Summer dreams ripped at the seams

‘May I respectfully point out,’ I said, struggling slightly with the respectful aspect, but fully engaged when it came to the pointing out part, ‘that it is currently lashing down?’

‘A bagatelle, a mere drizzle,’ Grange Girl said chirpily.

‘We all know that when you die they will find ‘Grange Gardens’ engraved on your heart. But look, it’s properly pouring. As if God’s not only installed a massive new water-feature, but is defrosting the freezer too while She’s at it.’

‘It’s a teensy shower. We can shelter under that weird tree in the corner.’

‘I’m sorry Grangey, but I’m putting my foot down.’

‘Hey! I can’t move.’

‘I know. I will remove my foot from the edge of your extra-long mackintosh when you agree that we can go into a café.’

‘If we can’t sit in the Grange it means summer is over!’ she wailed.

‘Summer is over. It’s time to admit defeat. That ‘whump’ thing when all the leaves fall down has happened again and I’ve got my vest on and I’ve already circled what I want in the Oxfam Christmas catalogue.’

When her face crumpled I gently led her to the Buttercup Café, which has something of an inside/outside vibe going on. I was careful to usher her to the inside bit, and we watched the rain sheeting down the windows, clasping our tea mugs like extras from a Batchelors Soup advert.

‘The summer is ended and we are not yet saved,’ Grangey intoned, and nibbled a salad leaf mournfully.

‘You wot?’

‘I had big plans for August. I was going to Do Things. But the weeks flashed by and here we are, allegedly Autumn already, and I’ve done nothing.’

‘I’m just the same. Every single morning of the holidays I was determined that this would be the day I’d iron the kids’ school uniform. Well, they are now known as the Crumple Kids so you can see how that went.’

‘My plans were somewhat bigger. I was going to visit every beach on the Hastings line.’‘Um, why?’

‘For poetry, you philistine, for the sheer romance of the thing. I was going to swim at Cooden Beach, Normans Bay, Pevensey and Westham…’

I bit into a warm chocolate brownie.

‘St Leonards Warrior Square?’

‘Don't be silly.’

‘No-one achieves their summer plans. The school gates are crowded with people saying, “Lovely thanks, no idea what we did, it’s all a blur.” Summer plans are like New Year’s resolutions; we makes ‘em then we breaks ‘em.’

Grange Girl sighed. ‘That brownie looks nice.’

‘Your salad looks cold.’

A particularly spectacular slosh of rain flung itself onto the window and Grangey shivered and pulled her pashmina a little tighter round her bikini. ‘Did I see apple crumble and custard on the menu?’ she asked in a small voice.

‘Two crumbles please,’ I asked the lady behind the counter. ‘And is there any chance you might put the heating on?’


Beth Miller, 6th September 2011. Published in VivaLewes.com. Photo by Alex Leith

Great balls of fire

‘It’s an interesting linguistic conundrum, isn’t it?’ mused Cycle Girl, as she tried to balance a pint of Harveys, a score sheet, her bag and phone. The Harveys won, naturally – everything else slid to the floor.

‘What, the ambiguous status of the word “balls”?’ said DJ Mama, showing off a little by juggling four skittle balls.

‘It’s one of those words that’s innocent in some contexts, and rude in others.’

‘On such a premise was the entire flimsy edifice of Are You Being Served built,’ said Born and Bred Boy, who was playing for the other team. In the literal sense of the phrase.

‘There are a lot of words like that,’ continued Cycle Girl, ‘For example…’

‘That’s quite enough, thank you,’ said Grange Girl, who had only popped into the Grange gardens to complain about the noise but was now dragged against her will into our team.

‘It seems silly to make a fuss about balls,’ said Head Girl, ‘when here we are, playing with them.’

‘Fnar,’ said Aging Lad wearily. After more than forty years of laughing dutifully at double entendres he can’t stop now, even though he’d clearly like to. If there’s a gap where someone ought to say ‘fnar’ he can’t bear it to go unfilled (fnar.)

The stern but friendly Rotarians in the Control Caravan announced the line-up for the Ladies Tournament in which we were playing, despite Grange Girl’s insistence that the term “ladies” was offensive. Most of the other teams had names like the Haywards Heath Harriers or The Pretty Shoes. No other team had the honour of their name being censored.

‘And in lane seven, playing Pink & Perky…’

‘Fnar,’ sighed Aging Lad.

‘How did they get their name approved?’ asked Cycle Girl.

‘...playing Pink & Perky are Ladies With, uh, Appendages.’

‘I think that’s us.’

‘Flipping heck,’ said Sweary Mary. ‘Lucky we didn’t go with Pussy Posse.’

Aging Lad held up a sign that said ‘Fnar,’ and the game commenced.

‘Has anyone practised at all?’ asked Grange Girl, as we quickly came to realise that the true meaning of balls for us was round objects you miss skittles with. ‘Or ever played before?’

‘Crazy golf’s my sport,’ said DJ Mama, launching a ball whistling into the air and narrowly missing several spectators.

‘I practised in the garden with pebbles,’ said Cycle Girl, sending her ball so wide it went into the next lane and knocked over more of their skittles than she’d ever managed of ours.

Born and Bred Boy sauntered over. ‘Just scored fourteen,’ he said. ‘What’s your top score?’

‘Three,’ said Head Girl bitterly, trampling our score sheet into the mud.

‘Head is another of those words,’ said Cycle Girl.

‘So’s score,’ said Sweary Mary.

