In this, Lewes’ time of need, with Tesco threatening to supersize, Angel Property planning to build a high-rise suburb next to the town centre and Onyx preparing to build a vast incinerator down the Ouse Valley, we need the local media to be strong, vibrant and pro-active. We need to know exactly what is going on with these proposals, exactly how much social and environmental damage they are going to cause, and, if they demand opposition, exactly what we can do to oppose them. Why is it, then, that the Sussex Express, which claims to be ‘The Paper for Lewes’ has dealt with these issues in such an insipid, piecemeal manner? Why is it that most articles on these issues seem to be re-hashed press releases, occasionally written by the very organisations which should be being investigated? Why aren’t any of the paper’s journalists looking under the stones of these local issues to see what murky truths lie beneath them? Why is it that the paper’s most incisive, intelligent and well-written pieces should be located in the letters pages and penned by its readers? We call upon the Sussex Express to use the resources it possesses to get more involved in the issues which really matter to this wonderful town. We call upon the Sussex Express to reassess its editorial policy and to become the sort of newspaper that Lewes deserves and needs in these uncertain times.
We have sent a copy of this editorial to the Sussex Express for submission to the letters pages. Enjoy the week.

Art - Duncan Bullen

For the last month Duncan Bullen’s subtle, peaceful abstract paintings have made the Star Gallery a calming haven for peace-loving Lewesians to collect their thoughts. They are going down on Sunday, so this weekend is your last chance to experience the meditative effect these works can have on you. The artist spends several weeks every year in Santa Caterina, a 16th century former hermitage on the island of Elba. His visits to this spiritually rich haven have been central to the development of his unique style. Bullen’s works, painted in oils and watercolours on wood and paper, are usually shaped as circles, squares, cruciforms or quatrefoils. They seem to contain, in their subtle tonal gradations, a depth of spiritual power stored within their frames. They seem to change as you move around the room.

In the prologue of Night Prayers a critic writes that looking at his work is like ‘being at the still point of the turning world.’ He has recently published a book of the work he has produced in the hermitage, entitled Night Prayers. ‘The prayer and ritual that have been said for centuries seem to get into your skin. And into your soul, if you are watchful and prepared to watch in quiet expectation,’ he says of the experience. The next exhibition at the Star Gallery, from April 29th, will be rather different: a collection of colourful silkscreen Cuban film posters from the 60’s to the present day. AL

Drama Day

Sussex Past are offering ‘a day of dramatic activity’ for eight pluses in Anne of Cleves House today. It is a drop-off event. You’ll be leaving your kids in good hands, and in a fine setting. Sometimes it is easy to forget the rich historical heritage that we have in Lewes, and what amazing venues we have for such events.

Anne of Cleves was a wise woman, who chose not to make a drama out of a crisis after her brief six-month period as the fourth wife of Henry VIII came to an end. They had married in January 1540, effectively against Henry’s wishes. Having been persuaded to wed for political purposes, he had sent Hans Holbein to paint Anne, and was pleased with the favourable portrait which came back (see right). But it seems that Holbein had airbrushed out the queen-to-be’s smallpox scars, and Henry, on first meeting his future wife, had somewhat ungallantly declared, “I like her not”. By July, Henry had managed to annul the marriage, divorcing the woman he cruelly dubbed ‘the Flanders Mare’ to wed Catherine Howard a mere 20 days later. Anne sensibly chose to stay on good terms with Henry (by now no oil painting himself), and effectively became his ‘sister’ in the court. She managed to amass a small personal fortune, as well as a property portfolio including Hever Castle in Kent and the then-new timber-framed Wealden Hall House in Lewes. What a dramatic place for your kids to start off an illustrious acting career! NW

Walk - ESCC Downland Walk

During the First World War thousands of Indian troops were mobilised to fight in various theatres. Some of them were unfortunate to be moved from their original deployment as reserves in Egypt to the front line on the Western Front. They were ill equipped for such a struggle, and casualties were enormous. The wounded who survived the journey across the Channel, were treated in various centres on the South Coast of England - a number of them in the Royal Pavilion in Brighton. The Hindus and Sikhs who died there, and in other local hospitals used for the purpose, were cremated on the hill behind Patcham (the Muslim dead were taken to a Mosque in Woking). In 1921, to commemorate these poor men’s ultimate sacrifice for the British Empire, the government erected a memorial chattri, a domed structure on pillars, at the spot they were cremated.

