I love my adopted hometown of Brighton and Hove – I moved here in 1995 and I still feel like I’m on holiday. I love everything about living here. The obvious thing is the sea. Although I hear what our local Surfers Against Sewage say, nothing’s going to keep me out of the briny. The water quality at Hove Lawns Beach – literally at the end of my avenue – is excellent at the mo, whereas when I first lived here, it was quite normal to emerge from even a brief dip festooned in all sorts of unmentionable stuff, like an obscene Christmas tree.
Here comes the summer – and the tourists. Personally, I love ‘em
I even love the seagulls. I know in theory that they’re flying rats but their natural comedic bent never fails to crack me up. I adore the way they perv over your food with their sideways eyes, then do that indignant shuffle when defiantly stared at, denying that they want your chips. Sometimes you see two of them fighting over an abandoned burger, pulling it to and fro – priceless. But they do have sad cries. I’ve always said they’re inhabited by the souls of Londoners who always meant to move to Brighton but died before they got round to it. I used to feel that way when I came here to visit from That London, and their cries never fail to remind me that I escaped.
I love it here all year round. In the winter walking on the prom is like living in a Morrissey song, communing with the timeless spirit of our damp, dazzling island race. But when the sun comes out, it truly is ‘that paradise of brightness’ that A.E. Coppard eulogised and that S.P.B. Mais was thinking of when he stated that: ‘Anyone who does not live in Brighton must be mad and should be locked up’.
Here comes the summer – and the tourists. Personally, I love ‘em, as do most of those born in Brighton who understand that without a tourist trade, a seaside town will wither no matter how many art galleries and craft beers it boasts. But I’ve met so many silly snobs – who invariably came here from a far less blessed bit of the British Isles – who come over all Hyacinth Bucket, regular as clockwork in June, July and August. Some of it verges on classism; a whole group of people demonised for their socio-economic origin.
I remember talking to an interesting woman who I was on the verge of becoming friends with when I mentioned how great it had been to see the town heaving with tourists on the first weekend of July 2020 after the lifting of the Covid laws. ‘Really?’ she sniffed with all the enthusiasm of Emily Thornberry glimpsing an England flag. ‘But they’re so… awful. Surely they’d be happier in Benidorm?’ Suffice it to say our friendship never bloomed.
The snobs have always been with us. In 2016 the Brighton-residing writer David Bennun blasted the then-boss of the Brighton Fringe Festival Julian Caddy after the latter wrote:
Today there are very much two Brightons: the inland one of vibrant creative industries, modern restaurants and a dynamic population – and the seafront of tacky sideshows, fish and chips, rock and assorted paraphernalia. Unfortunately for Brighton, a large proportion of outsiders see it primarily as a destination for the latter rather than the former.
Mr Bennun replied:
I want Brighton to remain full of life. That means not only the arts festivals I enjoy so much – including Brighton Fringe – but also day-tripping families; happy, pissed-up people larking about; roving, roaring gangs of hens and stags. I see no reason why these things and many others may not continue to co-exist as they have done for so long. Although, if I had to choose, I would take the people.
He wrote about the subsequent kerfuffle here. But lockdown made it worse, leading to the surreal spectacle – when rules were eased to allow outside boozing – of people drinking wine on the beach complaining about people drinking beer on the beach.‘They must be tourists’ the Buckets sniffed. ‘Don’t they have jobs?’ Yes, because no Brightonian ever drank beer or dared to be working class.
Those who called Brighton London-on-sea never really got it – the unique beat of our louche, lush, layabout ‘hood. Yes, they continue with their attempted colonisation; the ghastly ‘Brighton Beach House’, which opened here last year, is an outpost of Soho House, causing some who have had the dubious pleasure of being taken there as a ‘guest’ to dub it ‘So-so House’. With its sedate atmosphere and lack of misbehaving stars, it’s hardly the Groucho – it’s more the Gummo, the Marx brother that everyone forgets.
Now its high-handed London ways have got it into trouble with locals, who claim that the plan to put up a pair of two-metre-high entrance gates will block their view of the sea, benefitting only those daft enough to pay the club’s annual £1,300 a year membership fee. Valentine Low in the Times quoted resident Elaine Craig as saying ‘Soho House is expensive and is elitist – we have a Labour-controlled council and councillors should prove they believe in equality by rejecting this application’ while another local said: ‘The beauty of the seafront is to be able to stroll and look out to sea, not their fence, which is giving their paying private member clients a lovely vista whilst taking away the view from everyone else. The seafront should be protected as a valuable part of Brighton’s heritage and not for sale to the highest bidder.’ The idea of the woker-than-thou mob who frequent BBH being the bad guys in a class-war-of-words, reminiscent of the Mods and Rockers, is the first enjoyable thing about the dreary place.
No, give me the hen parties over the preening – if somewhat threadbare – flamingos of what passes for the Brighton media scene any day. (A below-the-line comment in the Times pointed out that ‘The worst thing is that for all the fuss about Soho House taking away the seafront from ordinary visitors to Brighton, and having it exclusively for their members, the members never come! Looking over the wall at their exclusive terrace: it’s empty.’)
But do we really want to live in a town with no tourists? Day-trippers once flocked to the coastal village of Horden in County Durham – they don’t anymore, and on Rightmove last week I found a four-bed terraced house listed for £5,000.
Though the Buckets probably call themselves ‘travellers’, the fact is that everyone’s a tourist when they go somewhere else looking for fun – the lucky among us get it at home. Personally, I’ll be on the beach from now till September burning myself to a crisp – and I’ll be very much hoping to be standing in the booze queue alongside the tourists who make this such a wonderful city to live in.
If you aren’t having fun this summer, I feel sorry for you – I too have known summertime sadness, especially in the summer of 2015 when the person I loved most in all the big bad beautiful world committed suicide. But – trust me – resenting other people having a good time won’t make it better. Last one in the sea’s a sissy!
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