COPYRIGHT@ GERRY ROSE

  Jilly had grown used to being woken up, to the sound of serenading seagulls every morning.  Their real name was Herring Gulls and Jilly was impressed that they usually mated for life and took an equal share of incubating their eggs and caring for the chicks. She had noticed that the residents of Poets’ Corner may possibly have learned a few things from the gulls. There seemed to be less gender defined roles these days. The men of Poets’ Corner seemed happy to don baby carriers, push buggies and do their fair share of child care. Her next-door neighbours on either side had two children each and both dads seemed very hands-on.

 The last few weeks had been a bit of a blur for Jilly, as she tackled her excess furniture and arranged for some work to be done to the house, to bring it up to her standards. She managed to sell a few pieces on FB marketplace although she found some of her encounters with people challenging. She was always realistic about her pricing but was amazed by how some people just always tried to beat you down. She put other things on freecycle, or she left them out in her front garden.

  She found recommendations for all sorts of trades people on ‘Nextdoor’, it was a useful forum once you got beyond the comments about seagulls, questions about how to discourage foxes, complaints about bin collections and about people who put their bags of dog poo in the recycling bins. Jilly found that behaviour quite worrying.  

 The trades people who came to give her quotes were interesting.  Several came and spent time measuring her windows, kitchen etc. but she soon realised that many would simply never get back to her.  She had worked out that some trades people in Hove were either not hungry for the work, or simply could not be bothered with jobs that they deemed not lucrative enough. She found this all quite different to the attitude in Norfolk. She supposed it was just typical of people who work in an area where there is a lot of money.

 However, she had persevered and soon she would have new windows and shutters. She was getting rid of the UVPC windows and was having box sash windows installed. Her kitchen was being extended to incorporate a small down stairs loo and then she would have new cabinets, flooring and appliances. She was getting a new bathroom once the kitchen was finished. Then she would have cabinets and shelving built either side of her fireplace in the sitting room. She would have the whole house decorated and the old carpets would be replaced. That was the plan, but Jilly was only too used to how plans could go awry.

  Jilly was becoming more familiar with Poets’ Corner. She took a daily walk around the area to ensure that she got her 10,000 steps. The terraced houses were built on a grid system. The designs were not entirely uniform, but most of the houses had been rendered and were painted white or grey and had bay windows. Some houses had retained their tiled paths which were quite colourful and their boot scrapers. The houses were two up two down mainly. Many people had extended into the loft. A few had side -return extensions, but what they cost to build, versus the amount of space gained did not make them a popular choice. Most people had removed the wall between the sitting room and the dining room.  The front and the back gardens were small. In general the houses were well maintained but Jilly did find at least 3 houses which were in a very poor condition. She felt a degree of outrage on behalf of the people who had to live next to these houses. She wondered if some eccentrics lived there, all Jilly knew that there was no way she could have lived next door, or opposite one of these really awful looking houses. She found their rusting downpipes, flaking paint, dirty windows with mildew ridden curtains and front gardens stacked with rubbish truly offensive. She felt sure that they were havens for all sorts of vermin. She thought allowing property in a nice area to deteriorate to this degree must surely contravene some law, but it probably didn’t.

 Poets’ Corner lies between Sackville Road to the east and Portland Road to the south, the railway line forms the northern boundary and Alpine Road is the western boundary of this ‘poetic enclave’ as her estate agent used to say. The estate agent had told her that it was a very desirable place to live. She would not necessarily argue with that, but it was never going to be incredibly desirable, because of the size of the houses, their small patio gardens and the general lack of off-street parking. Jilly disliked the way people pretended that things were better than they were. However, coming from the world of art, she knew that people are suggestable. Estate agents thrive by turning areas into ‘communities’. Poets’ Corner was a trendy area for families with young children and raising children in Hove must be great. She noticed that there were rather a lot of Ocado and Waitrose deliveries. Her needs as a 60+ divorced woman living on her own would be very different to the needs of the 30 something yummy mummy’s, or hipster dad’s (a few still hung around here). A friend in London told her Poets’ Corner had attracted a lot of lesbian couples with children because of the good schools and inclusive vibe. Jilly had seen some evidence of this. One of the builders had told her that he remembered when Poets’ Corner was less up market. Old photographs of the area show that the majority of people who lived in the area would probably have been semi-skilled people. Now the residents were mostly young professionals who had probably bought their houses with a bit of help from their parents. Jilly had read that Poets’ Corner was built shortly after the new Hove station had opened in 1865. Her house had been built by people with names which would not be out of place in a Charles Dickens book.  

