Muck and brass

 

  

The photo above is from a another side-turning off the main road here in Brighton, very close to my own little street. We are set off one of the busiest thoroughfares for local business in the city; within easy walking distance of the Palace Pier, the Pavilion and the Brighton Wheel. Not that this makes any difference to the immediate scenery: there are similar mounds of household and commercial rubbish and recycling across Brighton and Hove.

This post is really an open letter to Brighton and Hove City Council; the content has been emailed to them. Our refuse and recycling teams have been on balloted strike, as we approach the most crucial time of the year for seaside establishments. A wildcat strike in May resulted in a backlog of rubbish that couldn't possibly be cleared before the work to rule and current strikes commenced. In my particular area, our wheelie bins were removed just before the strike started, as part of a pilot scheme for communal bins. I would have welcomed this move, having rented in an area with only communal bins when I first moved here. But they were emptied everyday. When such large, focal collection points are left uncleared, the results can be seen in these pictures. Talks with the unions started in February; surely the pilot scheme should have been postponed if there was even the threat of disruption to services? The council initially suggested we take our rubbish home, but they had no (printable) suggestion as to where we should now put it.

The road cleaners have been part of the strike. Brighton's famously prolific gull population, who must think Christmas and Armageddon have arrived all at once, are skilled and ruthless binbag-rippers. Our pavements have been strewn with bits of pizza, fish and chips, vegetable skins and leftovers, much of it beginning to rot. Some bags clearly contain disposable nappies and sanitary items; also the dog poo the council has trained it's residents to scoop and wrap up. We have a wily and determined fox population too, and we've been warned that infestations of rats and maggots could follow.

Most people in Brighton are thankful that June has so far not been "flaming": probably one of the few parts of these isles that would rather forgo a long hot summer than suffer the accompanying long hot smells. However, the council and police warned residents about other flames: an arson attack would be disastrous with rubbish piled so high in front of houses and shops. The newly placed communal bins were meant to be strategic for flats and multi-resident housing, bus stops and food outlets.

Most of us have only a vague idea about the background to the strike. We know that the workers are concerned that changes to council staff allowances could effectively result in average pay cuts of £4,000 a year. The council say this is unlikely and that any changes have been brought in to safeguard existing jobs. But this is not a "poor" council: Brighton and Hove increased our council tax by just below the government capped maximum this year; the same as the previous year.

Sympathy for the working man and woman has been stretched as summer in the city so far has being uncomfortable for residents and visitors alike. Yet recent media polls showed that more than half of all residents questioned felt the council must be at fault. The strikers have not being paid and their families are living, eating and playing next to the same piles of rubbish as the rest of us. The council seemed to be in continual talks with the unions but at perpetual standoff. It didn't help the council's case that their representatives claimed things were moving encouragingly while the GMB, Britain's General Union, called the situation one of stalemate and animosity.

Having elected Dr Caroline Lucas as the UK's first Green Party MP in 2010, Brighton and Hove City Council is also Green by slight majority. Their mandate focuses on sustainable environmental policies and fair trade and business initiatives. Caroline Lucas was until very recently also the leader of the national Green Party; she stepped down from that role to concentrate on her parliamentary duties and local issues. To date, she hasn't made a comment about the refuse crisis. 

Today, B and H Council and the GMB have issued a joint statement, announcing that the industrial action will be "temporarily" suspended while new proposals from the council are considered. It's claimed that the proposed changes to services will be beneficial to residents as well, although of course the residents haven't been consulted with or even told what these changes will be. The council website does however point out that it's against the law for council tax payers to withhold any part of their bill due to the disruption of service, health hazard or inconvenience.

Brighton's increased number of rough sleepers have obviously been affected badly by the dispute. Some have taken to clearing rubbish themselves and trying to limit the carnage from the gulls. It's been both moving and disturbing to see this. Like most residents, I love Brighton warts and all, but open rubbish tips on main roads and along the seafront were avoidable and are not acceptable. Due to recent experience, most of us have no faith that the backlog will be cleared quickly or easily. The suspension of industrial action is temporary; there's no mention of contingency plans if the 28 day consultation fails.

