The Philosophical Cat

It was towards the end of November when my wife and I first realised that Rupert the cat wasn't well. Instead of having a bit of food, wandering off and coming back for more, it seemed he'd been forgetting to return. And then he stopped eating altogether. His weight dropped dramatically. Even his purr withered away. Our fifteen-year-old feline friend wasn't just at death's door; he'd pushed open the cat flap in death's door and was preparing to jump through. Whilst his housemate Harry was in fine form - six fully-working mice brought into the house one weekend - dear old Rupert had stopped joining us on the sofa every evening and had started to hide under the hedge. We'd bring him in, he'd take himself back out.

Although Rupert seemed ready to give up on life, Mrs B and I weren't going to let him quit so easily. We tried to tempt him with his favourite foods - sliced ham, tinned sardines, buttery toast crumbs, a little bit of Victoria sponge - but without success. I even stocked the kitchen cupboard with luxury cat food. We took him to the vet, where he was injected with vitamins, steroids and an antibiotic. "He seemed a bit unhappy", the nurse told us when she handed him back. I thought he seemed fairly relaxed. We were the unhappy ones.

Unlike me, Rupert was very good at living 'in the moment'. He didn't care what other people thought about him. He wasn't raging against the unfairness of everything. He wasn't regretting a misspent youth of goldfish-eating and frog-hunting. Despite the apparent passing of his 'best before' date, he was happy with his lot. It felt like I was being given a valuable lesson about stoicism and the philosophy of not worrying about the future.

After the vet trip, we started keeping our increasingly frail cat indoors in case he became too ill to find his way home. The next morning, when I came downstairs, Rupert was lying on his side in the middle of the floor, looking more like a poorly-constructed papier-mache model than a genuine pet. He lifted his head wearily when he heard me. At least there was still hope, I thought. Perhaps he'd like some ham. He turned his head away apologetically. Didn't I understand anything?

I fed Harry, made a cup of tea and went for a shower. When I came downstairs again, Rupert stood and wobbled over to greet me. Was that a miaow? I cracked open the emergency tin of Waitrose 'luxurious and delicate' cat food that I'd bought in case his appetite returned. It had. He cleared the bowl and then looked at me optimistically. In fact, he gave the distinct impression he'd like something similar for breakfast tomorrow. I think it's his way of reminding me he's a cat, not a philosopher.

First published in Viva Lewes magazine issue 112 January 2016

Dreaming of a Short Christmas

Apparently coffee mega-retailer Starbucks has declared war on Christmas. This season’s takeaway cups are plain red, which some activists say is an attack on Christianity. However, it’s not the lack of festive decoration on the cups that troubles me. It’s their arrival eight weeks before Christmas.

Honestly, I’m not an anti-Christmas grouch. I’m merely an anti-Christmas-in-October-and-November campaigner, with a little bit of there’s-too-much-commercialism-these-days thrown in for extra flavour. Humbug flavour, of course.

For example, I love a bit of Nat King Cole; I just don’t want to hear about his roasting chestnuts when Hallowe’en pumpkins are still on sale. I’d like my Christmas to be focussed on innocent childhood wishes, the annual emergence of tissue-wrapped tree decorations, frosty mornings, sparkling tinsel and twinkling candles, not Coca-Cola’s illuminated truck and ironic retro-styled jumpers. In many ways I'm hoping for an updated Victorian Christmas, packed with plum puddings and candlelit carols but without the cholera and workhouse poverty. But what if this wasn’t a dream. What if it was the law?

Let me take you back to Thursday 12th November, when the village of Ringmer went to the polls. Don't worry, people of Lewes, you didn't miss out. Your polling cards weren't lost in the post. This one was just for us. You see, we voted in a referendum to determine whether we wanted Lewes District Council and the South Downs National Park Authority to use Ringmer's own 'neighbourhood plan' when ruling on planning applications. It was all about decentralisation: I’m told our 'yes' vote means we villagers will have more control over local development. Maybe we’re now only a small step from a second referendum vote that would give us full independence from our neighbours.

And come that day, we could choose to be the UK’s first village with legally-enforceable rules about Christmas. No longer would shops be permitted to sell jellied fruits in September or install their lustrous point-of-sale displays during British Summer Time. Instead, our festive preparation would begin 12 days before Christmas and would end exactly 12 days afterwards. Gifts would be restricted to those mentioned in traditional texts: toy drums, dolls, kiddie cars, gold rings, partridges, that kind of thing. Stockings, not pillowcases, would hang from fireplaces. And sales of cranberry sauce would be strictly rationed.

