An eye on Rye

There are places that look lovely and then never live up to their hype, but Rye is a place that lives up to expectation and surpasses. Having spent longer getting here than it should have taken, mostly my fault (the small fire at Hastings Railway Station didn't help) it was with real awe that I looked around the town.

I have always been and shall be a bit of a history buff. I like the architecture of anything up to and including Victorian Gothic. Rye for me then was a delight. The small streets give the place an atmosphere that you could walk around it all day if it wasn't so small.

Small is good. You can take things in on a bigger scale. Such as Ypres tower, one of the oldest buildings in the town it hints at Rye's past as one of the Cinque Ports. Which gave it self governance and freedom from taxes. Rye was a target for a number of raids by the French.

Rye is now two miles inland and shows the fickle nature of the coast line in this part of the county. winchelsea the next town down the coast was rebuilt after the old town was destroyed by the sea only for it to now be inland.

Mermaid Street is one of the most interesting and photographed streets in Sussex. There is a mix of buildings from Medieval to Georgian. This I think is why it holds it's charm. There is a hint of preservation but not in a overly handed way. The shops are mainly independent business and are homed in buildings that will be here for a long time longer.
Much of this history can be discovered in the heritage centre which has a sound and light show with a town model

Rye's literary past is also something to boast about with Henry James and EF Benson both having occupied Lamb House at some time or another. Other notable writers to have lived in the town are John Fletcher the Jacobian play write and Radclyffe Hall. For me though the fact that John Ryan the creator of 'Captain Pugwash'  lived in the town made me the happiest out of the lot. Although the fact that the Cheeky Girls live in the town makes one chuckle as well.

I am going to come back to Rye and look at more of these places in more detail but I hope for now that I have left you with enough to inspire a visit of your own.

A quick run round Lewes

Lewes is one of those places that I haven't taken the time to get to know really well. I used the library to help with uni work and I like to buy my friends different beers from the Harvey's brewery shop. Today was no different. Having arrived in Haywards Heath at half two I only had a couple of hours to go and map things out for future reference before it got dark and I could no longer take any photos.

When I go to any place I don't know so well it is always interesting to try and get lost and discover places you would never knew were there. This was no different today as I found Southover grange gardens. There place must look beautiful in the summer and it looked in fine shape today.

Made from the ruins of the priory of Saint Pancras the grange often had royal visitors such as the future George IV who rode his carrige up the near by Keere Street, a wonderful cobble street that is on a fairly steep incline, although there are many steeper in the county.

Carry on walking and you will pass the building in which Thomas Paine lived.Paine is a man who influenced the American Revolution with his writing and had a lot to say which would be an injustice to write about right now but I will get round to writing about him soon I am sure.

The places I didn't visit such as the priory, castle and Anne of Cleves house will have to wait for another day, that maybe this week but count on hearing about it from me soon. tomorrow I move onto Eastbourne and hopefully Rye.

The Nearly Men

When Matt Prior tore his calf however slight it caused alarm bells to ring in the England management. If unfit for the first test at the Gabba would Jonny Bairstow be the right man to fill his gloves? Bairstow hasn’t been afforded the time to develop his keeping skills during the summer with Yorkshire due his England commitments. That was of course trying to nail down that difficult number six position.

So the question remains if England run into injuries to key players are those next in line capable of stepping up and ensuring England regain the Ashes?

Gary Ballance – Balance has been impressive all summer for Yorkshire and deserved his first ODI cap against Ireland. It could be argued that another winter the Lions and development squad would have been of much more use but he had obviously caught the eye of the management team and if he was to stake a claim for any place it would have been at six. This has been made harder by Michael Carberry taking the other opening spot alongside Alistair Cook. This means he will have to battle it out with his Yorkshire teammates Joe Root and Bairstow.

Ben Stokes - He is seen by many as the next Andrew Flintoff. This is a big claim and has a long way before people start talking about him in his own terms. It wasn’t so long ago that there were questions raised about his temperament. Stokes has however got is head down this last season. When called upon in the one day series against Australia at the end of the summer it was his calm bowling that ultimately lead to his selection in the final 16 less than a year before sent home from down under earlier in the year. He shouldn’t be called upon as his batting probably isn’t quite ready for test matches and England won’t go into many if any with five bowlers.

Monty Panesar - Monty’s problems are well publicised over the summer. He was dropped by Sussex and then finally sacked. On his day he is a bowler who is capable of dismissing some of the best batsmen in the world. It could be said that he only made this tour because of Simon Kerrigan’s disastrous debut at the Kia Oval. Australia will look to get after Panesar if anything was to happen to Graeme Swann. There is the chance that England may play two spinners at Adelaide but the fact that the players were asked to keep an eye on him again makes you wonder if he is truly ready to step up should the opportunity arise. I hope I'm wrong.

