Lansdowne Place

I moved to Brighton from Reading on 14 September 1986. I've never
kept a diary, but I'll always remember that date. When I arrived, the
Grand Hotel was still covered in scaffolding after the IRA attack on
the Tory party conference at the Grand Hotel. And the Royal Pavilion
was still clad in blue plastic like a Kristo sculpture as a result of a
student arson attempt.

The train from Reading is extremely slow, and idled past quaint rural
scenes saturated in the warm sun of an indian summer. It was all like
something from a 1950s children's story. The cheery train conductor
stooped down to inspect my ticket and said, "Brighton, eh? Den of
Iniquity, Brighton."

"Yes" I said, that's why I'm moving there."

Actually, Brighton has never struck me as a den of iniquity - more a
haven of equality and eccentricity. But of course, seedy experiences
are there on the side, if you fancy dipping in.

My first address in Brighton, 14 Lansdowne Place, USED to be a den of
iniquity - or at least, that's what the dodgey alcoholics on the top
floor said. Apparently, the previous resident of my room had been a
hooker.

It was a middling-sized bed-sit on the ground floor with high ceilings,
a corner kitchenette, two ancient coin-meters and a hospital bed -
which must have been a big hit with the Johns. The rent was ?17.50 a
week.

I lived there for about 8 months, until I got freaked out by a
disembodied voice calling my name from an upstairs window. A few days
before, I'd met a very strange man coming out of my toilet. He had one
arm and the aura of a VERY angry ghost. Living o r dead, I didn't like
him and decided it was about time to get myself down to the Infinity
Foods notice board.

I moved in to a house in Foundry Street, three houses up from the
Pedestrian Arms. My housemates were Mark Power - now a famous and
talented photographer and Barbara Collins, a lesser known, but equally
talented ceramacist. We soon discovered, in one of those Brighton
moments, that Barbara had gone to school with my cousins.

Six month lets were already a big thing in the 80s. We were renting off
a couple with a kid who used to spend half their year on a hillside in
Provence. I had the kids room - just big enough for a single bed.
But the rent was cheap and Barbara and Mark were good housemates. When
I'd moved to Brighton I only knew 3 people - a couple from school who
had come down to do Primal Scream Therapy and my friend Karen who I'd
lived with in Reading and was studying to be an accountant. I've always
found Brighton a tolerant place, but never very friendly, and it was
nice to have a way in to the Arty Set.

Whilst we were in Foundry Street, the Great Storm of October 87
occurred. Mark woke me up the next morning saying "It's OK, there
hasn't been a nuclear attack." I didn't know what he was talking about
until I realised the lights weren't working. We huddled round the
transistor radio and listened to Radio Sussex (like you have to when
there's an emergency) to learn of the breadth of destruction. Mark took
some great photos that day.

Mark, Barbara and I moved through 6 month lets twice more. The first
move was two streets to the East - 16 Upper Gardner Street. We rented
off a recovering alcoholic hippy lady who spent half HER year in Spain.
For some reason, when she showed us around, she pointed out the archway
where she'd knocked the two ground floor rooms into one. "They told me
I should put an RSJ in there, but I couldn't afford it so I just boxed
it in. No one will ever find out." Some years later, a friend's
boyfriend bought a house in Upper Gardner Street. My heart sank when I
realised it was number 16.

It was one of the nicest houses I've ever lived in. There was a
courtyard garden with white walls and fig tree, and a big open plan
kitchen in the basement. My room was a loft conversion with dangerous
steps and a trap door that shut out the world. The window looked east
over the North Laine. I could simultaneously watch the cooks horse
around in Digbys kitchen in Kensington Gardens (now Grinders), and
follow brave cyclists attempt the impossible gradient of Albion
Hill.

One of the best things about that house was stepping out on a Saturday
morning right into the middle of the street market. It was a privilege
beyond my wildest dreams to have cheap fruit and old kitchen equipment
on my doorstep, and very handy if you couldn't find the can opener on a
Saturday morning.

Our next house had me back in Hove, and I've been a Hove-ite ever
since. 5 Victoria Road - round the back of Clifton Terrace. It was
above an antiques shop run by a gentle taxi-driver called Michael and
his elderly mother who didn't say much at all, and never said anything
cheerful. We called her Mrs Brady Old Lady after the character in Viz
comics. We had to share the kitchen with her - which was a long, ship's
galley affair with an immensely long stretch of dark wood apothecary's
drawers instead of kitchen units. There were also about 20 antique
bread boards scattered all over the place.

The only access to the flat was through the shop door which was quite a
surreal, chintzy experience. We had a tea party in there one night just
because we could. It was a challenge to battle through a constantly
changing array of delicate antiquities, but it never gave me the same
buzz as the flea market. I did score some cheap homemakers black and
white crockery and a couple of 1940s printers annuals, but generally it
was all a bit high class for me.

