13

Paul Thomas May the fest be with you A fter a long winter, Spring is upon us which heralds the Brighton Festival. The cultural electricity will be throbbing in the city, courtesy of guest director Laurie Anderson, of O’Superman fame. If you stop to tie your laces and do so incorporating the theme of the fragmented assimilation of the migrant humming bee pollinating Kemptown you might get a grant and put on a show. Joking aside, keep an eye out out for Clairiere Urbaine, (urban clearing) by the French company Retouramont On Saturday 21st, they take over Lavender Street, in Kemptown for the UK premiere of their show of aerial choreography incorporating the surrounding space, promising a spectacular trip through the urban jungle. You can also enjoy a lively debate on just how urban Kemptown is, all for free. Away from the main Festival, The Fringe promises more earthly delights via comedy, music, dance and street theatre which means the cafe’s bars and pubs will be busier than usual, so please be nice to the staff . Before all the festival madness starts, International Star Wars day is on the 4th as in: ‘May the fourth be with you’. With Star Wars, Superman and X-men nods to the month, you might reach your limit of sci-fi and superheroes. Respire could be discovered at weekends offering the Artists Open Houses, including the popular Kemptown trail. Remember, you are not having a nose at how other people live, you are gaining essential context to the work on offer. Most do lovely tea and cakes, so take advantage and gather some artistic memories. Bank Holidays bookend the month, do mark the 2nd and 30th for something other than DIY this year. If all this vibrancy is not enough, Kemptown Carnival returns on June 4th. Enjoy! For more info on the Festival see www.brightonfestival.org Steve Rust Brighton Dad Dedicated follower of fashion V ictoria Beckham once stated that: “Fashion is important”. It wasn’t a statement I paid too much heed to. I have many priorities in my life, but ‘fashion’ is not up there with say ‘eating’. In fact it’s not even up there with ‘mowing the lawn’. My lovely wife on the other hand regards fashion as ‘important’ and takes an avid interest in it. For example, three days ago she bought a bikini online. In March! She said, “I’m going to wear it when we go to America next month”. I was shocked to see that not only was this (very small) bikini roughly the same price as my first car, that there was an exorbitant shipping cost from America. Yes that’s right. The bikini is travelling across the Atlantic, to go in a suitcase and be taken back across the Atlantic three weeks later: “Couldn’t you have bought it when we William Mills Greenfingers The perils of growing ince starting my Greenfingers column four years ago, we have published details of over thirty different varieties of plants. It would be useful to look back and consider which plants were the most satisfying to own and care for. What are we really looking for from the plants we share our homes with? My plants fall into two specific categories: fragrant flowering varieties, which require constant attention and those which can be placed in a particular corner and left to get on with it. The latter include evergreens and clean air favourites, such as spider plants and Dracaena, as well as cacti and succulents.The flowering plants which I have enjoyed growing are whose scent has the ability to lift our moods. These are used in aromatherapy by commercial growers harvesting millions of flowers, who press them to extract tiny amounts of volatile oils, which when evaporated in a fragrance oil burner smell the same as the flowers do on a summer’s morning. S My top three are rose, citrus, and jasmine, and we have experienced different results from trying to grow them. Rose is the most difficult as it is not really an indoor plant and their fragrance is so faint it’s difficult to notice. Buying a Jasmine is probably the easiest way to create the heaven of a room filled with fresh flower scent. They usually cost under £10 from garden centres and florists. they display a multitude of small white flowers, which when open give off a rich perfume. However Jasmine’s drawback is the early spring flowering season is soon over and as a plant they fare better outside. Citrus have taken up much of my time and energies over the years. Here we have all three of the requirements of the perfect plant-edible fruit, long lasting, and continuous flowering. If only it was that easy! Many nurseries swear that it is, yet Citrus have a horrid habit of dying if their living conditions aren’t right. It does takes care and practice to get their habitat just right but once achieved nothing beats them. For more information and a full library of our past articles: www.the-news.co/index.php/category/gardening/ got there?” I asked. This got me the standard ‘look’ that I’ve come to dread, but worse than that, it got me a ‘lecture’ which went like this: “You should consider yourself lucky that you’ve got a wife who takes pride in her appearance. You‘ve owned that t-shirt for about seven years now, and in fact all your clothes have turned the same colour as you haven’t bought any new ones for ages”. I thought about this and realised she was right, so in order to keep the peace I went shopping. First I went to TopMan. When I walked in, the staff gave me a look which said: “Clearly you must be some sort of workman and have entered our shop to fix something”. I walked out. I then found myself in an extremely expensive shop in Churchill Square. I only ventured in there because it was very dark and had armchairs at the front. I thought it might be some sort of bar. It wasn’t. I ended up buying a few new items and showed them to my wife. She looked and said: “You’ve just bought new versions of all the stuff you already have, that’s really unimaginative”. This made me cross: “Well you’re unimaginative” I replied, then kicked myself at the unimaginativeness of my response. Anyway we’ve decided that I’ll get some new clothes in America. We’re going to Texas, and hopefully my wife will choose me some things. If it was left to me I’d buy the first things I saw, and you’d see me strutting round Brighton in full cowboy hat, boots and spurs!