Suit other uses

In Littlehampton, on the coast just 4 miles from here, they're selling the old Coastguard Tower. (A new one was built several years ago and the old one isn't much use any more). It's being offered at auction next month, with the handy advice "Suit other uses". Just in case you thought you'd need to wear your pyjamas and retrieve a brick from the swimming pool before you could buy it.

On track for Goodwood

I’ve just spotted a red Aston Martin DB7 in Arundel with a ‘Monaco’ sticker on the boot. And that can only mean one thing: the Goodwood Festival of Speed is just around the corner.

I’ll admit to having a soft spot for the FoS. Although it’s increasingly becoming a popular choice for a corporate day out, it’s still packed with enthusiasts. I was lucky enough to be there (thank you, PrimeTime Radio) as a guest of Renault a few years ago, where I lunched with former F1 driver Patrick Tambay. A charming chap. This year Lord March has managed to persuade all four current British F1 drivers to attend. Wonder if any of them will be staying locally?

An Arundel Tomb

Chichester Cathedral – just a couple of stops on the train from Arundel – contains a tomb that shows two people holding hands (believed to be Richard Fitzalan, 10th Earl of Arundel, and his wife, Eleanor of Lancaster). It inspired Philip Larkin to write his poem “An Arundel Tomb”, which was published in 1956.

Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.

Going up...

Once upon a time - oh, alright, in 2005 – I decided I’d rather like to live in Arundel. Because I work from home, I reckoned my essential criteria were simply a nearby post office and a railway station. I also wanted to be relatively close to the majority of my friends and family, which effectively ruled out Assisi and Bath – despite my fondness for both.

Anyway, one of the houses I looked at was on Tarrant Street. A terraced two-bedroom cottage with a spiral staircase. Yes, a spiral staircase. As far as I could tell, it hadn’t been sympathetically renovated (or even unsympathetically renovated) since being converted from two one-bedroom cottages, which helped to explain the two-foot thick wall jutting into the lounge.

Originally on the market, if I remember rightly, for £225,000. Open to unreasonable offers, hinted the estate agent. I offered £167,000. No deal. £175,000? No deal. I wandered down the road and bought somewhere else.

As a curious type of soul, I’d been checking property prices in the area using OurProperty.co.uk. One day in 2006, I decided (in one of those internet off-on-a-tangent moments) to take another look at local prices. Well, I wasn’t surprised to discover the spiral staircase-equipped house had eventually sold for £175,000. Nice to see I’d guessed right.

Over the following months, I noticed there was a fair amount of building work going on. Hardly surprising, I thought. It really did need a new kitchen and a fair amount of decorating – and I’m neither particularly fussy about décor nor an enthusiastic cook.

And then, last week, I noticed a ‘for sale’ sign outside. So I wondered about the price. It’s for sale in one of the local estate agents for £289,950. And that's the end of the story. I’ll let you choose your own punchline…

The South of England show

I’ve always liked the South of England Show at Ardingly ever since going there as a child. Looking at farm animals and climbing on farm machinery were guaranteed to keep me entertained.

I was there again on Saturday and it doesn’t seem to have changed much in the thirty-something years since I first went… which is an excellent thing, I think. There are probably more ‘craft’ stalls there (although I’ll confess that I appreciate a well-turned wooden hedgehog) and probably more franchisees attempting to sell assorted kitchen utensils and DIY products with their enthusiastic sales demonstrations – but overall it’s still about British farming and the countryside. Neither in-your-face rural evangelism nor bucolic apologies; just telling it like it is.



[Photo of fruit & veg display by Tilleys Farm, Turners Hill, for NFU ‘Meet the Farmer’ stand].

Corpus Christi

Arundel is dominated by its castle and by the cathedral – an enormous gothic-style building that was built in the 19th century but only became a cathedral in 1965. It’s a Roman Catholic cathedral; something that puzzled me as a child because I’d been taught that only cities had cathedrals. But I digress.

Every year the cathedral celebrates Corpus Christi – the day on which Christians commemorate the creation of ‘holy communion’ – with a flower festival. It’s an impressive sight, with coaches full of visitors dropping people off to see flower heads and petals arranged on the cathedral floor. Fortunately the police have put ‘no waiting’ signs outside the cathedral (although they’ve misspelt the festival as “Corpus Christie”, which gives the impression that Jesus was related to Agatha).

On the feast day itself, there’s a service held in the cathedral, following which the priest and congregation leave the church by walking over the flowers. At least, that’s what I’m told. I’ve never been inside for it.

That day is tomorrow, so the festival opened this morning at 9.30am. I was up there pretty promptly – mainly to beat the crowds, although I’ll confess I wanted to ‘get it done’ because there’s 'proper' work I need to do today. Here’s what it looked like…

Back home again

I'm back. And what a week it's been. I've just spent five days in Belgium - mainly Bruges (or Brugge, as Flemish speakers prefer) - with my girlfriend and her son.

And the result?

Well, I can confirm that Bruges is suitably entertaining for a 12-year-old. After climbing to the top of the clock tower, visiting the chocolate museum, riding on a horse taxi, taking a boat trip, visiting windmills and hiring bicycles, we were happy to eat chips with mayonnaise until our stomachs and arteries were full.

Bruges is a gentle sort of city - not unlike Arundel in many ways. Once a busy port, it's now a clean gothic-looking tourist destination. And perfect if, like me, your grasp of the language doesn't extend beyond clearing your throat. The guy on the supermarket checkout spoke English (unprompted, may I add - although my 12-year-old companion's non-stop conversation may have given the game away). The woman in the pub did the same. Spreekt u Engels? and Dank u wel was pretty much all I needed.

Anyway, it got me thinking about Arundel's missing tourist opportunities. I reckon a horse and carriage would work really well. Although I'm not sure how you'd handle the downhill part when it came to the High Street...

PS: I can thoroughly recommend the apartment we stayed in. It's called Die Drie Koningen (The Three Kings), it's close to the city centre, it's much cheaper than a hotel and it has friendly, helpful English-French-German-Flemish speaking owners.