Blue Plaque / History

Words by Geoff Howard Illustrations by Mel Elliott It’s the Wednesday morning following Jack in the Green and everyone is exhausted due...

Poly Styrene is a Punk Icon.Poly Styrene’s image, words and music willLive Forever.Poly Styrene will continue to inspire, educate and excite generations to come. Poly’s daughter, Celeste Bell summed her mother up beautifully in her introduction to the book ‘Dayglo – The Poly Styrene Story’ (Omnibus Press, 2019).

In a traffic island marooned off the messy 60s junction that guillotines the town centre in two, there is a block of diddy modern granny flats plonked incongruously between the grander remains of the Regency front, with an even more incongruous Blue Plaque hidden behind the wheelie bins that nobody is able to read. Michael Faraday, it tells you in very underwhelming and matter-of-fact language, stayed in a cottage on this site the summer before he presented the Royal Institut

Nothing says Hastings like Jack in the Green: clog-dancing maidens, stomping steampunk drummers, Morris dancers a-leaping with their knee bells and handkerchiefs, happy LGBTQ+ samba troupes, beardy blokes with owls perched on their arms, a long procession following the presiding deity of the rite, Jack, the spirit of Spring, making his way up the winding cobbles of the Old Town

When I first began looking into my family ancestry I had no idea of the impact it would have on my life. In January 2022 I was feeling creatively stuck. The post-covid landscape for musicians such as myself was looking pretty bleak and my Dad had just been diagnosed with mixed Dementia and Alzheimer’s. 

I don’t know — one minute you’re being chemically castrated for being a homosexual and the next minute they’re sticking your face on money and hailing you as “The Gay Man Who Saved the World” on the front of Attitude Magazine.