Viva Lewes - The what's on guide

Tom Paine’s six-year stay in Lewes is to be commemorated with a statue of the revolutionary thinker and writer, which will be erected outside the library in the summer.
A Lewes resident, who wishes to remain anonymous, has stumped up £30,000 for a terracotta statue of Paine, which is to be crafted by Marcus Cornish.
Cornish is a top-rate sculptor, responsible for the stag in St James Square, Paddington Bear in Paddington Station, and, more recently, the controversial ‘Jesus in Jeans’ sculpture in the Catholic Church in Uckfield (pictured, photograph copyright Peter Royle).
We’re delighted that Paine’s fruitful association with Lewes is to be commemorated in such a way. Next stop: Gideon Mantell?

The Argus reported on the case of the stupendously named Rosary Singaharajah, a nun who drove a minibus full of colleagues into the back of a lorry by Earwig corner last October. In Lewes Magistrates Court last Thursday, the defending counsel raised the matter, when the subject of a fine came up, that she had no income. The judge fined her anyway: £50 plus £48 pounds costs. She also got three penalty points on her license.
Meanwhile, the BBC reported on two rather more serious cases in the Lewes courts. Fiona Donnison, accused of murdering her two toddlers, found in the boot of her car in Heathfield a couple of weeks ago, has been remanded to Lewes Crown Court until Feb 12th. This story was also picked up by The People. Nicholas Sitko, meanwhile, was found guilty of murdering 19-year-old Ben Lund in Eastbourne last year, and sentenced to life imprisonment in Lewes Crown Court. Sitko had drunk seven pints of lager and two shots of sambuca before head-butting and striking his victim. He must serve at least 14 years in prison.
Finally, the police are investigating a possible crime after a body was found in a flat above a firm of Seaford architects. Police were alerted to the incident when one of the office workers saw blood dripping through the ceiling. The Press Association have dubbed it the ‘dripping-blood body’ case.

The BBC have promised a rainy Friday, followed by a generally dry, but cloudy weekend, with maximum temperatures nuzzling towards double figures, and the minimums loath to dip below five. Saturday's the best chance for a bit of sun, apparently. This week's cover photograph is courtesy of Joe Knight. Enjoy the week...

There are two new artists to enjoy at the twitten-side hotel. First up, Gillian McCadden, who produces fine prints in fairly muted colours, either of natural matter or abstract shapes. We like her close up of nettles and grass, a rural version of a New-York-style cityscape. Then there's the painter Graham Sendall, whose work has a certain Raviliousness about it. He's based in Burwash, and generally paints scenes from that side of Sussex, but he's been turning his hand to Lewes scenes, as well.
There’s an opening do tonight at the hotel, and the two artists in question will be present, to answer your every question about their work.

Pelham House, free entry. And they do a fine cup of coffee

An exhibition of some of Britain’s most popular print-makers, called ‘I Love You’ designed primarily for people to buy prints in time for Valentine’s Day. So far, so corny? Well, actually, no. The exhibition, which includes works by the likes of Rob Ryan, Jonny Hannah, Graham Carter, John Dilnot, Sanna Annuka and Ann Darcy Hughes, was organized by Star-Gallery-based printmaker Mary Fellows, whose three-year-old daughter was born with congenital heart disease. All the profits from the exhibition go to two charities, both of which help fund research and treatment of such illnesses: Tiny Tickers and Baby Heart. The exhibition ends with a pink fizz party at lunchtime of Sunday the 14th.

Hop Gallery, open every day 1030am-5pm, free

Thursday 4th (and every Thursday for the next few weeks): Fire Works ‘half sales to Haiti’.

Eileen Gorrell, who runs Fire Works pottery shop on Western Road (where Bona Foodie used to be) is donating half the profits from her late-night opening sales on Thursday evenings, to raise money for Haiti.