Boyd Rankin – Ireland aren’t happy that another one of their players has chosen Test cricket with England over ODIs with them. Rankin performed well during the ODI series against Australia and his height and pace has helped win his place. He is very much a horses for courses pick and people are still wondering why Graham Onions wasn’t picked over him. Rankin was given an opportunity to win a place in the starting line up in two of the warm-up games but the place of England’s third seamer is still up for grabs even if Chris Tremlett seems to have the nod in Michael Clarke’s eyes.      

Chris Tremlett and Steven Finn – The real shootout seems to be between these two. Just as in 2009 when Tremlett eventually took over from Finn there seems to be a real debate on who should win that last spot. Finn has been given a lot of time by the England set-up to win a place in the team. He has been in and out of the side of late while he still tries to work out his run-up. The fact that the laws of the game changed because of him consistently hitting the stumps with his knee against the South Africans doesn’t help his cause but he is someone that picks up wickets and this is why he will always be there or there abouts.

Tremlett was a bit of a surprise pick. He has had a number of injury problems which has seen him slide down the pecking order in selection. His form over the summer was woeful at best yet he is the type of bowler that suits the pitches that the Ashes will be played on. Tremlett’s height and pace has roughed up the Aussies before and that is what will probably see him start at the Gabba at least.

Gallery 47

I saw this young man Who goes by the stage name of Gallery 47 open for Martha Tilston in Thursday. As you will see from the video he has a real passion for what he does. He is an amazing guitar player and his music is allround of a decent standard. 

Everything about the former carpet factory worker and Nottingham University impresses me. Look out for him in the not too distant future he deserves to be listened to. 

No Kebab for You

She lay on the lounger, watching the rabbit nuzzling the lobelia and the ice melting in her glass. The drink from the pitcher had long been consumed and lay empty, as a reminder of the exotic fruit juices that had been mixed with a strong spirit, what it been poured in was a long-forgotten memory.

The heat of the midday sun had made sitting out in the suburban garden thirsty work and Philippa was ready for the responsibilities that came with this task. The whistle of distant aircraft taking off and landing at Gatwick intermittently broke the serenity of the peaceful garden in full bloom.

The sunflowers spied on neighbour’s gardens. The lobelia, however, was under attack from Trevor the rabbit. It was a short, fat little thing. One of its ears was missing while the other stood to attention. Its white fur looked as if it was stained with the patches of brown. He was almost blind but still had a fighting spirit. This premature blindness usually lead it to run around in circles when allowed to roam free in the garden.

Other than a mixture of lettuce and carrots the only other food Trevor was fed were the remnants of kebab that fell to the grass when Philippa passed out on the lounger after a night out, the task of finding the key to the house too laborious. The taste of lamb was an experience like no other for the rabbit. The mix of salad and was not to his liking, however, the overpowering taste of mayonnaise left a nasty after taste.

The lobelia made an interesting change to his diet and he set about it with relish. Philippa looked on unconcerned for the safety of the purple-blue flowers or the digestion of the rabbit. Trevor hacked at the plant like an explorer scything at the thick jungle terrain in search of some sort of civilisation. ‘Who knows maybe they will find some in Crawley’ Trevor thought.

Philippa woke from a short nap, took off her sunglasses to reveal two pale rings around her eyes. She lifted her glass from the floor, the remnants of the ice spilling on the ground. Stepping over the spillage that had quickly soaked into the parched earth, before seeing in the corner of her eye the rabbit.

Trevor had eaten clean through the lobelia and was now ramming the fence with some fury. Philippa dropped the glass and ran toward the rabbit to the sound of breaking glass on the patio. She picked the rabbit up all the time reprimanding it for its actions and placing him back in his hutch before telling the poor little creature ‘there will be no more kebab for you.’

Constable Benton Fraser Royal Canadian Mounted police

Does anyone remember the television programme Due South? Here is a poem I wrote about it's main character 

It always seems to be you and your wolf
Talking to each other
Solving the case together
Not a pesky kid in sight.

'Thank you kindly' is how you address
Any complaint or insult.
You may be Canadian
But come on please get over it.

What is it with all this politeness?
It just comes over a little bit weird
You Talk to your father
Whose murder you are here to solve.

Your senses are finely attuned
Always there in the line of danger
That sense of honour is more
Critical than your sense of living.

While the bad guys have guns,
And explosives and Knives,
Brute force and a ruthless will to kill
You however have your wits

Sometimes though I get the feeling
You would rather help old ladies.
The problem is they are just as likely
To be at the centre of the villainy.

Bravo Bognor

I wrote this before I went to Uni and is probably about four or five years old but you can start to see my development towards a couple of my other blog posts.

