It is January. In fact, it is the end of January. I don’t know why February is only 28 days and January 31. If I was in charge of the calendar, I’d switch it around. At the very least, we could compromise and make two months of 30 days. We should stick the leap day into summer. More of a good thing. Still, there is hope ahead. As well as bringing in the outsider, championing hospitality, resisting hostility and celebrating movement, Thousand 4 1000 takes the post Christmas, pre-Vernal lull very seriously. We are all about joy and that is why we have not one, but two brilliant events lined up to bring you that little frisson of joy that will drag you through to the moment lilacs are bred out of the dead land. In Spring we will even have a third event.
Quiz-tastic
Event number one is a pub quiz at the Robin Hood pub on 6th February. It starts at 7:30 PM (19:30 if you’re into 24-hour clocks). There is a raffle. You can have a team of six. It will cost you £3 (sterling, to be precise) and will generally be brilliant. If you don’t know anybody, now is your chance to make friends for life. We even have a beautiful poster.
Speaking of which, it would be very helpful if you could share the beautiful poster far and wide. Now that silicon valley has fallen in love with some of the worst elements of society, it is somewhat hard to do communications. It was doable before social media. We need to remember how to do that once again.
Be each others’ valentines
Event number two is the return of Refugee Valentine. It is probably one of the cultural highlights of the Brighton musical year. It is organised by our friends at the Jollof Café, technically our friends at the Sussex Refugee and Migrant Self Support Group, but they are doing so well that they want to support us, rather than the other way round. What a triumph.
For those of you who have just arrived in Brighton, or been living under a rock for the last five years, Refugee Valentine is a response to loneliness. It says that love crosses borders. It’s not about lovey-dovey, romantic chocolate cake and roses. I’m sure that is all very nice, but love is much deeper and more profound. It is the ever present possibility of trust and kindness. It’s the thought that what is real is eternal. It is beauty and truth. It is an approach to existence that maintains that each stranger contains the potential for a new and better world. It claims that we can always find room at the inn, space at the table and ways of being together. It also says that there is nothing better than shaking your booty to infectious rhythms from all over the world.
There is Son Guarachando, Brighton’s best loved Cuban exiles, and Saidi Kanda with Mvula-Mandondo bringing beats and sounds from across Africa and its diaspora. It is 8th February at The Old Market Theatre, doors 7:30 PM. Tickets are available here.
Above all, love
This newsletter is a little delayed because of a certain encroaching sense of despair. To watch the return to the mainstream of reactionaries and fascists is dispiriting if nothing else. Writing this newsletter has cheered me up. It reminds me that what we have is each other and what each of us has is joy. We might not be able to flood the zone with shit with the same abandon as a tech mogul, but we don’t need whatever snake oil they are selling. Not only can we look after each other, we do. Your support is keeping people safe and allowing them to rebuild a life in exile. Your love of trivia or filthy guitar licks, channeled in the right way, creates an unbreakable human solidarity. As we’ve said many times before, “Hail guest, we ask not what thou art. If friend, we greet thee hand on heart. If stranger, such no longer be. If foe, our love shall conquer thee.”
Happy quizzing, happy dancing,