Or perhaps the citizens of this newly-liberated Ringmer wouldn’t be too bothered about how anyone celebrated the season as long as they were having fun. Actually, despite the occasional grumble, that’s definitely the choice I’d make. Goodwill to all. Fireworks, fairy lights, feasting… whatever you choose. Mine’s a skinny gingerbread latte with cream and extra sprinkles. But not before 13th December, please?

First published in Viva Lewes magazine issue 111 December 2015

A snail's space

I’m tiptoeing across our patio in the dark. Silhouetted in the moonlight, I cast a sinister shadow rather like a Scooby-Doo villain. An ominous rumble accompanies every step I take. It’s Sunday night and I’m moving our wheeled bin onto the driveway, ready for it to be emptied in the morning. However, my caution isn’t an attempt to keep quiet. It’s prompted by the large number of snails that inhabit our garden. You see, I have a particular fondness for snails, although I’m not quite sure why. Perhaps it’s the childhood trauma of having stood on one. Perhaps it’s the graphic description of snail farming that our French teacher gave us at secondary school. Either way, I don my outdoor slippers and tread very carefully whenever I’m in the garden at night. If I didn’t, there’d be a lot of crunching.

Actually, I’m not sure if tiptoeing is a smart move. Although it reduces the size of my footprint, it increases the pressure if there is any unfortunate snail-related incident. Maybe I ought to wear bigger shoes to disperse the impact. I wonder what size of shoe I’d need to ensure the safety of the average snail? A quick internet search reveals that dancing en pointe in ballet shoes can double the pressures acting on a foot. Therefore, strapping a pillow to each foot might be enough – but my A-level physics fails me at this stage. I’m tired and it’s time for bed.

Just a few minutes after my head hits the pillow I’m drifting off into a world where snails are telepathic. They’re trying to teach me something about Newton’s Second Law of Motion. Julia Bradbury is there, too. Perhaps she’s making a TV show about my pillow-shoe invention. She smiles at me and… hang on, Julia, I’m a married man. My wife…

My wife’s phone wakes me with a beep. She picks it up from the dressing table to see who’s sent her a message. “Sorry”, she whispers. I’m relieved it’s only the dream snails that are telepathic. The message is a casual inquiry from her daughter, whose five-month-old son is yet to adopt conventional sleeping. Anything that involves our nocturnal grandson is forgiven, of course. He’s a delightful chap to whom I’ve already promised an action-packed trip to the zoo when he’s a little older. After all, if a grandparent's role is to indulge their children's children, then a step-grandparent's role is surely even more anarchic. I’ll need to behave like some kind of louche character that might be portrayed on film by Hugh Grant or Bill Nighy, arriving at every birthday party on a Harley Davidson and wearing a smoking jacket. But there's one thing I haven't decided yet. Should I accessorise with pointy-toed slippers or extra-wide soft-soled shoes?

First published in Viva Lewes magazine issue 110 November 2015

Good news for moths and mothers

One evening in August, I stood outside with my wife and watched the Perseid meteor shower, wishing on a handful of shooting stars before returning indoors to the sofa. Thanks to Ringmer's dark skies, we didn't need to journey beyond the end of our driveway to experience this nocturnal display. You see, we don't have much street lighting around here. There's some on the B2192 to ensure road safety but most of the village is unlit. This has been a local preference for many years; apparently the introduction of street lighting was debated back in 1895 when Ringmer parish council was first formed (chaired by ex-MP William Langham Christie, since you ask). And it isn't just a local quirk: government guidelines say planning decisions "should limit the impact of light pollution from artificial light on local amenity, intrinsically dark landscapes and nature conservation". That's especially pleasing if you're an astronomer or a moth.

A few weeks later I'm visiting mum in West Sussex, sitting at her dining table and talking about home improvements. Suddenly the conversation takes an unexpected turn, reminding me of strange events that only happen under cover of darkness. "Do you have tanks everywhere where you are?", she asks. Perhaps this question wouldn't have seemed so left-field if it had come from a Ukrainian pen-friend, but the context seems completely incongruous. Nope, no military activity whatsoever. We've not had a midnight coup. The county border remains free of razor wire. Maybe I've misheard. "Sorry... what?" I haven't misheard. "Tanks", replies mum. "Do you have tanks where you live?" Oh dear. Perhaps it's time for one of those quick-check medical conversations that involves asking my mother if she knows the date and remembers who the Prime Minister is.

