Photo: Tom and Kate in Trinity College, Cambridge, September 2026
Ahem,
With the multiple heatwaves now over for the season and the reappearance of that thing called rain, we were nevertheless able to savour the unique English autumnal sun in patches during the month. Grand-daughter Lily is doing well and has started her life with a full availability of parents and Maisie the adoring Rottweiler, committed around the clock to her welfare and contentment. Nanny Alli has to be physically restrained from driving over almost every day to help look after her. Ella and Sam invited us to their house to celebrate Alli’s birthday, to introduce Lily to family parties, and to sponsor a present-opening session and significant Indian takeaway from the excellent Naasta. Alli’s birthday week had started with Sunday lunch at the Piltdown Man, and continued with a rare visit to the Alma followed by fish and chips from Kam’s fish bar, courtesy of her ever-generous husband.
Previously, we had lunch with Mary and Brian in Burgess Hill for our occasional leisurely catch up. I admired their new drawing room, the manifestation of the latest stage of their ongoing house renovation. Mary told me that the room, which had a completed and historically permanent feel to it, was very good for social conversation, as we proved with a general review of current affairs. My friend Charlie came to see me for a few days and we went together to tour Brighton and visit the Theatre Royal to see The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. We had to leave at the intermission because of the restricted space in the gallery gods for our suffering legs and of the overpowering heat. Charlie and I also unsuccessfully tried to find a real ale in the North Laines area, but were luckier in the pubs surrounding Uckfield and Lewes. We hobbled around the Ashdown Forest, went to a surprisingly pleasant Spoons in Crowborough (two pints for £5), and visited (at last) the Tom Paine museum in Lewes, now being resuscitated by lively supporters of a man I consider to be the greatest Englishman of all time. An excellent lunch in Squisito provided the finale for Charlie’s visit.
One lazy Saturday afternoon I stumbled on Lawrence of Arabia about to start on TV. I settled down to watch it, expecting a comfortable and familiar revisit, only to realise over the next three hours that I had never previously seen it at all and had mostly remembered only isolated excerpts and sequences. The motorcycle crash and St Paul’s memorial, which I had thought ended the film, opened it. I recognised the whipping scene that suggested masochism but did not recall the portrayals of his sadism in battle. Was he supposed to have been both? For all its seven-Oscar-winning grandeur, none of the actors won Oscars. O’Toole, on his debut, played a dim upper-class male model. Alec Guinness was absurd in his part; and there wasn’t a significant female in the entire film. But, filmed in colour, it was a visual feast for 1962.
I went with Jessie to see the Jayhawks in Brighton. The band is 40 years old and I have been listening to them for nearly 30 years and seen them in concert many times. They never seem to flag or fail and were as good as ever, although I was surprised to see such a sparse crowd, which suggested that they have never achieved the dubious life membership of the mainstream. Conversely, I went to the awards ceremony of the Uckfield Chamber of Commerce at the glitzy East Sussex National. My friend Lisa was runner-up in the Lifetime Achievement award, losing only to a man forty years older.
One evening I went to nearby Crowborough to attend a meeting of an organisation raising money and resources to make life less grim for the asylum seekers housed at the Crowborough Army Training Camp. The organisation finds volunteers to go into the camp to provide clothing, music, English lessons, companionship, and other activities. Sadly, due to repeated aggressive demonstrations by extreme right-wing groups, the matter has become deplorably aggravated. The refugees cannot easily get out into the town without being harassed and abused by non-residents paid to spread lies about their behaviour. The briefing made me despair about the UK’s treatment of asylum seekers and the overall press coverage and confected mob anger that drives it. People seeking asylum are entitled to have their claims considered, and this now has to be in the UK following the UK’s departure from the EU.
At the end of the month Alli and I went to a funeral and to a wedding, just days apart. First was the funeral of Robert Talbot, father of Jessie’s best friend Jenny, one of three daughters, like our family. It was a sad, passionate, but not solemn occasion that celebrated his life at St Andrew’s Church in Burgess Hill, with inspired eulogies by his bereaved daughters and wife. The wake, held at the Greyhound in Hassocks, was full of people who had loved and respected him and his loving family.
Shortly afterwards, Alli and I drove to Cambridge to attend the day of celebration of the marriage of Kate, my second-cousin-once-removed, and her ex-husband Tom at Trinity College. They had decided to get married again in Toronto a few weeks ago after marrying first in 2010 with a celebration at Wadham College, then divorcing a few years later. It was an entertaining day of poetry, music, old photos, and letters with plenty of smiles and friendship, all blessed by the late season sunshine. It was preceded by a morning’s punting on the Cam and a walk around the Botanic Gardens, as well as an excellent lunch the previous day in the Sole & Duck restaurant in Trumpington. Alli and I spent two nights in a comfortable house near the city centre and enjoyed ourselves greatly in a rare instance of a leisurely long weekend away from home,
…across these golden days before the fall of autumn leaves.
Lionel
