In PurSUEt is an award-winning one-woman show that tells the true story of a woman with a drinking problem who favours the stalking of Sue Perkins over dealing with her demons.
Following its sell-out run at the Edinburgh Fringe, the “queer cult sensation” In PurSUEt tells the story of a nameless ‘Woman’ sat in a therapist’s office. She’s been sent there to deal with her drink problem. But she doesn’t need help. She just needs Sue Perkins. They are meant for each other. If only Sue could see that too. But how can she? She’s too busy being a celebrity. So “Woman” sets out in pursuit of her love. From following Sue’s every move online – to breaking in backstage at the BBC, there isn’t anything she won’t do. But can she keep it all together and win her heart’s desire, whilst battling her out of control drinking?
Writer and actor Eleanor Higgins trained at the Royal Academy and at Circle In The Square Theatre School; New York. She battled substance misuse in her twenties whilst noticing the parallels between addiction and fantasy. Now in sobriety, and with a diploma in advanced psychology under her belt, she shares this intriguing story with the world. “I believe addiction and obsession are intrinsically linked – and that isn’t being spoken about enough”
Dates: 21st–22nd May 17:00pm, 24th May 18:00pm, 28-29th May 17:00pm.
When they’re in a hole, some people start digging. 1998. In an overlooked pub in a left-behind town, an unlikely hero and his would-be agent plot to put themselves on the map via an insane World Record attempt – the longest time buried alive. That’s five months in an oversized coffin, under a tiny beer garden in the middle of Mansfield.
A true and possibly hilarious tale of courage, endurance, hope, despair, love, lies and media manipulation by Argus Angel winners Brian Mitchell (The Ministry of Biscuits) and Joseph Nixon (co-writer of West-End sell-out smash The Shark is Broken). Previous collaborations include Edinburgh hits Those Magnificent Men and the multi-award-winning Big Daddy Vs. Giant Haystacks.
Starring Duncan Henderson (The Shark is Broken and The Polished Scar – winner of 2018 FringeReview Outstanding Theatre Award), Emma Wingrove (Sweethearts & The Hooligan) and Murray Simon (The Ministry of Biscuits, Lord God).
What do you get when you cross a dead iguana, an employee with a very rare medical condition and the HR department in a high-end toilet factory? It’s probably a question you’ve asked many times before.
Arthur is an over-promoted HR Manager, trying to find the path of least resistance in a world that has changed dramatically around him. Paula is the long-suffering HR advisor who keeps the ship afloat and herself sane by poking fun at her boss. And Jackie is the ambitious, and highly-strung new girl who is struggling to find her place in her family and the world.
Inspired by a true event, Sarah Archer’s comedy drama is about what can go wrong when we stop ourselves from telling people how we really feel, when we make assumptions rather than having honest conversations….
The Latest Music Bar, 14 – 17 Manchester Street, Brighton, BN2 1TF – 6, 10, 19 & 20 May
Here’s the sell: A story about love, but also Tinder addiction and lost erections.
Sophie is a lawyer with never-ending insomnia and Francesco is a Tinder addict who lost his erection. They both end up in India to find a cure but what they find instead is a miracle. Now they want to share their inspiring journey with the audience. But some things shouldn’t be shared…
BioPower is an intimate “storytelling” play which unveils the beautiful moments and darker struggles of a relationship. It’s a labyrinth within a labyrinth style performance. While two storytellers act out the ideal couple, their relationship on stage is strongly tested.
Described as “charming” and ““a refreshing response to the pomp of modern theatre”, storytelling is the art of sharing stories aloud, speaking directly to an audience, inviting them into the experience. No fourth walls here.
For most of us they are no longer free, though at £2 a test they aren’t expensive. But the question is, are they worthwhile? To understand the answer to that you have to understand that lateral flow tests aren’t very sensitive. You have to have quite a lot of virus in your throat and nose to get a positive. This is quite different from the PCR test, which, in principle, can detect any amount of virus, however small.
In practice that means that your test will probably be negative in the first day or two after you catch the virus, but it gets more likely to be positive in the day or two before symptoms begin, and then during the first 5 days of the illness.
