Beyond the Level

Beyond the Level - Artists' Open Houses, Brighton: the website is now live. it uses SSI (server side includes) for the navigation menu so I don't have to update every bloomin' page if it changes! - hence the shtml! I managed to find a very cheap host www.110mb.com that supports SSI, something a lot of the paid hosts don't even do!

Easter in Ramsbottom

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Originally uploaded by fred pipes

Ramsbottom, or Tupp's Arse as we used to call it, or just plain Rammy, was the venue for the 114th Easter Meet of the Clarion Cycling Club. Ian and Sue Bullock very kindly gave me a lift Up North. Ramsbottom is quite near Bury, where I was born and bred and where my sister and family still live. I was able to kill two birds with one stone: attend my first Easter Meet and see my family. Well, three really as Ramsbottom is a station on the East Lancs Railway and I'm passionate about steam trains!

I missed the hill climb on Saturday morning as it started at the crack of dawn and was all over by breakfast. The Conference was rather longer and more technical than anticipated, with the added surprise at the end that the Brighton and Hove Section (aka Bob Harber) was to host next year's meet - in Eastbourne! After this, I sloped off to Rawtenstall, pulled by a very clean and shiny Deltic Co-Co Class 55 no. 55022 Royal Scots Grey (I'm not usually keen on diesels but this one won me over) to seek out Britain's last Temperance Bar and sample a sarsaparilla (80p) and a Black Beer with Raisins (not as nice), followed by the first of many rides on steam trains: behind Standard Class 4 tank no. 80098, which was about to lose its boiler ticket. The other steam engine on duty was BR 2-6-0 Class 4MT no. 76079. I'm not usually excited about Standard locos, but hey! Also I was delighted to discover that I had three free rides on my membership card (I'm usually up for steam galas which are not eligible). Back in Rammy I tucked in to a cup of black peas then set off for Bury behind 76079 and a pint of Black Magic Mild at the Trackside - a bar that boasts 9 real ales, none above £2.40 a pint! Saturday night was an excellent buffet supper, and luckily I had to leave to catch my two buses home before the ceilidh band came on.

Sunday was the highlight of the weekend with a car trip to the Clarion House Cafe, the other side of Burnley. The weather was glorious and we were able to take our 50p pints of Clarion tea outside and enjoy magnificent views over the Pendle hills. Other more hardy lycra-clad Clarionettes had cycled there, a leisurely 40-mile excursion with plenty of challenging undulations. On the way back we took a wrong turning in Burnley and stumbled across rows and rows of boarded-up houses and shops - a scandal. Afterwards, Ian and Sue joined me on a round trip of the ELR and were delighted to be pulled by a loco (80098) built at Brighton Works in 1954. After a drink in the pub next door (with its own bowling green half way up the hill) we repaired to the Annual Dinner. Unfortunately I had to leave before the speeches.

As the next day was Easter Monday, there was another opportunity to ride on steam trains. This time I did the complete round trip, including Heywood. It's not the most attractive part of the journey and I spotted several gangs of disaffected youths being talked to by hi-vis clad policemen. Later I read in the Bury Times that kids had been throwing stones at the trains. Heywood however is a good place to take photos of the engine changing ends. 80098 had gone and was relaced by a rather ugly USA S160 2-8-0 no. 5197. Why is it that foreign locos always seem to have an excess of pipes and other accoutriments bolted on all over the place? I finished off the day with a pint of Old Moor Porter in the Trackside.

On Tuesday, on the recommendation of one of the Clarion officers, I went to view a fabulous exhibition of Walter Crane's work at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester entitled 'Art and Labour's Cause is One'. A whole bay was devoted to the Clarion, with letters and artwork - and a photo of the Clarion 'van - including the National Clarion logo and various versions of the popular poster 'A Garland for May Day 1895'. I was joined for lunch by Lois, Pete and Joe up from the Peak District, and we also enjoyed the Subversive Spaces show - joe got told off for touching a Sarah Lucas dining room and my favourite was a video of a bloke with a drumstick rattling it on railings. Wednesday was a quiet day spent in Bury, visiting the splendid art gallery, buying black puddings and whinberry pie - and watching the art deco Hornby Buildings being demolished! The journey back south on Thursday was completed in a record time of around 4 hours (taking the bus to Manchester rather than the expensive tram and taking a wrong tube train!), for the grand sum of £13.20 on Virgin.

