A sense of proportion

It's a sure sign that times are hard on the high street when Christian outreach centres start to outnumber charity shops. OK, we haven't quite got to that point yet here in Newhaven, but there is one fairly new and pretty large one. I'm sure they're doing an important and much needed job, and I'm particularly impressed with the effort that they've put into their window display - a lovely, and extensive, model winter street scene. A kind of fantasy high street of a bygone age, with traditional shops, red phone boxes, and, joy of joys, a canal and narrowboat! Here, in deepest Sussex, where such things are all but unheard of.

So it was a trifle churlish, I thought, of Baz to point out that not all the models were to precisely the same scale, and in particular that the carrots in the greengrocer's window were roughly the same size as the men further up the street, and you could probably fit a dozen red phone boxes into an Austin A6 (or similar). For me, that doesn't detract one little bit from its charm. If more people spent their time creating model street scenes, this world would be a better place.

17: Pray whither sailed those ships all three?

I see I've used this picture before, but never mind. In fact, if you compare it with a similar shot some twenty years later here, it appears that few of the ships have sailed. In particular, of course, the Rhoda B. Tatty even than, tatty still. But still defiantly afloat.

12:

Another Newhaven, late eighties, scene - there's random for you. One of the old fishing stages on the West Quay, obviously still in heavy use. Behind me as I took this would have been waste ground, scattered with more nets, fish and ice boxes and paraphernalia, where now are the delightful 'West Quay Lawns', or possibly a desirable waterside apartment.

Again, the Christmas Caption Challenge is open to all comers.

5: All I want for Christmas

This is one of the few duff pictures from a super set of the North Quay. But random I promised, and random you will get. This does however show the parlous state of the wooden wharf structure. I've a feeling it might have undergone some repairs subsequently; this was a good couple of years ago.

3: O Little Town

This is one of the photos I took of Newhaven in the late eighties. This is clearly looking downriver from the swing bridge at high(ish) tide. The basic scene looks pretty much unchanged today, but there are loads of differences in the detail. The most obvious - and most trivial - is the absence of the giant rubber shag (sorry, cormorant scuplture made from recycled tyres) in the middle.

On the right, the West Quay, the most notable difference is the absence of building, and the unimpeded view of the cliffs - this was before even the first phase of the West Quay development took place in the early nineties. There's now flats nearly all the way down. Here, there are fishing boats in the foreground; most are now concentrated further down the river, and there are fewer in total. New landing stages have been built in the last ten years or so, and some of these have already been decommissioned.

To the left of the picture, on the East Quay, is Big George the crane. I have no idea why it was called this. That's been gone maybe ten years or so. I think that in front of the ferry you can see other ships which would have been in the process of being unloaded. A lot of fruit and vegetables still came into Newhaven then, handled particularly by a firm called Fishers, and Fyffes had a banana ripening warehouse on the East Quay. That too has all come to an end.

How still we see thee lie indeed.

2: I saw three ships...

Well, I might have done on this trip to the beach in July 2007, when I constructed my masterpiece, five foot long, scale model sand narrow boat. Perhaps my proudest ever sand-based moment.

The days of frolicking in the sand at Newhaven's West Beach are now, sadly, behind us all. Like so much else in the area it is Out of Bounds to the general populace, thanks to the litigation-shy Newhaven Port and Properties who are glad to have an excuse, in the form of a slightly crumbly concrete sea wall, to keep the great unwashed off their asset.

High tide, low bridge

I noticed yesterday that the tide was particularly high as I walked to the station, but it was still a surprise to see this this morning. I suppose it's quite unusual for a boat like this to want to come so far up the river as most would be based in the marina further down, but there are boatyards and moorings all around Denton Island, so I guess that was where they were heading. They seemed a little put out at not being able to get under the bridge, pacing the deck and talking into a mobile. Normally, I'd imagine, they would have got under without any problem. This was at 10 o'clock, and the bridge was due to open at 10.30, presumably for a ship to come in as I couldn't see one waiting to go out. Perhaps they sneaked through then.

Greasing the swing bridge

Here is the man whose job it is to make sure that Newhaven Swing Bridge glides smoothly round.
And here is some background information about the bridge, from a splendid website that aims to catalogue all the moveable bridges in Britain.

The river at Lewes

We went into Lewes last night. Ostensibly, we were going to check out the Snowdrop, our formerly absolute favourite pub, now under new management having gone downhill and being closed for a while.

We didn't need to go in though; the sign outside saying 'DJ tonite'; the tracksuited clientele getting out of their souped up Astras outside, and the range of shiny new lager taps glimpsed through the window were sufficient to prevent us wasting our time and energy (and hope. Farewell Snowdrop; you were a lovely pub, but to everything its season. I wonder what's happened to the bust of Plato, latterly covered in glitter, which used to grace the window.)

However, my main reason for driving into Lewes, rather than patronising the Prince of Wales, our genuinely local local down the road, was that I wanted to get a closer look at this narrowboat moored on the Ouse near the pub, which previously I had only seen from the train. Walking a little way back along the main road Baz and I were able to find a path down the riverbank, from where we could just about see the boat. More exciting was to recognise the scene from that picture I mentioned a while back of a sailing barge in the early sixties. We were standing at almost exactly the same spot as from where that picture was taken. The gasometer has disappeared from the background, but much else remains the same, and the narrowboat is, I think, tied up to the same wharf as the barge was. How they get on and off other than at high tide is a bit of a mystery, but I must say I do envy them a bit. They're almost in the heart of Lewes, secluded from the road and pretty much the only boat on the river.