Let’s look at how this affects our decision in different situations:
You have symptoms of a cold, or worse. Yes, definitely worth the £2 for a test. It will pick up 80% of cases. In other words, if negative, Covid is fairly unlikely (but it doesn’t rule it out). If you repeat the test on day 2 and 3 and it’s still negative, then it’s even more unlikely that you have Covid. And if the test is positive you don’t need a PCR – you have Covid.
You feel fine but you are going to visit someone who is vulnerable. The most vulnerable person would be someone aged over 75, unvaccinated or vaccinated but without a booster in the last six months, and with some other condition that impairs their ability to fight infection. This is much more tricky. If you have the infection but have no symptoms, the lateral flow test has only a 20% chance of being positive. So in 4 out of 5 cases when you are infectious you will be falsely reassured by the test. I’d say it’s still worth doing but, if it’s negative, you should still do everything possible to keep the other person safe: meet out of doors, stay apart and especially don’t kiss, wear a mask and sanitise your hands before you go in.
You are a contact. That means you have been close to someone who has subsequently tested positive, or developed symptoms, in the subsequent 2 days. Yes, do a test but not immediately. It’s pretty sure to be negative in the first two days. If you only want to test once, do it on day 5. But you will only be in the clear after ten days from the contact. In addition to testing you have a choice of three policies: isolate for 10 days from contact; or mask, distance and sanitise for 10 days from contact; or continue with life as normal, if you have no alternative. But in this case my view is that, if you chose the second or third options, it would be wrong not to warn everyone, before you come into close contact with them, that you are a contact.
You’ve tested positive. Obviously you have the same three options as if you are a contact but the importance of isolating is far greater. And some people, e.g. GPs and their staff, are required to have two negative tests, 1 day apart, at least 5 days after their positive test. That’s not a bad rule for all of us to follow.
Those who are still paying attention will have a question. “If I have the virus, but there’s too little of it in my throat and nose to give a positive test, is it also too little to infect someone else?” Sadly, no. The study I’ve relied on for my stats shows that you can still pass it on, even when you are testing negative. That study can be found by searching on ‘BMJ Jonathan Deeks 2022’.
Final thought: because the lateral flow test depends on your getting enough virus on to your swab, don’t skimp the swabbing, however uncomfortable you find it. 15 seconds rubbing on one tonsil then 15 seconds rotating it deep in a nostril will give you the best result.
Have you ever noticed how people walk in winter? They’re huddled, it’s like they’re wrapped around themselves. Coats wrapped round, hats held on tight. Bent over forward, making themselves smaller. Less to get cold and wet, maybe. And no one’s out. The streets look deserted. Maybe everyone’s inside somewhere having fun, but I don’t think so. I think they’ve wrapped up, gone to bed early, hiding under a duvet.
In the summer, it’s different. When we go out, we stand up, look out. We smile and wave at each other as we pass by. People are sitting outside pubs. It’s alive.
My Fine Wife always berates me when I tell her I’d be happy if I never saw another winter. “You’ve got to have the dark to appreciate the light, you’ve got to have the winter because it’s part of the cycle of the year. You can’t have the warm if you don’t have the cold”. Pah. Cold, schmold. OK, I’ve got some nice heavy wool suits and a rather fine long, fur coat, but that aside… Winter? As Edwin Starr once said, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing.
What’s so terrible about the idea of retiring to a small Greek island? A little taverna on the beach in a horseshoe bay? “Calamari? Of course. And would you like some Retsina with that?”
No really, I’d be happy if I never saw another winter. Don’t like it. Don’t like the dark. Don’t like the cold. I don’t understand why the clocks go back or forward or whatever it is in the autumn so it gets darker (and therefore colder too) earlier. I used to be told “Ah, it’s the farmers”. I don’t know any farmers. I’m sure they’re lovely people but they’ve had their turn. Maybe now it’s my turn. Children will ask their parents why it is the clocks haven’t gone back or forward or whatever, they’ll ask why it’s still light and warm. “Ah, it’s the magazine editors…”
Anyway. That’s passed. The clocks have done the other thing they do and now it’s brighter later. I don’t have to wake the puppies up at 3pm to take them for a walk. Now I wake them at 5pm to take them out, It makes all the difference, The sky’s out. In a few weeks we’ll have that lovely, mad month when it’s the Festival, the Fringe, The Great Escape… probably a few other things I’ll remember later. It’s like a reward for all that farmer-inspired damp.
