Monday, January 30, 2006

St John's Place

The area where I live has a number of small mews
roads. Mews in this case are tiny roads, usually cobbled, squeezed between two buildings. Some of them are straight out of 'Minder', slightly shady looking geezers taking cars of unknown provenance to be fixed up in backstreet garages. These tiny mews streets are also becoming popular as haunts for artists' studios; quiet and tucked away from the world, they offer an ideal place to work.

St John's Place hides one of these studios, yet I had no idea until I happened to see it listed as one of the 'Open Studios' in last year's 'Open House' month.(For more on the Open Houses click here )

Inspired Mosaics is the name of this little gem; I love mosaic but the work at this place took my breath away. It was like discovering a little hive of creativity right under your nose. Been there the whole time, yet never noticed it before it opened it's doors up to the public for one weekend.
I'd love to take one of their mosaic courses one day. Until then I'll just have to visit them during the next Open House month, coming up this May.

Saturday, January 28, 2006

5Streets Brighton and Hove

This blog is inspired by the 5Streets idea created by Julia, on the other side of the world to me in Sydney. You can read her original 5Streets blog here http://5streets.blogspot.com.

I live in what is officially known as 'Brighton and Hove'. That's right, it's basically two towns with wildly different personalities shoehorned into one joint entity a few years back, for various local political reasons which we won't go into here.
I'm located near the 'border', such as it is, between the two (actually you'll find that they run smack into each other).

I love the idea of finding out more about the streets around me. I volunteer for a local history website here and love hearing the stories behind the places I pass everyday and the way in which this town, city, call it what you will, is constantly evolving. I hope to share a few of those everyday stories here.

No digital camera as yet (I'm quite fond of the idea of real photos that I can look at without the aid of a computer), but I'll try and scan a few to put online here.