A wry look at Worthing

It was the semi-final of the National Village Championship against Shipton-Under-Wychwood. Sadly, Findon lost a thrilling match, and the chance of a once-in-a-lifetime appearance of Lords disappeared into the ether, but it was still a memorable day out.

Sentinel has seen some weird and wonderful sights on his travels around Worthing but none more so than the spectacle of a large snake being shown to people on the grassy area next to the Grafton multi-storey car park last week.

Much interest was aroused on the 700 bus recently by the sight of Worthing's plastic bin bag lady, her shopping trolley once again overflowing, who was sitting near the museum's sculpture garden sipping a bottle of cola.

Sentinel was interested to learn quartermasters at St Clare's Hostel in Marine Place require a whole range of basic foodstuffs to sustain homeless people. The shopping list includes baked beans, instant mashed potato, jam, marmalade, Marmite and brown sauce. However, the powers that be are at pains to point out that tinned salmon and exotic tinned fruits are NOT required.

Terry Sandalls, general manager of Pressley the jeweller's in South Street, is most impressed with the improvements to Hill Barn Golf Course and its associated facilities since the council relinquished control to private operator Richard Haygarth. In what will be music to Mr Haygarth's ears, Mr Sandalls said: "The course is getting back to what it was and, as a result, it is getting very busy up there."

During a recent visit, Mr Sandalls's attention was diverted by honours boards mentioning the Pressley Cup, first presented in 1935, shortly after the downland course opened. Further investigation revealed GH Pressley, after whom the jewellers is still named, donated two silver trophies, for ladies and gentlemen, which are still played for today.

In a most generous gesture that links the past with present, Mr Sandalls has agreed that on an annual basis the winners of both trophies will from now receive a personal award from Pressley's, which will take the form of a solid silver memento.

Sentinel is always a little reticent when people start talking of "the good old days", basically because there are many facets of life today that are a vast improvement on decades gone by. For instance, when The Carola restaurant opened in 1964 at the Odeon cinema complex overlooking Liverpool Gardens, the cutting edge of cuisine was ham omelette or steak and kidney pie, washed down by a choice of three wines - vin blanc, vin rouge or Beaujolais.

In an act of public service, Sentinel put in a call to those behind plans for a new doctors' surgery at Broadwater Boulevard, which will have the effect of revitalising this "Son of Teville Gate" shopping precinct. Sadly his call, simply inquiring when the surgery might open, was met with not only an icy response but also a failure to call back as promised.

While the people concerned may not wish to divulge such matters to the Press (and by definition the public), there is no excuse for bad manners.

The recent house fire on the seafront near the George V Avenue turn-off was one of the most spectacular conflagrations to afflict Worthing in recent years and will be remembered for many years to come by the hundreds of people who witnessed dense smoke billowing from the roof. While it is small consolation for the owners, Sentinel was pleased to see scaffolding installed so quickly and a temporary tarpaulin fastened to the charred rafters.

Former mayor Bob Clare has firmly quashed as "nonsense" unfounded rumours circulating around the town that he was not going to accept the civic honour of alderman from the town hall.

The recent blistering sunshine has been likened to the famous 1976 heatwave but Sentinel, a veteran of that dim and distant summer, thinks the pudding is being rather over-egged. While 2003 will go down as exceptional, it fell way short of that recordbreaking year, when millions of orange ladybirds descended on the town at the tail end of July, forcing motorists to drive around with their car windows closed long before air conditioning had been put on four wheels.

It was so sultry that policemen were even allowed, by order of the Chief Constable no less, to take off their ties and, heaven forbid, undo the top buttons of their shirts.

Seawater was pumped inland to wash down Montague Street and hosepipe users were hunted down like Saddam Hussein's henchmen. Twenty-seven years later, the Sussex Downs may look a little parched but gardens, parks and grass verges still have a tinge of green about them.

The recent death of Diana Mosley, widow of Sir Oswald, who before the Second World War led the infamous Blackshirts, ends a remarkable chapter in the history of the 20th Century.

During the recession-hit Thirties, Worthing was a fertile recruiting ground for the British Union of Fascists, based in Warwick Street. The town even had a Blackshirt councillor, Captain CH Bentinck Budd, who caused uproar by wearing his black shirt to council meetings. Blackshirts handed out leaflets on the streets and there was even a magazine, still on the shelves at Worthing reference library, which backed the Fascist cause.

William Joyce, otherwise known as Lord Haw Haw, the Nazi propaganda broadcaster, addressed a rally at the Pavilion Theatre and threatened to stand for election as the town's MP. Sir Oswald's mum held friendly tea party at Mitchell's Cafe in The Arcade but, when the man himself arrived in Worthing, all hell broke loose.

After a speech to hundreds of Nazi-saluting supporters in the Pavilion on the evening of October 9, 1934, bitter violence, later dubbed the Battle of South Street, erupted outside between the Fascists and their opponents. A howling mob fought its way from the seafront along South Street to Warwick Street, watched from first-floor windows by people in their nightshirts.

As late as the Eighties, the National Front had a strong presence in Worthing, staging meetings at local pubs, and in recent weeks British National Party posters have started to appear around the town, suggesting fascism may be far from dead and buried.

Wandering around the town centre, Sentinel noted that Dolcis shoe shop in Montague Street is closing down, the former Beachcomber/Town's Pride pub is undergoing refurbishment and the external colour scheme of the Egremont pub in Brighton Road has been changed from light blue to terracotta. Talking of pubs and colour, people drinking outside the Royal Oak, almost opposite the Egremont, are now bathed after dark in an eerie green glow after the management decided to install a bank of green fairy lights at first-floor level. Meanwhile, it would appear the conversion into flats of the former Victorian Tower Brewery, behind the Egremont, is turning into one hell of a job.

Some weeks ago, Sentinel remarked on the graffiti defacing Denton Gardens and, despite a council crackdown on wall-scrawling, it is still in situ, blighting one of the town's finest parks.

Sentinel was chatting to a senior Worthing bowler recently who suggested, rather mischievously, that Beach House Park, home of the English Bowling Association (EBA) and long regarded as the mecca of men's bowls, may soon be eclipsed by Leamington Spa, which is a rather worrying thought bearing in mind the number of people who visit the town to play or watch this most gentle of sports every year.

Talking of the EBA, the memorabilia associated with its 100th anniversary is of very good quality, with none other than Toye, Kenning and Spencer, London-based suppliers of gold and silver to the Queen, manufacturing a very smart medal which last week was on display in the window of Warwick Street jeweller's Whibley's, alongside specially-marked commemorative blue-coloured bowls, an embroidered pennant and an enamelled badge.

Sentinel's attention was diverted by another Warwick Street window display, at a shop called Welcome Home, featuring salt crystal lamps that apparently "emit negative ions which may provide relief from sinus problems and allergies, reduce the severity and frequency of asthma attacks, enhance the immune system, increase productivity and concentration, increase lung capacity and reduce susceptibility to colds and flu".