Meanwhile back on dry land, the online petition to save Seven Cellars and Latina from the evil clutches of The Co-op Group stands at a fantastic 5,846. And by the time Dan Tansley has done his printing magic and this becomes a magazine, who knows what it’ll be. Funny how in the old days when the likes of Tesco were thought of as the Devil, the Co-op was seen as kind and benign. A co-operative. It sounded kinda cuddly. Well, there’s that idea gone. Anyway, let’s keep up the pressure. You never know.
Things are constantly changing round here. The Mighty Whistler, it’s like a shark. Always moving forward. Never staying still. We’ve got – at possibly huge expense – a new sports editor who this month is writing about the revolution in Whitehawk. And there’s another new development bubbling away in Whistler Towers. We’re going to start a listings section. What’s on and where to go. It would be lovely to have an old school listings section. It’ll mainly be in the website so we can regularly update it. It’ll take a bit of organising but I think it could be a thing to do.
I like to go on an adventure so the other Sunday I went with my friends Ben and Janine to see the Marina. In however many years of living here I have never been to the Marina. Going to Ben and Janine’s is already an adventure, because they live in Kemp Town. It’s a half-hour walk from my place to theirs so I make sure I’m well stocked up on Kendall Mint Cake. It’s an incentive to keep moving because I don’t like Kendall Mint Cake very much. I also take oxygen because they live on the 16th floor.
Anyway the Marina is another half hour walk from theirs so I bought an extra packet of Kendall Mint Cake because you can’t be too careful. The plan was to go to Wetherspoons for a restoring pint and then Malika Indian restaurant for lunch. But first we had to get to the Marina.
“So what’s it like?” I asked in the lift on the way down. Ben thought for a few seconds.
“Let me put it this way,” he said. “Do you know what the murder rate in London is? It’s something like two people per 100,000 per year. That’s how they measure it. Now, do you know what the murder rate in Baltimore is? It’s 47 per 100,000. In other words, you’re more than 23 times likely to be murdered in Baltimore than in London.”
I wondered where this was going. Was he about to say that the murder rate of Brighton Marina is roughly that of Baltimore’s?
“Anyway, a few years ago I was in Baltimore for work. And **** me, what a place. If you went into the certain areas of town people would just stand there with their mouths hanging open. People from outside normally know better than to go there.”
Again, I wondered where this was going. How long would I be able to fend off the gangs of Brighton Marina with just a pair of Kendall Mint Cake bars?
“The thing is, we went to Baltimore Marina. And you know what? It was lovely. Lots of expensive boats, people having fun, fancy shops, the works. But Brighton Marina? That’s what you’d expect Baltimore Marina to look like. They really should swap them over.
I began to see what he meant as we approached it. To get to the Marina you have to go through a desolate building site and a series of forbidding 1970s underpasses that all smell of glue. (Not hard to work out why.)
“This looks like the kind of place they filmed the ultraviolence scenes in A Clockwork Orange,” I said.
“I think it’s more the kind of place where Regan and Carter from The Sweeney chase the villains and give them a good kicking.”
Once you breach the Forbidden Zone, though, the Marina improves. A pint of IPA at Spoons is £1.68 and the buffet at the Malika is delicious. Just try not to inhale the glue fumes on the walk over there.
Seven Cellars and Latina are part of the fabric of our world. They’re part of what makes the Dials the Dials. Now they’re under threat by the Co-op – maybe that’s what their motto “It’s what we do” really means. Louise Oliver of Seven Cellars explains what it means to her
Seven Cellars is to me more than a shop. It represents a life-long dream to own my own business in Brighton. It represents four years studying Wine Business at Plumpton College. It is linked to friends and family, some whom are no longer with us, who helped me in so many ways to get it open, writing labels at one in the morning – hurriedly getting an inadequate amount of change for our first days trade, poring over wine lists (and so many samples) to agonise which wines we should open with. It was enormous fun. And we were welcomed so heartily by the amazing people of Seven Dials I just knew it was going to be special. And it is.
