Eastbourne: A Community Worth Writing About

Part of the building has fallen now, that glorious, grand old Grade II listed building on the Eastbourne seafront known in recent times as the Claremont Hotel. It stood for more than 160 years, with construction begun and completed in the mid nineteenth century. It’s been owned by residents, hoteliers, and a sheikh, but now lies in ruin with its ultimate fate being decided by engineers hoping to declare at least some parts of it salvageable.

I have walked past the Claremont many times while exploring Eastbourne, including every time I wrote about places like The Wish Tower and the chalk deposits below Holywell. I saw it before and I saw it after the massive fire that burned for days, fed by gas lines that could not be immediately shut off due to instability of the structure. Standing a distance from the building, behind barriers in place to keep the public away from danger, onlookers could see flames dancing in the empty windows for days after the main blaze was extinguished.

On November 24, enough street had been dug up around the property for gas company workers to locate and shut of all the valves supplying gas to the flames that just would not stop.

Over the last week, my thoughts have returned often to the gas main repairs taking place directly in front of my own flat, as seen below.

This work began before the Claremont fire and continues today. It definitely makes a person wonder, and worry. No official cause of the fire has been announced. But one can do the math. An explosion that blew out walls and tossed people to the ground, combined with gas flames burning for days...let’s just say that I will breathe a sigh of relief when the repairs have been completed on the lines supplying my flat, and that I’m quite happy to tolerate the inconvenience and noise of work crews and barricades and jackhammers and large, gaping holes in the street.

And the ashes...oh my, the ashes of the Claremont. For blocks in every direction, carbon calling cards can be found littering the sidewalks, stuck in the cracks of stairwells and turning rain puddles into black, greasy sludge. Burned pieces of history, charred remnants of the building, furniture, and belongings of those who lost everything in that fire--they will all wash away with time, but right now they are grim reminders of just how hot those flames burned.

The Spirit of Eastbourne

Many times it takes a tragedy to bring communities together, and Eastbourne definitely rallied in support of displaced hotel employees, guests, and everyone affected by the fire. But I've said since the moment my feet hit the ground here in October that I've felt a different vibe in this town than anywhere else I’ve traveled. It's a community already together. No tragedy was required to accomplish this.

Eastbourne is a proud community, one that cares deeply for its roots and guards them carefully. I’ve written about the regulars I see on the seafront each morning, picking up trash washed ashore by high tide overnight, faithfully carrying it to bins on the Promenade without expecting as much as a thank you. Shop owners cheerfully sweep the sidewalks in front of their businesses every morning. Storefront windows get cleaned. Repairs get made. Smiles get exchanged. Decorations get put up even while ash lies thick on the streets below.

Chats happen spontaneously and often--whether on the Promenade or the pebbles, on the sidewalk or on the bus, in the parks, in the taverns, and people here will stop everything they’re doing to share a few minutes of positive, non-judgmental conversation with complete strangers. The personality of this town is consistent and striking. I’ve had business cards made with my contact information in hopes I can keep in touch with at least some of the people I meet here.

Like the lovely family I met on Cavendish in the most remarkable and unexpected way. If you know me at all, you know without me even saying so that someone standing on a sidewalk teaching an impromptu dog safety course is going to rope me in faster than a cowboy with a lasso.

From the best I could gather, this eagle-eyed lady had spotted a pending disaster outside her family’s storefront when the young child of a passerby rushed up to Tori, the dog

@michelios brought from the U.S., as he walked her on leash a few feet ahead of me. Now, Tori is a very sweet dog, but she is easily frightened and was verging on panic by the time I caught up with them. In a scene that one would rarely see in the U.S., this woman patiently and sweetly--but firmly--taught someone else’s child every right step to take in approaching a strange dog.

