• ISBN: 978-1-935585-22-0 • 312 Pages - 6” X 9” - Paperback • www.FireshipPress.com

How to Order

Via Wholesalers:ALL Fireship books are available from the following distributors:

In the U.S.: Ingram, Baker & TaylorIn Europe: Gardnerʼs Books, Bertram Books

In Canada: Chapters/IndigoIf you have a relationship with any of these companies,

please feel free to order directly from them.

Purchase Order:Purchase orders are no problem. Simply e.mail, snailMail or FAX

them to the address or number shown below.

Fireship Press, LLC • P.O. Box 68412 • Tucson, AZ • 85737e.Mail: sales@FireshipPress.com • Phone: 520-360-6228 •

Questions?If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at”

e.Mail: sales@FireshipPress.comPhone: 520-360-6228FAX: 800-878-4410

Online:ALL of our books are available online from: Amazon.com,

BarnesAndNoble.com, Borders.com, and about 100 other book websites.

! Sussex Born and Bred is a series of short stories in which both Englandʼs history and her people are brought vividly to life by a man who has spent a lifetime observ-ing both. ! As you travel the roads and lanes of Sussex with master craftsman and author Alex Askaroff, youʼll meet a host of unforgettable places and characters.

• Nuria, the girl in the Salvador Dali drawing, asleep under a rosebush cuddled with Daliʼs pet lynx

• A mill pond haunted by Vivien Leighʼs ghost.• The ground on which Harold II fell and William the

Conqueror, by strength, luck, and cunning, claimed a country.

! Youʼll be welcomed by Cockney royalty, and enter-tained by the Eastbourne tailors who sewed maternity dresses for Queen Elizabeth II. ! War veterans and farmers, hop pickers and mill-workers, all of them are revealed as the extraordinary “ordinary” folk that they are; and who frame an unforget-table portrait of the land they love.

A Day of Stories

Sussex Tongue

The Sussex tongue is soft and sweet, Laced with skylark and summer wheat. It ripples like a babbling brook, Thick and rich with a Cornish hook. The Sussex tongue is almost gone, To be lost amongst the meadow song. In years to come you may search in vain, For the Sussex tongue won’t rise again.

Alex I. Askaroff

The trees were being shaken like rag dolls, and the leaves were being ripped off by a wind that was showing no mercy to man nor beast. The balmy Indian summer had been re-placed with bitter Arctic winds. To top it all a flash flood had lifted the drain-covers in my garden, spraying sewage across the plants.

I guess the fertiliser will do them good, I had thought as I left for work deciding to worry about the mess later.

Bent against the storm, I struggled to my first call along the old redbrick alley towards the tradesmen’s entrance of the Lansdowne Hotel on Eastbourne seafront. It was like walking in a wind tunnel. The rain slapped my face, the tool-box tugged annoyingly, like a misbehaving puppy on a lead.

I arrived at the entrance to the laundry just as the van driver dropped a box of fresh linen into a pool of water by the

- 1 -

back door. He was cursing. I was wet. Another day’s work had begun.

I soon had the linen-room’s machine running perfectly. One of the hotel staff had crept in after work to repair her denim jeans. Somehow she had managed to shift the top shaft of the Singer 527 out of position. In her panic she undid the lower bobbin assembly, got in a right muddle, and scarpered. The next day she owned up and I was called.

It’s funny how stories come. It was just one of my normal days. Mrs Lamb had called me out—once again. I sat in front of her machine wondering if it was her or the machine that was faulty. I re-threaded the machine, tested it, and pro-nounced it fit for duty. Thoughts of charging her disappeared when she smiled so sweetly at me. I left knowing that I would be back within the month.

My next customer went into a rendition of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” as she made my coffee. She only stopped when the neighbour’s dog howled louder than she did!

By the time I arrived at my next customer’s my head was pounding. I was soaked and my mood, like the weather, was getting darker. I was met at the door by smiling old man. I was just thinking what electric blue eyes he had when his charming wife brought in a steaming cup of coffee.

“Wow! Now that’s just what the doctor ordered,” I piped up, with my first smile of the day.

“He’s 91 this year,” said the old dear, handing me the cof-fee, and a biscuit that was as welcoming as a fresh worm to a starving bird.

“I’m only 90! He does all the sewing—learnt it during the war in India where he was stationed.”

Story time, I thought, as I sat down and sipped my drink. “Did you do much sewing out in India?” I enquired with my usual quizzical, tell-me-everything, expression.

“Hardly a stitch! I was busy maintaining Dakotas out of Assam. I had the training but we had a tiny gentleman who

- 2 -

lived in a dirt hut near the base. He could turn a piece of scrap into a suit and a rag into a dress. We would go to the local market and buy Indian silk, then take it to him. He had a hand-operated Singer, old as Moses. He would sit cross-legged in front of the machine and sew, singing away to him-self in Bengali. When he got to a tricky piece of sewing, where he needed both hands to sew, he would unfold his legs and turn the handle of the machine with his right foot! You had to see it to believe it. The best shirts in the area came from that little dirt hut. We arrived back from our tour of duty loaded with bags of clothes.”

“I can see why you did not have to sew if you had such a person living so close.” I smiled as I finished off my coffee, feeling, for the first time that morning, a bit more like a hu-man being.

The old couple fussed around me as I left, almost dress-ing me, folding my collar up around my chin and pulling the zip of my coat up tight. With both hands loaded, I nodded goodbye and ran with my tools to the car.

My next customer was another delight. His family had a sewing pedigree that few could match: court dressmakers to no less than King Louis XIV. Not bad eh! And more followed.

“Walpole’s, that was it, Walpole’s of Bond Street. Smack in the centre of London, on the corner of Oxford Street our shop was!” squealed Sylvia in delight as she sat down oppo-site me. “I spent several years there making skirts, blouses and dresses for the more refined members of the community.

“I remember it well. We were dressmakers to the gentry. An everyday dress, you know the sort of thing you would wear out to a meal with friends, would cost about eight pounds just after the war.

“Now let me think. Yes, I was earning 19 shillings a week, so a dress would have cost two months wages! Can you imag-ine going down to the shops today and spending two months wages on one dress? It doesn’t bear thinking about.

- 3 -

- 4 -

Born of a Russian/French father and Austrian/English mother, I grew up in 1960’s England and witnessed the birth of our modern age. One of six boys, our house was always an explosion of noise. From this early experience I now cherish my quiet moments although, as a result, my friends often call me an introvert.

Originally I went through the state schooling system, but things soon changed rather dramatically. My parents were in the manufacturing of baby goods and after the Miners Strikes of the 1970’s caused the power, across the country, to be turned off early each night, the first baby-boom soon fol-lowed. The business flourished and I was bundled off to pri-vate school. One second I was playing conkers in a class of 44, the next I was learning Latin with 11 classmates. Quite a shock!

Later I studied engineering and eventually became a self-employed engineer and, after many years, a master craftsman running my own specialised business in sewing machinery. It was a trade I had known since a child.

I live in my hometown of Eastbourne, Sussex with my wife and two kids; and I carry on the trade that I grew up with around the rural Southeast corner of England.

About the Author

AlexAskaroff