Born and Bred Boy picked up one of the balls we were using.

‘You know what the trouble is? Your balls aren’t heavy enough.’

‘Fnar,’ we all said cheerily.

Beth Miller, July 6th 2011. Published in VivaLewes.com. Photo by Alex Leith

Climb every mountain

It is a truth universally acknowledged that whenever the Grange Gardens café opens in a blaze of sunshine, the weather will instantly start leaping about across the calendar. So it was this week. Monday: café opens, and it’s April, all sunny and bright. Tuesday: rainy February, cold enough to bung the heating back on. Wednesday: July, people wearing sandals and saying, ‘phew what a scorcher.’ Today it’s September: warm but an autumnal nip in the air. I have missed my calling; I so should have been a weather girl.

Anyway, I was thinking how this was the first Grange Café opening day I have missed in several years, as both children are now at school, and that led to a bittersweet reflection about how life changes, and how we are gradually re-introducing activities that were closed off during the toddler years. Not that sort of activity. I mean things like choosing restaurants for their food, rather than the wipe-downability of their furnishings. Visiting the loo on one’s own. And going for proper walks.

Everyone deals with having kids differently. Some create the metaphorical equivalent of an empty room, stand well back and wait to see what the kid will have them do. Others say, ‘We’re going to carry on exactly as we always have.’ Friends of friends did this: bunged their baby in a sling and legged it up the Hindu Kush. (Have just looked up Hindu Kush to check it is something you leg up. It is.) They were all happy until their child learned to say ‘no’, around the age of ten months. I went to the opposite extreme, creating a lifestyle devoted to minimising the possibility of toddler tantrums, in me or the children. Yes, one’s horizons might thus narrow to Monkey Bizness and the Grange, but on the other hand it means never having to be stuck half-way up the Hindu Kush playing ‘I Spy’ for fourteen hours in order to avoid an epic scream-fest because the yak’s milk tea tastes ‘yucky.’

Then last week we were driving along the A27 when Thing Two stuck his head out the window and said, ‘I want to go up that mountain.’ For sure, Mount Caburn isn’t the H. Kush but it’s big for a small boy who’s been shielded from adult pursuits. We took him at his word and a few days later caught the train to Glynde and walked back to Lewes over the ‘biggest mountain ever’. Predictably, he started to moan immediately we left the train. But by the judicious distribution of chocolate-based snacks every ten yards, and by sherpa-ing him on the back of an obliging sheep, and, yes, by playing ‘I Spy’ even though he would insist that ‘grass’ begins with a ‘j’, we made our first successful return into the world of grown-up walks.

I’ll just about be ready for another one next year. In the meantime, it’s back to the Grange Café. Once the weather’s settled down a bit, anyway.

Beth Miller, 7th April 2011. Published in VivaLewes.com. Photo by Chris Winterflood.

If I ruled the world, every day would be the first day of Spring

I have broken Rule 243 of parenting. (For a copy of the complete rulebook send £14.99 to the usual address.)

‘For the last time, I don’t care what they say, March 1st is NOT the First Day of Spring!’
‘But Mummy! The teacher SAID!’

Rule 243 states: ‘Thou Shalt Not Disagree with Things Primary Teachers Have Told Your Child.’ There’s a clause which lists exceptional circumstances around creationism and sexism and whatnot but we rarely need to invoke this in Lewes.

Thing One’s nearly in tears, for I have brought Doubt and Confusion to her small teeming mind.

I try and restrain myself, force a smile and mutter, ‘We’ll have to agree to disagree won’t we,’ (which I completely don’t agree with), before I break rank and shout, ‘But everyone knows it’s the 21st March.’

Once Crèche Manager has arbitrated, rather poorly in my opinion, by telling me to grow up and by letting Thing One watch four episodes back-to-back of Chop Socky Chooks, I sneak off to confirm that I am correct. But Google is a horrible let-down. Apparently the 1st/21st argument isn’t new; as far back as 2006 Nicholas Winterton, Tory MP for Macclesfield, was taking up the cudgels in this debate. To my chagrin I realise I am on the same side as Winterton, and that it is the Met Office who have designated 1st March as Officially Spring. I frantically search for evidence that Winterton might know more about these matters than the Met. Is he perhaps a secret climatologist or hippy? But in amongst all his jolly activities such as supporting Section 28 and capital punishment, there is no mention that he likes to send up weather balloons, or even that he hangs seaweed from his window.

As penance I offer to take Thing One on a walk so she can be knowledgeable about the Signs of Spring and impress her teacher in a way that my playground ranting might have failed to do. There are many signs: the ducks are back on the Winterbourne Stream, there are purple crocuses most everywhere, and some trees have sprouted brave blossoms. Someone walks past with a plastic daffodil on their lapel and I try and engage them in Welsh but they hasten quickly away. Thing One rolls her eyes at me, a Sign of Teenhood I wasn’t expecting to see for a few years.

We go through the Grange: catkins, green leaves, mating frogs, (‘Come ON, Thing One!’ ‘But Mummy this is interesting.’). Then into town: Priory schoolgirls with bare legs, the road being dug up, Easter eggs in Waitrose.

‘There,’ I say magnanimously. ‘You and your teacher are right. It is Spring after all.’

But Thing One scrunches up her brow, clearly struggling to comprehend the bewildering nature of evidence versus anecdotal report. ‘Mum, if it’s Spring why is it still freezing?’

‘Well sweetie,’ I say, failing to hide my glee, ‘That’s something you’re going to have to ask your teacher.’

