So, how was your Easter? Because of the obligations and vagaries of magazine production, I’m writing this before it’s even happened. So what shall I write about? What is still in my heart and soul to tell you? The endless rain? My endless poverty? My latest run-in with Vodafone? I’m sorry, I can’t this week, I really can’t. So instead I’ll tell you about something nice that happened to me during my week off.
What happened was that my friend, who coincidentally happens to be the editor of The Whistler, invited me to a gig at the Prince Albert. Not only is the editor of The Whistler, he is also a gentleman of exquisite taste, so when he invites you along to a gig you go along without asking who’s playing, because you know it’s going to be good. A few days later, I asked “who are we seeing anyway?” and he replied “Jah Wobble”, and I fainted.
You might remember my having written about Mr Wobble a few months back, when I saw that he had followed me on Twitter. This put a spring in my step. For I had been a fan of his since October 1978, when Public Image Ltd’s first, eponymous single came out, with its simple but devastating bassline, played and conceived by Wobble. Since then he has released several groovy records, including collaborations with Sinead O’Connor and Holger Czukay of Can, but now is not the time for a discography.
Now as it happens my friend, the editor of The Whistler, knows Jah Wobble (he was christened John Wardle, but “Jah Wobble” is how a drunken Sid Vicious pronounced it once, and the name stuck). As it also happens, I get a bit giddy in the company of musicians, especially in the company of musicians of whose work I approve. A girlfriend of mine once saw me in the company of Jim Reid from the Jesus and Mary Chain, and said she’d never seen me act like that ever before: simpering and giggling like a schoolkid with a crush. Writers don’t impress me nearly as much: I know their specious ways all too well. Artists can make me go a bit silly but then I knew Marc Quinn at university and I thought “grifter” and “he’ll go far”, but I once met Francis Bacon and I was deeply impressed and wondered if he’d paint me if I slept with him. But I was with another girlfriend at the time and couldn’t think of a way to drop it into the conversation.
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he plan was to meet with JW at the pub before the gig. I got into a right tizzy thinking about this. I shaved and bathed and brushed the few remaining hairs on the top of my head. It turned out that Spurs were playing Fulham that evening and Wobble, who is a huge Spurs fan, wanted to see the match. Only there was some rugby nonsense going on that evening, and the only pub playing the match was a cavernous pile by Old Steine mostly frequented by students. I was a bit anxious: I am not a Spurs fan, which I thought would put a spoke in the wheels of my friendship with JW before it had even got moving. As it happened he couldn’t even make it into the pub: there was a queue and he thought Sod that for a lark and went back to the Albert to watch it on his phone.
As history records, Spurs barely even showed up either and Fulham slaughtered them 3-0 and it would have ben 4-0 but for the slimmest of offsides. After the match we went off to the Albert. “Hurry up,” I kept saying. “I want to meet Jah Wobble.”
“I’ve never seen him like this,” my friend said to another friend, another journalist who also knows Jah Wobble. Does everyone in this stupid town know Jah Wobble apart from me?
So we finally made it to the Albert and went to see Jah Wobble in the dressing room which is even tinier than the room he was about to play in. I was, by this stage, quivering with excitement. And so what did they all talk about? Football. Worse than that: Spurs football. I’ve never been so bored in my life. Never meet your heroes, I thought.
But the gig was brilliant, and as Mr Wobble came off stage he squeezed my arm and I’m in love all over again.
The vow always to say “Yes” started on a cliff top in Cornwall, at a retreat about Magickal Thinking, which states “If you align your desires with those of Mother Earth, she’ll help.” I was being afflicted with a wild desire to do three things, which I wrote down:
1: To find help to sail the Atlantic
2: To find ruined rainforest to rewild
3) To learn why I wanted all this.
Then I tucked the paper in the rock. A week later, someone from the retreat invited me to write five Ted-Talks on the Climate Crisis, where I learned the average Brit makes six tonnes of CO2 a year, but scientists say the sustainable amount is 2.5. Could I reduce? I wondered. How?
