Viva Brighton Issue #61 March 2018

COLUMN
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Amy Holtz
The truth is, I’m a Minnesotan
It was a grey, cold
afternoon when I saw the
angel of Regent Street for
the first time.
After turning around in
a complete circle, I only
managed to utter a sort of
breathy ‘Huh.’
The first months of this
year have been frozen
together in a special kind
of suffering – a squintthrough-the-rain,
heavyfooted
gloom. January and February are much
like siblings – they can be ok for a bit but have
the tendency to be annoyingly chaotic for no
reason at all other than their desire to make
you miserable.
So there’s been lots of rushing, and eating to
keep on rushing; lots of projects that were far
away and pointless in December but smack
you in the face with the urgency of expired
excuses. A winter’s worth of cat poo in the
garden; millions of wine bottles that you can’t
recycle because The Man’s taken your black
box away. So you have to walk six miles in
the 4pm twilight to send them to be crushed
like your dreams of a new year, new you,
which looks a lot like the old you but with a
newfound addiction to Horlicks, and not the
‘light’ version because life is just too short. All
the while your electricity meter is clanging
away. You will soon owe your life savings to a
little dancing orange dollop with eyes.
Brighton world problems, basically.
In the infancy of this new year, it feels easier
to just keep your head down, hoping it’ll go by
quicker if you do. But here
I am, looking up, standing
in front of the angel,
moved to tears. Suddenly,
the sun is a giant, chubby
baby’s face and it’s raining
adorable cherub giggles
down on you. Here’s this
wonderful thing – free
and beautiful. The angel’s
done more than stoke
my girlhood glitterphilia;
because the understanding
of why we’re here, who we are, everything
we’ve lost and gained over the past year has
become crystallized in a single image. It’s more
than just some graffiti. Stopping on this oftbypassed
street, I can feel the tiniest shards of
light pierce my shriveled winter heart.
I don’t believe there’s someone in the sky,
judging us, clamouring for us to atone for
swearing or wanting to kill your neighbour’s
cat, but I do know that one holy book says ‘Ye
shall make you no idols’. Though our lives are
littered silly with them – from craft beer to
Pride Britney to Messi to Linda McCartney’s
vegetarian sausages. Because we need them,
desperately, to feel like the ticking doomsday
clock is just a tock further than a whisker from
final jeopardy. Deep within us they create a
buoyancy – a little life raft inflated with hope
– that everything is going to turn out alright.
Or maybe I’m just being melodramatic. Either
way, if a little graffiti-worship helps you make
it through March, then join me. You know
where I’ll be waiting out the last of the short
winter days.
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