Barbara and Mark and I were still getting on OK, though we were leading
increasingly separate lives. I got very upset when Mark accused me of
leaving mouldy bacon in the fridge - since I'd been a vegetarian for 8
years it showed just how well he knew me. Soon after, I decided to jump
ship and moved in with my friend Jane who had bought a flat on the
corner of Montpelier Road and Lansdowne Road.

My bedroom was tiny again, but I had a specially built raised bed which
gave me great pleasure. When I had nothing better to do, I'd lie in bed
at night listening to cars braking, swerving and crashing at the
traffic lights outside. I also used to enjoy watching the guy in the
house over the road give karate lessons. That's the joy of a corner
house - lots of light and big windows to see the world go by. The
disadvantage of it was the builders on the roof of the house on the
other corner used to watch me exercise to my Jane Fonda aerobics tape.
Ah well.

In January 1990, I got my first proper job with reasonable pay - about
11 grand a year - as an in-house designer at the University of
Brighton. House prices had been extremely high but were dropping. I was
26 and was getting fed up of living in other people's houses and moving
every 6 months. I started looking for somewhere to buy, and was
attracted by a studio flat at the top of Lansdowne Place, number
123.

As I was waiting for the estate agent to show me round for the first
time, I remember being stunned by the way the front door was studded
with individual letter boxes - 7 in all, and 2 more flats in the
basement. Then the front door opened and a very neat elderly woman
stepped out with her shopping bag and a twinkle in her eye. She didn't
seem to mind that there was a stranger sitting on her front wall, and
greeted me in a friendly Yorkshire manner (as opposed to an unfriendly
Yorkshire manner, which is only subtly different). I hadn't imagined
sharing my home with another old lady, but this woman seemed the
opposite of Mrs Brady.

Flat 3 was small, but not poky. It had a separate kitchen that I
painted in the mexican style (deep pink and bright blue), and a
bathroom with a full-sized bath in dusty pink plastic. It cost ?30,000
and for the first time in my life I borrowed money off my dad - ?1500
which I conscientiously paid back at ?100 a month. In a twisted
monkey's paw kind of way, my wish to stop having to move all the time
came true. I had negative equity for nearly 10 years and couldn't have
moved out if I'd wanted to. Still, on the whole, I liked living there -
although it was hard to maintain that un-lived in IKEA catalogue type
look. Rolling up my futon and trying to disguise it as an unconvincing
sofa every day for 8 years was a task I NEVER learned to love.

Nearly all the flats in the house were bedsits or small 1-bedroom
flats, and nearly all the residents were single women from 'non-wealthy
families' on average levels of pay, stuck with negative equity. Other
than that, we didn't have much in common, but we lived and worked well
alongside each other, and I'm still in touch with Gill and Jinny - the
remaining two women from my days at 123.

The little old lady who I'd met that first day outside the letter-box
studded front door lived in flat 4. Between that encounter and the day
I moved in, she'd had a long term stay in hospital and had shrunk to
half her size. She must have weighed about 5 stone. Appropriately, she
was called Dot. She used to walk to the Blatchington Road Co-op every
day and come back with a small amount of shopping. On windy days she
was always getting blown over, but that wouldn't stop her. One day when
it was really cold, I told her to watch out for the black ice, and told
her how much I hated going out when it was slippery. A few hours later,
I heard a faint scratchy knock at my door. It was Dot - offering to do
my shopping for me!

I have many vivid memories of Lansdowne Place and the surrounding
streets, mostly happy. Amongst other things, GirlFrenzy was conceived
there - I know the very stretch of pavement where the idea popped into
my head. I also remember running full pelt down Brunswick Square one
night and rushing over the Kings Way to where we could hear a woman
screaming. We could just tell that it was no joke. By the time we
arrived, she'd managed to fight her attacker off, but we stayed with
her, and went to the Police Station with her to report the
attack.

And I remember going to Hove Court at the top of the street for
non-payment of Poll Tax. That was the 30 January 1991 - I know the date
because that's where Melita and I first met - and SHE wrote about it in
HER diary.

In 1994 I started seeing Peter Pavement. In theory, we lived
separately, but the reality was that Pete's residence was taken over by
the Slab-o-Concrete publishing empire and we slept every night in my
tiny studio flat which I was also working from. After 3 years of this,
with Pete having to do the customary 6-monthly move as the properties
he was renting regained equity and were put up for sale, it seemed
sensible to live together.

For years, every time I walked up Wilbury Road I looked at one
particluar house with a 1930s top floor extension. I always wondered
who lived in that flat. As Pete and I walked up Wilbury Road to meet
the agent outside No 17, I was delighted to realise that soon WE'D be
living there. Reluctantly, I became a landlady and arranged to rent my
bedsit out at cost-price to a student.

Moving day was 31 August 97. The radio alarm went off at 7 and we woke
up to the bizarre news of Princess Diana's death. Whilst the rest of
the nation were glued to their TV sets, it was nice to have something
practical to do.

