Rainy calls about zoomy things in the morning and then Lou and I braved the weather and struck out into the July storms to find and consume brachyura flesh in Worthing.
Lou did the driving most of the way. In a bid for more freedom, and despite the damocletian sword of tax MOT fuel parking permit insurance repair work etc etc she wants to get on the road and I don’t blame her. I thank the lord I was taught to drive by dad. I wouldn’t have the Paris thing without it… so much less would be possible. She’s paying for an instructor as well but if she can get time with me she will do. This is our window, while I’m back training engineers.
Worthing Crab Shack yielded excellent crustaceanmeat and then we figured the cinema was the right place for such a relentless winter day, so we went to “Wilding”. It’s about The Knepp Estate.
Double standards are everywhere so I can shamelessly hold my hand up here. I love nature, I love internal combustion engines. Wilding got me wearing my nature hat. It’s the companion piece to Clarkson’s Farm. There’s more overlap than you’d think.
The Knepp Estate is just up the road from Brighton and it was a farm until they decided to rewild it. Their work, or sometimes lack of it, has brought endangered species back from the brink and taught us all a great deal about the web of invisible connections that hold us all together. It has probably also made numerous traditional thinkers and nature averse ninnies apoplectic with rage. I adored Birch (Selsdon) for that one glorious moment it lived before repairing a horsehair roof in the heart of Soho brought down The House of St Barnabus and both the beautiful Birches with it.
I hope the work they are doing at Knepp keeps yielding fruit. It is astonishing the extent to which we are motivated and encouraged to control and stamp out nature. Dyed meat and bleached veg on supermarket shelves, so little connection left between origin and consumption. A populace so used to being served everything by the infrastructure of capitalism that it just needs a small collapse like loss of power for a week and thousands will die indignantly wondering why their delivery didn’t come.
We caught Wilding at The Dome in Worthing. A rare old cinema now, and being so close to The Crab Shack it seems rude not to. I’ve only got a few days so despite the rain we are trying to go to places I like in the area. Relaxation and luxury before round two.
Bedtime now again, and the rain is piling down on the skylight. This winter seems to be going on a tad longer than usual up here in blighty. Just three days ago I was building air coolers in Paris. Now there’s two blankets.
AlBarclay 