Benefit Street, Brighton.

Aside from the beach, The North Laine area  is probably one of the most recognised and photographed areas of Brighton. Calenders, travel books, Beautiful Britain pamphlets & posters, Lonely Planet guides - there's always pics. of the outdoor cafes, fabulous graffiti, unconventional people and crazy inventions. I love the North Laine - but I tend to look at it through different lenses each time I'm there. At The Regency Town House we have a huge data-base of knowledge about how North Laine grew, the people for whom the houses were built, those which doubled as schools, pubs, grocers, dressmakers, and information about all the people who lived in them.    But what about this? Did people move into these from Brighton slum areas? Was this the first time some people had proper kitchens instead of dank cellars? Did they luxuriate in heated rooms for the first time? And did they feel a sense of release and even Overlordship, gazing down into the crammed and thronging

                                             I’m going to invoke “the personal is the political” mantra here to excuse my departure  from my avowed stance of being a-political. Not only because I find that the elephant in the room is becoming uncomfortably intrusive; but because we are all, actually, shit-scared. But most people don't want to say it out loud. Because right there, last Wednesday morning, was when the  political  cast a huge dark cloud over my personal. On Wednesday EVERYONE , including the contestants, was at Stage One – total shock. On  Tuesday people everywhere had that euphoric moment on first awakening: - thinking it had all been a nightmare or that JR wasn’t dead. They all experienced the same cold chill when they realised it wasn’t a nightmare; or a game show.  The world had changed. Now, five days later, people have, as people will, begun to work out their own strategies for coping with this change. And  American politics has quietly sl