Benefit Street, Brighton.

It started out as a late Victorian – or perhaps early Edwardian – family home. It steadily declined until such time as, with much fanfare, it had been stripped inside and turned into flats. The 'fanfare' was not not a figure of speech: there really was a fuss made – with coverage in the media which shows the lovely old place being officiated over by  local MP. Caroline Lucas. Our building was presented as part of an initiative to assimilate those on Benefits into the local community. The stigma of being banished to the further reaches of town to live in seething communities  in brick blocks would not attach to the lucky occupants of this building.  Its sympathetic conversion ( one or two original ceiling roses and some restrained ceiling mouldings have been left in place), while incorporating modern interior architecture, blends well to showcase apartments that would be the envy of many of those chasing accommodation in the private sector all over Brighton and Hove. A

Imagine you're at an informal meeting at the end of which someone says their child is running a marathon and needs sponsors.  With much good-natured chatter everyone passes an iimpromptu "hat" around and  chucks in a fiver or a tenner. ' Till it comes to you.  "Oh no! I've no change on me!" you cry. "Not to worry, it isn't till Sunday" the parent says.  Your face doesn't change.  Sunday you'll still be broke. "It's ok" someone else says "I just threw a tenner in for you. You can give it to me at work, later." Your cheeks blaze and you swallow nervously.  How the hell are you going to finesse an extra £10 out of your next payment which, in any case, isn't for another twelve days? Or perhaps you're having coffee with someone.  They get an urgent call  about a breaking crisis and have to leave, forgetting they haven't even paid for their untouched coffee.  NOW what do you do? In your purse

BENEFITS STREET: - BRIGHTON. I've been getting good mileage out of my angst for the past couple of years. But it's time now to put it to one side and start talking out. It's not that I need to be heard because I have tidings of great joy or or nuggets of invaluable wisdom to impart. Nor because I have devised a plan to save the world; or discovered a wonder-herb that will cure all the ills of humans everywhere. Neither do I have any proselytising zeal. But I can communicate. I have, by now, lost just about everything I ever had in life – my possessions, my future, my dignity. But one thing I still haven't lost is the ability to communicate. In times BB (Before Brighton) I used this ability on behalf of the battered, the marginalised, the homeless, the mentally unstable. Because I knew that all the talks I gave, and the things I wrote, were reaching out to touch people. I was getting somewhere. Yet, once I became part of the proble