So you’ve decided that going away isn’t worth the pfaff and anyway you live in the best place in the country and the weather’s perf… OK, scrub that last bit. The weather’s variable. Today, it’s lovely. Tomorrow…

So what to do? Well, head down to the beach – that bit just to the east of the pier next to the Volks Railway Aquarium Station, The Warren On The Beach is doing another few weeks of theatre, cabaret, comedy and family shows, alongside an outdoor stage, street food and bars till August 30.

The indoor-outdoor site is free to enter, which means it’s there for a quick drink, and there’s a Happy Hour, where you get 20% off all drinks, Monday to Thursday before 6pm.

Shitfaced Shakespeare (23 – 30 August) will be treading the boards on the beach once again with Much Ado About Nothing. Featuring the finest classically-trained professional performers and one fully Shitfaced cast member, we guarantee that no two nights are ever the same. Having toured the world, broken America and sold-out the West End, they’re back on Brighton beach for one week only.

Lost in Translation Circus Present: Cabaret Paradiso (12 – 22 August) a phenomenal show for all the family featuring cabaret, burlesque, circus, sideshow and contemporary variety. Created in a moment where the world of arts stood still, Cabaret Paradiso celebrates performers from different arts forms and backgrounds, bringing back all the joy, celebration, hilarity, cheekiness, and irreverence that is a great night out. Indulge in fabulous fun for everyone in Brighton’s quirkiest new venue down on the beachfront and featuring Circus Abyssinia stars Bibi and Bichu.

The Snail and the Whale (13 – 30 August) continue their national tour with a string of sea-side shows. The Olivier award-winning cast bring Julia Donaldson’s much-loved picture-book to life.

For full line up and tickets head to warrenonthebeach.co.uk

If you prefer your wine to be powerful rather than elegant, you’re in luck.
Andrew Polmear tells all 

What’s the next big discovery among European wines? People talk about Hungary and Croatia, but my money is on Portugal. It’s a country that’s always made wines for its own consumption but, under the dead hand of President Salazar, there wasn’t much incentive to make quality wines. The British shippers had been buying wine from the Douro valley in the north east of Portugal since the late 17th century. They added brandy to the wine to preserve it during shipping and so port was born. But less and less port is drunk now in Britain and the growers are turning back to unfortified wine, but using modern wine-making methods. The result is a revelation.

I’ve been drinking two Portuguese reds: ‘Animus’ from the Douro made by  Vicente Faria Vinhos, selling at Aldi for the extraordinary price of £5.49; and The Society’s Portuguese Red from the Setubal Peninsula, made by Casa Ermelinda Freitas, and sold at £6.50 by The Wine Society. They are both 2019 but they come from very different ‘terroirs’. 

The Douro is high altitude, sharply drained, stony and mountainous, while the Setubal peninsular is low lying, with sandy soil, exposed to cooling ocean breezes. Both areas get hot. But despite the different ‘terroirs’ both are instantly recognisable as Portuguese. It’s the huge mouth-feel they have – what the wine trade calls ‘structure’. It’s the opposite of watery – a feeling of wine in the mouth that is so satisfying that flavour comes a mere second. It’s like velvet on the tongue. But there is flavour: black plums and dark cherries with a hint of perfume. Is that Turkish delight? Is it woodsmoke?

How do they do it? Conditions are right: plenty of sun, but enough cloud and cool ocean breezes to avoid the wine tasting like jam. Then they have marvellous local grapes. The star is Touriga National, a powerful grape with dark rich fruit and a leathery taste reminiscent of Cabernet Sauvignon. And there’s Tinta Roriz (which the Spanish call Tempranillo) – another big-flavoured grape. The wine from Setubal is from the Castelao grape plus a little Alicante Bouschet, a rich combination.

Then there’s the wine-making. EU funding in the 1990s enabled a lot of wine-makers to move to temperature-controlled, stainless steel vats. At the same time, higher educational institutes in Lisbon and Vila Real taught modern methods to a whole generation of wine-makers.

Now family wine-makers are producing their own wine, like the Freitas family, or, like Vicente Faria, are branching out so they can bottle enough wine to interest supermarkets like Aldi. They must soon rumble the fact that wine lovers are prepared to pay more for wine this good and prices will go up.

If you prefer wines that are elegant rather than powerful, if you like Burgundy with its Pinot Noir, rather than Bordeaux with its Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, then Portuguese reds are not for you. But if you share my love of power, my enjoyment of wine that lets you know you’ve got a real mouthful, then Portuguese reds do the job wonderfully.