Widower Harry Brown’s in his seventies, he’s suffering from emphysema, and he lives alone in a grotty council flat. Life’s a bit of a struggle. Then his only friend gets killed by a bunch of drug dealers.
And Harry? Harry gets mad. Really mad.
And pretty soon those drug dealers realise that they shouldn’t have bumped off his mate. Because Harry was once in thr Royal Marines, and once a marine… always a marine.
A revenge-motif thriller then, starring Michael Caine in his nastiest role since he played Jack in Get Carter. A curious film of two halves, too, which starts all social realism, and ends all action movie, as if Ken Loach had passed the baton over to Guy Ritchie at the halfway point.

Lewes Cinema, All Saints, 8pm, £5.50

Rising like a spectre from the long-dead remains of the legendary cusp-of-greatness skiffle band Daddy Yum Yum, the Curst Sons might be described as a ‘hillbilly blues band’. But that wouldn’t begin to capture the threesome’s madcap, breakneak style as they rattle and hum through old classics from pre vinyl days, and a few of their own, too. “If you look out the window and there's a slight breeze, that's God nodding,” said Mark Lamarr of their sound, on Radio 2, “…and that's a pretty good review.” I’ll be shouting for ‘Tom Dooley’. Hang down your head, and stomp your feet, it should be a humdinger of an evening.

Volunteer, 9pm, free

If you want a grave, thoughtful Sherlock Holmes movie, I guess, you don’t give the director’s job to Guy Ritchie, the guv’nor of the geezer-filled gorblimey British action movie.
But how far can you go wrong with Robert Downey Junior as Holmes? Not very far, if you believe the Golden Globe jury, who gave the American the Best Actor award in their 2009 edition.
Jude Law plays Dr Watson, which might have won the gong for ‘Curious Casting’ of the year, had such an award existed. No matter: this movie is a swashbuckling romp through Victorian London, bound to warm the cockles of yer ‘art… if you’re not a Conan Doyle purist, that is, in which case it’ll probably send you into a blue funk, and reaching for the laudanum.

The film, by the way, has a Lewes connection. The shirts worn by RDJ and co weree made by Vintage Shirts, in Castle Ditch Lane, run by Catherine Darcy.

Lewes Cinema, times tbs, £5.50

The precinct fills with stalls from local farmers (and other producers), as well as half the people you know in Lewes. Lots of leeks and turnips, February being February, but all the other stalls, too, with locally sourced meat, flowers and interestingly garnished pakoras, for example.

Cliffe Precinct, 9am-1pm

The Grange Gardens fills up with seed swappers, and various other grow-your-own-food-related stalls, for this District Council-run event. There are various activities from storytelling for kids to a (pleasingly alliterative) willow-weaving workshop. And there’s a chutney competition, organised by Transition Town, which you can register for on the day, if you’re quick. Heaven? For horticulturalists, it is.

Southover Grange Gardens, 10.30am-3.30pm, free entry

Debby Matthews lets you know about one of the greatest Lewesians, the 18th century geologist who was one of the pioneers who first envisaged the world of the dinosaur, discovering the Iguanadon and seven other ‘terrble lizards’. Learn about his humble background (he was the son of a local shoemaker), where he found the fossil which sent him on the path to greatness (or was it his wife?), and his bitter rivalry with the dastardly Richard Owen.

Last weekend Lewes lost the third of their three back-to-back relegation dogfights, against bottom of the table Weymouth, who were under the new management of Jerry Gill.
It’s always dangerous to play a side in such circumstances, and we understand that the Dorset side had much the better of the game, turning a 1-1 half-time score into a 3-1 advantage with two goals midway through the second half, including a 25-yard screamer from Jake Reid.
Lewes’ goal was a penalty by Joe Keehan, who opted to blast straight down the middle, instead of his trademark sidefoot into the bottom left-hand corner. The keeper dived to his left. Lewes had other chances, most notably from Sigere, who put a free header wide when the scores were level, and Wheeler, whose late header was saved by the keeper. The defeat leaves Lewes in third-from-bottom place, with a lot of catching up to do.
Braintree (nicknamed, simply ‘Iron’) are seventh in the table, and are very difficult to beat on their travels having only lost one league game away all season (though they have only won two). Looks like a tough game, then, though that’s what they said about Dover.
On Wednesday night, a young Lewes team (and that’s saying something) played out a chance-starved 1-1 draw against Hastings in the Sussex Senior Cup. The brilliantly-named Kane Louis scored Lewes’ goal, so early in the game that the tannoy man hadn’t yet got into his seat. Hastings equalised a quarter of an hour later. Lewes just seemed to be moving into an extra gear in the second half when Dan Royce was sent off, after which they did well to hold on. 161 hardcore fans attended in brass monkeys temperatures: the date of the replay in Hastings hasn’t yet been announced. Picture by James Boyes.