The day after the Ted Talks, I had a date with a professional explorer, so asked her, “Where would you find ruined rainforest?” “Minca, in Colombia,” she said. Six months later, she said she’d come with me.
I was then contacted by ex-Brighton resident, Kate McAllister, who runs The Hive, a school of self-directed learning in the Dominican Republic. Would I visit their school? I’d teach a term in spring 2023. I replied I would – if the school could help plant a thousand trees.
The explorer and I both paid a deposit to sail the Atlantic on a schooner. The next day she chucked me. Heartbroken, I sold off my possessions, rented out my house, and set off to sail the Atlantic – where I was delighted to see minke whales, sperm whales, Atlantic dolphins, gannets, cattle egrets, and – 900 miles from land – a swallow, who spurned my seeds and water. He just wanted what I wanted on that ship: a rest.
Arriving in the Dominican Republic, I sought a tree-planting project to learn what trees grow there – and the only one that replied was in Haiti. At the border to Haiti, I learned criminal gangs were kidnapping foreigners. A text arrived from my ex, telling me not to contact her. I thought I might as well proceed.
In Haiti, forbidding instructions, trying to contact the ex, I fell 10 feet to concrete – breaking ribs, and spent six days lying on a floor, where my only visitor was Patrick, who wanted £400 to train as a plumber. I gave it to him. Next day, I planted my first trees.
Back in the Dominican Republic, I planned to visit local schools, to persuade 1000 children to plant 1000 trees. But the project’s hardest moments (after the heartbreak) were the seven two hour visits to the bank, seeking 3000 dollars, to buy trees. Almost catatonically depressed, I applied Antony de Mello’s advice: “Don’t change yourself, observe yourself” and I saw myself objectively – still heartbroken, and desperate for encouragement.
Realising I was the witness of the thoughts, not the thinker, it engendered grace. Now magical things happened fast. Having only paid 1200 dollars, I was given 1000 trees. I was approached by a headmaster, who invited us to visit.
Still, as we started the day giving out trees, we had arranged only two school visits, reaching 140 children. Leaving the first school, the bus driver stopped at a second, where we met the mayor, and were photographed for the local paper, spreading our message further. Another school contacted… By the day’s end, we’d seen six schools, giving 840 trees.
That still left 160, but a friend from the Atlantic crossing connected me to a local organic farm. I took the 160 trees, and 20 volunteers turned up to plant them. We quickly filled the organic farm, then doubled its size, by buying a new fence…
Though proud of the project, I’ve not publicly written or spoken about it – from bashfulness, and serenity too. But…
“We’re doing a Fringe edition,” said The Whistler editor last week, “Have you a story you can make into a show?”
Well, I do, as you’ve heard, but surely I was too late to register it, wasn’t I? I dived into the Festival website, where I learned of the hundreds of venues which even include someone’s back garden, and found a spot at the Caxton Arms, at 13 45 pm, on Sunday June 2nd. I’d walked it the day before, and an instinct said, “This is your venue”.
So I’ll be there, longing to tell the tale, and to meet like-minded folks afterwards. I’ll also tell the juiciest bit of all – how I got lost in Colombian jungle, as I headed for Minca, but found my way to the Lost City of the Kogis, where I made a life-changing discovery – even more impactful than the idea “If you align your intentions with those of Mother Earth – she’ll help.”
Continuing our virtual Climate Café where we look at people and places making a positive contribution to our future. By Benita Matofska
The Climate Fashion Destination: Circles
More than a store, this new Brighton gem of a place prides itself on being a home for the circular economy. And it’s easy to see why. Beautifully curated, high quality pre-loved clothes and creatively repaired pieces brush shoulders with timeless homewares just waiting to be rediscovered and reloved.
