There's a question mark over the future of the Meeting House. Repairs to our 75 year old building could cost the Sussex East Area- which holds the money- something in the region of £50,000. There are those who say we should sell up and buy or rent something smaller and cheaper.

This came up in yesterday's Business Meeting and I got growly.

I made three points.

1. We have the best, most accomodating Quaker building in the County.

2. The Area has just spent an enormous amount of money on the Meeting House at Lewes, which, admittedly, is historic but with facilities inferior to ours.

3. They have the money in the bank. What else do they want to spend it on?

I continued growly when the matter of the person with the untrained puppy came up. This too threatens the Meeting (though in a different way) and anything that threatens the Meeting puts me on the defensive....

It seems I am vulnerable on the subject.  Well, it's good to know these things.

Everywhere one looks The Society of Friends is on the retreat. Ailz asked Quaker Central about hard copies of the most recent Swartthmore Lectures (which are given annually) and was told they'd stopped publishing them.

Grrrrr. Grrrr. Grrrrr!

Only here in Eastbourne we're not on the retreat. We get a healthy attendance, we are attracting new (and younger) people, we have developed a website with lots of good stuff on it, we have started a monthly newsletter, we have something like a full roster of hirers, we have projects underway to beautify the building and improve the facilities- and all built up from a situation post-covid where the Meeting was rocking on its foundations after the shock resignation of the clerk and treasurer and had a Sunday attendance in single figures.....

I know that everything that rises must fall but I'd like our upward trajectory to continue just a little bit longer- at least for the rest of my active life- which, dammit- won't be for so very much longer......

 Our version of mudlarking is going to the shop at the recycling centre- much less mucky and the things we come away with are all in one piece.

Yesterday I watched the Northern Mudlarks- mother and daughter operating out of the Scottish borders- picking their way through a Victorian dump that was leaching into whatever river that was. This was in early January, the ground was frozen and items had to be chipped out of the matrix. No, I'm too old for that kind of caper. 

We were at the recycling shop earlier in the day and came away with a fine haul. 

This little lot (excluding the plant) cost us £6.50

Two big, serviceable vases, a dinky little Italian jug, some coasters (for the Meeting House) and two model buildings- one French, the other Dutch. 



I researched the buildings. The French brasserie is probably imagined but the Dutch one represents an actual building on the Market Place in Delft. Both are what you might call collectibles- and if you bought them on eBay they would set you back a tidy sum.....

 Being a Quaker elder turns out to involve more than sitting in the corner looking venerable. It also involves dealing with people who bring untrained puppies into the Meeting for Worship. And doing so firmly but lovingly. It has a lot in common with the office of churchwarden in the dear old, corrupt old, silly old Church of England. Churchwardens it occurs to me, are issued with staves as a symbol of office- and not only as a symbol but also as a defensive or offensive weapon- used to keep order and maintain decency in the sacred building. It is essentially a quarter-staff as used by the outlaw Little John to thwack persons of whom he disapproved....

 From mudlarking to metal detecting is just a tiny sideways step. And now I'm watching videos related to both.

When YouTube groks that you're interested in a subject it feeds you with more of the same- which is how I come to know more about the Beatles' break-up than anyone apart from Paul and Ringo. I wouldn't say I'm sick of the topic but I'd be glad if YouTube gave it a rest. Why did the Beatles break up? Basically because they grew up and got a life- or lives. Anyway I'm hoping the detectorists and mudlarkers will now push them aside.

Isn't it great that people with a hobby or interest to share no longer have to catch the eye of a cultural gatekeeper- publisher or producer- but can simply take themselves online.

Yes, a lot of what's online is low quality, but the best is as good as anything you'd find of TV. Indeed, better- because freer in content and less bound by formula. 

I used to own a metal detector. It was one of the pricey things that went missing when we moved house. I'm afraid I hardly used it, except to amuse the grandkids. I knew a spot on the farm where you'd be guaranteed to find nicely corroded metal railings and tractor parts.

