Hove, Actually

Last summer, some of AC’s Brighton colleagues were in SF for a month, and so we had them round to dinner. I must have asked one of them if he liked his living situation in Brighton or something like that and he replied,

“Oh, I live in Hove, actually.”

And then the colleagues laughed and explained that “Hove, actually” is a frequently heard expression in Brighton. There’s even a HoveActually website. Hove is the town immediately to the west of Brighton. It’s sort of the dowdy sister to flashy Brighton, but the two together consist of a single urban unit, “Brighton and Hove.” Brighton and Hove attained official city status a few years ago, making them (it?) a kind of Siamese twin city. The general consensus is that Brighton is hip, edgy and urban, and Hove is bourgeois and boring. This is why nobody comes right out and admits to living in Hove. No, only upon further scrutiny does one confess “Hove, actually.”

Sam and I ventured into Hove today for only the second time. The first time was back in October when we walked to a recommended park, St. Ann’s Well Gardens. I didn’t realize it at the time, but we were in Hove. (Yes, we actually walked to Hove, actually.)

This afternoon we took a bus with the express intent of meeting a friend and her son at the Hove Museum. As we hurtled down the road it wasn’t difficult to tell that Brighton was giving way to Hove. Shops and people thinned out and the whole pace of things slowed down. The Hove Museum is housed in a stately manor house and also has a very proper looking Tea Room. We headed straight upstairs to the Toy Gallery where we took in the displays of 18th-19th and 20th-century toys.

There’s also a small cinema which was showing a loop of early 20th-century silent movies filmed in Hove. Sam and her little friend were entranced with the old grainy black and white film about a Hove errand boy who plays tricks on everyone in town. The kids kept insisting that it was raining in the film while we mums explained over and over, “No it’s just old cracks on the film.”

The last clip in the reel was made in 1901. It featured a well-dressed gentleman talking to the camera. The camera zoomed in on him slowly slowly until all we could see was his mouth. And then, his mouth opened wide and we were swallowed into the darkness! Then we see the cameraman tumbling into the gaping gob. It was quite surreal for 1901. Something I would have expected from early Parisian Dadaists and Surrealists, but not from turn-of-the-century-Hovians.

Being swallowed in Hove, actually, was rather fun.