Nothing Important (Seaford)

Nothing Important Then

It was Nhung’s idea. She saw a raffle and insisted we enter it. The little community fête at the Clinton Centre was in aid of the local lifeguard service and the raffle prizes were clearly all unwanted gifts from hated aunts. Why not the tombola? At least the winnings are useful; a tin of mushy peas, 4 pack of bog roll, raspberry squash. But according to some unwritten Lost Promenade law that only exists in Nhung’s head, the raffle it must be.

Community Fête

As well as the raffle, there’s a bric-a-brac stall laden with battered shoes; fairy cakes (proper old-school flat-looking things – none of your modern cupcake nonsense) and a cup of tea with a custard cream for 30p. So we have one and Tamsin tries to decide what’s more revolting, the adjacent screaming toddler encrusted in half-digested jelly or Nhung’s plans to have taxidermy lessons. It’s a close-run thing. We find out what time the raffle tickets are being drawn so we can return later, and head off to explore the small seaside town of Seaford.

Clinton Centre

Seaford is charming. It’s sedate and old-fashioned, but twinkly in the sun, and everybody is super-friendly (except for an old lady who, when Nhung put her bag down on a garden wall came running out of her house, shouting “What are you doing? What are you doing? I saw you pick something up”). There are funny little shops; ‘Eggs and Spreads’ which sells eggs and spreads; a lovely traditional pharmacy; ‘Just For Ladies Lingerie’ – with a window display of thermal vests, Winceyette dressing gowns and a green Halloween witch’s mask – and ‘Anyone Can Fish’, run by Tony, who likens fishing to meditation. Nhung nearly buys a snood from him, but is put off by its camouflage print, so settles for some portable fish weighing scales instead, which she plans to use to measure her bags when travelling.

Anyone Can Fish

In one charity shop, Nhung says, “I’m looking for a butter dish”, and a woman who is also looking for a butter dish overhears and they have a conversation about butter dishes. In another one, Nhung find an amazing vintage wool coat, which will be the basis of her winter look. Its discovery causes her such happiness, she almost skips her way around town for the rest of the day. And at yet another one, Tamsin spots a fairly horrible, itchy looking jumper with pictures of sheep on it that she thinks might interest Nhung. Nhung has wandered off down the street a little, so she calls out of the doorway, “Nhung! Nhung”. A passer-by thinks she’s shouting for her mum, and kindly replies; “She’s not there”. Seaford is great for second-hand shopping. As well as a good selection of charity shops, there’s a host of antique shops and junk shops, although one does sell the inevitable WWII German memorabilia/golliwogs that seem to so often be a feature of British seaside towns. This time the piece de resistance is a pot of SS-branded cold cream. Moisturiser for Nazis. Nice.

What with the finding of the lovely coat, Nhung’s on a roll and is asking to photograph Seaford townsfolk willy-nilly. One old man asks why she wants to photograph him and when she tells him about the blog, he replies “Nothing important then.”

Regency Restaurant

We have lunch in The Regency Restaurant, a traditional tearoom style place with wooden beams and pink and white check tablecloths, and then it’s time to go back to the Clinton Centre to join the 6 other people for the raffle draw. Ticket after ticket is drawn unclaimed and none of them are ours. The aim seems to be to make sure everyone who’s here for the draw wins something, and eventually sure enough – hooray! We are the proud owners of a pair of crystal wine goblets, a set of guest soaps, some tealights and a Parker pen. Result.

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After all that excitement, the only way to relax is to visit Seaford Museum, which is housed in a Martello tower on the seafront – one of the few of such towers open to the public in the country. If the Lost Promenade has one word of advice to anyone reading this blog, it is this; visit Seaford Museum, you won’t regret it. It’s basically one of the best museums we’ve ever been to.

