Benefit Street, Brighton.

The black dog that crawled back up on my shoulder 2 years ago has been a teacup  Chihuahua until recently.  About ten days ago I realised he’d morphed into a good-sized Labrador. I think now he’s going for Irish Wolfhound. Now that black dog is not exclusively the property of Winston Churchill, or Robin Williams or even National Treasure, Stephen Fry. Without even having it explained, every bi-polar person instinctively understands what it means the first time they hear it. Because, perhaps, that feeling of carrying an actual physical burden is so familiar?  At times it feels like a sack of wheat on one’s shoulders which is pretty grim – but an old, familiar dog? Smelly and noxious nowadays maybe, but intimately known: - he ain’t heavy, he’s my black dog? Now, even before I was clinically diagnosed at the age of 12, I knew what it was like to feel weighted down – until finally one ends up supine; unable to rise up high enough to get out of bed...

The sounds of tweetering in the dovecotes for once drowned out the maniacal screeches of the seagulls to-day, as Britonians and Hove Actuallys waited for the local council - The Brighton and Hove City Council - to hand down its budget. Oh, it'll be debated and argued about for weeks to come so I shan't bother with what's in the budget.  What both delights and dismays are what isn't in the budget - for which everyone living on Benefits Street, Brighton, also gives 'umble thanks. What DIDN'T go in was the inhumane idea of adding to the current paucity of public facilities by cutting out even more. Obviously made by people who are never more than a few minut es away from their cars - and home. But rousingly cheered by anyone who has ever got caught short walking home through Brighton and Hove to get to the other side...before you even get to the road home. It can be agonizing; and accounts for the pungent smells that assail one from various walls, garden...