Caroline, Author at Worthing By Accident

Magic, Dance and Diversity

2 seagulls on white stone balustrade overlooking beach and sea

Bhangra at a Worthing family party, queer art at the town hall, online apologies for experiences of racism: signs of conviviality in Worthing?

Sea Shanties and Vibe Shift

blonde white woman dressed as mermaid in gold lurex dress with fishtail

As post-post-moderns, we can still get a kick from those fantasies of piracy, running away to sea, and wearing cool matelot clothes.

Contemporary pub scene is full of yearnings.

We’re in the middle of vibe shift, for sure.

Living in Worthing – Globetrotter Style

White man, baseball cap, with baby in carry rucksack, stands looking out on range of hills.

Why would a globetrotter with 66 countires under their belt return again and again to Worthing? Can it be the vegan sausage rolls? Ot the bountiful opportunities to get a nose hair wax? Terry tells me what pulls him here.

White Poppies

White poppies remember and respect civilian deaths, deaths in all wars, and deaths from wherever they came. They’re a much less 19th-century approach to grief and mourning than the ‘only our boys’ approach of the red poppy campaign.

Today is a Day of National Mourning

purple british crown in whte-gloved hands of red-coated servants

Today is a day of national mourning.
An Elizabethan era ended – Carolingians again.

Coastal Remote Working – A Very Hot Desk At the Seaside

The town appeared to have somehow catapulted straight from 1960s to the 2000s. Time felt woozy. Millenial nostalgia for the mid-century modern collided with memories of actual mid-century, when life really did feel modern, in a not-ironic way.For an hour or two, I lived the fantasy of moving to Whitstable for the last part of my life: a return to Kentish birthplace but folding in that seaside vibe I’ve grown to love.

Social Prescribing

b/w pic of male beared white guy conducting a choir

Aunty Eileen’s doctor advised her to take up smoking for her asthma. You have to understand that this was in the 1960s. Doctors now are prescribing choir as part of proven Singing for Lung Health programmes.You might not yet have heard about ‘social prescribing’ – but you will.

Don’t You Want Me, Baby?

A black-haired and black-bearded white drag king in black vest takes a macho pose and sprays deodorant from a can

The vest is mine, the underpants too, the cock – well I suppose it’s mine. I bought it. I wrote the little piece above about the time when I took my drag king persona Eddie onto a public stage in Brighton.
White, mainstream, middle-class, respectable, assimilated gaydom?As Edelman’s global ethnographic review from 2001 will tell you, liberation doesn’t tend to emerge from such spaces.

A Shit Night Out in Worthing

man black leather jacket standing behind red theatre seat

I’m not a fan of stand-up, but we needed a group night out and I mistakenly assumed that a Black comedian would be offering something interesting to us here in melanin-starved Worthing. When he opened with an anti-royalist joke and a poke at Brexiteers, I knew we weren’t going to be getting creative absurdist monologue or Afrofuturist mould-breaking humour, but I thought we’d be fairly ok.

We weren’t.

A huge contrast to last Friday’s cabaret night over at Worthing’s The Factory, where Revolver Revue served up a signature blend of humour with burlesque and some sheer daftness.

Back on the Beer in Worthing

Anyone who passes down South Farm Road has spent months of their life waiting at the railway crossing there. Romances have come to inception and ruination during long moments of boredom or tetchiness at that crossing. Dogs and children whine why, why when they’re told again and again that they cannot move – yet. (There’s still another train coming through, apparently, although we’ve seen 2 pass already).