Circles was founded by Brighton-born ethical fashion aficionado Jules Hau. With over 30 years spent in eco fashion, Jules is on a mission to inspire a sustainable, mindful and creative lifestyle. It’s not just about circles of fashion, but circles of wellbeing and community too. Downstairs hosts a treasure trove of second-hand designer, boutique, vintage clothes and accessories. On my recent visit I found brands ranging from Isabel Marant, Diane Von Furstenburg, Stella McCartney, to my personal favourite Essential Antwerp. All the glamour minus the guilt – so I snapped up a vintage Biba silk, embroidered, red-green-orange top.
But Circles is more than your average consignment store. Yes, you can sell your designer items by appointment, or discover something unique to buy, but upstairs is another part of the story. Here you’ll find a wellbeing space offering massage, qi-gong, mindful treatments and sustainably focussed events. I’m something of a connoisseur of Brighton’s many pre-loved haunts, but Circles feels different. Maybe it’s Jules’s innate knowledge of ethical fashion, or her personal style that’s infused throughout. I can’t help but feel that it’s her loveliness and genuine care for the planet that will warm the heart of any discerning eco fashionista.
Circles Store is open Tuesday to Sunday and can be found at 21-23 Church Street, BN1 1RB. For info: https://www.circlesstore.co.uk/
The Climate Network: Climate Women
OK so full disclosure (now she tells us), Jules is also Co-founder of Climate Women, an initiative we started together in January this year. The concept is simple – a monthly circle and network for women who are passionate about the planet. We gather (in the Circles wellbeing space) on the last Wednesday of the month to create, support, swap ideas and deliver climate action. Having been active as a speaker, writer and campaigner, with most of my activities focussed nationally and globally, it felt time to turn attention to starting something on my Brighton doorstep.
Both Jules and I feel that given women’s role in taking climate action, it’s time to build something for ourselves. Notably, women lead on political environmental change, and once elected to office are more likely to deliver social and climate legislation – from Caroline Lucas, to Jacinda Ardern, Christiana Figueres, and Wangaari Mathai. Women lead more eco lifestyles too. A British study by Mintel showed that 71% of women try to live more ethically compared to 59% of men.
In the global South, women recycle more frequently, buy organic food and support energy efficiency. Women are also building more sustainable businesses, with greater investments into environmentally friendly business processes to reduce emissions. But all this comes at a price, with many women climate actors suffering burnout, climate anxiety and depressions. Climate Women provides a safe space to talk, listen, create and act. It has proven to be popular with (each event sold out well in advance. Each circle focusses on a theme from climate optimism, to wellbeing and our relationship with fashion.
We make individual pledges to act, as we believe small actions create ripples of impact and lead to big change. March saw our first local fundraiser in aid of The Real Junk Food Project raising £600 in a two-hour clothes swap bonanza. We’ve been asked to bring Climate Women to other cities, but for now at least our focus is to think global and change local.
Climate Women events take place on the last Wednesday of the month from 6.30 – 9pm at Circles, 21-23 Church Street, BN1 1RB.
The Climate Event: The Great Big Green Week (June 8th-16th)
The UK’s biggest ever celebration of community action to tackle climate change, protect nature and talk about local action. The theme this year is ‘swap together for good’ – inspiring swaps created by communities to make a better tomorrow. Climate Women are joining forces with the lovely folks at the community-owned Exeter Street Hall who are organising the Prestonville Great Big Green Weekend on June 8 & 9. On Sunday 9th, we’ll be delivering another clothes swap from 2.30pm with tea, coffee and cakes. Funds raised will support Exteter Street Hall and The Real Junk Food Project. You can sign up for plant and pot swaps, the Prestonville litter pick, a skills share (learn to crochet?); there’s bug house making for kids or why not join the repair café? What’s not to love?
Benita Matofska is a public speaker, writer, consultant and author of Generation Share, available from independent bookstores. Each copy is ethically produced, feeds and educates a girl in the slums in Mumbai and plants a tree.
