bears.
None.
The re-assuring thing in St
John sub Castro churchyard
with Michael was the large
number of Viva readers, both
young and old, who turned up
on a dark night undaunted.
Tarina is another reader, she
told me, when delicately bandaging
one of my fingers, following
a gardening accident.
I should have been wearing
gloves, but didn’t. How lucky
we are to have the minor
injuries unit in town and how
promptly I was attended to on
a Friday morning without fuss.
Well done also to the young guard on my Ashford
train from Brighton. His announcements were precise,
detailed and full of ancillary information. So
often, it’s impossible to understand the messages,
when you have hearing difficulties as I do. He was
smartly dressed, polite and when I commented on
his diction, he further impressed by adding that
he had a stammer. Unfortunately, I didn’t get his
name but I’m sure the rail company will know who
our friend is and will commend him.
Finally, a fun morning at the railway station where
my ticket office pal, Karen, was holding a charity
cake sale on behalf of Macmillan nurses. Sylvia and
I provided a Victoria sponge for the happy occasion
and it was really heartening to see scurrying
commuters smile for a moment and make generous
donations. A great town!
John Henty
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