Viva Brighton Issue #63 May 2018

COLUMN
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Lizzie Enfield
Notes from North Village
A colleague recently returned from a press trip to
Hamburg, where his tour guide left a trail of small
creatures made with Hama beads. “Street art,” he
informed my colleague, placing various pocketsized
rabbits, cats and birds in public places. My
colleague was dubious but I rather liked the idea.
I once saw a comedian advocating a whole new
pointless way of living: “see if you can get oranges
to rhyme with sausages,” he cajoled, rousing the
audience by asking them to chant lines ending
with both words and the encouraging “If you try
hard enough, you might find sausages and oranges
do rhyme.”
They never did. But we had fun trying.
The same comic said he often left eggs in people’s
gardens, as talking points.
“Imagine Florence and Alfred at number 73
haven’t actually spoken to each other for years.
Then, Flo draws the curtains one morning and
tells Fred to get out of bed and look at this.”
He mimed Fred going to his wife, who he no
longer had anything left to say to.
“What is it?”
“An egg!”
Suddenly they are chatting away over breakfast.
“How did it get there? Who left it? Why? Is it
art?”
A few months ago I woke to see a woman planting
a series of small crosses at apparently random
intervals across the grass in the local park.
I toyed with the idea that it was some sort of
memorial, the fallen of Blaker’s Park during the
war perhaps? Or the #MeToo women of the North
Village? Or perhaps an art installation?
Turned out she was highlighting the amount of
dog’s mess in the park. But still, it did look pretty.
And now there’s a new installation that’s being
talked about almost as much as if it were a Banksy:
a pair of maroon corduroy flares, abandoned on
the footbridge crossing the railway line.
Suddenly all the neighbors are chatting about
them.
“Have you seen the trousers on the railway
bridge?”
“What size are they?”
“Best place for them.”
“If there was a burgundy tank top with them, then
they’re mine.”
“Marooned!” Boom boom.
And then mysteriously, the trousers moved from
the south to the north side of the bridge where
they were arranged, rather than dumped: slung
over the railings in a suggestive way, if maroon
corduroy flares can ever really be considered
suggestive.
“Perhaps they’re part of the festival?” suggested
someone standing at the foot of the bridge where
there’s a little stenciled cat – like an actual Banksy.
“More likely the owner was stripped and arrested
by the fashion police.” This, from one of the ubercool
teens in the street.
I told her that I used to have a very similar pair
myself in the 70s.
She replied, coolly: “A lot of things happened in
the 70s that society no longer condones.”
This seems like a good title, for a street art exhibit.
Illustration by Joda (@joda_art)
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