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Postcard from Brighton, England

by Alex Sirbu
May 2005

After moving here from Bucharest two years ago, I’ve recently realised that I never really liked Brighton that much. There’s something just a bit too pretentious about it. For instance, its daily newspaper, The Argus, likes to literally liken the city (which it officially became three years ago – after being a bog-standard seaside resort for 200 previous years) to Los Angeles. True, both are on the coast (people just attempt to surf in the English Channel); both are also surrounded by hills (San Gabriel Mountains vs. the South Downs) and both definitely have a drugs problem. Indeed, an average of five people die here a week of heroin overdoses – which, in a city of just short of 200,000 people – may well actually beat Los Angeles in per-capita terms.

Both cities also have their fare share of celebrities. Within ten minutes’ walk from our front door, I could pop around to Paul McCartney’s, Fat Boy Slim’s or Nick Cave’s house for a cup of tea. I am sure they like things domestic. The mythical status I previously built-up about Nick Cave was somewhat dented when I recently followed him through the aisles of the local Tesco. He was wheeling his twins in a pushchair and loudly debating to himself whether Sugar Puffs were a better choice for the week ahead “because they fill you up quicker than Rice Crispies do.”

Difficult as it may seem, I liken Brighton to Bucharest. Potholed roads spring to mind, first of all. Thanks to squabbling, Brighton Council missed out on the chance two years ago of getting a government grant worth over £1 billion to fix the roads. The road quality has officially been classed as similar to those “found in developing nations.” The next chance for a grant comes in five years.

Still, that doesn’t stop plans going ahead for a series of skyscrapers to be built in the centre, and, worst of all, on the seafront. The council also plans to “pierce” certain public buildings with oversized body piercings (such as giving a church bell-tower a ‘Prince Albert’) because they would give the city a more youthful feel. With all this, who needs better roads?

Throughout the city there are already many buildings which, thanks to the inflated egos of a few back in the 1970s, destroy the harmony of the place with a poorly thought-out concrete poetry. Juxtapose that with otherwise fairly regal architecture and throw in the difference in living standards between McCartney/Slim/Cave and their cronies with the rest of us mere mortals, and you’ve got East Sussex’s answer to Romania’s capital – through squinted eyes. Even our MP seems uninterested, unwise and all too sure of himself.

When I got married to my Romanian wife a couple of years ago, I had to visit him to ask why the British authorities insisted she returned to Romania to complete paperwork at the British embassy there – when in fact the British embassy is, legally, British territory. It seemed ludicrous and expensive when the paperwork existed and could be done just up the road in south London. At that stage, her paperwork to be in the UK seemed fine. He told me, in a justified manner, that she “needs to get off her butt and work a bit if she wants to gets the papers to stay in the country.”

He firmly added, at the end of the five minutes I was granted, that the rules “help prevent arranged marriages.”

Still, my wife’s happy now with her job, managing kids at what is allegedly one of the South’s most misbehaved junior schools (trying to bring knives into class or rolling joints at the age of eight is de rigeur in the district of Whitehawk). And I would like to report that I’m also very happy walking around town most afternoons by myself, eavesdropping on any Romanian I hear spoken in supermarket queues; usually about arranging marriages and other such pressing matters.