It’s a paltry £1.50 to get in and at first seems fairly unremarkable. The air is ripe with a musty smell similar to Newhaven Fort and the main building is packed with flotsam and jetsam collected from the beach and the usual bits and bobs you might find in an average museum of local history. But then we walk through a doorway to the 5000 extra square feet under the fort…

Seaford Museum

A room full of radios! A wall plastered with sewing machines! A commode called a ‘Thunder Box’! A collection of vacuum cleaners and old computers! Spooky 1970s mannequins! Cameras, a model railway and a soap in the shape of a ventriloquist’s dummy! Seaford Museum has one of the most random and fascinating selections of miscellanea we’ve ever seen. All collected from local people, the contents tell the story of ordinary lives in a haphazard and random way. But this is the reality of life; not a rigidly structured narrative, but a confusing and circuitous wonder cabinet of fancies and oddments. Faded ephemera with hand-drawn labels, dead technology, cultural hodgepodge and skulls. Trying to find order in this confusion is a natural reaction; to collect it, to catalogue it; like the Lost Promenade, starting with the pieces around the edges to try to make sense of it all. It’s “nothing important”, but it’s everything to us.

Seaford Museum

Our reveries are disturbed by one of the museum’s pensioner volunteers – why are we taking photographs? We tell him about it and then overhear him say, “Those two ladies have an Internet Programme and are going to write about the museum”. Oh dear, I hope they don’t read the Lost Promenade before this is published and worry we’ll be snarky abut them. How could we be?

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After the delights of the museum, we wander along the seafront to look at the cute, colourful beach huts and try, in vain to find an art deco seafront shelter, of which there is an old photograph in the museum. We go back to a junk shop so Nhung can buy a biscuit tin that has been preying on her mind since Tamsin’s suggestion that she could “use it as a Ladytin to keep hairslides and stuff in.” She’s still skipping with excitement over her new-old coat and about Seaford generally. Not even some children running up and down the train on the way home shouting “Bogies!” can dampen our mood. We confused some old people, we explored a wonderful museum, we won the fucking raffle. Seaford (pronounced “Sea Ford”) – you may think we’re unimportant, but that’s OK. You’re nice.

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Lost

Snood not bought from the tackle shop

Art deco seafront shelter

Nhung’s butter dish (to be continued in the next Lost Prom entry…)

Clinton Centre

Found

Two hairbands – one black, one grey

Vintage herringbone wool coat by Lama-Laine

Huntley & Palmer biscuit tin with seagulls design

Plain black hairslides

Lip balm

Universal Film Splicer (for Super 8 film)

Parker Pen

Set of tealight candles

Charity shop Christmas cards

Pair of wine glasses

Guest soaps

Pink 1960s Ceramica Milano dressing table pot (for Tamsin’s collection of 60s china with pictures of pointy-chinned girls on it)

2 old postcards – 1 of Lily Brayton (early 20^th Century Shakespearean actress) and 1 of Croatian national costume

Fish weighing scales

China milk jug in the shape of a cat (the milk pours out of its mouth)

The best museum in England

Nhung’s Winter Look

Barn Theatre

Town of No Renown (Newhaven)

Conservative Club

Hands up who wouldn’t start a dreary Sunday with a nose around the art deco lair of a secret society if they got the chance? It’s certainly not something we’d turn down. Arcane symbols, a vial of dried blood, pottery dogs and camp blinged-up aprons for men? Lost Prom – meet the Freemasons.

Sussex Freemasons

Today’s trip is to Newhaven, but the Sussex Masonic Centre in Brighton is having an open day, so we stop by for a tour on our way to the station. The rarely glimpsed 1920s building features a pendulous stairwell lantern longer than both our living rooms and a cavernous black and white tiled hall, its dome ceiling gilded with the signs of the zodiac with an All Seeing Eye staring down from the centre. It’s especially impressive in comparison with the modern part of the building with its Artex ceiling-tiled modern hall.

Sussex Freemasons

These days the masons seem only to exist in order to hold and practice silly ‘ceremonies’. An order of events, sitting on the organ, reveals nothing of great interest, other than a donation from the ‘Helmet Fund’. One of the most noticeable things is the defibrillator in the bar area, presumably in case the old men get over excited about showing each other their nipples and having a secret ‘No Girlz Allowed – They Smell’ gang. Still, it keeps them busy.

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After a bit of breakfast, it’s on to Newhaven. The small part of it we’d seen on our previous trip (to Tide Mills) and the reports we’d heard from others had prepared us for kitchen sink desolation. We’d pictured a town of no renown – crumbling buildings, blank industrial estates, boarded-up shops, empty faces. An abandoned station, an abandoned ferry port and little sign left of the once thriving cross channel traffic, now departed to Kent and the Eurotunnel.