Here in Brighton Pavilion, we’ve had the same MP since 2010. Tom Gray, the new Labour Party candidate, talks to Jed Novick about changing that
Did you go full Spinal Tap? Did you throw strop about the miniature bread and get all the brown M&Ms taken out?
“No, no. I’ve always been too tethered, too down to earth.”
So OK. What was the most riderish rider you ever had?
“At one point I was struggling to keep all my socks clean, because doing your laundry on tour is an absolute ache, trying to find a launderette in Cleveland… So I added socks to the rider because I was thinking it would be nice to have some fresh, clean socks.”
Did you stipulate how many?
“Yeah, five pairs of clean socks.”
Colour?
“Whatever, just grey, blue or black.”
Clean socks. Grey, blue or black. And I was hoping for Nigel Tufnel.
I’m with Tom Gray, founding member of 1999 Mercury Prize winning band Gomez and now Labour Party candidate for Brighton Pavilion, a seat currently held by Caroline Lucas with a majority of nearly 20,000. Normally that would be considered a safe seat, but Caroline’s standing down and suddenly that 20,000 feels a bit vulnerable, a bit marginal.
“I think that’s because it’s Brighton Pavilion. It’s a unique place and has a unique standing in the electoral universe. It’s very particular and a very unusual group of people who live here. There’s an extraordinarily high level of education, of cultural engagement, of familiarity with international politics. There’s also a lot of money here, it’s actually quite a wealthy seat overall compared to most seats in the country, although there are areas of deprivation, real deprivation.
“Now, within that group, what you have is a huge number of people who’d consider themselves progressive. They wouldn’t say they’re Labour, they wouldn’t say they were Green, they might even have voted for the Lib Dems after Iraq. So you’re dealing with a huge number of people who are essentially unaffiliated floating progressive voters. And that is a fascinating group of people to aim yourself at.
“And so you say ‘What is it you actually want from your MP?’ Maybe you want somebody, as was clearly the case with Caroline, somebody who’s unique, a talented speaker, someone you felt reflected the insight and intelligence we have as a group of people in this constituency.”
But Caroline Lucas has gone – or will be soon. The question for Tom – and the other candidates is this. After 14 years of having the only Green MP in the country, what comes next? Or rather, who comes next?
“Maybe you think the natural successor is not a London councillor who’s been mired in local Green politics their entire life, but somebody who lives here, who comes from the creative industries, who’s been a musician and has been fighting all over the world for a change in the way that we perceive cultural workers, and who has a very distinctive voice of their own. Maybe that’s the natural successor.”
Sounds great but where could we find somebody like that?
“I couldn’t tell you. Where could we find someone like that?”
Labour’s slogan for the forthcoming (and frankly not forthcoming soon enough) election is “Let’s get Britain’s future back”. I’m a bit disappointed. I wanted it to be “Bring it on”, the title of Gomez’s first album.
“I keep saying ‘Bring it on. Let’s have that’, but I do understand why they’ve gone for that. It speaks to the fact that everything feels like it’s in terminal decline. Everything has been allowed to break and we’re pouring money into trying to solve the chaos they’ve created. They’re taking the investment out of people’s education, out of public health and housing and once you start to do that, everything falls apart. For example, A&E wards, on any given night, are 10 to 15% full of young people having mental health episodes. You think what’s gone wrong, where was the prevention? Where was the engagement? It’s no surprise to me that we’ve got a rise in car crime in big urban centers when we got rid of Sure Start 14 years ago. We took away the money and the support for underprivileged families, and when you do that, those communities start to disintegrate. It’s not hard this stuff, but you need time to fix it.
It’s not hard, this stuff. But no one has been able to do it.
“We can do it and we did do it. I joined the party in 1992. I joined the party of Neil Kinnock which became the party of John Smith and then became the party of Tony Blair, and the point is that even though my politics might have been some way to the left of Tony Blair, his government hauled millions of kids out of poverty, he gave us the minimum wage, gave us so many things that set us on the right track. Look back to 2010.
