Whispering Smith published in the Littlehampton Gazette May 2nd 2013

BACK IN THE late 1990s, I used to drive to Littlehampton School around nine o’clock, park up and listen to the wonderful Alastair Cook and his BBC Letter From America on the car radio. My daughter usually emerged from band practice just as the softly spoken journalist wound up his weekly column, his voice and his deliberate intonation punctuating the piece by sound, you could almost hear the commas and full stops. Well, that was a long time ago and the band played on. Later we, as proud parents, would go to The Windmill Theatre and listen to The Littlehampton Concert Band’s version of The Last Night of The proms with all of the usual singing, flag waving and horns of its bigger Albert Hall brother.  The last one we went to was soon after Nine Eleven and we sang the Star Spangled Banner while our daughter played clarinet and I was one of the few who knew the words – although the tune as most tunes do, escaped me! On Saturday the 18^th. of May the band is holding Picnic In The Park a reunion and concert in Caffyns Field at seven in the evening to celebrate the band’s 25^th anniversary and I will be there with my son, my daughter and friends and we will take a picnic and pretend we are in Kenwood and all that will be missing is her mother and the smoke from our Gitane or Gauloise  cigarettes. The band continues under the competent ten year leadership of Bob Hayslip whose father John Hayslip taught my daughter both the clarinet and the flute while a student at Angmering School – both instruments sadly now playing second fiddle to an electric bass guitar! It should be a memorable evening for a great many people and Caffyns Field is a super and greatly underused LA venue for such an event so be there if you can.

HAPPY to see that the Crossbush Farm Shop has now reopened after a long refurbishment. Offering local produce including meat and whacking great chicken eggs all of which of the half dozen I purchased were double yoked and, now that eggs are no longer thought to be bad for you, – see the feature in last week’s Waitrose free store newspaper – made a tasty and healthy family Sunday breakfast…