17 Wilbury Road was like a genteel Parisian Hotel and had an antiquted
lift with a screen door and shiny brass fittings which took us and all
our clobber up to Flat 7 heaven. It was light, beautiful and enormous,
and hard to believe that the Slab-o-Concrete empire could ever fill it
up. But indeed it did fill up - accompanied by Pete's crumbs, old
socks, unpaid bills, empty food wrappers and washing up. After 2 years
I got fed up of playing games like seeing how many weeks could go by
before a blown light bulb would be changed without me initiating the
process. I decided I'd rather live on my own than be responsible for an
adult baby. This was September 99.

At about this time my studio flat had just regained equity. I sold it
for a little more than I'd paid for it. At the time, I didn't realise
how stupid this was, I just wanted rid of the past. Dot's flat had been
empty since she'd temporarily moved to a rest home, where she'd had a
nasty fall. She died in hospital. Her funeral was at a grim 1960s
crematorium on the outskirts of Worthing. Apart from her immediate
family, me, Gill and Jinny were the only mourners. My tenant Tim became
the tenant of Dot's daughter, and I sold my flat to a teacher from
London who was looking for an "investment". (2 years later she sold it
for twice what she'd paid me for it).

I moved into a flat in Ventor Villas. I was lucky to get it. A nice
one-bed flat for ?300 a month was a bargain even then. But the thing
is, I just didn't want to live there.

I wanted to live in the Cat House - an eccentric property two corners
up from my studio, on the corner of Goldstone St and Shirley St. It had
unusual leaded glass bay windows emblazoned with stickers from every
animal protection society that ever got a car sticker made, and
black-painted models of rabbits and horses heads attached to the
external walls. It reminded me of the witch's house in Hansel and
Gretel. I was intrigued, and so I made enquiries.

Olive at the corner caff told me the woman who had lived there died
about 18 months before (watching Wimbledon on telly). One lunchtime I
went round to check out the address so I could write to the Land
Registry about ownership. By weird coincidence, I happened across the
Treasury solicitor's officers who were making their first inspection of
the property. Rather unwisely, they explained to me that the owner, Mrs
Brown, had died without a will, and until a living relative could be
found, the house would have to remain empty.

If I was a cartoon character, at this point my eyes would have
CHING-CHINGED up with dollar signs. I knew enough about squatting that
if there isn't an owner you cannot be evicted from a property. And
later, when I went out to check out the house with Ben Metz and we
realised that the kitchen fanlight was open, I nearly had a heart
attack. It was almost as if The Goddess Was Telling Me To Do It. I
tried to be rational about it all, but I couldn't stop myself. With the
help of my friend Phil (my old school friend who'd moved to Brighton to
do Primal Scream Therapy), on Saturday 20 November 1999 I moved into
the cat house.

Of all the places I've ever lived, the Cat House will always be the
most dear to me. I could write reams about it, and I had some of my
most beautiful and memorable moments in the 6 months I lived there.
Many of those moments were shared with Fiona who lived there with me,
and is one of the loveliest and most extraordinary people who has ever
walked this planet.

It's also because of getting to know Mrs Brown and her daughter Sheila.
I've never got to know a dead person before, but I do believe that I
moved in to the Cat House because Mrs Brown needed someone to remember
her, and at that time, I also needed to do something extraordinary to
do to help mend a broken heart.

Sorting through Mrs Brown's belongings when I first moved in was the
kind of thing a daughter or granddaughter should have done. And,
alongside creating GirlFrenzy, I would put it as one of the most
important things I've done in my life.

The cat house is still squatted, and could easily live on to the
12-year limit when it becomes the property of the occupier. And there's
still a little shrine to Mrs Brown in there. Hannah and Lindsay who
live there are going to have it as an Open House in the Festival this
year, so you can visit it too.

So, why did I move out from there, and throw away my only realistic
opportunity of owning property in Brighton? Because I had a dream - a
big-hearted, optimistic dream of living in a sunny house with a shared
garden and shared views on life. I moved to Brighton Rock, a housing
co-operative in Portslade in April 2000 and lived there until the 3
January this year. Brighton Rock is a novel in itself, and it's all too
soon and too close and too complex to go in to it all here and now. The
long and the short of it is that I realised that Brighton Rock, at that
time, was too vulnerable to promise me long-term, secure accommodation.
And I am getting old, and fed up of pretending I'm NOT vulnerable, and
I can take everything the world wants to throw at me. Because I can't
any more. I love Brighton Rock, and I love the remarkable bunch of
people who live there, and I truly believe that it has a positive
future, but for other people, not for me.

Before I left, I frantically started painting every little corner that
still hadn't been painted. It was only when Adam asked me "why?" that I
realised what I was doing. I was stroking that house all over, to say
"thank you for having me, I'm sorry I can't stay any longer. I love
you, but it's up to other people to look after you now".

And I guess, really, by retracing my steps and my houses through
Brighton, I'm doing the same thing.

Goodbye, thank you for having me, look after Brighton.