Planning my own fun

As a child, I loved planning. Special occasions were as much about enjoying the anticipation as relishing the event itself. When our summer holiday approached, I created countdown charts on graph paper. Each square represented an hour to be coloured in. Such was my enthusiasm, when the chart was about half-complete I'd change the axis and redraw it on a larger scale. Eventually, after a few revisions, there'd be a square to fill every five minutes, which meant the time between finishing breakfast and walking to school became an unusually productive time of day. Then there were the library visits to research our destinations, the notes I wrote... I'd pretty much experienced the holiday in advance before mum and dad had even loaded the car.

This fondness for project management was reinforced by the TV shows I watched during the 1970s and 1980s. In Mission: Impossible, the Impossible Missions Force would be given their instructions every week via self-destructing tape. They’d make a plan and would carry out their mission (if they chose to accept it) to save the world from plotters in fictional Eastern European countries. Then The A-Team crashed onto ITV in their GMC van, with Colonel John 'Hannibal' Smith telling us he loved it when a plan came together. Their enemies may have been closer to home but the format was pretty similar: a briefing, some far-fetched plotting, at least one explosion and a wisecrack to wrap things up.

These days, I live in a village where everyone has a plan. Ringmer has a non-explosive neighbourhood development plan that was adopted following a referendum in November 2015. It becomes part of the decision-making process when Lewes District Council and the South Downs National Park Authority are considering planning applications, although sadly it doesn't offer much help when the county council proposes closing the local library. Best-laid plans and all that, as Robert Burns nearly said.

Which made me realise the flaw in all these schemes. All my holiday ideas were at the mercy of little brother, whose fondness for steam railways caused many a detour. The secret IMF team was often at risk of discovery, despite their implausibly effective latex masks. And nothing went as expected for The A-Team, even though they were a crack commando unit. Yet, in all these cases, everything worked out alright in the end.

Could this be a lesson for me? Apparently so. Last Christmas, a study published in the Journal of Marketing Research suggested that having a strict schedule for your weekend wasn’t a good idea. Not only did this reduce the excitement from anticipating your activities, it also reduced the enjoyment you experienced from each event. The best solution, according to authors Gabriela Tonietto and Selin Malkoc, is to keep your plans relatively vague until the day of the occasion. Which means it’s probably best if I put my graph paper away this year.

First published in Viva Lewes magazine issue 136 January 2018.

Don't look back in manger

I’m dreaming of a traditional Ringmer Christmas. A turkey from butcher Lew Howard, a swift half in the pub after the carol service and a trip to the convenience shop for a pint of milk on 25th December. However, this year there’ll be a few additions. I’m planning to acquire a copy of Pears’ Cyclopaedia, a long-established pre-internet tome that may need to replace our local library if the county council’s proposed closure goes ahead. And there’s a family get-together planned, so our two-year-old grandson will be playing a significant role in the festive celebrations. In fact, there’s a good chance he’ll provide the main entertainment. That’s because every generation of young people learns a useless skill to a high level of expertise. When I was a kid, it started with the yoyo. I’d just about mastered ‘walking the dog’ by the time my contemporaries had moved on to Rubik’s Cube. Next came videogames. I lost interest fairly quickly, mainly because the only game I knew was the monochrome Asteroids machine in the corner of the coffee bar – and that cost 10p a go. Thanks to technology, today’s teens play games that look more like war documentaries, dexterously tapping their fingers to explode three-dimensional Nazi zombies rather than two-dimensional rocks. Our grandson already has his own specialist video-related party piece: he can peel a croissant in 15 seconds without taking his eyes off the latest TV adventures of Peppa Pig. This is a trick I might try to refine for long car journeys.