We’re all about getting the best out of a good old British summer as we keep calm and holiday at home. And what’s a #staycation without a spot of lunch and some English heritage thrown in? Gilly Smith finds out

Just an hour and a half out of Brighton in Chatham is a bit of a treasure, a family-owned English distillery making not just a rather lovely whisky out of local barley, wheat and rye, but vodkas and gins too. A tour of the distillery, complete with tastings, followed by lunch overlooking the River Medway is a lovely reminder of the skill, craftsmanship and history to be found on our doorstep.

Copper Rivet Distillery, perched on the dry dock at Chatham’s Royal Dockyards is a Victorian Grade II listed pump, until recently a relic from the industrial revolution, watching this corner of Kent follow its demise. 

It took the vision (and family cash) of Matthew Russell who was picnicking one day at Upnor Castle on the other side of the Medway to reinvent it and build it into an icon of 21st century innovation. His father, Bob, had built up the coffers over 30 years in the gift box drinks industry, and together, they built the family company. Four years on and recruiting only from British universities, the Russells have put together a team led by Abhishek “Abhi” Banik from Heriot-Watt University, Copper Rivet has  become the only spirit maker in Kent, and one of just a few in the UK to create them all the way from grain to glass. 

Its Dockyard spirits include a sweet pink gin made with Kent strawberries.  The vodkas are so packed with flavour that you could drink them neat on the rocks and dream of Russia. And the whiskies, initially a by-product of the gin and vodka are already raising eyebrows among the cognoscenti.

After the tour and tasting, lunch overlooking the river is a local, seasonal treat with two courses for £23 and three for £28. Try the scallop, treacle cured trout, sesame and Sussex tomato ponzu to start followed by saddle of lamb, aubergine caviar, kale chimichurri, goats curd, lamb scrumpet and Jersey Royals. And of course, all those strawberries macerating in gin are repurposed by chef, Will Freeman for dessert, a choux bun and rice pudding patisserie.

For more information, https://www.copperrivetdistillery.com 

Harry Hillery talks about his Brighton AIDS Memorial
project and the need to keep the light shining

In Brighton on World AIDS Day, many of us huddle together at the vigil in New Steine Gardens to “hear the voices of dead friends.” 

Two hundred souls claimed by the virus are remembered as their names are read, one after another. When I hear my friend Andrea’s name, memories flicker like the candle cradled in my hand, but what settles in my mind is the smile of the bright-eyed Brazilian florist who made me laugh every day. For me, it’s important that my thoughts linger on his life and exuberance, however short, before the disease choked the life from his lungs on an AIDS ward. I remember many of the people whose names are read at the vigil, but there are fewer faces I recognise in the crowd each passing year. 

Brighton has always been a transient place, an oasis many use to find their queer identity before moving on. Sometimes I worry I might be the only person left in the crowd of candles who remembers Andrea (pictured in 1989), and it saddens me to think all that might eventually remain of him and the other souls, are names forever bound to a virus and death. 

In 1989 I trained as a volunteer at the Sussex AIDS Centre and Helpline to help, but also to learn about the disease and stay alive. The Brighton area was hit hard by AIDS and due to the age and number of victims, many likened the experience to being in a war. When I opened the Evening Argus and read the hate or walked up St. James’s Street and saw GAY – GOT AIDS YET sprayed on a wall, it definitely felt like we were under attack and losing. But as writer and activist Neil Bartlett once reminded me, using war as a metaphor for AIDS is dangerous because it suggests an end. World War One stopped at 11 o’clock on the 11 November 1918 with an armistice, but HIV, AIDS and the stigma that surrounds it continues still. So many died, but so little remains to tell the story, just ghosts, shadows and a few buildings turned into more luxury flats. 

I created the Brighton AIDS Memorial collection to record stories, capture memories and trap the light before it disappears. Any remembrance must acknowledge the horror and the pain, but must also celebrate those we lost and provide a cathartic release. My journey has unearthed so much already, but I know there’s so much more that needs to be curated, archived and made accessible for future generations. My aim has always been to create a safe home for remembrance, recognise the queer heroes, trailblazers and organisations, and bring together all the photos, writing and ephemera in one place. 

So please take a look in those shoe boxes under the bed, open the scrapbooks and photo albums and help me build the collection. Or if you have a story to tell or someone to remember please get in touch and let the light back in.

brightonaidsmemorial@gmail.com

The Brighton AIDS Memorial collection can be found on Instagram (thebrightonaidsmemorial) and 

www.queerheritagesouth.co.uk 

David Andrews muses on where we are and where we’re going

Not long now.

