The Place To Be

The amount of excitement about the city bid still amazes and delights me and The Place To Be team.

Now it may of course be that we're just very dull people and no one can think of anything else to say to any of us.

But wherever we go, the minute someone discovers that we are involved, their first question is, 'When will we know?'.

Taxi drivers ask me before the destination, nice Paul in Mr Brampton's in Kemp Town before inquiring what kind of Sunday joint, mad Michael in Geo Watts the fishmongers wants news of city status before cod, halibut or monkfish.

Even if I go on a date (what an old-fashioned idea), that's what they want to know first.

Although, on reflection, I'm not sure I should let that be known, because it really does make going out with me sound duller than talking French philosophy with Benny from Crossroads.

So when will we know?

Well the terrible thing is that the only thing we know is that we still don't know.

The Home Office Minister in charge, Mike O'Brien, who may have other things on his mind at the moment, such as trying to restrain the worrying excesses of language and rhetoric about asylum seekers, wrote a very reassuring letter in reply to our anxieties about the so-called briefing note.

You may remember that there was a leak of a summary of each of the towns clearly written by some very junior pen-pusher.

Its only saving grace was its even-handed inaccuracy about every town.

The Minister was understandably a little embarrassed and decently set the record straight.

There is no timetable, but work has begun on preparing a recommendation to the Queen.

There is no shortlist yet, he assures me, and no favourites. So punters having a flutter on just Wolverhampton and Brighton and Hove are backing far too narrow a group of riders.

Sources close to the Home Office - in other words, gossip dressed up as informed speculation - suggest there will be some kind of, not ministerial, as was first thought, but fairly senior civil service visit to each town over the summer.

Which suggests we might know at the end of the season. But, in addition, the Minister has specifically invited us to send in more material.

This is most welcome as it will undoubtedly give us some advantage in the field because in Brighton and Hove we have not just put in a paper bid, but joined it with a year's celebration of the town and the two New Year's Eve celebrations as well, i.e. The Place To Be.

And in only the last two weeks you may have seen some evidence of the extraordinary diversity of activity and energy people have committed to The Place To Be.

The Summer Programme, launched last week at Brighton University, which sponsored it, listed hundreds of events.

At one end of the scale there is the Fire Raisers project, which is mad, wonderful and involves floating a maintenance platform between the piers and performing a version of The Tempest on it, underneath it and by it with hundreds of local people.

And at the small end there are events such as the Mackerel Fayre at the Fishing Museum, the natural habitat of our dungareed, soon-to-be Mayor, Andy Durr, and the drop-in workshops at Woodingdean and Portslade for the Millennium Diary projects for kids.

And if you can't find anything between those two extremes that catches your eye, I shall just have to send you the video of Reading's city bid.

Also this week, the editor of this splendid rag chaired the first round of the Small Grants Fund. Forty-eight schemes got money, ranging from a short film about a weekend in town to a tea- time get together of Jewish ex-Servicemen and women, a community quilt project in Prestonville, the self-explanatory Disabled Dykes' Club creativity party and a contribution to restoring the railings in Pelham Square in celebration of the Queen Mum's 100th birthday later in the year.

Only in Brighton and Hove.

So we'll be sending all that and more to Mr O'Brien with our thanks to him for asking.

Please do send me any thoughts you'd like me to forward via the Argus website at: letters@argus-btn.co.uk

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.