The value of a headless lead soldier you've dug up far surpasses that of an intact lead soldier you can buy in a shop or on eBay- and not just because it comes free. The one is only an artefact but the other is archaeology.

 The dog is only a puppy. It whines and whinges. The owner has issues (I see the symptoms; I don't know the underlying cause) and fusses with the dog. This is happening in the silent Meeting and can't be allowed to go on so I do my elder thing and extract them from the Meeting and take them for a walk. They behave perfectly well, but when we get back to the Meeting House there is drama. Tears. "I didn't want to go for a walk" . Other people pitch in- which is as it should be.  In Quakerism everyone is a priest and nobody is. It's one of the fundamentals. Ministry is shared, not vested in a single person.

This matter will be on-going.....

The dog is a cockapoo. My daughter has one of those. They're the most restless, boisterous dog ever invented. I'm told that the breeder who put spaniel and poodle together is on record as saying, "That was my biggest mistake." And yet they're so popular, so fashionable.

I'm not a dog person, but there are dogs I like. The person with the cockapoo previously owned an elderly greyhound. That dog was a love. And Edna has a Romanian street dog called Molly which is bright eyed and altogether delightful.

 I'm fitter than I thought.

I was part of a three man team moving a very heavy couch out of Edna and Miriam's, into a van, across town and into the Meeting House- and I wasn't the one huffing and puffing.

It's nice to surprise oneself.

 As Damian and his assistant were loading the remains of the piano- now partially dismembered- on the back of the van a chap with long hair (musicianly type- I wonder now if he was someone I should have recognised) drove past, stopped and came over to see what we were up to. I told him the lamentable story. "Pity," he said, "I'd have bought it off you." "Pity you didn't come by five minutes earlier," I replied. 

Twenty years and more of not being able to shift the damn thing and just after we've rendered unsaleable we have someone come by who might have been a buyer. Ain't that just life! Thomas Hardy would have called it a "Satire of Circumstance" and worked it up into one of his awkard, cussed, indelible little pomes.....

By the way, Damian says he means to keep some of the fancy carved woodwork and repurpose it as a shelf. 

The piano had been sitting at the Meeting House unplayed and untuned for decades. David who was around twenty years ago said it was a bone of contention even then. We discussed it, we deliberated, but no no-one actually did anything because such is the Quaker way. "It's so heavy," we complained. We mentioned it to our mate Damian and he said, "I'll get it out for you." And he did. It took him all of ten minutes,

One has to be a little sad. It was a good piano. Legend says it was once played by Donald Swan....

 Picture Diary 91

1. The Great Gandalfo



2. Green Lady



3. Skeleton Coast



4. The Parade's Gone By



5. Candy Stripe Sue



6. The Lost Traveller's Dream Under The Hill

 We sat in the front row, holding up a phone to film the talk. Harvey warned us he danced around a lot. And so he does. The rock 'n' roll recording we made will end up on the Eastbourne Quaker website.

Harvey Gillman is one of British Quakerisms strongest voices. He's Jewish, mystical, a bit Zen, gay and very very angry. He goes to the Rye Meeting and we're very lucky to have him in Sussex East. He writes books. He writes poems.

His title was "Spirituality in an Age of Anxiety". He asked us to define spirituality- or, rather, not define it- because that would be theology (perish the thought) but to give him our feelings about it. I said "freedom" and if I hadn't had my turn I might also have said "openness".

He talked about his anger at the state of the world.  "Anger is guilt turned outwards," he suggested, quoting someone or other. I used to be very angry myself and gave it up- because my mantra is that it's fear turned outwards- but guilt is a more complex, more equivocal emotion than fear and now, thanks to him, I'm wondering if I should be angrier....

A thunderstorm passed over us last night. I could feel the air shivering as it came closer and closer. In the event we were only brushed by its skirts but I think other places, further inland, will have really received a hammering.