Some months ago, we had a couple of people who share our passion for hot yoga around for supper. Always a surprise to see other hot yoga enthusiasts with clothes on, as in the studio you need to wear as little as possible. One, Serena Wells, is a graduate of Brighton University where she studied Fashion Textiles and specialises in using colour to create bold, graphic works, often silk on silk. She currently has a design studio in Brighton. Her parents were from Guyana. (Note 1) The other, Armando Colucci, known to everyone as Armi, is an Italian from Naples who works as a head trainer for the hair products company Schwarzkopf. We sit down to a simple supper and the conversation starts. It wasn’t the first question but at some time Armi asked:

“Have you always lived in Brighton?”

That’s when the thought went ‘ping’!

“No. I was actually born in Bath ……”

Pulteney Bridge over the River Avon in Bath

…… and I realised that ‘B’ was a linking letter to a great number of places I have lived in! I could hear myself talking about being born in Bath (PCs 164 & 165), how I went to the first of three boarding schools there and how my parents had divorced.

Then my mother remarried and she and my stepfather moved away and my mind went into another subconscious loop about how they moved to Balcombe, too far away for more than one visit each term, the two-day half term.

Brighton’s where the blue spot is. Bath top left.

Balcombe is a little village some 18 miles north of Brighton. (See PC 58 Going Home December 2015). I remember a first Geography lesson at Daunsteys’, a public school in Wiltshire; ‘write an essay about where you live’ and Balcombe was by comparison to Bath very small, so I volunteered that it had a population of 300. These days I’d simply ask Google and get a reasonably accurate figure. The master, Mr Taylor, put a red ‘1’ before the 300; I guess the village had a large catchment area.

The Half Moon Inn in the centre of Balcombe circa 1961

It had a good steam train service to London Victoria and to Brighton, and a regular bus service to Haywards Heath, the local town where there were many shops and the Perrymount cinema, where the auditorium was divided into ‘smoking’ and ‘non-smoking’ sections. We went to the Theatre Royal, Brighton for pre-London productions or to the ice rink for a fun afternoon.

On the way to Haywards Heath the road passed over the River Ouse and to its west was the magnificent Ouse Viaduct, known locally as the Balcombe Viaduct.

My next ‘B’ would have been Bielefeld, a town in what was then West Germany, where the British Army had a large Headquarters and where I met my first wife. I was stationed in both Lippstadt and Sennelager, ten miles away. Returning to the UK for a staff role and Staff College, after a stint in the Ministry of Defence I took over an Air Defence battery in Wing Barracks in Bulford, a few miles north of Salisbury.

Wing Barracks, Bulford being demolished in the C21st!

Thoughts tumble through my subconscious like cereal into a bowl at breakfast. My mind leapt to London where I bought a rather dingy basement flat on the south side of Clapham Common, across the Common from Battersea. For those of us of a certain age, Battersea will for ever be associated with Peter Sellers and his ‘Balham – Gateway to the South’ radio skit. “We enter Balham through the verdant grasslands of Battersea Park, stretching for more than half an acre …..” or something like that! I toyed with the idea of buying a house just south of Basingstoke, southwest of London in Hampshire, but there were too many issues that couldn’t be resolved and I pulled out.

In 2000 I bought a terraced house in Bramfield Road, Battersea and nine years later attended my first session in Hot Yoga South, Balham, a ten-minute cycle ride away; the start of a continuing journey. Battersea is another London village that went from rather down at heel to being an attractive place to live, particularly for ‘Yummy Mummies’. So much so that the road at the bottom of Bramfield Road, Northcote Road, was known as Nappy Valley. 

My life moved on and through my regular hot yoga practice I met Celina.

Wanting to live on the south coast and needing to be able to practise Hot Yoga regularly, Celina and I identified where that was possible. We had a weekend in Bournemouth and went to two classes in the studio in Boscombe. For me, Bournemouth will always be associated with an uncle’s brother, a chap called Ken Bailey who was awarded the Freedom of the City for his work with the young. (There’s another B!). Boscombe is somewhat rundown, what might be called a ‘white trash’ area; sad, gaunt, pale faces, skinny bodies, dressed in black. We decided to look in Brighton. We knew the studio owners in Brighton and here were more options. We bought in Hove, practised in Portslade until 2018, then moved to practise in Yoga In The Lanes in Middle Street, Brighton.

Brighton of course is a city of contrasts, although in the early C20th its seedier side seemed to colour its reputation; in the 1930s – “Queen of Slaughtering Places”! Now it’s better known for its thriving arts scene and laissez faire attitude, for its Pride Parade in August and for its Palace Pier, and a beach of pebbles.  

The Peace Statue on the boundary between Brighton and Hove

It’s just a coincidence, these Bs; obviously could easily have been A or C.
These thoughts had drifted through my brain in a few seconds but suddenly I was aware that Serena was asking me a question about my paintings, and I needed to become fully conscious!

Never imagined I would return to Brighton & Hove!

Richard 22^nd November 2024

Hove

http://www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

Note 1 The explorer Lucy Shepherd traversed the Guyana jungle from the east to the border with Brazil in the west, on foot in 50 days. Watch ‘Secret Amazon: Into the Wild’ on You Tube or Channel 4. Don’t if the idea of Bushmaster snakes terrifies you.

Note 2 My Podiatrist thinks Bath is ‘posh’.