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.
Ethnographic flash shorts about Worthing, West Sussex, UK
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.
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.
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.
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).
One minute everybody was scoffing 2 or 3 choc-chip brioches a day, leading to mild stockpiling on my part. Those bloody ‘3 for 2’ offers play their own guilty part in this practice. And then, bugger me, 3 weeks later, everyone was ‘off brioche’ and ‘into mini cheeses’.
An old post from October 2017. (When vegans in Worthing were still remarkable – how we’ve moved on!) We’re in The Orchard cafe for their vegan tea event. There’s 7 of us, in a chock-full cafe (tickets sold out weeks ago), and we look around in wonder, interested to know who are the vegan-or-vegan-curious of Worthing, then?Continue reading “Creem Cheeze & White Poppies”
While there is a familiar shared trajectory to the gentrification and regeneration process, there can be many missed opportunities to intervene and shape the (inevitable) process of change in positive and inclusive ways.
Things were getting nasty. Anyone opening the fridge door would find me right behind them, reminding them that, “Those are the only olives we have”, or “I was planning on using that mozzarella on a home-made pizza tomorrow”. I wasn’t exactly hiding the chickpeas, but I did count the tins every morning.
A Sussex lockdown queer wedding. Blending some old and well-known traditions with Celtic spirituality and a nod to church roots worked. And at no point did it ever feel like ‘Sheilaism’ (the term Robert Bellah famously used for describing the contemporary fall from traditional religion and rituals and into an utterly individualistic solipsistic pick-and-mix contemporary state of ‘spiritual but not religious’). The celebrant reminded us Boomers how far we’ve come since our teens, when ‘gay wedding’ was preposterous blasphemy. Keep an open mind. Allow the unexpected into your life.
Sod terroir and its restrictive snobbery: we have Sussex qvevri, yes we bloody do.