A MISCELLANY OF MEMORIES...

Consumed in The …Atlas, Robin Hood, Biscuit Factory, Montpelier Inn, Real Eating Co., Freemasons, Mad Hatter, Meeting Place, Market Place, Sanctuary Café, Hampton, Lion and Lobster, PV, Windmill, Duke of Norfolk, and Billie’s , Tallulah’s, and Barney’s.

And beyond the zimmer-zone, where re-visiting wasn’t allowed: Hotel du Vin, Café Paradiso, Café Rouge, La Fourchette, Browns, Ha Ha, No Name Restaurant, Al Forno, Donnatello, Leonardo, Picasso, Due South, Havana, Boardwalk, Tables 88, Komedia, Food for Friends, Bagelman, Frank in Steine, Infinity Café, Inside Out, Mrs Fitzherberts, Koba, St James’s, Shakespeare’s Head, Sidewinder, Slug and Lettuce, William IV, Bar Valentino, Theatre Royal, Carluccio’s, and The …Dorset, Tin Drum, Joogleberry, Bath Arms, Cricketers, George, Nelson, Prince Albert, Regency, Sussex, Crescent , Office, Street, and the Duke of York’s cinema where a glass helped us get through Pierrepoint.

The memory of working - or drinking - through the ‘lists’ spawns another shape: £s. Only our wee beer-money cushion replenished by periodic employment made it possible; there’s no way we could do the same today, unless… Recently I learned I’d won 3rd Prize in Spilling Ink’s 2011 Fiction Competition for ‘Cries from the Marianas Trench.’ Late in the day my literary career is beginning to take-off. Let’s hope it’s just a matter of time before my published, comic-poignant Brighton-based nanotale, Walk A Pavement Once, is made into a movie. Between us and returning to Sussex there are several obstacles, but a film at least would remove one of them: cash. And it would bring in the readies for every joint in the lists. Plaques saying ‘Eivind and Suzi were in here Once’ or ‘Eivind and Suzi came here Twice’ would have customers arriving in their droves.

‘Arriving’! How the word reminds me of that beautiful May evening when Suzi and I arrived in town, reminding me too that the memory-inducing ubiquity of Brighton extends beyond newspapers, radio and TV, to the language I use - and the streets I walk: every time I stroll to our local Tesco or wander into town and see one of them, I’m transported back to that first evening, where just outside the railway station we were given, despite his penury, a warm, unforgettable welcome from the Big Issue seller who always called me ‘Sean’.

I hope he’s no longer there. I hope he’s moved on. Oh I can’t see him being in Courtenay Gate. But with the chill of winter upon us, I hope he has more than a roof over his head, more than a shelter: I hope he has found a home.

When I began today’s post, with an image of affluent Hove in my mind, I didn’t imagine it would end like this. But that’s writing for you: you don’t know where it’ll take you.

(The story of our year in Brighton began on May 17, with ‘ARRIVAL!’)

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