Beth Miller, 1st March 2011. Published in VivaLewes.com and Viva Lewes handbook, March 2012

You say bananas and I say banahnahs

It’s another rainy day in Baltica – the rain’s outside, to be fair – and we’re discussing greengrocers, and how they’ve almost disappeared.

'When I were a lass,’ says Cycle Girl, ‘there were greengrocers everywhere. They had little signs stuck into the fruit which said ‘apples’ or ‘bananas’ for their slower customers.’

Born and Bred Boy says, ‘I remember before The Flood, when Bills was just a large scruffy greengrocers.’

‘The Flood starring Noah?’ asks Absent-Minded Girl, the sort of person who would benefit from those ‘apples’ signs.

‘Greengrocers used to bag up your fruit themselves,’ says Aging Lad. ‘None of this self-service malarkey.’ Lad, as his full name suggests, is getting on a bit. Probably used to date Mrs Noah back in the day.

‘The greengrocers at the top end of town still bags up your fruit,’ says Grange Girl.

‘Where?’ asks Absent-Minded Girl.

We all point up the road.

'You mean up at St. Annes,’ says Sweary Mary.

‘St Annes is just the church.’

‘No, it’s the whole blinkin’ area.’

‘I call it that bit where the butchers is,’ says Cycle Girl.

‘I call it Western Road, ’ says Aging Lad.

‘But that’ll never catch on, Lad,’ I say. ‘Because there’s a school called Western Road that isn’t in Western Road. So if you say you’re going to Western Road, no-one knows if you mean the school or the top end of town.’

‘To be honest, no-one cares where you’re going,’ says Aging Lad.

I hit him with one of Baltica’s fine painted teapots.

‘Born and Bred Boy should decide,’ says Grangey magnanimously. ‘After all, he does live up there.’

‘Top end of town,’ he says.

We huddle round a piece of paper to draw the boundaries. A small fight breaks out over whether it should begin at the Shelleys or Lewes Grammar, but after some rough work with the teapot we compromise on the bottleneck. It’s clearer where it finishes: at Morris Road Garage (which isn’t in Morris Road).

‘Not at the prison?’

‘The prison is in the next area along.’

‘Which is called?’

‘That bit with Baron’s Down Road in.’

‘That’s not a very slick name.’

‘You know what’s interesting about the top end of town?’ asks Grange Girl. ‘It’s small, but has everything a person needs. Pubs, churches, school. A greengrocers, chemists, butchers, takeaway, sandwich shop and an undertakers.’

‘And a paint-your-own-pottery place.’

‘Oh yes, that too.’

‘I’ve often thought I’d be fine if Lewes flooded again, but you know, much worse,’ says Born and Bred Boy. ‘I’d grab supplies from the shops and climb to the top of the Council tower. They’ve probably got water coolers, so I’d survive for weeks.’

We all think about that.

‘I wonder how I’d go if the Grange Road area flooded,’ says Cycle Girl.

‘That’s part of blimmin’ Southover,’ says Mary.

‘It’s clearly in Winterbourne,’ says Grange Girl.

‘You’d be stuffed, whatever you call it,’ says Born and Bred Boy happily, pouring another cup of tea.

Beth Miller, 16th Feb 2011. Published in VivaLewes.com and in Viva Lewes magazine, April 2011. Photo by Alex Leith

And I love you till my fountain pen runs dry

Last weekend I bumped into Honesty Girl, and asked if she too was going to Seedy Saturday.

She looked down her nose at me in a manner reminiscent of the great Edith Evans dismissing the very idea of a handbag (or for a more modern reference, the look on a Mexican’s face when discussing Jeremy Clarkson).

‘Good gracious no. It’s bad enough when the weather’s nice, but today…’ she gestured to the windy rain swirling round us. ‘No, today I’m going to buy up the remaining stock in Sussex Stationers.’

‘It’s such a shame, isn’t it?’

‘I’m gutted. It’s another blow; I was in a state for weeks when Pen to Paper closed. It’s a conspiracy, you know.’

‘Is it?’

She pulled me into a huddle and hissed, ‘They don’t want us to have the means of communication. Slowly they’re removing all pens, paper and chalk from the town.’

‘Chalk?’

‘Then they’ll have us just where they want us.’

‘But we’ll still have email and texts and the internet, won’t we? Who are “they” anyway?’

‘Ssssh!’ She looked round wildly, and I thought significantly, in the direction of the parking shop.

‘The NCP? But why would they…’

‘Not them. Heavens! Say no more. Walls have ears.’

She straightened up and said in her normal voice, ‘Well, better go. I want twenty tubes of Pritt. Enjoy your… seeds.’ You sad little person, she didn’t quite add.

I never worry too much about the state of my friends’ emotional wellbeing. It’s their little foibles that make them interesting. So off I went in the rain to be seedy. But after a few swaps and some merry banter in the Grange my mind started to wander, becoming preoccupied with thoughts of nice crisp pastel-coloured card, fresh packs of Berol felt-tips and multi-coloured drawing pins.

Stationery unites people. You’ll find that if you confess a deep love of paper-based items, many others will reveal the same passion. My first job was in a stationery shop, applied for as a foot fetish might seek work in Russell & Bromley. I was not only allowed but positively encouraged to rifle through rainbow post-it pads and align packs of envelopes by size. I became something of an expert on posh pens, and once sold a solid gold Mont Blanc to a rich gentleman with no taste. I had to take it out of the safe, which remains the highlight of my working life.

