I spent most of the Bank Holiday Weekend in West St Leonard’s. It was the first time I had been to the Bexhill end of St Leonard’s west of Marine Court and was pleasantly surprised to find myself in a world I never knew existed. I even ventured as far out as Crowhurst. My hostess for the weekend was Françoise de Naillat…l’artiste de verre. I earned my keep on Sunday by helping her clean up assorted boxes, crates and fused glass works of art in her garage.

The first evening in town I went with Françoise to see the Da Vinci Code…she for the first time and I for the second. And yes...Audrey Tautou was as big a treat on the silver screen this time as the time before. Am I the only person who enjoys seeing good films more than once? My argument is that the first time I am focussed on the ‘and then…and then’ while on subsequent viewings my attention is caught by other things. And with a good film these other things are the artistic things that tend to pass you by…or get taken in subliminally…the first time around.

Another first was Hastings College. Martin Hutchings…Connie’s husband for 15 years…has finally escaped from her shadow and struck out on his own artistically. He invited me to a showing of some of his work on exhibition for a couple of days. So I dragged Françoise along…en route to the Coach & Horses for a jug or two of cider. Below is the sort of thing Martin is into at the moment. But tomorrow who knows? Unlike many abstract artists Martin at least knows how to draw…my minimum criteria if I am to take the work of such artists seriously.

David Cameron is busily neutralising the drawing rooms, common rooms and dining rooms of Left-Liberal England . Without being tribal Labour supporters, those who would call themselves progressive or vaguely Left-of-Centre do not form any great electoral bloc. But they are opinion formers. And when they shift others shift with them. They were in love with Tony Blair but the affection is not transferring to Gordon Brown. For the first time in two decades it no longer feels awkward for someone to admit to being a Tory.

Few of these people will in the end vote for David Cameron but they are not struck on Gordon Brown either. Gordon Brown just does not get the juices flowing in Harrogate, Hampstead or Hay-on-Wye like Tony Blair. Smart Left-Liberal England’s love affair with New Labour is evaporating and there is little doubt that the picture David Cameron and his acolytes are painting of the latest Tory leader has made him hard for Progressives to hate. He is de-Satanising their political world and airbrushing out the knee-jerk Left-Liberal link between Thatcherism and Toryism.

However it is not all sweetness and light in the New Model Conservative Party. A socially conservative alliance of Tory MPs that goes by the name of Cornerstone…is busy flexing its right-wing muscles. This from them: ‘the idea that we can parachute insubstantial and untested candidates with little knowledge of the local scene into key seats to win the confidence of people they seek to represent is the bizarre theory of people who spend too much time with the Pseuds and Posers of London’s Chichi Set and not enough time in normal Britain.’ Ouch! It can only get worse.