IoW steam railway

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Originally uploaded by fred pipes

The visit to the Isle of Wight steam railway was the climax of a very pleasant cycling holiday with the Clarion. We'd cycled 28 miles from Ryde to Totland youth hostel, a lot of the time on disused railway tracks - the one along the Yar valley being spectacular and teaming with wild life. And another undulating 18 miles to Wootton, where after lunch six of us headed to the station to put our bikes on the 2.31 train to Smallbrook Junction. Aren't guard's vans a good idea? We paid £5 for a single. The train was pulled by Hawthorn Leslie 'Invincible', an 0-4-0 industrial saddle tank. At the main station of Havenstreet, we had 15 minutes to dash round the museum, shop and shed. We saw Barclay 0-6-0T 'Ajax', Hunslet 0-6-0ST Austerity No. 92 'Waggoner' and British Rail Class 05 0-6-0DM No D2554 plus a few others in bits. No Terriers. The official website is here. Then it was on to Smallbrook Junction, which is no station at all - just an interchange to the Island Line, which uses old London tube train rolling stock - from which we got the tube to Ryde Pier head and the Fast Cat ferry. As we crossed the Solent, the sea mist closed in - we missed our train home and had to wait an hour for the next one. Smallbrook Junction has no way out and a woman volunteer, who was very impressed by Jim's ex-BR hi-viz jacket and whistle, was in charge of both platforms.

Sheffield Hallam University Library

There are two copies of my new book on the shelves of Sheffield Hallam University Library!

TUNNELS.. Official Underground music

TUNNELS.. Official Underground music on MySpace Music: saw DJ Ben Langham, aka Ben Phaze on BBC Breakfast this morning. He makes young person's 'dance' music from sounds sampled from London's Underground railway!

100% free

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Originally uploaded by fred pipes

I was going to be harsher about this packaging, but have since mellowed. People get very confused about percentages. I've seen cleaning products and shampoo for example advertised as 100% free. That doesn't mean you don't have to pay for it at all - it means you'll get twice as much for your money. Or in the case of these stock cubes, two for the price of one. The thinking goes: you're getting 200% for the price of 100% therefore 100% is free. Or, each pack is half price, so you are getting 50% free. Times that by two packs and you arrive at 100% free. Or more accurately, 100% extra free. Some people don't think you can have more than 100% - you can't for example have more than 100% of a cake - that'd be more than one cake. 'He gave 110%' is a jarring phrase used to describe a footballer or an athlete trying a little bit harder. But if you blow up a photo 200%, it's twice the size of the original (well, four times really, but that's another story)! BTW I was rather hoping that Infinity Foods (where I got this) would have had an offer on the salt-reduced versions of these, but alas no.

Wikipedia

Chatting to my coffee chum Adrian the other day over a toasted teacake at Capers got me wondering how many of my mates have Wikipedia entries. Mine was a struggle to establish - and it's not out of the woods yet! I was deemed not notable enough at first and various friends had to find citations here there and everywhere to back it up (you're not allowed to amend your own entry, which is very frustrating)! Well, Adrian Oxaal probably has the biggest entry. He's followed by my social secretary Peter Chrisp. Fellow Brightonian Marek Kohn also has an entry, but after that we're struggling! People you'd expect to have entries don't: no Dan Thompson (it was apparently deleted), Foz? Foster gets a mention both under The Monochrome Set and David Devant and his Spirit Wife but not under his own name! David Bramwell is in there but only as the real name of Dave Spikey! Then we are into the territory of acquaintances: I was at school with Peter Skellern and we both came to London in 1965. I worked with Nick Crane, at a Gomshall architects called Hutton + Rostron in 1977, both of us writing entries for the Barbour Index. My Time Team editor Steve Platt gets the briefest entry. I'm sure there are others - let me know - I'll continue to search.

Froggy threesome

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Originally uploaded by fred pipes

After a winter of my garden pond looking very barren and empty - and for several days coated with ice and snow - suddenly the frogs are back! I can hear them plop into the water as soon as I come out the back door, but if you're patient they will eventually surface again. The other day I counted six of them! Where have they been? There is even already an early blob of spawn in amongst the reeds.

