Ditchling Museum Of Art And Craft

The Museum of Arts and Crafts at Ditching has only a few minor works by Eric Gill, but his spirit predominates- as it did in the lives and over the work of his followers. Gill was mind-rackingly odd- a cult leader and sexual predator who achieved a version of modernism through a passion for medieval catholicism and is the only British artist who could be exhibited alongside Matisse and Picasso without seeming like a pale copyist or an eccentric interloper. Gill revolutionised sculpture and typography and produced religous art that convinces- which is a hard thing to do in an unbelieving age. He drew all sorts of craftspeople to Ditchling- where he established a pompously named guild-cum-commune with its own chapel- and it is their work, in metalwork and calligraphy and weaving etc that is mostly on show. There are oddities- for instance an example of the textiles that were woven for Charlton Heston to wear in Ben Hur and a small selection of drawings and contraptions by the (non-Gillian) cartoonist Roland Emmett. My favourite exhibit (sadly only on loan) is a garden roller carved on its ends (by a Gill disciple under the master's supervision) with sexually explicit images of a boy and girl.

St John the Baptist, Clayton

Just down the road from Ditchling is St John the Baptist, Clayton- with its very fine 11th century Clunaic frescos. The paintings got a coat of whitewash in Cromwellian times and re-emerged during restoration in the late 19th century. All things considered they're very well preserved. Gill must have loved having them on the doorstep.

A Visitor

My former brother-in-law came calling. I don't see him very often and after every meeting my image of him resets itself to how he used to be- slim and gangling with a mullet. The bell rang and I was momentarily shocked to find this short, stocky, shaven-headed old bloke at the door.

I took him to see our apple trees. (He used to farm fruit. I remember visiting him once in a commercial orchard and being naively shocked at the quantities of windfalls that he was leaving to rot). He said our trees were in reasonable shape. I said they hadn't fruited last year and he said that's because apple trees in their natural state only fruit biannually and if you want them to be more forthcoming you have to prune them viciously. I've lived to be 64 without knowing that.

He and my mother always seem to have been fond of one another. And why not? Twenty minutes after he'd left she turned to me and said, "Can you tell me who brought the flowers?"