Autumnal leaves will soon be falling. Another seasonal change, triggering, inevitably, introspection. How many more seasons do I have left? How many more winters? All the old cliches creep slowly yet firmly into the consciousness.

“We could,” said a friend from university days, “be in our last decade. Who knows?”

Like me, my old buddy, a recently retired professor of sociology, has seen many summers, and is a fully paid-up member of the grey hair tribe. The palette we both now share leans towards the pale, washed out. Like flicking through one of those Farrow & Ball colour taster cards.

On a recent trip to the Isle of Wight with my two kids (Hurrah!! A staycation!! An escape!! A breakout!!) I – literally – saw my life flashing before me, eerily seeing my 29-year-old son leaning against a railing I had leant against decades before, as a 10-year-old child on my family’s annual pilgrimage to Ventnor.

The shadows which crisscrossed the road, thrown by the venerable, ancient oaks, now a metaphor for my coming time. And of course, they will be there for my children’s children. As Cormac McCarthy wrote, ‘the plains, they do not change. We change and age and disappear and the plains and their long timeless shadows, they do not disappear. They stay.’

But hey! Let’s not get maudlin. Let’s get out and see ….see the world. If we can. While we can. The doom which has engulfed us all in the past 18 months is gradually beginning to lift, albeit a patchy recovery for an economy riddled with heavy machine gun fire.

Walking down my local Western Road en route to Waitrose – a hazardous journey on foot at the best of times, running the gauntlet of street sleepers and shuffling morning-after drunks – I was struck by the extraordinary number of closed shops. Not just closed. Boarded up. Like the owners had wind of a massive riot about to kick off.

It looked like a combat zone, shortly after the last grenades had been lobbed. Most of those names will not return. Debenhams, gone, New Look, gone, Gap, about to be vapourised, the list is long and deadening.

Yet at 9 am on a Saturday morning there was already a huge queue snaking around the block for Primark, standing now like the stoic Alamo fort surrounded by thousands of Mexican soldiers. Here, on this chill mid-summer’s morning, are dozens of expectant shoppers, mainly with very young children in tow, waiting to pounce. Maybe for school uniforms, I thought.

Am I, I reflected while stepping over a rogue guy rope anchoring a street-sleeper’s pop-up tent, witnessing the beginning of the end? It’s not coming back, is it?

The journey which, by stealth, began in the mid-90s with the advent of online services, is just a few nails away from the complete, ready to rock coffin.

We have all seen it coming.

Problem is, our local council services can barely cover the cost of bin collections, let alone plan for what must now replace these once bustling precincts.

Logically, what we once knew as ‘the shops’ will become the new high density housing zones. With any luck we may see a return of the kind of retailers we could actually use, as opposed to another Chunky Funky Chicken – but I am not optimistic.

The realist in me sees a drab, colour-drained landscape, where human interaction is pared down to a minimum.

The snaking Primark queues will also be gone before too long, as the retailer throws in the towel and joins former stablemates like Gap in dispatching its gear online.

Which means – what? – more DPD vans screaming around the corner just when you managed to dodge the guy in the low-slung black helmet on a souped up moped, making an urgent McDonald’s breakfast delivery to the flat where they have the full symphony fast-food app addiction.

Apart from the clear fact that our roads are overstuffed and drastically over polluted, is there anyone among us not driven crazy by the incessant demands by the likes of Deliveroo to utilise its food delivery services?

The over reliance on kamikaze youngsters urgently revving their leased motorcycles to invade every corner of our lives is whipping up a perfect storm of polluted obesity, sending us hurtling to an end of days scenario of toxic corpulence.

A

part from all the grievous harm we are inflicting on the planet, am I alone in wondering how can people afford to call on the Mad Max brigade to deliver a cheeseburger and fries? And this, when data suggesting that three in five of under 10 are technically obese.

For the most part those children are raised in poorer homes, yet data points to those on lower incomes being far more likely to be drawn to fast food services.

But no worries if you can’t afford it, as there are always the fast loan crew who will help you out if you find yourself a bit short.

Plus ca change.

‘Don’t look so glum, David,’ chirped Vinod, who has run my local newsagent/grocers/anything you might need corner shop for the past three decades.