Holman Hunt

If there were a heaven it'd be a bit like standing in the Manchester [City] Art Gallery surrounded by almost everything Holman Hunt ever painted! I've waited years to see an exhibition devoted to my favourite painter - I've been to all the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood round-ups over the years and shows featuring Millais, Rossetti, Burne-Jones, Alma-Tadema, Lord Leighton, all the Victorians and Edwardians. I travelled up to Manchester especially for this and I wasn't disappointed. Holman Hunt was the most consistent of the Pre-Raphs - he didn't go downhill in later life like Millais and was infinitely more commited than Rossetti, even tho I love them both. He was probably the least scandallous too, tho he did marry his sister-in-law! His paintings may not be as pretty as Rossetti's and their moral and religious themes may put you off, but in my opinion he represents the highest ever achievement in painting - nobody even comes close, before or after (well OK, maybe Vermeer, Ingres, Dali and Glenn Brown). Holman Hunt wasn't a photo-realist - if you look up close at one of his big works, you can see his hand in the brushstrokes and even pencil under the thin layers of paint, but what is astonishing is the bright saturated colours he used. A square inch of painted textile or wood shaving is a psychedelic whirl of intense luscious pigment. He makes the Impressionists look drab. He does however suffer from the same thing that made prog rock unfashionable in pop music - too much going on! And I'm not sure I like his use of soft-focus sometimes, as in 'The awakening conscience' and the horrible 'Triumph of the Innocents' with its babies in bubbles. Gerhard Richter, the American Pop artists and Hyper-realists do it better. To see his true genius, look at the landscape backgrounds of the big 'uns or smaller informal works, like 'Fairlight Downs - Sunlight on the sea' 1852-8 (in the collection of Lord Lloyd Webber) a shimmering sea traversed by a steamship (putting it in HH's present), with the remarkable device of a stick thrown to a dog shown in mid-air! This was painted near Hastings about the same time as 'Our English Coasts' - the one one with sheep on the Downs straying onto the cliffs with the stunning back-lighting. His cropping of the sheep in this one anticipating the snapshot-inspired compositions of Degas. It was great to see all three versions of 'The Light of the World' - we even had the actual lantern HH had made, different piercings representing different faiths. Many of the other big 'uns I'd seen before. Like the prog rockers, many of HH's paintings had been on world tours, and he made a fortune from prints. A rather unimpressive monochrome photogravure (tho HH is said to have touched up 300 of them in black chalk by hand!) by Goupil and Co of 'The triumph of the innocents' was on show in an impressive frame, made by C R Ashbee and the Guild of Handicrafts for C R Horsfall's Ancoats gallery. According to the caption, commentator Alan Crawford (who?) said: 'It is hard to imagine an object more strongly associated with the vanished ideal of social reform through art than this, with its reproduction from Holman Hunt, its quotation from Ruskin [beautifully calligraphed on vellum from The art of England, Chapter 1], made in London's East End by reformed craftsmen, to bring the light of culture to the poor of Manchester.' Hmmm, ever so slightly patronising? The exhibition was free and also includes two spoofs by Steve Bell! My only gripe is the 25 quid publication described as a catalogue. It was produced by the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, where this show first appeared. Despite being full of interesting articles and colour pictures (which could have been a tad bigger!) it doesn't list the exhibits, and it includes pictures not in the exhibition, as I found out when I examined mine in the cafe. I didn't realise for example that there are (at least) two versions of 'The shadow of the cross'. The Manchester one was on show, but there is also a smaller one in nearby Leeds! (And a third I've since learnt is owned by Andrew Lloyd Webber.) There are also (at least) two Ladies of Shalott. What I need from a catalogue is a trainspotter's guide to where all his works can be seen. It was great however to see the self-portrait from the Uffizi and John Ballantyne's portrait of HH in his studio looking like a Victorian Vivian Stanshall in his oriental robe, hat and big ginger beard! Moving Manchester's Holman Hunts next door freed up some wallspace in the main gallery. I'm not good as spot the difference but it looks like most of the gaps have been filled with Millais's dull later landscapes. Manchester Art Gallery (they seem to have dropped City from the name) is a treasure at any time. The Valettes alone are worth a trip to the land of L S Lowry, Joy Division and The Smiths - the foggy streets of this grim Northern city (like on the day I visited) were always waiting for his style of urban Impressionism. And there's an accompanying exhibition of works on paper by the PRB, Burne-Jones and the underrated Ford Madox Brown, he of 'Work' in the main building. The exhibition closes on 11 January. The nearest Holman Hunt to Brighton BTW is the dishy 'Bianca' at Worthing Art Gallery, currently on loan to the above exhibition.

