The First Steps From Then to Now.

I haven’t simply forgotten about the story of Our House. That’s impossible as we are all living the story as it unfolds. But things are changing a little deep down here – a small ray of light has started to reach us.

The past 19 months, since the Old House finally shook itself and got ready for a new lease of life, have been so eventfull, so compelling, and so full of drama that half the house is now on anti-depressants.

But out of all that, maybe something good is happening right now. I think we might just have taken a small step for humanity. We’ve become an Association…

And so – to go back to the beginning…

This completely gutted and re-vamped Victorian villa, which comprises 16 households, is the product of a scheme undertaken by Seaside Homes in conjunction with Council, to assimilate People Like Us into the community: rather than confining us to the ghettos that ring that community.

So the building and surrounds had to meld into the middle-class spic n’ span-ness of the area. If you listened hard, you could hear the sighs of “There goes the neighbourhood” from behind various twitching curtains the day we all moved in.

All of us lot were euphoric at our lot. Jeez! We had carpets and everything. (Most people in Council housing don’t, you know.)

So we made wry references to teething troubles when the place started leaking and flooding like a colander in the mid-Atlantic. We shrugged and were understanding when we didn’t have hot water and heating for far longer than the periods in which we actually had them.

We did get a little testy, however, as we all realized that the kitchen counter-tops were just a tad too low for appliances to be fitted under. (To this day my immediate neighbour can’t get a washing-machine into the space where it has to be plumbed, and has to lug all her clothes to and from the Laundromat.)

But we had real food for thought when one of the chippies (who has since gone to pastures new) told us that Mears, the contractors, had been told this problem when the specs. were first released. But told the workers to carry on anyway. (Meh! What would People Like Us know, anyway? We only want cookers so we can do druggy things on them while our babies squall, unattended, in the corner.)

So we just thought about this– completely unsubstantiated – piece of information and began, gradually, to swap stories. And the old one concerning the probability that if something looks, smells and tastes dodgy, it could actually be dodgy, occurred to more than one of us.

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Benefit Street, Brighton.

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