Dripping Pan, 3pm, £10/£5/Kids free

Derek Watt’s directs Mike Leigh’s theatrical comeback. Leigh, who made his name with stage and TV dramas such as ‘Nuts in May’ and ‘Abigail’s Party’, turned his back on the theatre in 1993, after his hit ‘It’s a Great Big Shame’ was overlooked in the Evening Standard awards. He vowed never to return, and turned his hand to cinema, finding a much bigger and just-as-appreciative audience with the likes of ‘Vera Drake’ and ‘Secrets and Lies’.
He was persuaded, however, in 2005 by Nicholas Hytner to make a return, and this is the result. In 2,000 Years, Leigh engages with his Jewishness. Hytner was rewarded with the whole run being sold out before the first performance. Some critics wondered how true to (Jewish family) life the play was, others enjoyed the psychological drama – and the jokes. ‘Terrific – it’s vintage Leigh!’ spouted the Telegraph.

Lewes Little Theatre, 7.45pm (2.45pm matinee on Sat 13th), £10/£7 + membership. 474826/474882 or here for more details

The Singers are joined by Baroque organist Nicholas Houghton. You can hear the debonair Houghton talking about his German-voiced Gwynn and Goetze chamber organ, here http://www.nickhoughton.org.uk/. Expect works by Byrd, Bach, Brahms, Part, Walton and Rutter. In aid SJSC church organ restoration fund.

St John-sub-castro, 7.30pm, £8 on the door. £6 in advance from Laportes or 01273 472489. U/16's free.

Sofia Ferman, who runs an extremely popular dance class (‘5Rhythms’) on Friday nights, has organised a Sunday afternoon boogie to raise money for Haitis’s children. There’s food on offer upstairs, if you’re worried about missing your Sunday roast, plus ‘beautiful art, made by talented children and grown ups’. The event is open from 1-4pm, and there’s a 5Rythms ‘dance for all ages’ between 1-30 and 3pm. All money will go to UNICEF, to be converted into supplies for the children in earthquake-stricken Haiti.

It’s a good weekend for lovers of proto-pianos. Pianist David Breitman explores the development of works for early piano. Breitman’s quite a big shot in this world, a much-recorded Canadian with a wide and eclectic repertoire, one of seven fortepianists who share a complete Beethoven piano sonata cycle.

English Passage, 4pm, £11, 01306 627332

Interesting synchronicity here: in Lewes Little Theatre this week we have Mike Leigh engaging with his Jewishness for the first time, and tonight it’s the turn of the Coen Brothers to do the same thing. In fact, if you got your timing right, you could have an entire ‘auteurs confronting their Jewishness for the first time’ weekend. Mike Leigh’s play is said to be darkly funny, and I can assure you, so is this. Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) is a physics professor living a suburban life in the Mid-West. Trouble is, his daughter keeps stealing money from him to get a nose job, his son spends all his time in his room smoking pot, his dysfunctional brother is sleeping on the couch, and his wife decides to leave him for her self-help guru. Then things start getting worse.
It’s a fascinating and brilliantly made film, but at the same time, it’s an extremely uncomfortable experience sitting through it. Two Jews telling an extremely long-winded Jewish joke, with a black-as-Old-Testament-hell punchline. And you thought you were having a mid-life crisis. DL