As well as practising pastry exfoliation, I probably ought to adopt a few more of the latest seasonal trends. According to The Sun, ‘extreme cleavage’ is one of the biggest fashion trends for Christmas 2017. This statement is illustrated with a photo of Amanda Holden’s chest and a reminder of her age, as though the ability to use double-sided tape is somehow remarkable for a 46-year-old. I’m already expecting some extreme cleavage at the dinner table, although ours is going to involve the turkey. Also predicted by style gurus is the return of tinsel. That’s no surprise to me: ours has been returning annually from a black bin bag in the loft since it was bought in Woolworths. In addition, financial experts have been cautioning against over-enthusiastic spending. Good news for all my friends, as it gives me an excuse to return to my childhood recipe for home-made peppermint creams, neatly presented in vol-au-vent cases and tasting more like toothpaste than confectionery.

Most importantly, this kind of back-to-basics Christmas means I have the perfect opportunity to teach my grandson some of the festive songs that meant so much to me as a schoolboy. All together now: "While shepherds washed their socks by night..."

First published in Viva Lewes magazine issue 135 December 2017

Trying to help

I’m no Nostradamus but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this year’s Lewes Bonfire celebrations featured an effigy of Donald Trump straddling a nuclear weapon, rather like Slim Pickens in the film Dr Strangelove. Then again, there are plenty of local issues that have caused upsets during the past 12 months. Perhaps we’re more likely to see someone astride a railway carriage.

Yes, it’s that time of year again. The time of year when we Ringmer residents adopt a supportive role for our neighbours. November sees our village retreating into the flickering shadows as Lewes welcomes – if ‘welcomes’ isn’t too strong a word – thousands upon thousands of visitors. On 5th November, Ringmer becomes an unofficial park-and-ride site. Dozens of people heading south into Lewes take the opportunity to dump their cars outside the shops and pick up the bus. I’m sorely tempted to start my own taxi service, just for one night.

Recently I’ve been lending a hand even closer to home. In fact, I’ve nominated myself as Head of Operations whenever our grandson comes to visit. Before he arrives, I move the television remote control onto a shelf and hide Rupert the cat under a pile of cushions. And when he leaves, I tidy up – which is surprisingly upsetting. Not because the house is suddenly silent, except for an almost imperceptible feline sigh of relief. No, it’s because most of the boy’s toys have some kind of electronic element, which means virtually every one laughs or applauds ironically when I move it. It's like a scene from Poltergeist, except the possession is battery-powered rather than demonic. Almost inevitably, as I carry the repacked box of toys out of the lounge, a digital voice from the bottom of the collection will shout “yay”.

Arguably I’m sometimes a little too inclined to help others. One particularly traumatic incident happened several years ago, when I met a worm that was heading across the pavement towards the road. Towards an unpleasantly sudden demise, I thought. Now, I wouldn’t usually touch a worm – apparently it hurts them – but desperate times called for desperate measures. There was a six-foot wall surrounding the nearest garden, so I picked up the worm and flung it over the wall. Instead of reaching the lawn, it landed in the branches of a small tree, with the force of my throw causing the worm to wrap around itself like a bolas hurled by an Argentinian cowboy. Even from a distance, I was pretty sure I could sense its annoyance. So perhaps that worm is a modern-day fable. Perhaps it was a way of telling me that trying to help isn’t always appreciated, even if you’re certain you can make the world a better place. Or perhaps it’s telling me that I should practise my throwing. I have a grandson to entertain, after all.

First published in Viva Lewes magazine issue 122 November 2016

Teach your children well

"You're this week's number one girl
But one girl will never do"

That’s part of the chorus to ‘This Week's Number One’, a song started but never quite finished in the 1980s by teenaged songwriter Mark Bridge. Yes, me. I’ll be honest, the title was a cynical attempt to increase potential sales. I imagined hordes of my pop-loving contemporaries walking into their local record shops and being given a copy of my single after saying “I'd like this week's number one, please”.

There are three points to be made here. Firstly, although it may have seemed unlikely at the time, I have subsequently become a professional writer and – thanks to this very column – can now describe myself as a published songwriter, too. (So ‘yah boo sucks’ to the kid who laughed at me back then, just in case he’s moved to Lewes.) And secondly, my younger self clearly didn't have a clue about real life, did he?