Slowly pushing a heavily laden trolley, stacked precariously with towering rows of canned tomatoes and huge six-pint milk bottles, Vinod paused for breath.

‘The thing is, my friend,’ he beamed, now leaning gratefully against his shop doorway, and flashing a knowing grin,’ it’s the youngsters who are going to have to deal with it all. It is they who will inherit this mess.. Our time is gone now, vanished. Like our youth.’

And he was right. As EM Forster put it in Howards End, it is not the meek who will inherit the earth, but the destroyers. Like Forster’s Wilcox family. The hardened and faceless corporations who have constructed a vast cyber economy, silicon empires controlled, unseen, and without empathy.

But, as Samuel Beckett wrote “I go on. I can’t go on. But. I go on…”. And so we do, beating against the tide. We go on.

Book shops – good book shops – have always been more than somewhere just to buy a book. They’re places to hang out, to read, to meet people, to just be. Now there’s a new book shop that’s all those things – and more. 

The Book Makers is a volunteer-run community project where established authors support local writers from diverse backgrounds. And it’s a book shop. “It’s a space where established authors commit to welcoming new voices into the community of writers. It’s a place where people can learn about the craft – and business – of writing”, says local author William Shaw who, together with Brighton-based arts charity Creative Future and local bookshop Goldsboro Books, is behind the venture. 

In September, Creative Future New Writing South and Writers Mosaic will be starting a full programme of workshops in the space to further inspire creativity. Go and support. Go and hang out.

The Book Makers,  15 Cranbourne St BN1 2RD

I’ve lived in Brighton for more than two years now and every day I love it a little bit more. Daily compound interest over 800 days adds up to quite a lot, so I’m very happy here. Except for the seagulls.   

The thing is, you cannot have Brighton without seagulls. The idea is ludicrous. In West Hill, the gulls are relatively discreet. I had a soft-headed next-door neighbour who used to leave an open packet of Wonderloaf on the front porch for them but eventually she was lynched and thrown into the sea. After that the seagull menace at 42 Dyke Road was a spent force, and we went back to our daily routines. 

Elsewhere it’s a different story. By the sea they become aggressively predatory. You can always spot tourists because of the unguarded way they saunter around with their chips. Sooner or later they are going to learn the way to eat them is to hunch over them, maintaining ceaseless vigilance. This is not easy, and can make you look furtive, as if you are concealing a dirty secret. 

But you don’t have to be a visitor to become a victim, as I found out a few weeks ago. I had decided to treat myself to a bacon double cheeseburger from the Burger King in North Street – I allow myself about two of these a year – and was enjoying it mightily, until… There was a sudden blur of white, and a BOF noise and the next thing I knew my hand was empty, and four seagulls were picking over the scraps of bacon double cheeseburger a couple of feet to my right. 

One does not expect altruism or even basic consideration from the animal kingdom, but even so I was outraged. My initial instinct was to call the police. Those burgers cost nearly a fiver, and I am not made of money. I was impressed, though, at the clinical way the operation was conducted. The seagull is a large bird, but at no point was I struck or even touched by feather or beak. As impressive a piece of flying as I have ever seen. What also impressed me was the reaction of my fellow humans. Instead of laughing, they stopped to console me. I wonder whether I’d have reacted in as kindly a fashion. But then these were Brightonians: they knew the score. They know the menace that lurks in the air above, that perches on the chimney-tops, or struts around the streets as if they’re saying “come and have a go if you’re hard enough.” 

   I’ve recently heard that black-headed gulls are now invading the town and destroying seagulls’ nests. These are twice as big as native seagulls, show even less fear, and do not bother with humans. Until they do, they get my profound encouragement.

THE JOLLOF CAFÉ is a project of the Sussex Refugee and Migrant Self Group working to support people “trapped on the wrong side of the UK’s immigration system”. They “work together to resolve immigration policies and navigate the hostile environment”. Collaborating closely with migrant housing charity Thousand 4 Thousand, they’ve set up the Jollof Café to show what hospitality looks like. It’s also a space where asylum seekers and forced migrants can come for love and support. 

Do join them at West Hill Hall on Wednesday for a chat and to share a meal. Always remember, it’s worth talking to strangers, quite  a lot of them have sweets.

Whenever I wander along Upper Gardner Street in the North Laine I get that Proustian rush, that time and place thing. For Proust it was smells and tastes, for me it’s the colourful local architecture and that central Brighton bohemian vibe which is pretty much unchanged since I first arrived here in 1979.

