From my little Lane to The Lanes..
On blossom, seagulls and learning to belong somewhere new
I’m on the move again! After just over a year in my rented flat — long enough to finally feel like Brighton was mine — I’ve found somewhere I’d like to call home. Not forever, perhaps, but properly for now. And there’s something about packing boxes a second time that makes you (even more) reflective! The first move, from a small town on the edge of the countryside to this loud, bright, salt-aired city, taught me more than I expected. Here’s some of what I’ve learned.
Early morning walks to yoga
1. You have to learn to be anonymous — and then find your people anyway
When my children were young, I barely had to think about belonging. Three kids anchor you to a community almost by accident — their friendships become yours, the school gate does the work for you. Mine left home around the same time I moved here, which meant I escaped empty nest syndrome entirely — I was too busy flying the nest myself! But arriving somewhere new without that ready-made web is its own particular thing. In a city, no one notices you at first. The anonymity is both liberation and loneliness in equal measure. Luckily, I wasn’t starting from nothing — I had yoga and art, and a handful of friends dotted around the city, and a fairly new relationship too! Those threads mattered more than I realised at the time. But the discovery — slower than you’d like — is that belonging is something you have to build here, consciously and from scratch.
2. You miss the dark — but noise becomes its own texture
I’ve been lucky in my rental — a quiet road, central but somehow removed from the late night revelry that Brighton is famous for. I’m hoping to find the same calm in my new place. But city noise goes beyond people and traffic. Nobody warns you about the seagulls. In spring, when they’re nesting and feeding and generally conducting their very loud business, the racket is extraordinary! And then there are the noises that turn out to be unexpectedly pleasant. Runners passing on their way down to the seafront, somehow managing to hold entire conversations while doing so. The neighbours taking their children to school - a reminder that life is going on just outside.
3. Small rituals matter more, not less — and the seasons blur
One of the things I miss most, is the full force of the seasons. In the countryside they arrive en masse — wild garlic carpeting the lanes, bluebells as far as you can see, daffodils on the roundabouts. Here, the trees are coming into leaf right now and the blossom is extraordinary if you look for it. But it’s individual moments rather than a landscape changing all at once. I don’t use my car much here, so I miss even the verges — that long grass. The seasons still come. They just arrive more quietly. And then there’s Monty, my dog, still in the countryside. Old now, deaf and half blind, he couldn’t manage stairs — and he couldn’t manage me not being there 24/7. His separation anxiety was so severe that I barely felt able to go out. The kindest thing was for him to stay where he knew. He’s now living with seven other dogs, with daily wonky walks in the fields behind where he lives. He is having the time of his life.
4. Nature hits differently when it’s scarce
You notice things you might have walked past before. Blossom and magnolia on streets — there are the most beautiful trees just behind Churchill Square, where you turn a corner from the bustle of the shopping centre and suddenly find yourself in streets that are beautifully, quietly residential. A front garden full of plants can lift your spirits in a way that’s hard to measure. I understand why people need parking spaces in a city, but those who have held onto their gardens, even a strip of them, are doing something so important for everyone who walks past!
5. You have to hold your nerve during the in-between
There’s a gap — sometimes a long one — between arriving and feeling at home. You’re not unhappy exactly. You’re just not rooted yet. People who’ve always lived in cities don’t always understand this particular kind of unsettled feeling. But slowly, quietly, it shifts. The few new friends I’ve made here mean more to me than I can easily say. I have art to thank for that — it opened doors that nothing else quite would have. And then occasionally I bump into someone I know when I’m out and about, just a hello but in such a huge place, that is a really lovely feeling.
6. The city is actually full of villages
Living in central Hove for the last fifteen months, I’ve really enjoyed getting to know this little patch. There’s now a favourite pizzeria and a favourite coffee shop. Once you find your patch, your regular faces, your corner of the street, the city shrinks to something navigable and warm. You stop living in the whole city and start living in your piece of it — which turns out, is not so different from before!
7. The pace surprised me
I’d assumed that city living would feel relentless, that I’d have to work harder to find any sense of slowness. But Brighton has a laid-back quality that is probably Brighton-specific rather than city-specific. And with a car that I now fill up perhaps once a month rather than once a week, things have defintitely changed. I walk or get the bus most places now, and I find myself running little errands in a way that feels almost old-fashioned — popping out for food for a couple of days at a time rather than doing one enormous weekly shop. It actually reminded me of my teenage years living in France, where people would go out each day to the boulangerie, the butcher, the market. One day’s worth at a time. Because everything is on my doorstep, there’s simply no need to go out and do a huge shop and then go home and hunker down for a week!
8. Some things don’t transplant
When I moved here I imagined that Brighton would open up a whole new chapter for Cherfold Flowers. New couples, new venues, workshops, weddings on my doorstep. But the reality is that Brighton already has a wonderful community of florists, and I have no desire to muscle in on a city where so many self-employed people are already working hard to make a living from flowers. What it did instead was make me realise how much the relationships I’ve built over the years with venues - they don’t disappear just because I’ve moved. Most of the places I work are at most an hour away. And there’s something really lovely about driving out to a wedding at a venue I know well, seeing familiar faces, keeping those threads going.
9. Arriving is just the beginning of arriving
This is the second time I’m doing February and March here. This week, with the first real warmth in the air, I found myself remembering that same feeling from last year: people playing football on Hove Lawns in front of my house, the queue forming outside Marocco’s for ice creams, people sitting outside bars and pubs with late afternoon drinks, suddenly feeling somewhere more Mediterranean than the South Coast of England.
In the mornings I open my blinds and there it is — a big blue sky and beyond it the sea. Having had that view for over a year now has been a perfect introduction to living by the sea.
Now it’s time to move again and put down roots in a new ‘village’. And I’m very much looking forward to having a garden again — one that I might even choose to grow flowers in. Albeit on a much smaller scale!