Admittedly, there was a time when armoured vehicles were occasionally seen on the streets near mum's house. They were delivered at night to the local premises of a company called Hunting Hivolt, where high-tech communications equipment would be installed. It was the army equivalent of secretly dropping off your Ford Capri to have a cassette player fitted and a couple of loudspeakers embedded in the parcel shelf. However, the business hasn't been there for years. I rack my brains for an explanation of mum's question. There's an awkward silence. Mum looks exasperated. "Tanks for hot water and cold water. Do you have those in your house?" Phew. Mum's not lost the plot. She's preparing to have a new gas boiler installed; a fairly urgent requirement after the previous one had rusted from the inside out. Installing a new boiler will involve removing her hot water tank, hence the concern. Incidentally, mum had been alerted to the problem by her carbon monoxide detector - "why's this thing keep going off?" - which she'd dealt with by knocking the detector off the wall with a broom handle. A lucky escape, you might say. The scene could have been much darker.

First published in Viva Lewes magazine issue 109 October 2015

Looking for trouble in Ringmer

The Viva Lewes office was hot. Hotter than a Scotch Bonnet at Lewes Chilli Fayre. I took off my trilby and threw my trenchcoat over a chair. Sunlight squeezed through the Venetian blinds like a misdirected delivery truck driving down St Martin's Lane. My editor rolled up her sleeves and bit the end off a cigar. "The theme for September's magazine is Law and Order", she snarled. "You'd best make this one good. You don't want to end up like him." She gestured with her cigar towards a Norman Baker-shaped mound in the recently resurfaced part of Station Road. "And don't think you can get away with writing your column as some kind of Film Noir parody."

As if. Look, I’ve checked Ringmer’s police statistics and, whilst we’re not entirely innocent, the number of offences barely reaches double figures each month. That’s not much to talk about. It seems the youngsters are all busy stealing cars in the virtual world of Grand Theft Auto, not nicking hubcaps from their neighbours. So, in order to boost our local stats, I’d like to propose five new conversational crimes that town-dwellers need to avoid when they visit us.

1. Anyone in a group of people who sees a sign that reads 'Warning, electric fence' must not attempt to persuade another member of that group to touch the wire, no matter how great the potential for slapstick comedy. The penalty for transgression requires the perpetrator to stand in a puddle and touch the fence.

2. No one is allowed to complain about poor mobile phone coverage or to describe their location as 'the middle of nowhere'. That seems a bit like visiting a health spa and moaning about the lack of cream cakes.

3. Making comparisons with The Archers is forbidden, unless the discussion involves any technical innovation featured on the show. Any mention of high-tech animal husbandry is the equivalent of a get-out-of-jail card.

4. Under no circumstances is anyone permitted to lean over a five-bar gate whilst chewing a piece of grass and say "arrr", particularly not in an accent approximating a West Country pirate.

5. Referring to Ringmer as a 'large village' should be avoided. A large village is a town.

I walked back into the Viva Lewes office. I hadn’t started this thing, but it was up to me to finish it. The pieces of the puzzle had fallen into place. I sat at my typewriter and wrote my five rules. Time crawled by like the Harveys dray going uphill. Eventually I gave the finished document to my editor. She put down her whisky and looked up from her desk. “Hey, Clyde”, she said. “You forgot one thing. Rule number six: don't try to talk in the style of a fictional 1940s detective. Too many clichés there. You might have gotten away with it if hadn’t been for that pesky kitsch.”

First published in Viva Lewes magazine issue 108 September 2015

In which I need more than a hand

My wife is a remarkably patient woman. I can go for days without expressing an opinion, infuriating her with phrases like "I'll have whatever you're having", only to react with zero tolerance to the smallest piece of advertising hyperbole. Today she finds me standing on a metaphorical soapbox, channelling the spirit of Tom Paine. "It's the theme for Viva Lewes magazine. They've chosen 'handmade'. I can't write a column about that. I think I'm hyperventilating." Mrs B raises an eyebrow. "Breathe into this", she says, and passes me the paper bag she keeps handy for these occasions. “Anyway, what’s bothering you?”