All these things apply in different ways to Adelia at Latina café too. We were stunned to receive a call from our landlord, Bob (Patel – not his real name, his business name) to tell us he had sold our protected leases (I still don’t know how that can happen) to the Co-op for £1.5 million, thus making the Co-op our landlords.
The Co-op sent us both a letter which simply told us to change the bank details for rent payment with Immediate effect. It was a bit rude to be honest because there was no attempt to introduce themselves, no niceties whatsoever.
They sent inspectors to “review” the properties – along with structural engineers and architects. They used a third party to tell us that they will be seeking to remove us from our properties. Under a protected lease there are only two reasons you can do that: non payment of rent or redevelopment. The redevelopment will happen. They will increase the size of the second co-op and force us to move out.
I did write to our MP but she said there was little we could do unless we can get an effective campaign to get them to back off. The expansion into our little shops is inevitable because it’s completely legal.
I wonder if it will cause consternation if we use their twitter hashtag #itswhatwedo to ask them if what they really do is put two well-loved family-owned shops out of business? I can confirm that whatever happens we will try to stay in the Dials and relocate as soon as we can if new premises can be found. We have three years yet so we are not going anywhere soon. The wheels of corporate business turn very slowly indeed.
Thank you so much for the support. So many of you are asking what you can do to help. We have been overwhelmed by the sentiment and people coming in to offer words of encouragement. Some people have sent letters to the MP and the council, some have offered to design posters. Some have offered their company on a lock in protest!
We’ve put a lot of planning and energy into Seven Cellars and Latina Café and now it feels as though all our plans are on hold and we have to live with constant uncertainty. We don’t take it personally but whether the co-op group intentionally or unintentionally are failing to give us clarity on what the next steps are the result it exactly the same and we are left worrying night after night about what the future holds.
The irony is that Seven Cellars and Latina Café have been and still are successful and popular shops and yet they face an existential threat. On a final point and putting our own issues to one side the Seven Cellars and Latina Café premises go back to 1841. And I often wonder how many families have spent their lives trading from there and serving the community. It seems a bit brutal and unnecessary to bring it all to an end. When the Co-op already have a bigger shop just a few hundred meters away.
We are not powerless. We have a voice. There’s a petition at change.org.
Write, shout, put it on your social media platform. Don’t be passive, be active. You have a voice. Use it.
It’s about me getting to grips with my childhood erotic obsession with watching hyper-muscular men being tortured by their male antagonists in 1980s action films. So it’s about ‘musclebound men’, and (my favourite porn category) ‘bound muscle’.” Already I know no one is reading this because anyone who was reading, right now they’re on the Fringe website, credit card in hand, looking up dates. Anyway. Where were we? “Bound muscle. but it’s also about me, as a woman, having been “bound” to this idea of the power of macho men all my life – and about what is at stake in maintaining that idea. It’s less niche than it sounds – I promise!”
Rosy is – and I say this from a completely biased point of view – extraordinary. She’s a doctor – no, not that kind – and did her PhD on the Russian poet Mayakovsky, for which obviously she learnt Russian. She’s the Queen of The Poetry Slam, a performance poet and was behind “Hammer and Tongue” (which The Guardian said “reinvented the medium for the hip hop generation”). She also, it seems, has a bit of a fascination for men who have spent too long in enclosed rooms lifting up lumps of metal and then putting them down again.
Where did the fascination with musclebound hunks come from?
“Well, torturing musclemen was a major cultural obsession in the 80s, but the thing that really got me hooked was He Man: Masters of the Universe, starring Dolph Lundgren, which I first saw when I was five. There was something so powerful and inherently sexual about watching this impossibly muscular body being publicly stripped, whipped and humiliated. Of course, the beefcakes in these films always escape – so the function of the torture scenes is only to reinforce their strength – and yet they have to go through this performance of weakness to get there. Being captured, having one’s clothes removed – being objectified like that – is generally what happens to women in films, but for women it always implies a loss of power whereas for these men it only seems to make them stronger. Musclebound charts my mission to get to the heart of that power, to unpick the politics of it and to channel it into my own life by any means (and I really do mean any means!) possible.