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Yet, even though it’s a Sunday and hardly anything is open – perhaps because the sun is out – it doesn’t look all that grim Quite grim, but it’s no Basingstoke. In the town centre there are plenty of empty premises, but there’s also a cake shop, a second hand bookshop, a shop called ‘Balloonatics’ (which as well as balloons also sells a strange array of giant fluffy dogs), a takeaway called ‘I Like ‘a’ Pizza’ and a pet accessories parlour with what looks like a row of day-glo nooses hanging in the window (which turn out to be dog leads). There are even a few streets that might – if only somebody showed some love to them (and money), almost be a bit, well French. Newhaven is the gateway to the South of England by sea but right now, it doesn’t feel like a gateway to anywhere, unless it’s the gateway to a particularly scruffy garage forecourt where all the toilets are blocked, the shop smells of sick and you burn your tongue on a microwaved pie.

Conservative Club

Our favourite sight in Newhaven is its derelict Conservative Club. Torched and sad; ragged doors and windows hang off the building like pieces of loose, charred skin. There’s a sign that mysteriously says; ‘Danger Keep Out: Canon’ and a poster on the door revealing that fittingly, the last band to play there were called Tasteless. This building is what the whole of British society will look like in 5 years time, once its political masters have done their worst. This is one ruined property we won’t be mourning.

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A brief but sudden shower sends us hurtling to the only shelter – a fish shop. Nhung is amazed by the cheap prices but Tamsin is concerned about the smell and nixes her buying any. Next stop; an eccentrically corroded boat on the Ouse, red and pale blue with orange rust stripes and loaded up with multi-coloured bicycles, prams and wheelbarrows. Tatty net curtains and a TV aerial suggest someone might be living here. Blue rags hang from the bow like a shabby veil.

old banger

We wander down an alleyway behind some houses and find ourselves in a small harbour area, full of even more delightfully rusty, mysterious detritus. There’s a giant hangar, families of cranes and containers with smiley face grafitti on them and a snooty-looking ginger ship’s cat strutting proudly on a houseboat. Later on we see another sweet pussy, this time a black and white one clambering on the rocks by the river in search of fishy titbits. Aw.

giant hangar

Back to the town centre again and some burgers, chips and milkshakes at Rose Cafe & Restaurant. At one point a woman comes in and asks, “Did I leave my top here?”

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In search of more excitement, we decide to walk up to Newhaven Fort where a Battle of Britain Day is being held. Re-enactment types in vintage army uniforms, 40s swing dancers, cute miniature tanks and a Land Girls’ reunion are amongst the attractions on offer.

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Built in the 1860s, the fort saw action in both World Wars, and was restored relatively recently, after standing near derelict for many years. A warren of tunnels and cave-like little chambers each hold different war-related displays, covering topics such as the blitz, life in the trenches etc. However, we don’t spend much time on these as the rooms, with their smell of damp and cat wee are too reminiscent of Tamsin’s flat.

Land Girls

Our best conversation of the day is with Ivy and Alice, two former Land Girls. Ivy is 92 and was stationed near Coventry where she was seriously injured during the bombing. But their eyes sparkle and dance as they reminisce about their time in the land army – it’s a privilege to speak to them.

At the hop

We amble around the ramparts taking in the sights. A German U-boat crew smoking fags, lindy-hopping couples from Brighton, the sea mumbling indistinctly at the bottom of the cliffs. A couple who collect antique weapons talk to us about 1940s puttees and disappointingly nobody does any Cher-like straddling of the cannons. Finally, there is a minute’s silence and ‘The Last Post’ is played as old soldiers struggle to hold up their brightly-coloured standards against the strong wind.

The Last Post

Newhaven itself, like freemasonry, has a similar air – a feel of the last of England – battling gamely against elements outside its control. Its standard is still flying just, but at half-mast.

Lost

Fresh fish

The Spitfire fly-by promised at the Fort (cancelled due to the weather conditions)

Lives in centuries of wars

Found

Fresh rosemary (plucked by Nhung to go with her lost fish)

Small tin with WW11 postcard design

Red ensign needed for sailing trip

Two lovely Land Girls

Two lovely pussies

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