Hastings Pier…one of England’s last great Victorian wooden piers…has been closed after safety experts said it could collapse. Five metal trusses supporting the privately owned nine hundred foot pier have given way. Failure of one is enough to render it unsafe. A couple of years ago the West Pier in Brighton burnt down after it had passed into private hands. Brighton is where the Rye trains from Ashford end their journeys. Sea Front (below) by Matt Hardman…mixed media 18”x24”…gives an idea of what these piers have withstood over the past hundred years.
I spent a couple of hours with Heidi on the boat yesterday afternoon. I contrive to get my guests to visit at high tide but as Vemara spends twice as much time on the mud as afloat the odds are against me. At the moment our tides are on neaps which means that the highest tides are a week away in either direction and the daily high and low tides are in the middle of the full range…a 2.7 yesterday compared with a 3.3 on 13th June and a 3.3 again on 27th June.
The highest and lowest tides of the year are around the Equinoxes in March and September when they range from 1.7 to 4.3. The highest points of the spring tides…this is what these two weekly high tides are called…occur at midday and midnight with the high tide advancing by about an hour every day to give us the neap tides at six o’clock morning and evening. On most tides Vemara is afloat for at least an hour and a half either side of high tide. Philosophically tides are quite dangerous. They were instrumental in persuading Galileo to the Copernican Cause and look at the trouble this caused him with the Roman Catholic Hierarchy of the time.
I went to Ashford in the morning and called in on Lesley Brownbill on my return to give her the sad news that I may have attended my last ever Ryesingers rehearsal. I am not planning to return from Stockholm for next month’s concert in Camber and hope to be settled in Lund by the time of the Christmas Carol Concert at East Guldforde and the February 2007 performance of Gilbert & Sullivan’s Princess Ida.
Next year is an Elgar Anniversary Year so it will be The Dream of Gerontis everywhere. Not one to follow the herd Lesley was looking for something completely different. My suggestion of Paul McCartney’s Liverpool Oratorio did not go down well. Local people have mixed reactions to Paul McCartney. One of my stories is that my daughter was once employed to paint Paul’s boat.
But the favourite McCartney story in Rye is about the time that Linda McCartney came aboard Barnaby Rudge. As is the way with royalty, during the lads’ lunch break Linda asked one of them what he had in his sandwich. ‘Ham, Ma’am!’ was the reply. Related with relish this story never fails to get a laugh. Decades before the Great Unwashed were taught by Jamie Oliver that you are what you eat, Linda was an Evangelical Vegetarian…which in small towns like Rye means seriously subversive and downright weird.
I love these light midsummer days and was up with the lark at five. By the time I arrived at Jempson's for breakfast at eight my e-mails had been sorted at Meads Books. NCAB came in with a rush job last week just as all our translators disappeared for their Scandinavian Midsummer Breaks and we were still scrambling for someone to deliver 380 words of Norwegian. But at midday Cultura UK (me) put Cultura Sweden (Alan) on the phone to sweet talk the client. A deal was struck so the heat is off. Our normal translator will do it on Monday when she returns to her desk.
While searching for a translator several offers went out to translators registered on a Translators’ Exchange…a very impressive website that seems to works extremely well. But the whole business is crying out for a Union Organiser as websites like this force down wages. Of course with the side effects being the main effects the website probably doubles up as a Singles Agency…much like Friends Reunited…so it gives good value for money to its users.