Oh and instead of warning residents that we could face legal action if we pull back an effective refund for loss of services, perhaps an open and honest apology and explanation were in order. A guarantee that next year's council tax charge will reflect this sorry situation wouldn't go amiss.

Just sayin'.

 

 

  "Dirty Old Town" The Pogues (version)

 

 

 

 

Birds and beads, trees and tries

"Try to be better than yourself."

(William Faulkner)

Photo: Gigi, album

Whenever I take down Christmas decorations, it usually makes me feel a little deflated, as though I'm packing away cheeriness. My decorations are largely lights and garlands, and beads, berries and birds on my pot plants. I don't care for tinsel, and my own Christmas tree is a living, growing, potted one that I've nurtured and nagged for more than ten years. Everywhere that I've moved, Noel the Tree has moved too. He started his life with me in South London; a tiny, ornamental but non-specified fir from Sainsbury's. He was stuck in a red plastic flowerpot, with fake snow on his branches. Just the right size for Mum's mantelpiece, he was supposed to be thrown away by Twelfth Night, but I have a problem throwing away anything that's still even vaguely green and vibrant. When I realised he was actually rooted and growing, I decided to encourage him to be a tree. 

Re-potted several times since then and now more than six feet tall, he guards my back door. He has his own set of solar star-lights which he wears all year round, but he also has his own silver star and poinsettia garlands for Christmas. He did look rather camp at Christmas; he seems to be flourishing in Brighton's misty dampness. He's withstood being diagnosed as disposably ornamental, some mis-management from my Mum, and being hacked about by my brother-in-law who thought he was an unpruned and misguided shrub in Mum's front garden. During moves from London and then across Brighton, he's been locked in storage, knocked down basement steps and ridiculed and disrespected by various removal men. I'm an admirer of trees generally for their strength and dependable longevity; I'm extremely fond of Noel the Tree.

It didn't really take long to dismantle festivities in my little house this year. Traditionally, I try to give the last piece of the last mince pie to the birds in the back garden - feathered ones, not some bedraggled hen-party who've stumbled off the main road straight into my rose bushes, confused by Noel's twinkling. The other day, I watched for at least ten minutes while a very small robin tried valiantly to fly off with the largest piece of pastry. Luckily, Ginger the tom from next door was purring obliviously at the bottom of my stairs. 

I've never really seen a robin in a tizzy before. Every time he started to fly away with the pastry, he would drop some and start flapping and spluttering. What appeared to be a fat thrush popped down to muscle in; the robin saw him off in no uncertain terms. Eventually, he got a larger piece up to the safety of my garden table, where he pecked and gulped it down, all the while keeping a bright eye on the rest of his hoard. He then hopped down and secured another large-ish morsel, then another. Eventually, he finished all of it on his own and did a little twitchy victory-dance around the garden table; I felt like applauding him.

Photo: Gigi, album

I've already told friends that I haven't really made resolutions this year. However, after writing about Brighton's phoenix-like spirit and reflecting on my own hardy Christmas tree,  grown-up from a supermarket novelty, I've encountered probably the toughest little robin this side of Hastings. On New Year's Day, I watched the skaters on the ice-rink in front of the Pavilion. As soon as the ice was cleared between sessions, a motley crew swished and staggered out. There was a lot of wobbling and clomping, quite a bit of teetering and rail-clinging; surprisingly little falling. From six to sixty year olds, there was a palpable sense of "trying". There are some rather pompous looking plastic "practice penguins" with grip handles for the very young or very wary, but they were largely left redundant. There was a lot of smiling: it made me feel that it really is exhilarating to have a go and then just great when success surprises you. 

One little girl of about seven stumbled out on her own and skidded straight into the barrier while her dad struggled to attach his skates. She looked terrified, with her feet splaying in opposite directions, but she'd circumnavigated the rink by the time her father had reached the ice, clinging to the rail the whole time. As she crashed against the barrier near me, I gave her an encouraging grin. She managed a wry little smile back as she lurched past the practice penguins disdainfully.