News that WH Smiths have bought up Sussex Stationers brings some cheer, though we don’t yet know if they’re going to Smith it up, close it, or turn it into something un-stationery. Just in case it becomes a boutique, I went to the sale and bought a pile of notepads and a packet of chalk.

‘Look!’ I showed Honesty Girl at the checkout. ‘Now they won’t be able to stop me communicating.’

She gave me that Evans/Clarkson look again. ‘It wouldn’t hurt you, actually, to communicate a bit less,’ she said.

Beth Miller, 9th February 2011. Published in VivaLewes.com

You’re gonna make me lonesome when you go

Summer has ceased abruptly, reminding me of that Peanuts cartoon where all the leaves fall off the trees in one mighty ‘whump.’ As the mercury sinks so the mind turns to quintessentially autumnal questions: is it environmentally wrong to pop the heating on yet? Must I wear a jumper instead? Where in fact are the jumpers anyway? Oh please can I put the heating on? When then? All right, can you pass me the duvet?

September’s metaphorical back-to-school vibe is compounded this week by Thing Two’s actual start at school, a fortnight after everyone else for doubtless excellent reasons known only to reception teachers. So from Friday all my little chicks will have flown, and with a whump my seven years of the pre-school round will end. Gone, the familiar weekday routines: hanging out in an empty Grange, watching Thing Two make mud pies amongst the primroses; performing resistance tests on playground equipment; wiping apple juice off our seats in Neros; trotting round the shops when they are quiet.

I think we might have outstayed our welcome in some of the shops though. This week Thing Two and I were told off in both Wickle and Bright Ideas. I like an independent shop as much as the next person (unless the next person is from Transition Town, in which case they win), but I do wonder if shouting ‘We love kids coming in here BUT…’ is exemplary commercial policy? Whereas boo hiss chain Costa has always greeted Thing Two and I with great warmth during the innumerable times we have repaired there for his favourite chocolate milkshake (till I discovered that a Frescato was essentially an enormous coffee with a hint of chocolate. Which might explain the bouncing around in Bright Ideas.)

‘What will you do with yourself when both Things are at school?’ is a question I have been asked a lot lately.

Grange Girl suggested I consider the small ads of Lewes News for day-filling ideas. I noticed she’d already ringed some: dolls house club, embroidery workshop, and singing for larks.

I thanked her, put Lewes News in the recycling and turned on the heating (the one cancels the other out, you see). To put a dampener on any further talk of embroidery, I then started to draw up a timetable of things to do.

Day One. Have bit of a cry, then get a grip. Go into Bright Ideas without incident.
Day Two. Fold his little clothes and have bit of a cry. Then get a grip. Go into Neros and spill own drink on seat to make self feel at home.
Day Three. Watch something on telly other than Ben 10. Then watch Ben 10 for old times’ sake. Have bit of a cry, then get a grip.
Day Four. Make mud pies in the Grange. Fail to cry.
Day Five. Forget I have children and arrive late for school pick-up.

Personally, I think the time will fly by.

Beth Miller, 15th September 2010. Published in VivaLewes.com and in Viva Lewes October 2010 magazine. Photo iStockphoto

Hey, you’ve got to hide your love away

‘Say again? I didn’t quite get that.’

Country Mouse was on the phone, murmuring even more quietly than usual.

‘I said, what Lewes venue would you recommend for a secret assignation?’

I shook the phone. ‘Sorry, Uncle Adultery. I thought I was talking to Country Mouse.’

‘It is me!’ Mouse squeaked furiously. ‘Stop making your judgemental face.’

Spooky. How could she know that?

‘Daytime. Private. Somewhere no-one in ___ would dream of going to.’

She named her home village, which I have Jane Austenly disguised, and will give no further clue than to say it is a handsome shire, lying quite fully nine miles hence.

Fired up with curiosity, I popped on large sunglasses and wrapped my hair in a scarf, Jackie O style (or so I fancied, till Man of the House started reminiscing about Hilda Ogden), and set off for town.

Lewes looked different now I was seeking dark corners. All my usual haunts were too exposed. Café Nero had just one hidden table, at the back behind a pillar, and the noise of the coffee machine would drown out discreet conversation. What could she be up to? A dodgy financial deal or criminal activity seemed unlikely. Mouse would surely not sully her soft leather-gloved hands. Romance, then. And she wanted to keep well away from nosey villagers. Fair enough. We dwellers of bustling metropolises are above such idle speculation.

Unsurprisingly, I bumped into Hoxton Mum in Bills (completely open-plan). She suggested the Zu Studios, but their space is only available ‘for those who promote creativity and positivity’. Say what you like about Country Mouse, but she’s never bothered with that sort of thing.

I tested the new café, Baltica, but after ten minutes in a window seat I’d been waved at by everyone I ever knew (and by some complete strangers too). Neither Pelham House nor the Real Eating Company are over-endowed with nooks. I thought the dimly-lit downstairs bar at Buddha Belly would be perfect, but it was not only shut during the day, but seemed shut in a more global sense.

After extensive research, I presented Mouse with a shortlist of three. Lewes Patisserie on Station Street, thus far largely undiscovered; downstairs at Robsons - not very glamorous but certainly no-one would find you; and Shelleys, with its cranny-filled garden and nineteenth century vibe.

By cunning sleight of hand I extracted the date of Mouse’s tryst, and spent that day scampering around town looking for her. When at last, I gave up and walked home across the Grange Gardens, I discovered her under a lilac tree with Aging Lad.