Well, as far as I'm concerned, 'handmade' is an empty word that's usually hyperspecific or uselessly vague. I'd argue it's as counter-intuitive as 'homemade', which is commonly used by restaurants to indicate that the relevant component of your meal was cooked in their own kitchen. In that sense, 'homemade' is actually meant to reassure us that our food wasn't made in anyone's home.

Similarly, I reckon 'handmade' has little to offer but confusion. To start with, it tells us the product isn't natural. In this sense it's the same as 'man-made' - which is reminiscent of 1970s shirts that generated enough of a static charge for the wearer to shoot electricity from their fingertips like a superhero. 'Handmade' means the item wasn't formed independently by our planet, unlike spring water, kittens and bananas. It's artificial. Yet 'handmade' also warns us that the end product isn't much good. It's not laser-cut to within a fraction of a millimetre. It's not precision engineered on a lathe. It's not been assembled by robots on a computer-controlled production line. Chances are, it's a bit rough around the edges. Artificial and imperfect. It's hardly a recommendation, is it?

Of course, there are exceptions. I'd like my art to be handmade, thank you. (Unless the artist chooses to employ another part of their anatomy.) But I'm not worried if the baker uses a mechanical mixer when making my bread.

I can tell my ranting isn't going down well at home, so I pop out for a walk round the block. On my travels I discover the recently opened and appropriately named ‎Café Ringmer (note the accent), where I order a cappuccino. The woman behind the counter creates my drink with the help of a serious-looking espresso machine. I wonder whether there ought to be a new phrase for 'handmade with the help of technology'. Maybe something sci-fi like 'cyborg-crafted' or 'mecha-enhanced employee' would be a better description. As I sip my coffee, I realise that I don't care about 'handmade'. What I care about is care itself. And if we’re using ‘handmade’ as a synonym for ‘made with care’, I’m perfectly happy with that. Because care is something that only comes from people. Much like opinions, I suppose. I’m sure Mrs B will be delighted that I’ve finally found one.

First published in Viva Lewes magazine issue 107 August 2015

An American doppelganger

As far as I can tell, there's no Ringmer in the USA. Although there is a city of Lewes in Delaware's Sussex County (named by expat William Penn, who may have been feeling a bit homesick), those of us living on the other side of Earwig Corner don't have any transatlantic clones. We Ringmerites are true originals. But what if Mr Penn had gone a step further?

Well, according to every Hollywood B-movie I can remember (and an old copy of the National Enquirer I once saw in my dentist's waiting room), this American interpretation of Ringmer would be located on a crossroads in the desert. Route 66, not the B2192. In my imagination, tumbleweed blows across the petrol station forecourt, where an old man in dungarees is standing by the pumps. Instead of a friendly pub there's a diner - advertised by an intermittently-working neon sign - that's run by a former Marine and an impossibly glamorous waitress. Customers have waffles for breakfast and, much to the confusion of residents in Lewes, order coffee by saying "I'll have a coffee, please" rather than "can I get a skinny decaf cappuccino, a little on the wet side?" Bowling takes place in an alley, not on a green. Oh, and most people shop at the drive-through supermarket where they buy high-fructose corn syrup and shrink-wrapped shotguns.

Somehow I suspect real life isn't much like that. However, Ringmer can (as I mentioned a few months ago) claim a couple of key roles in American history. In 1636, local vicar's daughter Ann Sadler married John Harvard. They moved to America, where Harvard's bequest of £780 helped to found the university that now bears his name. These days you'd be lucky if that money saw you through the first month of a new term. A few years later, Ringmer resident Gulielma Springett married the aforementioned William Penn. As part of a debt repayment, Penn was given a large parcel of land in America. He wanted to call it 'Sylvania' but King Charles II insisted he named it 'Pennsylvania', which duly happened in 1681. All are remembered in our village road names: Harvard Road, Penn Crescent, Sadlers Way and Springett Avenue.

And I can claim my own transatlantic connection. Back in the early days of the world wide web, when Dave Gorman was still learning how to use Google, I was contacted by a man in the USA who shared my name. This other Mark Bridge introduced himself as a singing cowboy. I was delighted; it felt rather like finding a time-travelling relative. And although I've subsequently discovered we both have a more-famous namesake who plays professional football in Australia, it's the folk singer I'm especially pleased to be associated with. But which one of us was the first Mark Bridge? That's a bit of a worry. Surely I'm not a pale imitation of myself?

First published in Viva Lewes magazine issue 106 July 2015.