 She noted that there were a scattering of businesses operating amongst the houses. She had discovered a local garage which was tucked behind a row of houses which was entered by way of an alley between the houses. There was a corner shop, an art studio, auction house, hairdressers and a barber. There was a funeral parlour which was family run and had been operating since 1906. She guessed that long ago there would have been many other shops and businesses cheek by jowl with the residents. The Victorians were a practical bunch.    She had read some reviews about the area on some of the yummy mummy forums which stated that these houses were thrown up in haste and were not of a high quality. People complained of paper-thin walls and damp. It was true that unsightly wheelie bins which were too large for some of the front gardens ended up blocking pavements and forcing pedestrians to do a sort of slalom course when meeting oncoming pedestrians. It was sometimes hard to judge who had the right of way and who should duck between the bins and the wall to allow a pedestrian coming in the opposite direction to pass without crashing into them. Then people will complain about lots of things. She was told that new houses were no better and she liked the original features in her little house.

  The area seemed to be something of a sanctuary for Yucca trees, perhaps it was the sea air and their similarity to palm trees, but there was an abundance of them, and Cala Lilies thrived too. Other things that thrived in this area were places like the holistic therapy centre in Portland Road. The Tree of Life offered baby yoga and realigning of chakras amongst many other treatments. There were lots of quirky cafes like the Tealeaf café which seemed to be playing homage to superheroes. The wine merchant Quaff offered every gin you never knew existed.  Beauty salons and hairdressers were in abundance. There were 4 pretty decent looking pubs which she was yet to explore. There were lots of Indian and Chinese take aways.  The Chip Basket fish and chip shop was already her go to place for a delicious cod and chips. The Poets’ Corner pub in Montgomery Street to use estate agent’s parlance boasted that it had a smokery. Jilly was of the generation which did not feel comfortable to visit a pub alone. Jilly knew that men had no problem with doing this, but she would rather sit at home alone with a glass of wine than enter a pub and buy one and sit on her own. A dentist and a GP were within hobbling distance. There were at least 5 buses which took you into Brighton. There was a Co-op and a small Sainsburys, she could survive well into her old age here with her every need catered for.

 To date she did not have a single friend living in Brighton and Hove. She had met some of her lovely neighbours but she had adopted her village protocol and used it in an urban environment. The protocol was: be polite to your neighbours but don’t encourage them by being too friendly. She knew from village life that once you allowed your neighbours to enter your life it was very hard to get rid of them. Most people in villages did not move out of them, so if you encouraged them by being over friendly they could become a burden by being overly interested in what you got up too and could be intrusive. Despite Brighton and Hove being granted city status in 2000 she had no intention of overly encouraging her city neighbours either. Her goal was to develop the sort of relationship where you could exchange pleasantries with your neighbours and take their parcels in, but never have to allow any of them to enter your house. Jilly knew she was strange in this regard, but had no intention of changing. She was someone who had always hated casual callers. She had a deep fear of anyone finding her with a hair out of place or slobbing around in casual clothes, particularly clothing which she kept for doing the cleaning in or her home yoga.

 Judging from the contents of the recycling boxes which sat in the narrow front gardens, the residents enjoyed craft beers and wine. There were also empty kimchi jars and upmarket artisan pizza boxes. On one of her walks a huge seagull was helping itself to the last remnants of a wrap which someone must have dropped. There were several lost cats in the area according to the flyers which were left under people’s windscreen wipers and attached to lamp posts. The Cats were obviously fur babies and bore names such as Otto, Persephone and Zeus. Stencilled on the pavement were green and red dogs pooing and details of the cost of not clearing up after your multi coloured dog.

 Despite finding the navigation of the Brighton and Hove Residents’ Parking Permit application process a nightmare, she had no regrets of moving from Norfolk to Hove. She would have preferred to have moved to the Hove Cream regency houses of Brunswick Square but her white house in Poet’s Corner suited her needs. She felt sure she would soon feel settled in and already liked the fact that the roads bore the names of some fantastic British Poets such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron etc. She just needed to meet a few like-minded people.