Lewes Cinema, All Saints, 7pm, £5.50

‘Linha de Passe’ means ‘keep-uppy’ in Brazilian: the game in which several footballers pass the ball to each other, trying to stop it from touching the ground.
In the 2008 film of that name, Walter Salles (director of Central Station and The Motorcycle Diaries) and co-director Daniela Thomas juggle their attention between four half-brothers living on the poverty line in a favela in Sao Paolo, while their mother, a cleaning lady, expects a fifth child by god-knows-who.
Each of the brothers is trying to reinvent himself, for better or worse, to move on in life: one through God, one through crime, one through football, and the youngest through a time-consuming obsession with his untraceable bus-driver father.
It’s a compelling watch, which brings modern Sao Paolo to life in the same way that Rossellini and co’s films took the audience on a tour of post-war Rome. Professional actors mingle with unwitting extras in the uncompromising and very real streets of the city.
It’s a tricky game to get away with, and, by trying to divert your attention in too many directions, Salles and Thomas occasionally drop the ball. But, with such great acting and powerful characters, you end up forgiving them for it. DL

Lewes Film Club, All Saints, 8pm, £5.

The End of the Line will change the way you think about your tuna and sweet corn sandwiches. The film seeks to expose inconvenient truths about the urgent problem of overfishing. And what better to feast on before its screening than ethically sourced fish? Eat your fill of guilt-free fish in a two-course meal that includes the likes of smoked mackerel fillet and bouillabaisse. All in all, the evening rallies around the ethos that ‘food should taste good, be environmentally friendly and fair in terms of paying suppliers and workers.’ Now that’s our kind of eating. AKJ

The 1959 comedy I’m Alright Jack is an Ealing-style romp which pokes fun at both sides of the shop floor during an industrial dispute. I thought it to be a peculiar choice by the Film Club, a feeling which seemed to be borne out when I watched it myself, having rented the DVD. The jokes clanged, the acting was over the top, the plot appeared to be preposterous.
But I gave it a chance, and I’m glad I did, because as time wore on, the film’s charm won me over, and its carefully wrought structure brought genuine tears of laughter by the end.
And just listen to the cast of British character actors who appear in it: Ian Carmichael, Terry-Thomas, Peter Sellers, Richard Attenborough, Margaret Rutherford, John Le Mesurier, Irene Handl, Liz Fraser, Terry Scott... there’s even an appearance by Malcolm Muggeridge, playing himself.
Peter Sellers stands out, playing the Marxist shop steward who orders the downing of tools at the drop of a hat in the factory he works at, but doesn’t lift a finger in the home. Any harmony is shattered when the boss’s nephew (Ian Carmichael) takes a job on the shop floor, for reasons which are far too complicated to explain here.
Is there much difference between ‘dated’ and ‘of its time’? There is: this film falls very much into the latter camp: and charmingly so.

Lewes Film Club, All Saints, 8pm, £5 (Oyster Project accessible rescreening Thur 18th, 12.45, £3).

Duende is the surging spirit which infuses the sound of great flamenco , and it is a difficult concept for the novice to fully comprehend.
Frederico García Lorca came from the home of flamenco, Andalucia, and tried to encapsulate the meaning of the term in a lecture on the subject.
“Duende,” he summed up, “is a power and not a behaviour; it is a struggle and not a concept. Duende... surges up from the soles of the feet. Which means it is not a matter of ability, but of real live form; of blood; of ancient culture; of creative action.”
The flamenco troupe Canción Gitana have aptly chosen the subject for the latest work they are touring, then. Lament for Lorca is the story of the brief and passionate life of the poet, who was brutally assassinated by Franco’s troops in the opening days of the Spanish Civil War, in August 1936. Lorca was just the sort of figure the fascists couldn’t stomach: he was left wing; he was a homosexual; he was fascinated with gypsy culture; and, most of all, he was an avant-garde poet, playwright and artist, counting the likes of Dalí and Buñuel among his friends. Controversy still reigns around his death, and his remains have never been found. Canción Gitana are an international flamenco dance group, with a narrator, and flamenco guitarists and a dancer, who have created a dance biography of Lorca, with scenes incorporating dramatic costumes, passionate guitar, rat-a-tat dancing and, if you’re very lucky... a splash of genuine duende, too.

