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Brighton Life, Nicholas Lezard

Nicholas Lezard – View From The Hill (June 2023)

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Do yourself a big favour and go to the Brighton Museum and see the exhibition of Roger Bamber’s photography. I’ve written about him before here: he was a friend, and he died last autumn. The exhibition has the splendid title “Out of the Ordinary”, which is beautifully double-edged, for he would turn settings that were ordinary and make them extraordinary. I wonder if this is why he moved to Brighton: because this is a town like no other, where surreal moments are a daily experience. (I was staying with him when the Grand was bombed in 1984, and, alerted by his News Desk, we raced down to be among the first on the scene. That might not have exactly been surreal, but it was certainly out of the ordinary.)

He was both a news photographer and a – what is the term? Art photographer? That doesn’t seem right, but his photographs are definitely art. I would tease him that his job only took him 1/250th of a second to do, but this was nonsense: he would set up his shots meticulously to get the right effect, often at great personal risk to himself. You look at his photo of men working on the Clifton Suspension Bridge and ask: hang on, how did he get up there? He would scorn safety harnesses, saying they got tangled up with his camera straps. There’s a photo of a microlight pilot achieving the world height record. Look at it without reading the caption next to it and it might not occur to you for a minute: this picture is taken from above.

He got along with everyone. The pop stars here include Freddie Mercury, Bowie, Mick Jagger, Suzi Quatro, but he also captured the working lives of railwaymen (he had a thing for steam trains), fringe performers, toy museum curators, the eccentric and the unusual. These latter he never mocked or ridiculed: he brought out their essence in a manner of pure celebration. He also had a thing for buses, and when he told the editor of Bus Times that his was the most boring magazine he’d ever seen, he followed this up with an offer to take the front cover photo for each issue, the condition being that he be allowed to borrow a bus for a day to get it into an unusual situation. Fittingly, there is a bus named after him now, as Brighton honours its best children: the 25, which takes you to the Amex Stadium.

Brighton was where his heart was. Come not just for the celebrity and news photos, but for the pictures of thew Fringe, the West Pier in flames, the seafront covered under a rare fall of snow. The people in it look like Lowry stick figures: the effect was deliberate. Few people has a way with a camera like Roger did. When his pictures were in the paper (which they were for decades; and he won numerous press photography awards), you could spot it was his from across the room.

Pic: credit © Roger Bamber/TopFoto

Nicholas Lezard

Nicholas Lezard – April-May 2023

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I write this at four o’clock; and I would like to go to Belchers for double egg and chips; but Belchers is shut. But thank goodness, it opens tomorrow; it just shut6s at two. Yet its survival is something of an anomaly; thank God it is still here.

As a Brighton resident, I get quite a few targeted ads to do with the place; as I imagine you do, too. The best one was for a tatty phone repair shop with branches in Kemptown and Preston Street; one of the comments beneath the ad was from a highly disappointed customer, which somehow added to the charm.

But the worst ad was the other day, and it was for “the twenty best restaurants in Brighton”. I scrolled through the list. The usual suspects: Riddler and Finns, the Salt Whatever It Is, you know the thing. Every photo was of a plate upon which lurked, shamefully, in portions so minuscule they were almost invisible, some confection of leaves and jus which you just knew that they cost, at a bare minimum, the thick end of twenty quid.

Now the best restaurant in Brighton is, as everybody knows, the Regency, which charges you about a half as much for its oysters as R & F. Why? They’re the same oysters. Its whitebait is a triumph. But there are times when you don’t want whitebait, however well-cooked; you want double egg and chips with a mug of dark brown tea, red and brown sauce bottles on the table. (Brown for me, thanks.) You also want it in a cafe that has been unchanged for decades; the kind of place that would not have looked out of place in an episode of, say, The Sweeney. Not that there is an undercurrent of violence in Belchers; indeed, the atmosphere inside is hushed, reverent, as people eat their all-day breakfasts and sip their tea. Right now, as I write, it is raining; I know that were it open, its windows, in its dining space the size of a small living room, would be slightly steamed up. (Ed: I’ve got to take you to Mac’s Cafe over Kemptown way. So old school there are Granadas and Capris parked – well, stopped – outside).

Belchers is now in its fifth decade, as is its proprietor and head chef, Jane. (Not that she looks it.) I don’t go there as often as I would like; in common with many these days, I have to watch the pennies. That said, six quid and change for a cup of tea and the double egg and chips is really not a bad deal.

It is, admittedly, a bit of a shlepp from West Hill; there was a decent cafe on Dyke Road but its food is now abominable. Beetroot has been involved. But Belchers is the true, the echt, the unimprovable. There’s a phrase used in the Michelin Guide, in which Belchers will never feature, for restaurants which are worth making an effort to go to: vaut le détour. Belchers falls very much into that category. 

Features, Nicholas Lezard

View From The Hill: Nicholas Lezard

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I’ve lived in Brighton for a few years now, on and off, but this is only the second year I have seen the Christmas lights in Western Road. You don’t get Christmas lights across the streets in West Hill: they’re probably considered a little garish. Especially on Dyke Road, between St Nicholas’s and Seven Dials. 

But down in the big city, or the rather strange and somehow ungentrifiable Western Road, they like a display. I can’t remember what the lights spelled out last year: I think they might have said something like “BELIEVE” which I thought was a bit vague. Believe in what? Christmas? Santa? Climate change? I mean, there are all sorts of things you can believe in but not all of them are good. I think another set of lights said something uncontroversial like “PEACE” but then that’s pretty much par for the course for this time of year. 

I wasn’t prepared for the slogan strung out across the road by the Sainsbury’s Local. What the pretty lights said this time was: “HERE WE GO AGAIN”. 

I went into a kind of reverie. I imagined a meeting of the Christmas Decorations committee of Brighton and Hove City Council. It has been a long year: the months-long garbage strike has left everyone rattled and exhausted. And I suspect the Council has rather less money to play with than it did last year. The biscuits are not fancy. The coffee is not hand-ground Nicaraguan: it is Nescafe. 

The Chair looks round the table. 

“So what’s this year’s slogan going to be?” 

Somewhere round the table, a spoon clinks against a coffee cup. Someone nibbles a Waitrose Essentials Garibaldi. They used to have Hobnobs. Chocolate Hobnobs.

“Anyone?” 

“Nah,” says Trevor. (No council meeting in England is considered quorate unless there is someone called Trevor attending.) 

“I’ve got nothing,” says Sue. She has spent the last month going over the accounts, and lost the will to live in mid-November. 

A deep sense of Sisyphean ennui steals over the room. A voice pipes up from the back. It is Steve, known for his mordant wit, like Tim from The Office. “Here we go again,” he says. 

There’s a long silence. 

“Well,” says the Chair, “if no one’s got anything better …”

Steve is about to say that this was not meant to be a slogan, it was just a cry of despair, but then realises that if he says this, the meeting will drag on, and it is already as close to going-home time as makes no difference. He reads the room: everyone is looking at him, fiercely willing him to remain silent. So he remains silent. The Chair slaps her folder shut.

“That’s settled, then,” she says, and everyone files out. My God, they think: we got away with it. 

And that’s how I like to think the meeting went. I couldn’t love this town more if I tried.