My schoolfriend Bernie used to send out letters and cards of encouragement including the motto:"Dream, Believe, Try, Achieve". Having lived her own advice, she's achieved many things since leaving the convent, including writing several books about whatever has fired her enthusiasm, and founding the influential "Women's Environmental Network". The Green MP for Brighton, Caroline Lucas, is one of their "matrons": the WEN doesn't have "patrons". I've actively appreciated the first half of Bernie's motto: I do believe in the power of dreams and goals, and I do have faith which enables me to be strong for people and things I care about. I even have a niggling awareness of my capabilities. But I then stop short of actually trying sometimes. 
As the frost set in towards the end of 2012, I wrote it off as one of several years with more moans than merriment, more losses than treasures. Last night, after spotting that one ceramic berry I hadn't taken off the ficus plant, I realised it's simply been a trying year; and therefore literally one full of opportunities for trying. Groucho Marx famously said that he wanted to live for ever and would die trying to; Judy Garland once declared that she definitely did believe in the power of a rainbow and had spent her whole life "trying to get over it". Somewhere between these two sentiments, there is a little patch of wintry ground where hopes, like little robins, shy away from calling themselves resolutions, just in case some quirky blonde is watching from the window. 
My godfather, "uncle Bob", was a bit of a trier  although he was often written off by folk as a dreamer. He was a former docker and merchant seaman from a working class family in a run-down part of Southwark, south London. He hadn't had the best education in the world, certainly with no time or funds for formal musical or literary instruction. Yet at his packed funeral in Rotherhithe some years ago, doubting friends were amazed to hear that he really had become a river pilot on his beloved Thames and indeed a Master Mariner; he actually had joined the Black Watch guards and learnt to play bagpipes; he did eventually have one or two of his many country compositions recorded in Nashville. 
A fellow lover of Robbie Burns, uncle Bob would recite huge chunks of his poetry; "Auld Lang Sine" was his favourite. He also particularly liked T.H. Palmer's "Try, Try", but I only realised why it was special to him after he died:

"'Tis a lesson you should heed, 

If at first you don't succeed, 

Try, try again. 

Then your courage should appear, 

For if you will persevere, 

You will conquer, never fear; 

Try, try again." 

When he suffered a heart attack at the age of seventy, it seemed inconceivable that he might not pull through: he was a battler, after all. My mother and I were stunned when his body seemed to give out on his spirit and he died of organ failure. My godfather's seemingly mundane and humble life had actually been an unpublicised Curriculum Vitae of persistence and quiet triumph.

I've always appreciated that a score in rugby is fittingly called a try, rather than a goal. Anyone who's ever played will testify to the deliberate and concentrated effort behind every try. Sorry to sound disparaging to any footie fan, but I've never heard of an accidental score in rugby ; it's not really possible to score an "own-try". So, my one resolution is actually just to try, about whatever and whenever I feel passionate to do so, but hopefully not just for the new year. Because hope is for life, not just for Christmas.

*For my friend Mel Bauwens, another tough little robin who achieved so much last year; and for Bobby Allen, RIP*

"You can't always get what you want,

But if you try sometimes

You might just find

You get what you need."

(The Rolling Stones)

"Courage doesn't always roar.Sometimes it's the quiet voice at the end of the day, saying 'I will try again tomorrow'."

(Mary Anne Radmacher)

"Try"  Pink

"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away." 

(Maya Angelou) 

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."

(Albert Einstein) 

The water is wide and a bit brass monkeys (really rather cold)

"Do you want to go to the seaside?

I'm not trying to say that everybody wants to go.