By any means possible. What kinds of means are we talking about here?
You’ll have to come along and find out! I’m a Grade-A stalker, and I got some damn good stalking in on this project – from cruising my local bodybuilding gym all the way to the dizzy heights of Hollywood!
So who are we talking about here. Who are the top three chunks of hunk?
“The top three would have to be Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dolph Lundgren and Sylvester Stallone. Stallone has a very different kind of physique – he’s naturally quite slight compared to the other two – but he sure knows how to take a beating in submissive style (see Rambo: First Blood Part II for some great examples).”
Where and when can we see the show?
It’s on at The Rialto theatre, at 6.30pm on 20th, 21st and 22nd May. See you there!
“Hapless, hairy, northerner” Iain Cochrane finds all human life when he knocks on doors. Sometimes he also finds iguanas, and when he’s really lucky, a bearded dragon. And people think reading gas meters is easy
But I have a smart meter!” they say…a lot. The reality is that those evil entities known as energy suppliers don’t read their own meters. They outsource all that nonsense to people like me. I literally do not know why a meter needs to read. I just go where they send me and record the numbers. Even smart meters. As I always joke, “Well I must crack on. These smart meters aren’t going to read themselves are they?” (ba dumm tish – Ay thang yew, I’m here all week)
All human life is behind these closed Brighton doors. When you ring a doorbell, you just don’t know what you’re letting yourself in for. For instance, in the 15 months I’ve been doing the job, eight women have answered the door in nothing but a towel. similarly, six men have responded to a friendly knocking in just their pants. You learn not to react but to suggest a level of modesty before any further action is taken…or not.
Iguanas – 1
Sex shops – 1
Funeral parlours – 3
Bees rescued – 7
Happily, the number of pleasant, helpful homeowners far out-number the unpleasant obstructive ones. And this being Brighton, every third house I enter has a piano in the corner or a guitar hanging from the wall which lends a bit of common interest to break the ice and establish a modicum of trust. One bloke in Woodingdean was even kind enough to let me fondle his BAFTA!
Oh, and the celebs. Modesty forbids me to divulge who and where. Or possibly it’s the current data protection laws.
Bearded dragons – 1
Tarantulas – 3
Corn snakes – 1
Convents – 1
Then there’s the occasional personality who defies pigeon-holing. Like the wonderful old lady whose short-term memory was itself a memory.
But whose recollection of her childhood remained perfectly intact. The reason for my visit established, she then enthused that I “Run orf and read my meter and then come back, sit down and tell me all about yourself”. She began by asking me what my passion was. “Music” I said. Clasping her hands together and gazing heavenward, she waxed “Ahhh, MUSIC! If music be the food of love…”
She was unable to finish the adage. Instead she asked me, three times in the space of five minutes, how many children I had. But then her story unfolded. She told me about how, as a little girl, she and her family ‘escaped Poland’.
You don’t meet many like her anymore (Ukraine situation pending). What struck me most of all was her passion for life. Amazing, eccentric, life-affirming lady.
People who mistake my uniform for that of a traffic warden – 10 per day (at least)
People who have threatened to “rip my (bleep) head off” – 1
Rats – 2 (both dead)
So it’s not all about recording numbers. There’s an element of social work too. Although I can’t remember specifically how I responded to the six people so far who have told me they’re terminally ill. It does somewhat put you on the spot. And I see signs several times a day warning me of an immediate danger of death by electrocution. People think reading gas meters is easy!
On the upside, I’ve dropped a trouser size and the 7 or 8 miles I walk per day has got me feeling almost fit and healthy!
So if a hapless, hairy northerner knocks on your door and asks to read your meter, just let him get on with it. And yes, he’d love a cup of tea.
And no, HE ISN’T A BLOODY TRAFFIC WARDEN!!!
News and views from West Hill and Seven Dials in Brighton
