A tale about home

09 Oct 2011 2 Comments

by pennyforthem in Blogroll, Europe, Latest News Tags: Brighton, home, writing

My home is Brighton, on the south coast of the UK. I was born in Brighton General Hospital in 1985, and have lived in and around Brighton for my entire life, the only place I’ve lived when I’ve lived in the UK. I’ve travelled all over the world, all around the world, under the water and up mountains and have blogged about what I’ve found on this site. I’ve never really spoken much about my home, and this is my home, no matter where I travel to and how long I spend away. I’ll always think of Brighton as my home.

More specifically, When I had just turned 19, I moved into this flat (apartment) as a lodger with a man that I eventually went on to marry. It was my first home. I’d lived away from my family home before, but had never felt comfortable, never felt bothered about how my room was decorated or how clean the bathroom was. This time it was different. There are 45 flats in this building, and I live on the 9th floor. The communal areas aren’t all that lovely, and the slow, old lift that creaks it’s way up to the 9th floor doesn’t fill you with joy, and even then, when you step out onto the landing that we share with three other neighbours, you might see it as dingy. Our flat is the one with the odd door – all the others have nice white front doors, but ours is the bright red one.

Once you open the front door, you’re aware of a feeling of calm. You walk along the long, smurf-coloured hallway, past the two bedrooms and the bathroom and into our big living room, and if it’s a nice day, your breath might be taken away by the view from our living room window – a view that stretches right accross the city, you can count the famous landmarks and than look right out to sea. I know our flat like the back of my hand. I know where each chip in the paint is, the sound the bathroom door makes when you lock it, the noise the wind makes against the window when it’s stormy outside and the location of all of the items crammed into each cupboard.

What I don’t know is beyond my front door. What I don’t know is how each of the 44 other people or families feel about their home, if they love it as much as I do, what they can see from their windows, or how each flat is decorated. I don’t know how they came to live in their flat – some are owned by the council, and others, like ours, is owned by ourselves. I mentioned the creaky old lift earlier, when in fact there are two. The first one goes to the 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th and 11th floors, whilst the other lift services the floors in between. This means that I rarely get to see the people that live on the even floors, unless we walk in the front door together. I know many of the people that use my lift by sight, and I will smile or nod when I see them in the street, but I don’t know their names.

I know of a man that moved into this building when as soon as it was first built in the 60s, and I know of another woman who has ended up in her flat, but is Canadian. I know the routine of the old man on the first floor that takes his dog for a walk at 7am every morning, and I can occasionally hear the man who lives above us pottering around his flat, and I know that the lady underneath us is a bit mad.

I’ve decided to try and change the fact that most of the people in this building are complete strangers. I’ve always thought about how great it would be to write a book about the lives of the people that have come to live under the same roof as me. I want to find out how everyone came to live in this building, where they lived before, where they were born. So finally, I have decided to write this book, because not only do I think it’s important to get to know my neighbours, but because I think that the people that live here show a real cross section of Brighton society, the people that make up this town that I love so much, the people generations older than me, generations younger than me, people from the same culture as me and people from cultures that I’d love to hear more about.

Finally, it’s time for me to start writing about my corner of the world.

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