Look who I just met: Darryl Nau – sat on my bike 🙂 I didn’t know who he was, I’ll admit. This guy was just leaning on the closed gates on Hastings Pier. He said he was compering the BMX comp at Source Park. Totally humble about it. This being despite the fact that Battle […]
Lily and her partner Rob run the bar at Observer Building, the old newspaper offices in Hastings. It’s a beautiful old building with peeling, tired walls spruced up with art and weird sculptures. They’ve made a really homely space out of a cavernous room. The bar has mismatched furniture, tables that are doors, a pool […]
An homage to Henri Cartier Bresson. The beach was amazing today, so many good pictures.
To be fair, this is a picture of St Leonard’s Beach, bereft of people due to the incumbent storm. Marine Court is so dominant, once the tallest residential building in all of Great Britain. I shall come back to the Sid Little designed seafront another time. Marine Court is a Grade II (1999) listed Art […]
John Philipps is the proprietor of an extraordinary book store on London Road, St Leonards. He hands me and my friend comp slips with a beautiful picture of the Scarlet Pimpernel on them. The shop is absolutely rammed and even has a Whizzer & Chips annual in the window. This really impresses me somehow. Looking […]
On a moody day in Hastings, David was sitting in a seafront shelter watching the waves. He is bell ringer at the local church. Discussing his past, he said he’s rung bells in Battersea and Putney and used to live in Shepherd’s Bush. Bell ringing is a surprisingly social activity.
You know when you get photographed in a Minnie Mouse onesie. On a pier. In the rain.
Crown Lane is a rather declivitous, or perhaps inclivitous passage in Hastings Old Town. Each year they have a bicycle race on it. A butcher’s bicycle. It is an old boneshaker of the kind Arkwright had in Open All Hours. The thing weighs twice as much as the Forth Bridge. The rules are simple: Get up […]
She said, “You must do the ride to Bexhill; Giant Sea Cabbages, Colossal Daisies. Kingdom of Beach Huts and Overgrown Cliffs.” It was an intriguing introduction. The ride does not disappoint. It is perfectly magical. You come off the normal path onto dusty gravel, which then turns into a kind of chain mail behind kaleidoscopic […]
Hastings pram race. This is the neighbours. They were off to the pram race in a taxi. Oh, I’m going too! I said, hint, hint share the taxi. Hint not taken and off they went. I cycled the beautiful ride along the seafront. The wind at my back and pelting at over 30 miles per […]
Meet Francesca. She makes piers. The screws in the deck that she is fixing have a square drive head. Francesca says they should be star drive so the deck looks like it is covered in stars.
The newly rebuilt and reopened Hastings Pier. Some of the fixtures are reclaimed from the old pier and cleverly, and beautifully integrated into the new design. The new pier (more photos to follow) is expansive and at the moment, looks a bit empty compared to Palace Pier in Brighton or others based on the Victorian […]