The latest guided walk organised by the East Sussex County Council takes you up Ditchling Beacon and past the Chattri. The route then skirts the A27, and takes you over the crest of another hill to Stanmer Park, past Stanmer House, and into Stanmer village before turning back across the ridge and along the South Downs Way to your starting point. You are advised to take a packed lunch and a flask of coffee. It’s a fairly strenuous walk, so wear sensible footwear and a waterproof jacket.

Peace talk - Milan Rai

The last time peace activist Milan Rai was in Lewes he spent two weeks in the prison for refusing to pay a fine in compensation to the Foreign Office for statements painted on the FCO building in the run-up to the bombing of Fallujah. Rai is back tonight in the more salubrious setting of Southover Grange to give a talk about the premise of his latest book The London Bombings, Islam and the Iraq War. The book is an examination of the motivation behind the bombings.

Tony Benn is much better qualified than us to discuss the importance of the book. ‘Milan Rai’s book about the July bombings in London,’ writes the seasoned activist, ‘is clear, scholarly, analytical, powerful, persuasive, and very readable. Seeking the real explanation for those events he completely destroys the illusion spread by the prime minister that they had nothing to do with Britain’s illegal aggression against Iraq, which no one really believes. The author, a man committed to peace, holds no brief for the violence in those attacks and the suffering they caused, but patiently takes us through the circumstances that played a part in motivating those that carried them out. This is a book that everyone with a serious interest in the crisis we face must read if they are to hope to understand it, its causes, its effects, and how we might resolve it.’ The talk is organised by the Lewes branch of the CND. AL

Folk - Andy Irvine

One of Irish music’s most enduring legends concerns Planxty’s first live gig in Galway. The band, featuring Christy Moore, Andy Irvine, Donal Lunny and Liam O’Flynn had just formed having recorded together on Moore’s album Prosperous. As a live band they were an unknown quantity: no-one knew what to expect when they supported Donovan. After their first song Irvine remembers hearing the crowd going mad, but, as he was unable to see them through the stage lights, he was worried they might be booing the band off the stage. Instead they were roaring their enthusiasm, and a legend was born. Planxty went on to become highly successful not only in Ireland and Britain but across the whole of Europe: they split briefly in the mid seventies but reformed again before the decade was over and went on recording and gigging until 1983. Irvine shared the singing responsibilities with Moore: as well as playing the mandolin he penned all the band’s original songs.

Irvine is an accomplished musician on the bouzouki, mandolin, mandola, guitar, harmonica and hurdy gurdy. He tours solo as well as playing with Patrick Street and Mosaic, bands he formed after Planxty’s demise. In 2004, after a low-key reunion gig in Lisdoonvarna, Planxty briefly reformed and played further gigs in Dublin and County Clare, releasing a new album Live in 2004. Whether the band will play again remains unsure. What is for sure is that Irvine is a bona fide folk-rock legend. AL

Jazz - Howard Alden

When swing jazz first hit the scene in the States in the 1920’s the high energy it produced led to aficionados inventing a frenetic dance which became all the rage and helped push the genre’s popularity sky high. The Charleston became the Lindy Hop became the Jitterbug became the Jive as swing continued to thrive. Stan Getz continued the tradition in the sixties; in the eighties there was a resurgence of a more modern version of swing jazz in the States, thanks to a number of artists such as Howard Alden, Scott Hamilton and Ken Peplowski. Guitarist Alden was proclaimed by Jazz Times as being ‘the best of his generation’ and has played with the likes of Woody Herman, Benny Carter and Dizzy Gillespie.

When he last came to play at the Lewes Jazz Club back in 2004 he recorded a live album of the gig, which he is currently touring the UK to promote. It is called Howard Alden’s UK Four Live at Lewes. With Alden on that momentous occasion were Geoff Simkins, the local saxophone star and teacher, UK bass virtuoso Simon Woolf and drummer Steve Brown. He is returning tonight with virtually the same line-up, with British Jazz Award-winning drummer Bobby Worth replacing Steve Brown. It is doubtful whether Lewes’ collection of jazz aficionados will reproduce the sort of mad dancing which led the Nazis to brand the genre ‘degenerate’ and ban it from the dancehalls in the 30’s and 40’s. But you never know. Hamilton and Peplowski are booked to appear shortly at the club. Watch this space. AL

Why does Easter move?