Suet pudding

Since I stopped eating meat nearly 30 years ago (I confess I'm not vegan, nor vegetarian, cos I eat the odd bit of fish) there have been food items I've missed. I used to have dreams about liver, like the grilled liver and chips with a fried egg on top we used to have in the cafe over the deli at Boggi's in Clerkenwell. I have fond memories of salt beef sandwiches with mustard from a shop that seemed to serve nothing else, in Fetter Lane. One thing I used to love as a lad was steak and kidney pudding, with tinned peas and a ladle full of brown gravy, as served in that cafe over a shop on Kay Gardens, when we wagged off school on a Friday. They did meat puds in tiny tins too, I seem to remember from my student days. The nearest to it was a wild mushroom suet pudding from Terre a Terre one Christmas freelancers lunch a few years back. Gorgeous! Since then we've seen veggie haggis and black pudding appear, tho I'm not conviced by the V Pud - tastes nothing like the real thing! Veggie food has come a long way since that brown slop they once served at Crank's. Thank goodness for Linda MacCartney and Quorn. I love pies and pasties and still mourn the demise of Sainsbury's Savoury Pasty. Yes, I know you can buy cheese and onion pasties ('do I have to spell it out!') and Waitrose do a lovely hand-crimped vegetable one, but I crave that MEAT taste! Linda's Country pies are a great stand-by, but frozen products seldom come out right with me. Recently Quorn have been releasing various pastry slices, including Minced beef with onion (not available in all supermarkets I'm sad to say) which I quite like but examining the shelves at Asda the other day my heart stopped when I spotted the new Quorn Beef style and ale pudding! And yes, it does taste like I remembered, and you don't have to boil it up in one of granny's stockings for hours on end! They do a mince and onion version too (but curse their packaging that makes every product look alike!). It's a dream come true. So what's next on the wish list? If they can do haggis, which is mostly cereal filling anyway, it can't be too difficult to produce a veggie faggot? Come on Mr Brain, what are you waiting for?

The Two Wrongies

Watching The Two Wrongies last night - two lovely funny dancers who perform much of their act naked (except for rubber bathing caps) - made me wonder when nudity began to lose its shock value. When I were a lad naked flesh was rare and highly charged - we only had National Geographic, Amateur Photographer and library books detailing expeditions to far off hot places to pour over. I think I remember seeing dancers from Sierra Leone on tv once - with bare breasts! - in black and white! The annual Bury Fair had a Nude Show, that was always closed on the opening night so as not to embarrass the Mayor. For sixpence you got to see a foul-mouthed compere introducing tableaux of perfectly still naked ladies recreating famous paintings. The only book in the school library with the word 'fuck' in it was a well thumbed copy of The Cantos of Ezra Pound. If you did come across a copy of Spic, Span or Health and Efficiency in the playground, the nether regions were always air-brushed out. We had to wait for Paul Raymond's relaunched Men Only in the 70s to see pubic hair for the first time! At college (1965-68) I discovered that foreign films, especially those of Fellini, usually contained some nudity! And my first full frontal was Arthur Lowe's wife (or was it matron) wandering empty school corridors in Lindsay Anderson's If. Then there was a trip to a Soho strip club with the rowing club, where a Wilfrid Bramwell character behind a hatch served up Nescafe from a small tin as we sat in cinema seats to watch ladies, moving this time, remove their clothing. But it was the late-60s and soon there was hippy nudity mostly everywhere. There was Hair and Oh! Calcutta!, though I saw neither, and then we got Page 3 girls - and some of the early ones were quite attractive and artistic, quite unlike the plastic busty teenagers we have nowadays. It is said that John Ruskin, having been brought up with marble statues, was so horrified when he saw Effie Gray's bush on his wedding night, the marriage was never consummated and she ran off with Millais. He'd have been very happy with today's Hollywood waxings. Nowadays, along with easy access internet porn, there are nudist beaches, the World Naked Bike Ride every June, and The Two Wrongies. They were a delight and not a bit embarrassing, down the Basement last night - lithe dancers with a sense of humour, in the Liz Aggiss mould. We saw them on stage, dancing beautifully, and 'backstage' chatting and changing what few clothes they had. Highlight was the 'air sex' competition in which three highly accomplished members of the audience mimed foreplay, the act itself, and cigarette afterwards. Hilarious.