I greeted them warmly, saying, ‘Lad keeping you company till your gentleman arrives, eh?’, before registering her blushes and his ill-bred gestures. With a shocked and possibly judgemental expression on my face, I hastily backed out whence I had come.

Beth Miller, 8th June 2010. Published in VivaLewes.com. Photo by Alex Leith

I’m on the pavement, thinking ‘bout the government

Not long now till we set off to put that vital X on the ballot paper. Thing One is beyond excited. Since last time we voted in Lewes, for the County Council, or whatever it was, she regards elections with an awe bestowed upon very few other activities. Going To Vote is in the same league as spending an hour in the Build-a-Bear Workshop in Churchill Square, or being allowed an ice cream and a cake at the Grange.

If only it were the spirit of democracy that so fired her imagination. I wish she were enlivened by a deep and historical understanding of the struggles Emmeline Pankhurst and the Monster Raving Loonies went through to bring suffrage to all. But no. I’m afraid the reason for her anticipation is because at the Council election, a kind man at the desk gave her a gobstopper. She’d never seen one before, due to my Lewes parent’s internal checklist, in which gobstoppers are clearly listed as a choking hazard, between ‘gherkins’ and ‘golf balls’.

She reverently took the sweetie and popped it in her mouth. Then I voted, which doesn’t take nearly long enough, by the way. All that fuss, all that campaigning, all that media hype and canvassing, all that listening to commentators sticking the word ‘gate’ on the end of every gaffe, all that watching three white men in different coloured ties arguing on telly, and then it’s just one quick squiggle on a piece of paper. I did a little smiley face next to it, to spin out my time in the booth, and to show that I understood the importance of the thing.

I remember the strength of my conviction, when I cast my first vote as a student in 1987, that my choice would get into power. They were bound to, simply because I was now participating. I was staggered to find this wasn’t the case, and it was a useful life lesson, I guess. One I’ll have to explain to Thing One in twelve years or so.

We left the church hall and I made the mistake of telling Thing One that when I was a kid, and before gobstoppers (and British Bulldog) were banned, they changed colour as you sucked them. She took the sweet out of her mouth to inspect it, and dropped it instantly into some mud. It did change colour, right enough, but only to brown. She was pretty good about it, sobbing for little more than forty minutes.

So that’s why she’s excited about going to the polls. She’s hoping to have another shot at a gobstopper. Something about her optimism reminds me of all us voters, shlepping off to make our mark. Even though we know that whatever we do, the government will still get in. And once they’re in, whoever they are, experience shows us that it won’t be long before the shiny coloured sweetie slips, and falls in the dirt.


Beth Miller, 5th May 2010. Published in VivaLewes.com. Photo by Alex Leith

My stethoscope is bobbing to the throbbing of your heart

It’s not that I don’t feel sorry for poor Thing Two, holding out his painfully twisted arm to me and sobbing uncontrollably. Of course I do. My maternal heart-strings are properly tugged.

The reason I’m smiling, as I administer soothing kisses, is because, for once, I Know What To Do. When a child staggers in, their knee geysering blood, or displaying a lightsaber-shaped wound to the forehead, the Lewes parent can confidently say, ‘Righto. We’re off to the Minor Injuries Unit. Again.’

In an uncertain world, where people can’t get back from their hols, and other people think Nick Clegg will make a suitable prime minister, it’s good to have something as reassuring and stable as the Victoria Hospital up the road. A hundred years old, shy and low-key, it’s always there. Even on Sunday afternoons.

I’ve been to the Minor Injuries Unit a lot since having kids. Not quite enough to have my name noted on a secret ‘child at risk’ register when I swish through the door, but certainly enough to have been gently interrogated last time (septic cut), as to why I hadn’t brought Thing Two sooner. The real answer was: ‘Because if I brought him every time he got a scrape we might as well move in, in which case these joined-together chairs will have to go.’ But instead I explained that I’d been too busy smoking reefers and watching wrestling. This is the sort of answer they are looking for.

Those of you used to the high-tech hospital car-parks of Haywards Heath and Brighton will be astonished to find the one at the Vic is free and unregulated. Therefore you will never get a space. Don’t even try; it’s heart-breaking. Walk, if the injury allows. Otherwise get a cab.

Twice I have been seen straight away (I was the only patient). However, if you do have to wait, you will be pleased to see that there is a chocolate vending machine, a smattering of Lego, and a telly. The telly, tuned permanently to an unsuitably confessional programme, and situated too high up to change, is extremely useful in distracting children from their pain. The small price to pay later will be them asking you what a foreskin is.

When I mentioned my love of the Minor Injuries Unit to Pells Girl, she tried to tell tales of unsatisfactorily mended elbows, but I stopped her mouth with a Garibaldi. I’ll not hear a word against the Vic. The nurses are angels, the admin staff heroes and comedians. It’s not just for children, either. I was once quickly cured of a dreadfully painful and debilitating injury*, and sent humorously on my way.

Minor Injuries Unit, open 8am-8pm, seven days a week. See you there.

* It was a splinter. Look, I couldn’t get it out by myself. I couldn’t find a needle. And it WAS very big. The nurse said it was a whopper, so there.

