I haven't spent time in Brighton for close to two decades, but it doesn't seem any different. Such is fashion that the students even seem to be dressed the same. Maybe it is scruffier, but it always had an air of faded beauty: perhaps the look of a woman who was never all that goodlooking but used to dress up nicely and did wonders with makeup and now doesn't bother so much.
I am trying not to notice that it is a more expensive place than Brisbane. It's hard to make a real comparison because the dollar is artificially bad against the pound at the moment, but there's no pretending that it would not cost more to live here. I sigh when I think about how difficult it would be to live here, to rebuild a life. But I want to. I feel it enfolding me in its arms.
And it is so beautiful: even these worn streets seem to me the perfection of the urban experiment. These are places people can live in, not those shacks that pass for houses in Brisbane. Here are places where people walk, take the bus, live cheek by jowl with each other, rubbing along together for good or bad.
The other evening, my sister's partner, A, and I had a few beers in a pub on London Road. A pub! Who would not sell their soul for the embrace of the English pub? I know I would.
Seaford
Seaford, I think