One day it came up in conversation: why does Easter move around the calendar? Christmas doesn’t do that. Our birthdays don’t do that. What’s so special about Easter? We started asking around. Even the people who normally have answers for everything gave bluffy politician-type answers.
‘It’s based on the old Hebrew calendar, and the cycles don’t quite fit,’ said one guy, who edits encyclopedias for a living.
‘But it shifts, like, a whole month from one year to another.’
‘They really don’t fit.’
Google, as ever, came to our rescue. It was all decided, it seems, back in 325AD at the first Council of Nicaea, convened by the Emperor Constantine. Different countries were celebrating Easter on different days, and the emperor, head of the Christian church, wanted a simple solution to the problem. He didn’t get one. The Council decided that Easter should be held on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. This would give the holiest of days maximum light, day and night, as there would be around twelve hours of daylight, and around twelve hours of moonlight. Unfortunately it also meant that Easter could fall anywhere between March 22nd and April 25th.
In 1990, after 1,665 years of confusion over this frankly bizarre compromise (based on the Hebrew celebration of Passover) the Vatican approved the idea of a fixed-date Easter. JP2, it seems, was tired of arguments about different calendars meaning different Easters in Western and Eastern Europe, and disputes over the difference between an ecclesiastical full moon and an astronomical full moon. This approval has never been ratified. Frankly, enjoying all the unholy disruption it causes, we hope it never is. AL

Easter Traditions… Go on an Easter Egg Hunt

So, if Easter is a Christian festival to celebrate the resurrection of Christ, what’s with the eggs? And where do the rabbits come into it? We don’t remember them in the New Testament. Of course, it turns out, that they’re pre-Christian rituals, tacked onto the religious festivities. The Egyptians and the Persians both gave coloured eggs as ‘spring festival’ gifts, whilst the ancient Egyptians believed that the hare came out at night to feed the moon. In ancient Europe, eggs of different colours were taken from the nests of various birds to make talismans. People would search through the woods for them, a trip which evolved in to today’s egg hunt. The fact that eggs were forbidden during Lent also made them a sought-after prize. The first chocolate egg is believed to have been made in Germany, but it was when German immigrants took the skill to Pennsylvania that Easter started becoming such a choc-fest. After the Civil War, the hunt for the chocolate Easter egg became an integral part of the festivities.

Like many US trends, it has crossed the pond and the hunting down and devouring of eggs for mass consumption (or EMC’s as the White House might call them) has now become part of the fabric of the UK Easter festivities. So if you feel the urge to seek out and destroy some cocoa-filled monsters, see pages 12 and 16 for locations plus page 23 for dental consequences… NW

Easter Egg Hunting - with the National Trust

The National Trust is organising a number of Easter egg hunts this Easter weekend and a couple are within half-an-hour’s drive from Lewes. Ten miles east stands Alfriston Clergy House, the very first building purchased by the Trust back in 1896 (for just £10). It’s a small thatched half-timbered medieval building, with a chalk and sour milk floor, which commands good views across the Cuckmere Valley from its beautiful cottage garden. The garden’s rare array of traditional flowers will be starting to bloom: a bit of patient searching is likely to unearth a few bunnies and eggs, too

An alternative egg-hunting venue, ten miles north of Lewes, is the wonderful Sheffield Park Garden. Henry VIII spent time there as the guest of Thomas Howard, the 3rd Duke of Norfolk. The grounds as we see them today were mainly laid out by Capability Brown in the 1790’s, whilst much of the flora we can see, including the exotic arboretum, was planted around the turn of the 20th century. Rest assured: your kids’ scramble for eggs will be soaked in history. NW

Classical Music - St Cecilia’s Mass

French composer Charles Gounod is best known to modern TV-bred audiences for the Funeral March of a Marionette, which was adapted for the theme music to the Alfred Hitchcock Presents show. (Listen).
To opera lovers he is also revered for his adaptations of Goethe’s Faust and Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. However his first critical success came before any of these works were penned, and the praise came not from French, but from English critics, after the debut of his first serious work, the Messe Solonelle in G, nowadays known as the St Cecilia Mass, in St Martin’s Hall, London. “Within our experience,” gushed The Atheneum, “we do not remember any first appearance under parallel circumstances… It is the poetry of a new poet." Four years later the Mass was met with similar critical acclaim in Paris, and a star of classical music was born.