Beth Miller, 28th April 2010. Published in VivaLewes.com. Photo by Alex Leith

She knows she's the chocolate girl

Easter has changed its meaning over the years. When I was a child, it was a time of dismay, because it always coincided with Passover. This is a Jewish festival, so called because the Angel of Chocolate passes over the houses of Jewish children and gives them matzos instead. A matzo is a large square cracker; pleasant enough, but not really a substitute for delicious creamy chocolate. Makes a lousy sandwich too. Bite into it and it explodes into fragments, which is why at Passover, Jewish mothers all carry dust-busters in their handbags.

If only I’d been aware, back then, of Richard Dawkin’s proposition that bringing up a child within a religion is tantamount to abuse. Though he selfishly didn’t make this statement till 2006, far too late for me. To be fair, being brought up a liberal Jew wasn’t usually abusive so much as wishy-washy. Until I was given some criminally horrible ‘approved for Passover’ chocolate, at which point I would have been only too happy to ring Social Services and expose my parents as monsters.

Once I grew up and could abandon the faith of my forefathers, which I did gladly, Easter became a time of supersize gluttony. There were lost years to make up for. Soon after Man of the House and I got together, he briefly left me alone in the car with a large Easter egg which we were taking somewhere as a gift. By the time he’d paid for the petrol, I’d laid waste to it like a plague of locusts, and had no defence other than to mumble, thickly, ‘You were sold a pup, this box only has half an egg in it’.

When my kids were toddlers, Easter became a lovely four day break, spent gazing at their dear little faces as I scoffed the many presents they’d been sent, and occasionally chucked them a smartie.

Then Thing One started school, and Easter is now an immensely long holiday for which I am completely unprepared. Two weeks? Hang on, we’ve only just had half-term. Everyone else must have been secretly planning, as they’ve all gone away, in a mass Exodus (I still remember my Old Testament). In their stead, come a load of people from other places.

In Neros yesterday, I didn’t recognise anyone. You can normally guarantee to see Hoxton Mum at least; she’s always sitting in the window sipping a skinny soy something. The place was heaving, but it was filled with strangers, holiday-makers in wind-cheaters, all talking about how quaint and nice everything was.

I strolled around, looking at Lewes through their eyes. I guess the castle is quite cute. And there’s a Monsoon. And a brewery. Fair enough, it’s got everything you need for a mini-break.

Then I found myself at Catlins. He still had a couple of Montezumas eggs left. I sat in the Grange, frenziedly ripped off the cardboard and tinfoil, and spent a therapeutic afternoon shaking off the memories of my deprived childhood.


Beth Miller, 7th April 2010. Published in VivaLewes.com. Photo by Alex Leith

I'm still standing

After the long, hard winter it’s going to be a bumper spring: flowers and birdies and whatnot bursting out all over. So say the Met Office, and they’re never wrong. You can already see, in the Grange Gardens, the first signs of the sap rising. There are daffs, and cute purple crocuses, and those regimented rows of primroses the poor gardeners are contractually obliged to plant each year by the megalomaniac Primrose Consortium. Young people in their black school uniforms lie snogging on the damp grass. Grange regulars step delicately over them, clutching their thermoses, for the café won’t open for a little while yet. And ladies of all ages roam uncomfortably, for the toilets, too, are not yet unlocked.

Hoxton Mum and I basked on a sunny bench, watching our small boys battling the Forces of Primrose Evil, armed only with destructive urges and large pointed sticks.

‘Where’s the nearest loo?’ I pondered. At present, it was merely an idle enquiry, but would doubtless become less theoretical at some future axis. ‘Kings Head’, I continued, ‘They’d probably let me use theirs if I buy a bag of crisps.’

‘Alternatively’, said Hoxton Mum, rummaging in her bag, ‘You could borrow my shewee.’ She showed me a pink plastic funnel which came in its own velvet bag.

‘Um…’

‘It’s a portable device for women so they can stand up and…’

‘Yes, I get it.’ I glanced round. Two women were frowning in our direction, and I felt a surge of embarrassment, but they were just glaring at Thing Two and his flowerbed redesign. That’s all right then. I turned back to Hoxton Mum.

‘Where on earth did you get it?’

‘Lewes Outdoor Shop.’

‘Seriously?’

‘It’s the most marvellous invention. I bought it last year for Goodwood. Frankly, the facilities there… well honestly.’

I looked at Hoxton Mum with new interest. She sat calmly, sipping coffee from her Burberry flask. In her chic outfit and spiky heels, she was the epitome of whatever a shewee woman is not. I confessed my surprise.

‘It’s hygienic and convenient. No more ruined shoes. And it’s totally empowering. Look!’ She opened her Stella McCartney jacket to reveal a t-shirt in suffragette colours of silver and purple, emblazoned with the legend, ‘Stand up and take control’. Then she said, ‘Blast. Chipped a nail.’

I put the lid on my thermos. Too much tea.

‘Are you telling me, Hoxie, that behind the majestic trees of the Grange, women - including you - have taken to micturating in an upright position?’

‘Quiet, the children can hear you.’

The situation was now less hypothetical and more pressing. I stood up, though only as a precursor to perambulation, and not as a, well, stand, against biology. ‘Can you keep an eye on Thing Two?’

I tried the Kings Head, but being only 9.30am, it was shut. I returned to the Grange. Hoxie handed me the little bag, and a disinfectant spray. I chose a suitably broad-trunked tree, and disappeared behind it.