Billy Cowie

I'm not a big fan of video installations, dark rooms in art galleies, audience participation - or dance for that matter - but for Billy Cowie, I'll not only make an exception, but be first in the queue. 'The revery alone', part of the Dance for camera festival 2008 is his best yet: seven minutes of mesmerising movement - on the ceiling! After donning spirit spex at Lighthouse, you are invited to lie flat out on yoga mats in a dark room, there to watch a naked dancer hanging on to the wallpaper. Truly [literally] amazing. It's on until 11 December. Also worth seeing is MyrioRama by Jeremy Radvan over the stair well - him drawing to a dancer's movements (reminiscent of his show down the sewers a while back). But you wouldn't get me down the dirty hole that was 'Burrow Me' even if there were wall-to-wall real naked ladies inside!

The Brothers Quay

The exhibition of work by the Brothers Quay (or Quay Brothers as they are also known) at the University of Brighton gallery - Inventorium: the Pharmacist's prescription for lip reading puppets - is truly [literally] amazing. It's a collection of scenes from their animated films shoehorned into boxes, cabinets of curiosity, theatrically lit with big lenses to look through that make the interiors even more Tardis like, and which direct your gaze to pertinent details. Largely overshadowed by Czech animator Jan Svankmajer, to whom they have created a homage, the American twins are perhaps best known for their 1986 film Street of crocodiles, based on a novel by the Polish author and artist Bruno Schulz. The creepy boxes full of bark, crystals and talcum powder populated by Bellmer-like robot dolls, look as if they will come to life any minute, which they do, in their films, also showing at Cinecity around Brighton now. You almost expect Foster and Gilvan to pop out from behind them at any second. Apart from the 'Powdered ejaculation of a stag (at the time of rutting season)', a line of which we are invited to snort and is currently sustaining Peter Chrisp, the other highlight is 'Eurydice - She, So Beloved', a work based on Monteverdi's Orfeo in its own room which also contains a coffin of pylons and more bark. This mostly live action dance piece was quite long and dark and would have benefitted from the addition of a comfy chair for the more elderly connoisseur. But it's not often we have an exhibition of this importance in town - go see it! It's on until 20 December usually until 8pm, but closed on Sundays!

The Ladybird Book of The Policeman

The Ladybird Book of The Policeman: I confess I do collect Ladybird books - this spoof made me laugh out loud!

Three bonzos and a piano

threebonzosandapiano.co.uk: new website for Rodney, Roger, Sam ... and Dave!

Chainsaw rebels' station tree protest

Chainsaw rebels' station tree protest (From The Argus): my neighbours Marc and Angie of the Dragonfly House use direct action to protest about tree chopping on the railways.

Great service

Great service (From The Argus): my letter to the Argus about the axing of the Brighton to Watford Junction service.

Steam at the Bluebell and Bury

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Originally uploaded by fred pipes

There were two steam galas on the trot, last two weekends: first on the Bluebell, then on the East Lancs. I made use of the vintage bus to get to the Bluebell on Sunday 19 October. Star was GWR Prairie 5199. Jinty 47493 had broken down, so the only other locos in steam were Southern Railway U Class no. 1638, Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway class 7F no. 53809 and South Eastern and Chatham Railway O1 Class no. 65. I didn't take many snaps, concentrating on Flip videos, which can be seen on Vimeo. I met my friend Karen and 3 kids (and Johnny) there and we travelled back to Brighton on another vintage bus.