I fell in love at the seaside;

I handled my charm with time and slight of hand"

(From "Seaside" by The Kooks)

Photo: Gigi, album

Several years ago, when I was still a born and bred Londoner, The Independent published a short article about Brighton, coining it the latest destination for Londoners in "the demographics of disillusionment". Brighton has often been dismissed as "London-on-sea": to be fair, many of the folk I've encountered here in the past couple of years have escaped from The Smoke, only to find this gritty little corner of East Sussex has some of the most polluted air in the UK.
The article rattled on about Brighton's tarnished and tired reputation and the underbelly of wide-boy entrepreneurs and gold chain wearing gangsters. Yes, Brighton can be seedy, but I've found it's an almost cosy kind of seediness, a bit like our beautiful heron gulls strewing pizza and party poppers along the pavements. The article berated Brighton's people as the real problem, citing middle-aged punks, hippies and ravers and in particular the "lentil-munchers" who believe they're special. I appreciate that many people beyond East Sussex certainly feel that a lot of Brighton folk are somehow trying to evade or cheat their way out of maturity. I prefer to view our little quirks and eccentricities as a kind of die-hard innocence. Even our lopsided and crammed little terraced streets (now marketed as charming workmen's cottages but originally Victorian slums) are painted in clashing pastel shades, in defiance of whatever is thrown at the area, meteorologically, socially or economically.
I often say that Brighton is a rusty little place to live: there's something precious glinting beneath every layer of barnacles and grime. I've seen real poverty among people since I moved here, sometimes spiritual as well as physical; yet I've also witnessed both the gentleness and the tenacity of the human spirit. It is gritty here, but let's call it true grit. The ancient settlement Brighthelmstone dates from before the Doomsday Book. The Brighton of the Regency Set and recent day-tripping has literally raised itself up from the ashes. Brighthelmstone was sacked and burnt to the ground by French raiders in 1514, leaving only part of St Nicholas' Church (the area's Mother Church) and the skeletal street pattern of The Lanes. By the 1740s, Brighton had reinvented itself as a spa and resort. I've no doubt Brighton will emerge from the current recession and any era of disillusionment with that spirit and sense of irony intact.
The Independent concluded that Brighton was "the capital for people who can't handle London", with nearby Lewes the choice for those who can't handle Brighton. It conceded that Brighton could be extremely useful: "as a dump for London's moaners". Again, I agree that many of us who are self-exiled Londoners have a bag of chips on our shoulders about constant comparisons between the two cities. "It's actually very different from London " we say earnestly,  " for one thing, we have the sea..." And the one thing about Brighton that will never be urbanised or easily dismissed is that it is unequivocally, unapologetically and un-subtly Seaside, with everything that implies. It has the green gentility of the Downs to ease back against, the Little London shot of hustle and bustle to keep it on it's patched up toes, but it is essentially a fishing village that made good and remains on the lookout and on the make to do so again. Even our beautifully gaudy and slightly incongruous royal palace, The Pavilion was once just a re-hashed farmhouse with a sea view.

 

 2013 New Year's Day swim at Brighton Pier and Saltdean, East Sussex

Traditionally, every Christmas Day since 1860 and more recently each New Year's Day, hardy Brightonians take to the sea for an obviously very chilly and apparently rejuvenating dip. This year, they were disappointed after the council closed the beach because of bad weather. With the usual high tide and burgeoning winds being taunted by the forecast of an unusually heavy sea swell it was considered too dangerous, even for experienced swimmers. The early morning temperature also fell below five degrees. Yet yesterday morning, the New Year dippers were back in force, at the pier beach and further along the stony Brighton coast. 
It was a quiet day in the city, although the pier was still lit up and winking from Christmas; like a favourite auntie after a few festive sherries, all dressed up in the hope the family are taking her out. With many restaurants closing at 6 pm, there seemed to be quite a few people wandering around hopefully, looking for somewhere to be and something to do. I ambled home last night from a lovely day out and about, with the reassuring feeling that it could only be a matter of time before they find them.

The Christmas Day swim at Brighton Pier, 2009.

"Beyond the Sea" was a favourite song for both my parents; almost instinctively it's become one of mine.

"Beyond the Sea"  Bobby Darin

"It's a good world if you don't weaken."
(From "Brighton Rock", Graham Greene)