It was a time of massively high unemployment (Thatcher had come to power that year, go figure…) but I was miraculously offered a job shortly after graduating as a supervisor on the Government’s Youth Opportunities Scheme, known back then as YOP.

Upper Gardner Street, 1980s

The money was poor, but I thought here was a chance to give something back to the community, helping out these kids who were deemed unemployable. Most had left school at 15, as you could back then.

Some of their own volition, but most because they were thrown out, had been branded as trouble-makers. Most came from broken homes in the problem areas of Brighton. But one thing they all had in common was that they wanted to belong somewhere, to be part of something. Be part of the world of work, where they could transition from boys to young men.

I had a gang of around 15 boys in all, with a brief to go out into the community and do up dilapidated buildings which could then be used by local people. Most of the work was straight forward painting and decorating, and the boys were given a small wage each week, more or less equivalent to today’s minimum wage. It was designed to be a learning experience and help prepare them to enter the work force.

Every day we’d go out in a transit-type van, descending noisily onto whatever project we happened to be engaged in. Sometimes the boys would moon out of the windows at startled passers-by, and as their boss I was supposed to be unamused. But it was a laugh, and we bonded.

Lunch times were a challenge. The boys were supposed to bring a packed lunch, but many didn’t because there wasn’t anyone at home to prepare them.

One boy, Trevor, often missed out on food altogether, having to scavenge what he could from his reluctant peers. One day he did, to my surprise have a modest lunch box with him. This unusual development was the subject of much speculation by the other boys. What was in Trevor’s sandwiches? You don’t want to know. That kind of thing.

We were at the time giving the old Brighton Boys Club in Upper Gardner Street a lick of paint, and all was going well. The boys were – by and large – hard-working and keen, until Trevor suddenly announced he had had enough, was starving, and was going to have an early break.

Off he went to get his tupperware container, and he tore into one of his sandwiches. It may have been spam, I can’t recall. What I can recall is that it was far too early for a break, being around 12 noon and, starving or not, lunch time was never before 1pm.

With 15 boys – all ravenously hungry seemingly all the time – it was important to keep to the routine. So I asked Trevor to put the sandwich away until 1pm, when we could all eat.

“No”, he said, glaring at me like a feral dog protecting a bone. “Fuck off. You can’t make me”.

“Trevor, please put the sandwich away, or I’ll have to send you off for the rest of the day. You’ll lose half a day’s money, and you could lose your job here place on the scheme”.

He looked at me. “I mean it”, I said, trying to sound more authoritative than I felt.

Trevor, who had severe learning difficulties and an absentee mother who was known to be a working prostitute, was a strong kid with a shock of bright red hair and a face bedecked with large freckles.

He leapt up, furiously tearing at the remains of the sandwich, and with a wild growl seized a fire extinguisher from the wall.

“Put it down, Trevor”, I said.

But Trevor was determined to show who was the boss, and instead of putting the extinguisher down, lifted it above his head and stumbled towards me, snarling, trying to catch his breath.

“I… WANT… TO… EAT… MY… FUCKING....SANDWICH“.

The other boys found this hugely entertaining, and there were shouts of “Do ‘im Trev, go on, do ‘im”.

It was as if I’d walked inadvertently into a dog fighting ring, and Trevor, playing to an enthusiastic crowd, strutted like a victorious gladiator in a particularly bloody arena.

Looking back now, I can tell you that all my romantic notions of doing something real and putting something back into the community left me. I wasn’t much older than those kids and I was about to sustain perhaps a severe head injury.

It didn’t seem worth it. Fortunately, even in his temporary fury, the heat of Trevor’s rage, my assuring him he would be locked away for a good while if he went ahead with the attack managed to seep through. I held my ground and talked Trevor down.

There were no mobile phones to call the police, and it was with great relief that I warily watched a panting Trevor lower the extinguisher to the floor.

I resolved not to let the incident put me off my job. But in truth it was never the same again. The trust had gone.

Having reported back to my boss on the episode, Trevor was quietly removed from the programme. I recall him mournfully taking his leave of our base camp, never to return.

Whenever I wander along Upper Gardner Street I wonder to this day where Trevor and all those other boys are now. Did they ever make it into the work force proper, did they grow up to have families and ideals of their own? Or did the hand they were dealt simply mute all enthusiasm for life, take away any desire to progress in the world of work.

Did they ‘do battle with the world ‘ere all eternity,’ as Sophocles might have it.

David Andrews is a writer and media consultant.

www.davidandrewsmedia.co.uk