Up in Bury I was joined by my sister and brother-in-law on the Saturday train to Rawtenstall. It came in as 61994 The Great Marquess, but as we pulled out, there she was on another platform! Andrew Barclay 0-6-0ST Austerity no. 2183 was chuffing up and down taking footplate passengers for a tenner. At Ramsbottom, we found out we'd been pulled by Jinty 47324 (I still don't know why they're called Jinties!) and they jumped ship and headed back to Bury - pulled by 71000 Duke of Gloucester, the lucky things! I carried on to Rawtenstall where I headed off to the R Lowry exhibition. After missing the Duke again on the way back I had to be content with a double header of L&YR 0-6-0 Class 27 no. 1300 and the Jinty. On Sunday I met my friend Lois, Pete and little Joe. I'd calculated that we'd get the Duke this time, and in she came from Heywood. But... again she was detached and we ended up leaving Bury with 61994 The Great Marquess! At Ramsbottom we saw pig's ears at the car boot sale, had black peas in a polystyrene cup (60p) from Ye Olde Black Peas stall and a chocolate drink in the strangest footballers' wives cafe. It was a cup of frothy milk you had to dissolve a bar of German chocolate in and whisk up (3 quid)! I can't see it catching on! We continued to Rawtenstall pulled by Black Five 45407 and back to Bury. On the way back I was filming the Duke stopped at Ramsbottom when a torrent of rain came off the roof of our train and soaked me! Took some more films back at Bury, then went for a pint of black stuff in the well stocked Trackside bar. Lois had a black pudding bap and then drove us through the rain to New Mills. Pocket rocket BR 2-6-0 Class 4MT no. 76079 (running as 76001) was also in steam but I couldn't get a decent shot of it. Next day I travelled to Liverpool to sample some Biennial art (not that impressed by the videos at FACT or the paintings at Bluecoat) and visit and photograph various houses my Grandad lived in - in Toxteth and over the water in Egremont.

Ray Lowry exhibition

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Originally uploaded by fred pipes

I love my bus pass! When I was Up North last week, I used it to visit houses in Toxteth and Egremont lived in by my Grandfather (still amazingly in existence), and to reach the tiny Lancashire town of Crawshawbooth to visit the Ray Lowry exhibition at the See Gallery. It's incredibly sad that I'd only heard of this exhibition because he'd died, and sadder still that he won't profit from the sales of his artwork (but he does have a son I believe). Along with Bill Tidy and Larry, R Lowry was a great influence - I loved his surreal scratchy drawings in NME and Punch, but know nothing about him, apart from his unhealthy interest in the nazis! I was in Rawtenstall anyway, riding the East Lancs steam railway, so on the advice of gallery owner Julian Williams, caught the X43 bus along part of 'The Witch Way' towards Pendle. The gallery was easy to find, in an Oddfellows Hall and I was taken aback by the crisp gorgeous oils he'd started painting of Manchester (aiming to become 'the other Lowry'). Around the corner were the cartoons I'd known, loved and laughed at. And there were plenty more up the stairs, including folders full in the photographic studio up top. I got a cup of tea, but had to be quick browsing so as to catch the bus back. I bought one depicting Bob Dylan trying to buy a drink at a bar. In another building were his large oils, incuding swasticas made from eggs and bacon and confectionery, an attempt to rehabilitate that bad symbol. Back in the gallery the curator of the Bluecoat in Liverpool was discussing the possiblity of moving the exhibition there. There were plenty of red dots tho, so it won't be the same. The bus driver on the way back was intrigued by my Brighton bus pass. Back in Rawtenstall I searched for Britain's last temperence bar to no avail - maybe it was shut on Saturdays? After buying some batteries at Boots, I got to the station to find the Duke of Gloucester had just pulled out, and the cafe was closing. And it was raining...

Having a Wii

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Originally uploaded by fred pipes

Am I old? Am I? I do have a bus pass, but don't feel that old. Mind you, when I look in the mirror, I don't see my dad, I see my grandad! Roy Lowry didn't even reach state pension age before snuffing it. Does old mean sitting in overheated communal rooms smelling of wee and watching loud daytime TV like my poor old dad before he died? Going to genteel tea dances, and not even ironically? According to Age Concern, old means over 50! That's a shock. Most of the people in my choir are older than me. And I'm one of the younger members of the Clarion Cycling Club, Brighton and Hove Section. So, am I old? With an invitation from my 'old' friend Patricia who works at Age Concern, I popped down to the Royal Albion Hotel to see what the nu-wave old folk are up to these days. It was the final of the Nintendo Wii ten-pin bowling tournament and the two teams were T-shirted and ready to go. Marion, Pat, Margaret, Fred, Tony and Eric from Somerset Point, a sheltered housing block in Kemp Town, were in black; Frank, Mal, Michael, Joan, Les and Eileen from Woods House, in Hove, were in white. And they were good. Strike followed strike and lots of arm action led to the blacks winning 681 to 669. Thankfully, the Wii software kept track of the complicated scoring. Then it was a photo call and off across the road for fish and chips (I headed to the Off Beat). If it's that much fun, I can't wait to get really old!