Tonight’s rendition of the Mass in St Leonard’s Church in Seaford is a rather unconventional affair. All-comers are invited to join the church’s well-practiced choir in this Easter rendition of Gounod’s much-loved work. There was a practice run-through of the work on April 10th; there will be a further rehearsal two hours before the performance. Those who do not wish to participate in the singing can turn up simply to listen to the main event, though it would be a pity not to join in, particularly in the crescendo and fortissimo after the second part of the Sanctus solo. Classical karaoke? Should be a scream. AL

Gig - Boho

Before I ring John May, the lead singer of Boho, I dig around the web a bit and find the band’s 2002 4-track EP New Beat Experience. So I listen to the songs. I like them, and find them a little hard to categorise. There’s a folky feel to a couple of them, the others have a richer, fuller, bluesy sound. A saxophone appears, and disappears again. The lyrics are grown-up, and rather sad.
“Resurrection has its rules
Watch the party catch on fire
Preacher man and holy fools
Calling me a sinful liar.”
At first I think I detect something rather Brightony about the sound. But this isn’t quite right. Then I get it. There’s something unequivocally… Lewesy about the sound.
May used to be an NME journalist, so I try a rock-cliché opening line.
“Billy Bragg meets Alan Ginsberg in the Lewes Arms?”
Mercifully he laughs, before telling me about the band. They are celebrating their sixth anniversary. Over thirty people have played in the line-up. For years the band were the centre-piece of a resident event at the Komedia Club, dubbed the New Beat Explosion, featuring the likes of Arthur Brown and Billy Childish. He cites Dylan as a big influence. “There’s a little bit of Americana and new folk in it. Not obscure. Quite danceable… I guess it’s fair to say we’re a bit of a cult.” I’m intrigued. I’m going. See you there? AL

Art - The Chalk Gallery

There are certain situations in our society in which adults can take their clothes off in front of strangers. In public showers, in designated areas like nudist beaches, in Spencer Tunick photos. In most other situations, however, public nudity is generally considered shocking, and even illegal. In the western world it is linked inextricable with sexual taboo, and the notion of original sin. In representational art, however, nudity is commonplace. There are nude statues in public spaces, nude portraits in public galleries. In Lucian Freud’s world, everyone walks around naked, and nobody minds. The artist has a licence to be a voyeur, and you are allowed to look through their eyes. Why should this be? Does something about the artistic process transcend our normal social taboos?
This thought springs to mind when you view the latest hanging at the Chalk Gallery, entitled ‘Spring to Life’. To painters, of course, ‘life painting’ means ‘nude painting’ and so nearly half the exhibits are nudes. There are large, painterly oil nudes. There are watercolour nudes, their body folds mapped out by conflicting shades of blue, green and yellow. There’s a Gauguinesque tropical nude and a seemingly abstract picture in red, black and white, which on closer inspection turns out to be two nudes, one reclining. There are paintings of women by men, of men by women, and of women by women. Perhaps tellingly there are none of men by men. It’s not shocking, and not erotic, but it is strangely compelling, to see all that nakedness, dressed up as art. AL

Lewes Youth Council - Fundraising Egg Hunt

French youth have taken to the streets recently to successfully block a law designed to make it easier for employers to sack anyone under the age of 26. Their action proved that the refusal of a younger generation to be pushed around by their elders can still have a dramatic effect on society. In Britain the youth tend to be a little more laid back nowadays with their protest, but we do have the British Youth Council set up to reflect ‘the voice of young people in the UK’. Young people are deemed to be those under the age of 26. The organisation has a number of laudable objectives, including a respect agenda and the aim to ‘advance young people’s participation in society and civic life’.

Lewes also has a Youth Council, its members elected by their 9-16 year old peers in Lewes District schools. Last year’s opening of the skate park saw one of the YC’s projects successfully completed. This Saturday the Council is aiming to raise funds for the Pakistan Earthquake Appeal by arranging an Easter egg hunt. This one takes place in the glorious Grange Gardens. Bruditz Chocolate Shop is one of the sponsors, so expect frenzied efforts to reach the chocolates at the end. We’re assured that the event is suitable for children and adults alike. Expect to guess the weight of a cake, name a bunny and find hidden treasure. Don’t expect the kids to take to the streets, though - unless the chocolates run out. NW

Gig - Ska Toons

Originally, in the early sixties, ska was the Jamaican version of American rhythm & blues, its joyful off-beat kick adding a Caribbean smile. It made you want to dance. As it became more popular, it became more versatile, too. Bands like the Skalites started adding versions of popular theme tunes, Beatles songs and surf instrumentals into their set. When the Americans developed soul music, the Jamaicans reacted in their own way, and ska music slowed down a beat, and became