Whatever people thought of the country, waiting lists at the hospital were three months not three years. We really need to look at just that one fact and go, who’s better at doing this? The people who love and care for and believe in public services, or the Etonians who want to see the whole thing fall down?
Where did the passion for politics come from? Tom joined Labour when he was 15, the age when he should have been smoking behind the bike sheds and…
“Oh, I was doing that too”
“But it’s an interesting question. My family, on one side, it’s working class Roman Catholic from Salford, and on my mum’s side, my grandparents were Holocaust survivors, they were German Jews who ran from the Holocaust, so I’m a really weird mix.
“I grew up in Southport, a quiet suburban place and I suppose it’s just in the fibre of all of that, a real strong sense of duty to community.
That’s really what my politics are and that’s what has affected all the things that I’ve done along the way, outside of just making music for fun. But in terms of the other things, it’s always driven by asking how will we actually affect change? Can we really do something better for these people. I get very tired of gestures and conversation. I want people to be doing stuff. I’m like, What are we doing? What are we actually doing?
“So if people have just had enough, what I would say to people is you have to understand the scale of… look, when was the last time in British history, that we swung from a party with a working majority, to a party of a different stripe with a working majority? When was the last time that happened?”
If you read the papers and listen to the news, a Labour victory at the next election is almost inevitable. All you hear is talk of 20plus point leads in polls, but Tom’s right. It’s a major swing, a bigger swing than Tony Blair achieved in 1997. “People just seem to think it’s inevitable and I keep saying there is nothing inevitable about what we’re trying to achieve. But it really feels like the safety of the country hangs in the balance, the sanity of the country hangs in the balance. Everything hangs in the balance of this election and it’s so important that we fix this stuff.”
Labour still have, for many people, the ghost of the past hanging over them. For a long time, certainly at the time of the last election, the party was unelectable. By making Corbyn leader, they opened the door for Boris Johnson with his 80 seat majority and, arguably, for the disaster that is Brexit. The more you think about it – and incidentally, it was 1970. The last time a swing of this size happened was 54 years ago – winning the next election isn’t inevitable. Maybe right now we should look at what’s needed now rather than talk about mistakes made in the past. “If you’re not going to do something or change something, why be involved? I could be a member of the Green Party. Some of their policies are OK, but the truth is, the reason I’m in politics is not because I want to wear a badge that suits my ideology. I’m in politics, because I want to make things better. I want to do stuff. I don’t understand the politics of not doing stuff.
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om Gray moved to Brighton in 1997 – “I came here for a gig and never left. I was sofa surfing for a year or so and had a permanent address by ‘99. I’d grown up in Merseyside and even in the creative areas, it felt you could feel physically threatened quite a lot. Whereas in Brighton it didn’t really have that. It felt safer. As soon as I came here, I felt ‘I’ve found my people’. Everyone’s cool with everyone. You can dress how you like, everyone’s comfortable with it. I couldn’t believe it existed. I was 20 years old and had spent most of my life in Liverpool and Leeds and, believe me, it’s very different.”
According to his Wikipedia page – and where else do you look to find out about people? – “Tom Gray is a Mercury Prize-winning British songwriter, composer, and activist. He is a founding member of the rock band Gomez, the founder of the Broken Record campaign, and the elected Chair of the Ivors Academy. He is an elected Council Member of PRS For Music and sits on the board of UK Music. He is a UK Labour Party activist based in Brighton & Hove, and a member of the Musicians’ Union. He was the recipient of the 2022 Unsung Hero Award presented by the Music Producer’s Guild UK”.
If that’s not enough, he’s also writing a stage musical now around “Danny, Champion of The World”, a Roald Dahl story about a boy and his dad who go nicking pheasants off the rich landowner up the road. It’s great. It’s my kind of stuff, sticking it to authority. But the main thing is it’s just a really beautiful story of a non toxic male relationship between a man and a son. You very rarely see that depicted and I think that’s why I’m really attracted to it.”