At this stage I’d like to cite Elton John's Part-Time Love and Stevie Wonder's Part-Time Lover to emphasise my third point. I have clearly been influenced by the songs of my youth. Educated by them, you might say. And I'm sure I'm not the only person with such influences. As I’ve grown older – and smarter, I hope – I’ve treated my entertainment as entertainment, not as a behavioural guide. Just as well, really, when you consider that I grew up with Benny Hill on prime-time television. Fortunately I preferred the work of Frank Sinatra, whose apparently effortless style involved him hitting each note a millisecond before it was too late, and Buddy Greco, a man who chuckled to himself like a naughty schoolboy during the introduction of almost every song. While my school friends adopted role models like surgeon Christiaan Barnard, a remarkable man who transplanted an extra ‘a’ into his first name to keep it working longer, I was endeavouring to model myself after musicians who didn’t take themselves seriously.

This irreverence has stayed with me. Fast-forward to the first time I heard Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers LP. I laughed out loud. As far as I'm concerned, the song Who Knew had the same shock-value humour as Julian Clary's ‘Norman Lamont’ line or Stan Boardman and the Fokke joke. (If I’ve lost you here, you’ll find the answers on YouTube. Please don’t look if you’re at work or before the children have gone to bed.)

However, amongst all the comedy and the deliberately offensive material there’s also important stuff to be learned from song lyrics. Take Anita Bell’s 1979 locally-inspired chart-topping song of female empowerment, for example. Backed by an electronic drum and the sound of chimes she repeats her upbeat message: You Can, Ringmer Belle.

First published in Viva Lewes magazine issue 120 September 2016

Searching for reality in Ringmer

When I was a child, I liked to read comics. They helped make me the person I am today. I learned dog-training from Dennis the Menace and Gnasher, I learned social interaction from the Bash Street Kids and I learned feminism from Pansy Potter, the Strongman's Daughter. But it was The Numskulls that made me question the very fabric of reality. In this cartoon strip, six tiny people lived inside a man's head, controlling his thoughts and his body. It's a concept that was refined by Pixar for last year's animated film Inside Out, which featured five colourful emotions inside the brain of an 11-year-old girl.

Whilst The Numskulls were never going to win points for biological accuracy, they certainly scored highly when it came to surrealism. Brainy - the leader, naturally - worked in a room with a teleprinter and a suggestion box. In the mouth, Alf and Fred (whose names sounded as old-fashioned to me as 'teleprinter' does today) would break up food with pickaxes. There was a Numskull behind the eyes, one for the ears and another for the nose. Fortunately, everything else seemed to take care of itself. As I grew older, I swapped my comics for science-fiction, where I discovered more simulated reality in the stories of Ray Bradbury and Philip K Dick, and in assorted films, from Tron to The Thirteenth Floor.

All this helps explain why I'll happily argue that time isn't necessarily linear (which means I'll never miss a deadline again) and colours only exist inside your brain (no more mismatched socks). You may disagree with me, of course. But it's unlikely you'd suggest sending me to the Ringmer Asylum. Back in the mid-19th century, that could have been a very real threat.

In 1829, a couple of years after the Royal Horse Artillery had vacated its Ringmer barracks, the buildings were turned into what was described as a lunatic asylum. It was privately owned, charging its patients the equivalent of 75p per week. Records show that 20 patients were there in 1830, with eleven being restrained during the day and six at night. (I’d like to think the night-time restraint was nothing more than a particularly heavy duvet, similar to the 16.5 tog behemoth that Mrs B uses to keep me subdued in the winter.) Over the next 25 years, the Commissioners in Lunacy reported that conditions improved and then declined. Eventually, in 1855, Ringmer Asylum closed when the proprietor died. Today, the cries of patients have been replaced by barking, as some of those former barracks buildings are now kennels for the Southdown & Eridge Hunt. Mind you, I reckon I could probably stop the barking quite easily. If those hounds ever gneed extra training, I have gnumerous tips from a gnotable source.

First published in Viva Lewes magazine issue 114 March 2016