All Saints, 7.45pm, £12.50, box office 07968 515401/07963 959262

Lewes returned from a long, enforced break with a match at Bromley on the 23rd – one which they might have won but for two controversial decisions by the referee, who seemed either not to understand the rules, or to have put his contact lenses in the wrong way round. Lewes were 11-10 down in the game at half time, but with a superior pack, and the slope in their favour, they were confident of muscling their way to victory. As it was, the referee, within five minutes of the restart, awarded Bromley’s Mike Addenya two tries in two separare incidences when he touched down the ball after it had been rendered dead by having already been touched down by a Lewes player. The result? Suddenly Lewes were 23-10 down, with a mountain to climb. To their credit, they got to the summit, drawing level at 23-23 one minute from time. A conversion would have planted a two-point flag on that summit, but, alas, the kick went wide of the post, and once again a result was decided right at the death.
A week later, a fine away win over Deal and Betteshanger (28-15) saw Lewes move to fifth in the London Div 2 table. Sevenoaks, today’s opponents, are third, and won the corresponding fixture in Kent 40-32 back in November.

Stanley Turner, 2.30pm, free

Each performance by guitarist, singer and songwriter Jeff Lang is a beautiful experiment in a folky, bluesy, rocky something which the transports the listener into another time and place. You get the definite feeling that you are witnessing music in all its ragged and raw loveliness. Seeing him in the village hall should be nothing short of ethereal. AJK

Beechwood Hall, Cooksbridge, 7.30pm, £7/5, 477706/07640347, marion.hughes@btinternet.com

Thurs 4th: Los Chacareroso. Latin guitar music. Pelham Arms, 8.30pm, free.
Thur 4th: Martin Wyndham Read and Iris Bishop. (Folk at the) Royal Oak, 8pm, £6
Fri 5th: Led Zeppelin Tribute & Ray Owens Juicy Lucy. Con Club, 8pm, £3.
Fri 5th: The Curst Sons. Gospel with urban grit, Volunteer, 9pm, free.
Sat 6th: Mike Nicholson (left). Folk singer and guitarist. Elephant & Castle, 8pm, £5.
Sat 6th: Miss Jones. 60s to present acoustic. John Harvey Tavern, 9pm, free.
Sat 6th. 51 North. Classis R and B. Snowdrop, 9pm, free
Sun 7th: Monkey Trap. Rock, soul and ska. Volunteer, 4pm, free.
Thurs 11th: Tuxedo Junction, 20s and 30s swing, Pelham Arms, 8.30pm, free.
Thur 11th. Jez Lowe. Geordie singer-songwriter. Royal Oak, 8pm, £6
Fri 12th: Dolly Dagger, Jimi Hendrix tribute, Volunteer, 9pm, free.
Fri 12th. The Lieutenant’s Mistress. Old-school indie foursome. Con Club, 8pm, £3
Sat 13th: Elle Osborne, folk singer & fiddle player, Elephant & Castle, 8pm, £4.
Sat 13th: White Lines, Rock & Blues covers, John Harvey Tavern, 9pm, free.
Sat 13th: The Contenders. The shock of the old. Snowdrop, 9pm, free
Sun 14th: Sam Chara, French jazz, cabaret style, Volunteer, 4pm, free.

Walking by May’s General Store last week we were pleasantly surprised to find this ‘love fairy’ aiming her arrow at every head in sight. Apparently she is May’s General Stores’ interpretation of Cupid and you can see her in the shop’s window every Tuesday and Friday until Valentine’s Day. She’s just shooting a dose of love potion into the hearts of fellow Lewesians who pass by. May’s Cupid, Caroline, has lived in Lewes for seven years, though she’s originally from Sweden, and is the manager’s daughter-in-law. She told Viva Lewes: “Sometimes people pass and look a bit miserable...and then they see [me] and get surprised.” Thank you for putting a bit of heart into our day, Ms Cupid. AJK