We talked long about local issues, housing, the environment – he doesn’t fly, Gomez toured carbon neutral – but what I was really interested in was this.
What was that like, winning the Mercury Prize. You were up against Massive Attack’s Mezzanine.
“I mean, they were robbed,” he laughs.
Do you still remember when the envelope was opened?
“Just. I was 20. I had no way of understanding what was happening. I was too young. I was just like, ‘Wow, we made a tape and it won the Mercury Prize’. How do you process that?
Do you remember that feeling, the night?
“Yeah, we lost the Mercury Prize that night.”
Do you remember where?
He laughs, again. Clearly it was a good night.
That whole music thing, was it great?
“Oh, come on. I loved it. I’ve had an absolutely charmed life. Honestly, I’ve been so lucky to have been able to make stuff and be involved with brilliant people. The reason I stopped touring was that my son started going to school, and I wanted to take him to school. That’s what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to travelli the world any more.
You did a lot of all that travelling the world?
“Mate, we were massive in North America. We had our biggest album in America with our fifth album, when no one was thinking about us here, that’s when we were starting to have radio hits in America. In 2007 we were in the top 30 grossing acts in America, playing 240 shows a year and playing big theatres all over North America, Australia, Asia, Japan.”
Does one moment stand out?
“There were loads of times when you’d just think ‘This is ridiculous’, but I had a moment on stage in Glastonbury in ‘99. The sun was setting behind the audience and I could see it and they couldn’t see it. So I just stopped the gig and got everyone to turn round and look at that and like 80,000 people turned round faced away from the stage and looked at the sunset. And you just heard everyone go ‘Wow’. There’s not many times in your life where you get to do that.”
I’m sitting here looking out at a clear blue sky, crisp shards of light shining through the trees. The buds of a few weeks ago have turned into vibrant green leaves. Everything is coming alive. The BBC weather app says that it’s an illusion, that the skies are going to turn grey, that it’s going to rain. I don’t believe it. I think the BBC app is just saying that out of force of habit. I’ve stolen a screen grab from another day and I’m going to say this is today. Easy.
May is the best time in our world. May is when the arts come alive. The Festival, the Fringe, The Great Escape (it’ll survive the virtue signalling protests), the Alternative Escape. When the sun shines, there’s no finer place than Brighton in May. You can read about all that stuff on our website – it’s difficult to do that in a physical mag that comes out every two months.
We’re a bit bigger this month – four extra pages! I know! In colour! I know! – with the usual mix of the wider, big picture stuff (the interview with new Labour parliamentary candidate Tom Gray, who seems a lovely bloke and is a welcome return to Labour’s values after the madness of the Corbyn years), and local stories, like the interview with Sarah from Solifiore, a lovely shop which we should all support. Even The Gull About Town has returned for the summer.
For the good folk of West Hill though, May means something else. May means the highlight of the social calendar, the time when the great and the good come together to celebrate themselves in all their self-reflecting glory. For the good folk of West Hill, May means St Nick’s Dog Show which this year falls on Monday May 6.
Last year we entered Pickle Pie and, look, it’s a dog show. It’s a lovely, fun event. The sun shines. There’s Pimms. Everyone smiles. It’s the perfect antidote to this corrosive obsession so many people have with winning and competition. It’s purely about pleasure and enjoyment, the joy of simple participation, the feeling of community, of taking part.
Fourth. He came fourth. It took him weeks to get over that. He wouldn’t leave the house, let alone go to the dog park. The St Nick’s Pooch Pals sent a delegation.
This year we’re playing the odds, taking more of a spread betting approach. We’re entering three dogs. Not saying anything, but if I were you, I’d put a few quid on Harry.
Everything you ever wanted to know about life in Brighton (OK, and Hove)
The Whistler 