A wry look at Worthing

During a fascinating talk, Sir Patrick revealed how he once met Orville Wright, the first person to fly an aircraft just a century ago.

Now the human race is on the brink of colonising Mars, which will be unusually clear in the night-sky this August as the Red Planet swings in close to Earth.

Despite the advent of the digital age, Sir Patrick's only prop, apart from a beer mug full of water, was a slide projector - definitely Sixties technology.

But it proved to be the perfect tool to illustrate his lecture, which was a straight-forward mixture of science fact and science fiction.

Sir Patrick made many predictions, which hopefully won't be as wide of the mark as the one he made in 1954, when he argued it would be at least 50 years before spaceship travel to the moon was possible (it happened in 1969).

According to The Argus's cuttings library, he has no time for people who believe in flying saucers but at the same time does not think we were alone in the Universe.

Sir Patrick once said: "From my astronomical studies, I have become quite convinced that there have been many planets inhabited by people similar to ourselves, who have destroyed themselves through stupidity. They have developed the scientific know-how but not the skills to use this know-how sensibly. It would be tragic if we were to make the same mistakes."

Sir Patrick, who was born on March 4, 1923, became interested in astronomy at the age of six when he was given a book called The Story Of The Solar System.

A sick child, the legacy of a heart condition, he read extensively and later recalled: "By the time I was 11 I had my own telescope, a 3in refractor, and I spent many hours peering out of the bedroom window at night and the early hours of the morning looking at the stars."

In 1940, Sir Patrick joined the RAF and was wounded in the knee by shrapnel during service with Bomber Command as a navigator over Germany.

He steadfastly refuses to discuss his flying experiences or the death of his sweetheart during the war, the reason why he never married.

After the war, Sir Patrick settled in East Grinstead and became a prep school teacher in Tunbridge Wells but had his sights set on a writing career.

His opening work, a boys novel called Master Of The Moon, was published in 1952, the first of more than 60 books bashed out on an ancient 1908 typewriter given to him by his father.

The moon was Sir Patrick's favourite topic and he chased eclipses around the world. There is even a crater named after him.

After a spell in Northern Ireland, he settled in Selsey, looking after his beloved mother, Gertrude, who died in 1981, aged 94.

Sir Patrick, a regular sight cycling around on his battered bike while smoking a pipe, built an observatory in his back garden.

But his view of the stars was blighted by what he called the Aurora Bognor Regis, the glare from street lamps that distorted his view of the heavens.

Sentinel sensed that the only way this particular octogenerian would quit life on Earth was when he boarded a spacecraft to Mars.

Returning to the lecture, Sentinel wonders why certain members of the audience cannot turn up on time, resulting in them scrambling in the dark for seats while Sir Patrick was in full flow.

Sentinel was awoken on Sunday morning by a spectacular roll of thunder, as Mother Nature's percussion section flexed its considerable muscles.

It has been quite a few years since Worthing has experienced such a spectacular heavenly light show, which threatened to repeat itself on Sunday night when a giant bank of cloud, with that ominous blue hue, rolled across the town.

Sadly (or happily depending on your point of view), the approaching storm didn't quite deliver, although there was one particular flash of lightning at about 11pm which left hairs standing up on many a person's nervous neck.

Driving along East Worthing seafront on Friday night, at about 9pm, Sentinel was stopped in his tracks by a dark pall of smoke hovering just feet above the sea about half-a-mile south of the Half Brick pub.

The fire brigade turned up to have a look before flying north along Ham Road with blue lights blazing.

There were no boats in the immediate vicinity and Sentinel remains puzzled as to what caused this rather strange twilight phenomenon.

Sentinel paused at Worthing library this week to study an informative exhibition devoted to the charity Guild Care, which was founded 70 years ago.

He was interested to learn that when the organisation was known as Worthing Council for Social Services, it ran a dental health scheme for people in the town earning less than £1 a week.

This enabled poor people to have a filling or a tooth extraction for the equivalent of just seven-and-a-half pence today.

Before the war the charity also provided boots and shoes for otherwise barefoot children and prams for mothers evacuated to the town in 1939.

Methold House, Guild Care's headquarters in North Street, was named after Mrs Effie Methold, who as honorary secretary for 20 years put in 50 hours a week until her death in 1956.

Sentinel was delighted to receive a letter from David Phillips, of 26 Compton Avenue, Goring, who has grown tired of life in Worthing after 21 years and is planning to "emigrate" to the Isle of Man.

Like many of us, David has become increasingly dismayed by ever-rising taxes, paying more than £1,600 a year in council tax and water rates for a two-bedroom bungalow while watching public services deteriorate.

To emphasise his point, he sent in a series of photographs, including an "orange" letter box, explaining: "It has not been painted for at least 15 years and is down to its original primer."

Another picture shows a lamp standard installed four years ago, just inches away from the old one, which was dubbed "dangerous" four years ago but never removed.

David concludes: "I have enjoyed my 21 years in Worthing but I have had enough. The Sentinel has been a pleasure and is read from cover to cover."

There is nothing Sentinel likes more than sitting in Montague Place with a coffee watching the world go by but he was relieved not to be sitting outside Costa last week when a seagull strafed the seating area, leaving people with rather more than froth on their cappuccinos.

Strolling along the promenade last Tuesday, Sentinel watched no less than eight helicopters pass over in the space of about two minutes. It was like a scene from Apocalypse Now and all that was needed was the music from Richard Wagner's Ride Of The Valkyries.

One of the aircraft passed just south of the pier, skimming the waves, with the others following in quick succession at varying heights.

On Saturday, Sentinel witnessed two microlights following a similar path but his attention was diverted by the sound of thunderflashes being let off by children on the beach.

Sentinel was at the time enjoying an ice cream purchased from the eyecatchingly colourful and varied cold counter at Macari's, near the Dome cinema.

The widespread choice includes diabetic vanilla.

Being an inky scribbler, Sentinel is very much against petty town hall secrecy.

He is therefore keen to hear why councillors kept confidential their discussions about the exhibition and sale of paintings on the seafront, which is hardly a matter of national security.

The council's graffiti crackdown has been a great success but Sentinel has noticed two pockets of wall-scrawling that require attention - in Denton Gardens and on the south side of the A259 Littlehampton Road opposite Northbrook College.

Wandering along the seafront on Friday, Sentinel watched more than 20 youngsters taking a dip just west of the Lido.

They must have been foreign students, unaware that Worthing's sea water had failed pollution tests.

But it did make him ponder over the possibility of setting up a surf club in the town, possibly based at Checkers, the pub with no beer near Bath Place.