Once Upon a Time in the West of Worthing

As I cycled along the seafront this afternoon the setting sun transformed West Worthing into a blazing painted backdrop from a spaghetti western. As I looked on the scene, I recalled the rousing strains of Ennio Morricone's Ecstasy of Gold, imagining bandit Tuco running around the wooden posts and rocks at West Parade's shingle beach garden, searching for the grave of Arch Stanton.

 

In a Bloomsbury state of mind

After going to see the excellent Radical Bloomsbury show at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery last week I was moved to take a trip to Firle, East Sussex to visit Charleston, the country home of artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant which became a meeting place for their friends – the writers, painters and intellectuals known as the Bloomsbury group.
       
Charleston is an 18^th century farmhouse with a walled garden set at the foot of the South Downs. Each room inside is full of paintings, textiles and ceramics including work by Renoir, Picasso and Delacroix as well as furniture and objects from the Omega Workshops. However, I was most interested in seeing the hand-painted embellishments by Bell and Grant who (inspired by Italian fresco painting and the Post-Impressionists) decorated the walls, wonky doors and furniture. The beautiful stencilled dark grey walls in the dining room were particularly impressive, as was the richly painted large circular Omega dining table. I also loved the patched heavy curtains made of several long pieces of sewn-together contrasting fabrics, and the fact that the makeshift curtain poles were dusty with even a cobweb or two. Another delight was Quentin Bell’s witty ceramic colander lampshades.
     
I travelled there by train and bike using the Charleston website’s bike route guide (I took the shortest route from Berwick station) though I’d recommend avoiding cycling along the A27 and taking one of the more circuitous off-road routes if you can. Pedalling along the country roads with cars and the odd lorry whizzing past me at high speed I took courage from imagining Virginia Woolf out on her bike, probably cycling along the same roads to and from the house all those years ago.

  

The road to Emmaus

This morning I set off for Emmaus the second-hand superstore in Portslade Old Village. Emmaus is home to a community of previously homeless men and women who live and work together, running the on-site shops, fantastic tearooms and garden centre, all set in beautifully leafy and well-maintained grounds.
       My favourite shop is the almost hidden room just beyond the tearoom which sells superb vintage fabrics, furniture and ceramics, as well as delightful handicrafts made by people in the Emmaus community. I bought some brilliant blue 1950s barkcloth fabric and a large Sanderson William Morris Blackthorn print curtain.
       From there I breezed downhill on my bicycle to Portslade harbour where it was blowing a gale! I sailed along the coastal bike route to Brighton, stopping at Hove to record this brief but noisy video on my phone.