Words: Lizzie Beck. Pictures: Tatenda Mikey and Hatton’s Yard. Where I live in St Leonards it is well established that there are as many art galleries as there are coffee shops. Which is actually pretty impressive for a small town. But why is this worth mentioning? Because in six years I’ve been in every one…
Words: Grace Lally. Pic: protests outside East Sussex County Council last year. Elections are being cancelled and opposition groups have been forced to resort to the courts to defend the democratic right to vote. In Putin’s Russia? In Trump’s America? No, this particular anti-democratic stunt is being pulled by our own local councillors here in Hastings and…
Just before Christmas it hit the headlines: we’ve stolen a Native American chief’s headdress. We, as in England generally, but also Hastings and its Museum specifically. Now, I know a Hastings boy did once stain his skin with tea and head out for Canada to pretend to be ‘one of them Red Injuns’. That happened,…
Conquest Hospital Cardiology faces closure WE ARE WALKERS ‘We’re all walkers in our family.’ My brother makes this observation after spending the day with our dad for his birthday. It often doesn’t make sense to people how much we like to walk. Sometimes it even riles people up: ‘but it’s faster to go by x…
Merlin Betts I read this and I immediately thought of the biblical Eve. I bet a lot of you did too. Eve, or an archetypal woman. I didn’t know that “All About Eve” also refers to a band, and that their name comes from a 1950s film, “All About Eve”, which is about women lecherously…
Andrew Myers If you were to inhabit the body of an insect while retaining all the vital aspects of human intellect and perception, and find yourself on one of the vertical surfaces of the present writer’s kitchen, while a dish involving fish or seafood is being prepared, or indeed during any activity, culinary or otherwise,…
Writing: Merlin Betts. Image: Archie Lauchlan. Walking the border of Gaza… well, a similar length anyway. The Stade to the De La Warr is about 9km, not far off the length of the Gaza Strip’s southern border with Egypt. Gaza’s longer border is 51km – that’s basically from here to Brighton. I made this the…
Gareth Stevens considers the winners and losers of gentrification Even though I have used both the terms DfL (Down from London) and OfB (Over from Brighton) from time to time … I try not to. Both labels are lazy, reductive and divisive. Whenever people use either term in a pejorative way, they redirect fire which…
Gareth Stevens “Without community, politics is dead. But communities have been scattered like dust in the wind. At work, at home, both practically and imaginatively, we are atomised.” George Monbiot What do we even mean by the word Community these days? What does it mean to be a Hastinger – and do you have to…
Merlin Betts Second night in the Piero Lounge. Now the confirmed refuge for any wary (or weary) stranger when dusk falls grey and harsh over Nuneaton – if that stranger is sober and needs to charge multiple electrical devices. Doubtful that it’ll last with so few covers on Friday and Saturday night, but the place…