Benefit Street, Brighton.

  It's only since I got here 7 years ago that I have begun to understand, exactly, how very unique both my parents had been from the general species. So this is probably a good time to introduce the fact that I usually called them Phyl & George. I shall go on referring to them now in that way - both because that's who they are, and because another thing I've learned since coming here is that we were  English Middle Class. So there are verbal minefields to pick my way through even in referring to my parents.  If I call them "Mummy & Daddy" people will make the sign of the evil-eye against me and accuse me of being Middle Class. (Which I find  a bit unfair, as they are the people who put me in that box. I had gone happily through my whole life until 2014 without knowing I belonged in any 'Class' at all.) On the other hand, if I referred to my parents as "Mum & Dad" I'd have to keep pinching myself to remind myself who I was talkin...

                                          My parents were of the school - rather as if they were straight out of a Wodehouse chapter - which quite naturally used the phrase "Navel gazing". It was an eclectic grouping of everything from deep psychiatric therapy to "finding oneself" to "meditation"...well any form of prolonged thinking about oneself. Not that my parents were averse to spiritual or metaphysical contemplation. Just not about oneself. As the nuns confirmed that paying too much attention to oneself was the very epitome of vanity, I think I've always thought of it at least as self-indulgent.  As if putting too much thought into why I'd been so upset about something someone had said to me, would be like wolfing down an entire, £1.00 slab of chocolate. Oh, I've done it of course. Just as I've wolfed down an entire, £1.00 slab of chocolate from time to time. And ...