Beth Miller, 24th March 2010. Published in VivaLewes.com and in Viva Lewes magazine, March 2011

Baby, it's cold outside

Whenever I hear someone’s thinking of getting a puppy, I always ask if they’ve considered a toddler instead. There are similarities – boundless enthusiasm, weeing on the floor – but toddlers have the edge because they’re reluctant to go out in bad weather. They won’t stand by the door holding their reins and looking hopeful. They will resist vigorously, clinging grimly to inadequately earthed items such as crystal vases.

But though they object, pre-schoolers, like puppies, need to go out every day and romp off some energy. Where to, when it’s cold and wet?

Expensive:

Monkey Bizness. Massive cushioned aircraft hangar. Not dear in money terms, if you take just one toddler and stay all day. Costly, however, in terms of the toll on your sanity.

Lewes Castle. Marvellous dressing-up room in which to enact fantasies of being a thirteenth century toddler. Town model will hold pre-schoolers’ attention for just seventeen seconds.

Paradise Park. Unbeatable for indoor activities. Most toddlers are terrified of the implausible looking dinosaurs but the kind staff will let you bypass them.

Budget:

Library. The children’s section is very good. Not free, as your child will force you to rent a Pingu DVD which you will fail to return, incurring enough fines to have bought the damn thing outright.

White Hart. I’ve never tried this but am told that toast costs about 50p and you can watch swimmers in the pool below. The White Hart does not market itself as a ‘toddler hang-out’, so use sparingly.

Ocean Adventure at the Leisure Centre. Tiny, low-rent Monkey Bizness. Has a crèche most mornings so you can have a grown-up swim/quick nap. Hot chocolate from the machine is better than the tea.

Toy Library at the All Saints. Toys, biccies, tea, company. Only open on Wednesday mornings, no point banging weepily on the door at other times.

Toddler groups. There are enough of these in drafty church halls that you could spend your whole week lurching from one to the other. Terrific if you find like-minded parents. Beyond depressing otherwise. (LDC keeps a list.)

Free:

Wyevales Garden Centre. Much missed is the unfenced koi carp pond, but there are lovely wooden playhouses (boring people call them ‘sheds’). There’s a café so you might have to spend money at some point.

Inside Outside. New ‘creative playgroup’. Their website hints they’ll be outside whatever the weather, before admitting they have a nice big warm tent. Untried but it looks good.

Toys R Us. Before your child realises this a shop, tell them it’s a toy museum. Don’t buy anything or the gig is up.

Booth Museum. Only if you can face explaining the principle of taxidermy. Thing Two set off an alarm last time.

Grange Gardens. Technically outdoors, but on cold sunny days before the café opens the benches near the hatch are bathed in warmth. Toddlers, sprinkled with Grange magic, will play happily for ages. Thing Two and I are often the only people there, so keep it to yourself.

Beth Miller. Published in VivaLewes.com

But my words like silent raindrops fell

We took advantage of the open day thingy to nose round the Friends Meeting House. It was a lofty chamber of tranquillity, in which even the children spoke in hushed whispers. We imagined the building in use, echoing with silence. But a nice lady who gave us tea and some rather good Victoria Sponge said, ‘Ooh no, we have tons of kids in the side-room on Sundays and it’s really noisy’.

Just an hour after visiting the Friends, we encountered two women in the Grange Gardens, Not Friends, who brusquely told Things One and Two to be seen and not heard. They said they had come to the Grange for peace and quiet.

‘Well why sit right next to the café at lunch-time on a Saturday then?’ is what I should have said, but instead suggested they might prefer the Knot Garden, a space specifically set aside for meditation and repose. ‘No, we want to sit here’, they replied, giving me no other option than to attack them with Thing Two’s Power Ranger.

Clearly, if I want somewhere relaxing for the Things to play I should take them to hang out with the Quakers.

So where in a small town can you go for a bit of p and q?

When I were a lass, it was libraries that were silent chapels of contemplation. No sitcom was complete without a secret being loudly blurted out amongst the bookstacks. Then a bunch of elderly extras in mackintoshes, one of whom was contractually obliged to have a fussy little moustache, would chorus ‘Shush!’

In fact I believe it was this tiresome cultural stereotype which caused libraries to re-think their noise policy. Now you go into, say, Lewes library, and the place is awash with people talking at a normal pitch. Parents read out loud in the children’s area, and often there are music groups, with toddlers bellowing, ‘The Children on the Bus Make Too Much Noise’. People do their shopping on the library computers and yell, ‘HOW MUCH?’ just as if they were at home. Say ‘shush’ in a library nowadays and everyone will look at you like you’re an out-of-touch weirdo, which you are, and may suggest you move along to the Grange Gardens.

Oddly, the quietest place I have encountered lately is Monkey Bizness. Their spelling. For those of you who’ve never been (oh lucky people), it’s a windowless warehouse filled with slides, massive cushions and screaming children. Usually, the decibel level is what Phil Spector was aiming for with his wall of sound, except much, much louder.

But the other morning, after being bullied into taking him there by my child’s freakish mastery of maternal guilt, we found we were the only visitors. Thing Two swiftly scaled a twenty-foot climbing frame and disappeared, as though into a black hole, and I sank into a leather sofa. It was exactly like being in a huge, silent padded cell. I must tell the Grange Garden ladies. I think they’d like it.

