A Pocket-full of Rye

We arrive at Rye with almost an hour to spare before Frances has her orthodontic appointment. Rye is a beautiful little town, often heaving with tourists. However it is even better on a sunny July morning at 10am. Today a gentle breeze drifts across the town from the direction of Dungeness nuclear power station.
Front Line News with David Horne SUS-160422-121044001Front Line News with David Horne SUS-160422-121044001
Front Line News with David Horne SUS-160422-121044001

Whilst Frances is ‘under the knife’, I decide to explore. As the town slowly awakens, it is like watching a flower unfold in the morning sun. Shopkeepers are putting out their wares, some carefully but others noisily, as they bustle about their business preparing for the inevitable footfall of tourist customers.

An ancient but dapperly be-hatted decorator is laying out his tools in preparation for yet another day’s work. How many times has he gone through this same routine over his extensive working life? Rye exudes tradition and traditional values from its every pore.

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Cobbled streets draw me uphill towards the church which sits at the summit, in a position dominating the Rye skyline and visible for miles around. I wonder at the folly of those who choose to buy houses on such cobbled streets. Do they sleep at night, as car tyres rumble noisily by?

As I make my way towards Rye Castle, overlooking the harbour, my attention is drawn towards another more recent artefact of war - Rye war memorial. As in thousands of other villages and towns all over Britain, it bears the names of local servicemen who fell in battle, in both of the major conflicts of the Twentieth Century. Poignantly, additional names have been inscribed on it, marking the deaths of further victims - this time in the Iraq and Gulfs wars. Will it never end?

I am suddenly drawn back into the Twenty-first Century by my vibrating mobile phone. It is Frances, who has evidently survived the dentist’s chair. We agree to meet at the castle.

Rye is one of those sensible towns well provided with toilets. I find some nearby. Alas for anyone of advancing years and any degree of infirmity, I discover that the step up to the urinal is so high that I suspect they may shortly need to erect a further memorial - to those of Rye who ‘fell-in-toilet’.

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As I await the dentally reconstructed Frances, I gaze across the geologically recent flatness of Dungeness and the frequently changed course of the East Sussex Rother. This has to be where I will breathe my last. Born amongst the now defunct coal fields of South Yorkshire on the banks of one Rother, the circle of life demands that I expire close to the banks of another - overlooking a forest of wind turbines and a nuclear power station - the successors to the coal power of my youth.

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