Departure!

We were apprehensive and uncertain - how would we feel being back in Scotland, and was leaving Brighton really the right thing to do? We were at the Meeting Place Cafe near the Peace Statue, having coffee – plus, for Suzi, a toasted tea cake. It was a last time that reminded us of a first time: a year earlier, on May 17, we’d arrived in town, registered at a B&B in Madeira Place, walked here to the Peace Statue and then uphill to view what would become our Brighton home.

And now we were about to leave: train then plane. Never again would we sit here, looking at the sea, at the Lawns at Hove, the joggers and the walkers, and Courtenay Gate.

Soon we would have to begin that uphill walk for the last time. But before doing so, we had our last photograph taken, on the promenade. Two obliging girls were passing by. The one who wasn’t going to take the photo said to Suzi: "Oh you’re from Glasgow!" She’d heard that so often in Brighton – and now she’d never hear it again.

An hour later we were experiencing the best antidote to the poignancy of last times: a once-only. Lunching in La Fourchette on Western Road, we asked ourselves why we hadn't come here before? It had been recommended. My daughter Fifi’s boyfriend – and now her husband – had said we must try it. Why we hadn’t is a mystery. Food and service: 10/10. And we were kicking ourselves. La Fourchette lay comfortably within the Zimmer Zone, so we could have made repeated visits to the place.

We sat, food finished and wine consumed, only a furlong from our flat. It wasn’t the Scots in us that kept us from asking the waiter for our bill. We just didn’t want it to end! Any of it.

At the rear of our little flat was a tiny garden with a lilac tree. We looked at the table and the chairs on which we’d often sat, and then walked inside. To check it out, before checking-in. Two extremely heavy suitcases stood forlornly in the living room. The delightful furnished flat we’d grown to love was pristine – and silent. Of all the last times during those final weeks the most difficult and painful one was closing the door behind us.

Our taxi was outside. Suzi wanted to go along the sea front and wave to Cavendish Place, where at the beginning of our adventure we’d lived self-catering for a week, and then say goodbye to the Palace Pier. From there we went into the Old Steine, which we loved so much, and on into Kemp Town, destination: the estate agents. En route we glimpsed the St James Pub. We’d had our first drink there, on our first evening. In the warm, welcoming hostelry we’d talked excitedly about its variegated clientele, our feelings, our future in Brighton, and we ached to do it all again.

Not that we said so - we didn’t need to. And in any case we didn’t have much opportunity to talk. The garrulous driver saw to that. He interrupted his life story to make a pitch for driving us straight to Gatwick. No need to break our backs taking luggage on and off crowded trains. So, after returning the keys to the girls at the agency, that’s what we did. It seemed a sensible decision, and it probably was, but we regret it.

In mid-afternoon sunshine we stood outside the airport terminal. It was over! In a couple of hours we’d touch down on tartan soil. We turned to walk inside and looked at each other. Our year in Brighton had begun with his greeting; it had ended without his farewell – we hadn’t seen the Big Issue seller at the station who always called me Sean.

(Huge thanks go out to all Walk A Pavement Once Again readers. Thanks, too, to The Argus, for giving me the opportunity to recount some of the things that happened to Suzi and I during our wonderful year in Brighton. Writing the blog has given me enormous pleasure – and Suzi enormous work in editing my drafts!)

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