Sarah once had a studio in the building, and I remember buying a massive drawing board / easel that took four of us to carry back from here. January 2007. Snowy air. After-pints in the Evening Star. I never really used the board, sat cross-legged on the floor to draw instead.
The building is massive, and has the feel of a gently decaying factory; hospital-wide corridors and paint-flaking walls, creaky industrial lifts and a cafe on the 3rd floor. I peer from the windows into the centre of New England House; a courtyard surrounded by windows, looking back from rooms that seem to be used as store-rooms.
It is situated in an odd industrial part of Brighton town centre; down from the station, turn left into this shop-less slip of new buildings and Sainsburys, deserted and dreamy. This is a million miles from Brighton, a secret country, even if from the windows of the seventh floor I can see for miles back to all those places I've known for years.
