Chez Kay
Andrew Kay is hanging on to his one glass of wine for dear life
Living in the suburbs has changed me in so many ways but none more so than my drinking habits. When I lived in town I would go out all the time, drink every night and attend the proverbial opening of an envelope. Well not any more.
Six years ago I moved out to the much maligned Deans, Saltdean to be precise and I have to say that I love it there. There are too many pluses to list but the one that makes most sense is that it has moderated my partying instinct.
Now don’t get me wrong, I can still party like the best of them. I can hold my drink, and someone else’s for that matter. I love parties but it can all get a bit hectic. I recently went to a party at a famous institution, a launch to be precise and was confronted by a pay bar. I ask you, what a shock. I was then told that I had to leave my drink at the door if I wanted to go in to the exhibit. Well to be honest it was all a bit too much.
“I would go out all the time, drink every night and attend the proverbial opening of an envelope”
It’s not that I object to having to pay for the drink. On the contrary, it strikes me that events funded by the public purse should adopt a more frugal approach, why should the few drink wine at the city’s expense. No, what I objected to was paying and then being asked to abandon it in a room full of people all looking for a free drink. Not on, I thought, and so did many others. In the end they relented and allowed us to take our drinks in with us.
Given that it was going to be my one drink of the night I was perhaps more anxious than I should have been but when you do moderate your booze habit, that one drink becomes rather precious.
There’s a chance that I will be moving back into town soon, and I am sad about that. I will miss the clean open space of Saltdean and the happy neighbourly atmosphere. I’m sure it exists in other places but since moving south from Lancashire I have never found anywhere quite as friendly as my adopted Deco suburb by the sea.
I worry too that the fleshpots and potatory establishments of our sealined city will draw me back into a spiral of drink and partying, staying out late, wandering around in a drunken haze and generally being a bad, bad boy. There again, put like that it does sound rather appealing, after all, Brighton – ‘bastard child of the Georgian age‘ – is the most exciting seaside resort in the world.
Oh yes we have heritage, but scratch away at the surface and you soon find the seedy underbelly. I want to be a proud part of that once more.