Beth Miller. Published in VivaLewes.com and in Viva Lewes magazine, October 2009. Photo by Alex Leith

Anything is possible when you're sowing the seeds of love

I couldn’t think what to do with Uncle Adultery when he paid us an unscheduled visit on Saturday. In desperation I suggested the Seedy thing at the Grange Gardens and to my surprise he jumped at it.
‘Why do you call him that?’, whispered Grange Girl, gazing at him in shock and awe. Uncle Adultery always cuts a bit of a dash; doubly so in this straw-strewn tent scattered with Lewes worthies in woolly hats.
His unusual moniker is not a slur on his private life but rather his professional one: he runs a dating agency for married people who want to have affairs. I know! Whatever happened to initiative?
His slogan is ‘Attached? Yet Need a Loving Friend?’ and he has made a packet from it, for those of you recession bunnies considering a change of portfolio. His pale gold Prada suit, accessorised with purple shirt, white Italian moccasins and loud Received Pronunciation caused all heads to turn as he sauntered round the stalls, looking puzzled.
‘Dearest niece’, he boomed finally, ‘I can’t see a single thing that could be granted the nomenclature ‘seedy’. Where are the burlesque ladies? Where are the gentlemen’s etchings? Where, in short, is the va-va-voom?’
Honestly, if he didn’t exist, I’d have invented him. Grange Girl pretended she wasn’t with us, and hid under a bookstall selling tomes such as ‘Apocalypse Now: Use String to Protect Your Family’ and ‘Yum! Mung Beans!’ I’d been interested to see Grangey and Uncle A together as I couldn’t imagine two more different universes, but she gestured at me to make him go away.
My Uncle gave one last hopeless sweep of the room to ensure he wasn’t missing a pole-dancing display somewhere, then allowed me to show him round.
At first he was impressed: ‘They do your garden for free here, Niecey! They charge £25 an hour in Kensington!’
I gently explained the principle behind land-share, whereby people with gardens share them with people without for mutual gain and fresh veggies, but he just nodded as though I were simple and said, ‘Yes! Free gardening!’
However, he was confused by the man giving away small packets of compost (‘Yes, dear fellow, but why would I want it if you value it so little?’) and completely mystified by the seed swapping element of the day.
‘Now let me just see if I’ve got this straight’, he harangued them. ‘I give you some SEEDS’ - pronounced as though it were a foreign word - ‘and you give me some different SEEDS?’ They nodded, uncertainly. ‘And then what?’ he cried, ‘Where will it all end?’
At this point I sidled off to spend a futile yet pleasant hour milling flour. I was rather astonished, on my return, to see Uncle and Grange Girl sitting on the window ledge in the foyer, talking intently. As I approached, I heard her say, ‘Really? That’s extremely interesting’, and she twisted her wedding ring round and round.

Beth Miller, 2nd February 2009. Published in Vivalewes.com, and in Viva Lewes magazine, February 2010. Photo taken by Alex Leith

So good they named it once

It's not often, walking round town, that you start to ponder the many ways in which Lewes is actually a lot like New York. In fact, it's never happened to me before. It probably hasn't happened to anyone before.

But suddenly, on Saturday, there I was, thinking, hmm, yes, Grange Gardens is just like a very small, clean, safe Central Park. If you squint a bit. And the twittens are kind of laid out in a grid, really, aren't they? Just not a very conventional grid.

What, I hear you plead, led to this Manhattan-obsessed train of thought? I'm glad you asked. It was a small thing, really. I was trundling along the High Street, and I'd like to say I was minding my own business, but that's not true, because not only was I peering nosily into every shop window and smiling randomly at old ladies, but I'd also just caused a minor fracas in the bank, the details of which needn't detain us here.

Anyway, in the midst of this not minding my own business, I was suddenly brought up short by an unfamiliar and extremely unexpected sight: a chollah in the window of that cheesy shop (as in, they sell cheese, not that they are naff and like Val Doonican).

A what? I hear you gentiles cry. A chollah: it's a plaited loaf, traditional in Jewish homes on a Friday night. Well you could have knocked me down with a chollah, as the old saying I've just made up goes. I haven't seen one of those since the last century when my dear old East End mum would mutter an ancient blessing over such a loaf on Sabbath evenings (and would be ably supported by my brother and I saying 'Get on with it, we want to watch 'Winner Takes All').

I bustled in to the cheesy shop and was about to seize a chollah, possibly two, for who knew when these times would roll round again, when a horrible thought struck me. This was Lewes, right? Not Manhattan, or Ilford, or Hove, even. Probably - and here I let out a disappointed sigh - almost certainly, this chollah was nothing but brioche in rabbi's clothing.

'Is this brioche?' I asked the sales assistant, putting the full force of my disdain into the word so that it sounded as if I was swearing.

'No', she replied, 'It's chollah'. She pronounced it perfectly.

Strolling away with the bag under my arm (I only bought one in the end - it's just a loaf of bread for god's sake, nothing to make a song and dance about), suddenly Lewes was lit with a more cosmopolitan light. My overdraft-related fracas in the bank now seemed like a vibrant and forthright exchange between two colourful and busy city-types, rather than an overheated scene of public humiliation.

And that wasn't all. Why yes! Like New York, we have an amazing array of shops, some of which even sell things you want to buy. We have restaurants with food from many nations, although mainly Italy. We have a melting-pot of people, from all over Sussex and the south-east, and if we don't have a mayor who preaches a zero tolerance regime, we do at least have a parking system which operates on the same principle.

So ran my thoughts, as I wandered home, imagining that the lone Big Issue seller was in fact a large number of witty pan-handlers, and that if I popped into Beckworths they could sort me out with salami on rye to go.The chollah tasted of brioche, by the way. But it was very nice brioche.

Beth Miller December 2008. Published on Lewes.co.uk