The flat in Hove which Angela Rayner infamously purchased is literally two streets and five minutes’ walk from my place, if I could walk. When I was planning to buy an apartment shortly into the new century, I looked at one in that street and thought: ‘Whoah – that’s a bit steep!’ I’d just sold my gaff to a developer for £1.5 million, so that gives one some perspective on how expensive my ’hood has become, having once been a boring outpost of Brighton. In the end, I decided I preferred Art Deco to Regency – but Mrs Rayner is obviously far classier than me.
It’s telling that Ange has moved here to ‘Hove, Actually’ rather than Brighton. There are lovely flats comparable with hers up in Brighton’s swanky Kemptown, the gay village, and she’d be surrounded by the love of her people there, being quite the camp icon. Spiritually, with her eclectic mixture of day-drinking, vaping in a kayak and funny friends, I think that Brighton with its copious hen parties and Palestinian flags may be a better fit. But whereas Brighton is considered to be on the slide (some of the once most sumptuous shopping areas, such as the ancient, lovely, cobbled East Street, are now shuttered-up shadows of their former selves), Hove is definitely having a moment.
It wasn’t always so. Though I showed off about moving briefly to the epicentre of Brighton in 1995 – the Arts Club in the Lanes – because it sounded cool to be in the footsteps of Patrick Hamilton and Graham Greene, I kept it quiet a few years later when I moved to Hove, lured here by the only outdoor swimming pool not in the outer reaches of our fair city. Incredibly, I found one just two streets back from Church Road – Hove’s high street, recently described in the Sunday Times as ‘vibrant’. We’re used to having deprived inner cities described as this, not always favourably, but Hove had such a reputation as an enclave of the old and infirm that this kind of attention is welcome. Probably my greatest moment of Hovarian pride came when I heard on the radio a young ‘urban’ London comedian asked the question ‘What’s the best smell in the world?’ only to have him answer: ‘HOVE! It smells of freshly mown grass and really expensive coffee.’ He didn’t say ‘Brighton’ – because Brighton really smells bad these days, of vomit, bins and posh Palestinian supporters, who apparently don’t wash as part of their protest.
Hove used to smell bad, of incontinent old people; now that’s just my flat. There was a brilliant comic singer-songwriter called Terry Garoghan around a while back who wrote Brighton The Musical in which various neighbourhoods were affectionately mocked; the funniest one was ‘HoVogue’ to the tune of the Madonna song. The lyrics went, in part: ‘All around, everywhere you go is quiet / And everybody is old / You’re in Hove / Everybody there’s geriatric / Everybody’s kicking the bucket / A bus pass, a game of bowls / Meals on Wheels – no crusty rolls!’ How I laughed at the time, when I was an able-bodied whippersnapper in my frisky forties; I’m not laughing now.
Now the mobility shops have closed – just when I needed them – and the upmarket bars are opening. It was in 2021 that Hove’s BN3 postcode was declared the most valuable in the country outside of London and the plaudits haven’t stopped since. Sometimes on a wet Wednesday in the middle of winter trying to dodge the savage wind tunnels that sweep up from sea to main street, one can wonder if outsiders don’t make a bit too much fuss about the old place. In 2023, the My London website raved: ‘The unbelievably beautiful commuter town an hour from London named as one of the UK’s best places to live by the sea… Hove is almost comically beautiful… boasts a seafront that’s just as elegant, but without the churn of crowds of Brighton.’ This year the Sunday Times picked it as one of the best places to live in the UK: ‘This former fishing village turned upmarket urban haven offers the best of both worlds, all the culture and bright lights of its big brother Brighton, but with fewer tourists, a better selection of homes and much more zen.’
Spiritually, with her eclectic mixture of day-drinking, vaping in a kayak and funny friends, I think that Brighton with its copious hen parties and Palestinian flags may be a better fit.
Hove is undoubtedly a lovely place to raise children, with its vast seafront lawns and the countryside only a bus-ride away, and the end of Covid drew a massive amount of young families down here from London, hence the huge hike in property prices and the pricing-out of the indigenous young. But nothing will get rid of we oldsters: many Hove pensioners are a particular kind which I named Yolo-OAPs and others calls SKIs – Spending Kids’ Inheritance. I was in the bed next to one beautiful and racy old lady at the rehab hospital; when I next met her it was after we’d both been sprung, at Hove’s Paris Wine Bar, where all the wicked and/or wealthy oldies congregate to reminisce about the good old days in Ibiza and Marbs. When I chose my flat, I picked it because it had the sea at one end and the bar/cafe/restaurant quarter at the other; a mere ten minutes apart are my regular watering holes, the local pubs the Old Albion and the Blind Busker, the excellent restaurants Fourth And Church, Nostos, the Modelo Lounge, LatinoAmerica, Wild Flor – and a truly historical branch of Pizza Express, handily right next to a first-rate pharmacy where I access the numerous pills and potions it takes to get my poor broken body through the day.
I was looking forward to seeing Angela around while I sunned myself at a pavement table, sharing fags and Private Eye with my husband, calculating how many Long Island iced teas it might take to make me say something sharp to her. But I suppose this is neither here nor there after I came home drunk yesterday and wrote to her on X: ‘You are a disgrace – not just to your worthless party, but to the working class, who are far from worthless. If you have any regard for both or either, RESIGN NOW, as every day you stay in office you send another hundred votes to Reform. I genuinely pity you – greed undid you.’
I’m not sure we’ll be seeing too much of her now, even with a bit of extra time on her hands. ‘Hove is better than this’ was the local paper headline, quoting our sitting Labour MP Peter Kyle, who understandably declared himself ‘disappointed’ that someone had spray-painted (in pink) the words ‘Bitch’ and ‘Tax evader’ on a joint wall of the block while across the street ‘Tax evader Rayner’ was graffitied on construction chipboard, just to drive the point home. Mr Kyle told the Argus: ‘I’m really disappointed that the heritage wall has been defaced over this issue. Hove is better than this. There are many, many ways people can express their anger and disappointment in Angela Rayner, including reporting her to the Commissioner for Standards.’ A spokesman for Rayner said: ‘Neither Angela nor her neighbours deserve to be subjected to harassment and intimidation.’
Being graffitied is a fate I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, especially in an area like this which prides itself on its discretion. But I doubt whether Rayner will be very popular with her neighbours now, no matter how suitably sympathetic they are in the short run. It’s interesting to think that had she chosen Brighton she would have blended in far more easily; you’ll find grifters and graffiti on every street corner there. But she had to go and choose my hoity-toity ’hood. It was a desire for gentility, as much as greed, that undid her, perhaps, which given her proud boasts of proletarian purity seem poignant. Even Red Ange, it seems, could not resist the discreet charm of the Hove-eoisie.
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