sadness

As I was returning to the garage to collect my car after an expensive repair I had the opportunity of walking down The Drive in Hove. I have a special attachment to the road because my grandparents used to live there in the magnificent old block of flats pictured above*. The inside of the building was wonderful with an open cage lift, staircases wide enough to drive down, huge high ceilings, ornate plasterwork, tiled floors, a red stair carpet with brass restraints on every step.

As I approached I had intended to write about the fond memories of visiting them there, walking down the ramp at the side of the building to the gravel area in front of the row of garages (completely out of bounds to us), their grey collapsible sofa bed which they used to trap us in to wake us in the morning, cups of tea from glass cups and saucers**, the piece of seaweed hanging outside their kitchen***, their unique smell, black and white TV, card games around their walnut table, complimented by a snapshot of the fabulous façade. Instead I find myself filled with a great sense of sadness and loss.

I have no idea why or how this building has ended up in this dilapidated state but seeing it in like this, a shell, a ghost of it's former glory, was a shock to me. The blue plaque that once adorned it's front to mark the residence of the novelist Dame Ivy Compton-Burnett has been removed and the whole thing is boarded off and boarded up. I can only hope that it will be sympathetically brought back to life but, given the price and pressure on property in the area, I greatly doubt that it will be.













*Not as one of the extremely rich residents but as the caretakers of the block.
** A fetish that I still carry on today. Tea drunk from a glass mug is the only way.
*** If the seaweed was wet then it was raining .....