Your memory is known to play tricks on you; especially your childhood memory which is capable of the most outrageous tricks of all. Things seemed bigger, brighter and on the whole more exciting. Often that was because they were or that you were smaller in a big, big world, more prone to exaggeration and on the whole a lot more curious about the world. I remember childhood trips to Nottingham being bowled over by the Brew House Yard Museum. It was like stepping into a Narnia like world. It was magical, being able to experience an air raid safe in the knowledge that you were not going to be the target of a stray bomb.

The problem is that you grow up and the magic disappears, you see the smoke and mirrors that deceived you. How disappointed the seven year old you would have been. Not just disappointed with that you shrug it off and accept, but that someone could do this to you. This Tardis like building of your childhood could be so small.  So what happens when you go back to towns or cities that once played a role in your childhood, but you have not visited since? You are after all a different person however much you try to deceive yourself that the child you once were is still in there trying to get out. I think it was in a kind of childlike naivety that I went blundering back to places that I thought I could trust not to disappoint.

Chichester is a grand looking place that has a grand looking heritage. It is dominated by its 900 year old cathedral, the only cathedral in England visible from the sea. It has been settled on since the Roman occupation; in one of its parks lies buried a Roman amphitheatre. All this you would think would make it the ideal location for a tourist. I thought so. However when I first arrived the tourist information office was not open. Fine. I’ll come back later, I thought. I headed for the local museum not wanting to go to the most visibly obvious venue first. When I got there I found it was not to open until ten, never mind I’ll come back later, after all it’s not the biggest city in the world.

One of the best things about Chichester was that it had one of the most impressive McDonalds anywhere in the world forget the Golden arches overlooking red square. Housed in the old corn exchange building with Greek style columns mixed with Victorian grandeur while the building remains an important part of Chichester it now no longer houses Ronald and friends.  

So it was over to the cathedral. What I remember as a kid was the roofs of the cloisters looked like they were the upturned hulls of medieval boats, and apparently that is exactly the look it was going for. I was there for half nine on the dot and finally it looked as if my luck had changed. I went in through the oak door of the cathedral shop, as if the architect had planned it for just that purpose 900 years ago.  I was greeted by a middle aged woman who asked

  “Are you a customer?”

   I replied in the affirmative.

  “Well I’m sorry, but we aren’t open just at the moment.”

  “Oh really!” was all I could think to reply, transfixed to the spot as if nailed to the floor.

   “Well I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

  Hardly in the Christian spirit I thought, and slammed the door to convey my annoyance.

I then went in the main building to have a look round after all medieval buildings are very interesting but I didn’t take any of it in. I guess it was the usual fair of memorials to long dead Bishops and knights plus all the aspects of a living and working church. Indeed there were many people scurrying about to set up some spectacular light show for later that evening.  I had had enough of Chichester and headed for the train station.

 

A replacement bus service had deprived me of the joys of Barnham train station which only purpose was to ferry holidaymakers down the line to Bognor then Butlins. Bus replacement services are usually double decker buses that are full to bursting, and take twice as long to reach their final destination. This journey however made a nice change and twenty minutes later I was taking my first lung full of sea air. Everyone knows Bognor Regis as the place that George V remarked ‘bugger Bognor’, while Queen Victoria found it to be a ‘delightful little place’. Bognor is now a vastly different place it has a certain run down charm to it and it brightened my day up immeasurably, even the sun came out to say hello.

Most people are rather disparaging about this little seaside resort and in 1994 the IRA planted a bomb outside the local Thomas Cook. But I love the place, and even if the Birdman competition looks to have gone due to its ever diminishing pier and a health and safety culture. It still has a little place in my heart.

 The beach is surprisingly sandy which gives it the upper hand over its rivals of Brighton and Southsea which both contain nothing but pebbles. I wandered into the pier and played on the penny arcades which are irresistible and make you feel like you will soon be going to support groups for the addicted. The chance to win cuddly toys you never in your right mind would want seem valuable pirate treasure. I ended my visit to a little seaside café ran by a Mediterranean family and for a long time I was the only person there. It looked as if the place had changed very little since the 1970s but it added to the whole experience.

  In situations like this I can get overly polite to the point, where I start to thank and apologise in equal measure that I end up apologising for it. There is something reassuring about eating fish and chips while looking out to sea locked away safe from the perils of a fluid enemy that most of the time looks as harmless as a toothless dog. This coastline is not a palm tree paradise but has more of a mucky hue at this time of year. It doesn’t have the same appeals as nearby Brighton with its hedonistic nightlife, but you like it all the same. It just feels like a home from home.  

It’s a pity that I missed out on Barnham station though as I’m sure the memories would have come flooding back of the small version of myself and my family, but Bognor lifted the spirits nether the less.