This sidewalk scene called to mind the presentations some of my rescue volunteers and I were able to do for Cedar Bluff Elementary School and Mountain Kids before our nonprofit was completely blacklisted by county officials. Tori had participated in those presentations because despite the subtle fear responses I counted on her to display in a demonstration, she would not pose a bite risk for the children. Thank goodness it was Tori this child rushed up to and not Paige, who was walking a few steps behind with Milo and me. Paige has a bit of a reputation, being otherwise known as Tater-Bug, the Biter of Children, and would not have made such pleasant subject matter for the School of Hard Knocks as Tori did.

Long after the newly-educated child and her mother had disappeared up the street, I was still standing there enraptured by my conversation with the woman from the shop, along with her husband and her own daughter who had both joined us on the sidewalk. See, not only had they captured my interest with Dog Safety 101, but the shop they own is a modern barber shop, and it just so happens that I owned a hair salon in Virginia for several years until lupus retired me permanently. The things we had to talk about were quickly piling up. Add to this the fact that the woman shares a name with me, albeit with a slightly different spelling (Rhondda, if I’m not mistaken,) and her daughter’s middle name is Paige...well, you can imagine that the synchronicity was piling up as well.

In the case of this sidewalk meeting, I was able to take photos and share them here with permission of this lovely family. But I’ve met many other people on the streets and beaches of Eastbourne that I feel I’ve known for years, like Nicola (who is now a treasured Facebook friend) and the couple with the electric piano for sale, and the lady on the Promenade who knew immediately that Milo is an Anatolian Shepherd, and the countless other people who have restored my faith in human nature and put such a brilliant face on Eastbourne that now I never want to leave. There really is magic here. And while I’ve heard and read murmurings by locals who feel the area is at risk of losing its soul to this external influence or that one, believe me, folks--the heart of this town is still beating. Your efforts to preserve the values and character of this community have not been in vain.

The Writer in Me

Those who’ve followed my blog and read my latest novel know that I spent the last decade embedded in one of the most closed and hostile cultures in America--Central Appalachia. My work there as an animal welfare advocate and rescuer resulted in death threats, harassment from local officials and town police officers, intimidation and bullying through certain forms of media, and social isolation. To go from that to such a welcoming and friendly community as Eastbourne was, for me, like emerging from underneath a blanket of smog to a sky full of sunshine and air I could actually breathe. It’s made quite an impression.

If you’ve guessed that Eastbourne will feature in at least one future novel of mine, it’s possible that you are correct. This has been a great place of healing for me. I can imagine it would be for High Kill’s Taylor Beckett, as well. But there are definitely some things to consider before I start mapping out a plot. First is that the tone and nature of High Kill is rather negative toward its setting and I don’t want that to carry forward. While I think a follow-up novel with the opposite type of mood would make a nice contrast, this is something I will have to be mindful of from start to finish.

The second consideration is that, due to the genre of this series (crime/mystery/thriller,) I’m compelled to invent a scenario in which Taylor solves a case that local law enforcement has been unable to close. Now, what in the world could an American woman with PTSD and no job (oops--spoiler) possibly have to offer police in the UK in the way of help? Well, I have some ideas, but again--I will have to be mindful of how I handle this storyline. I managed to write High Kill without making the fictional local Sheriff’s Department look like bungling fools. I will write this sequel in a way that also does not cast a bad light on the competency of East Sussex law enforcement, fictional or otherwise

Lastly, despite considering several different directions I could go with the plot, I keep coming back to the Beachy Head suicides. They’re so numerous that the matter begs to be written about in fiction as well as nonfiction, and so heartbreaking that the theme would resonate across oceans. However, there is real human suffering on all sides of those deaths, from the lives of the people who made those choices to the families left behind to deal with the loss. This would have to be handled with great sensitivity and zero sensationalism. Those who’ve read High Kill know that Taylor suffered a traumatic loss that was utterly soul-shattering. She would be the right character to place at the center of a story involving the Beachy Head suicides. However, I have my work cut out for me as an author when it comes to hitting just the right notes. I’ll be doing a lot of thinking about this in the weeks to come.

For now, my third novel High Kill is being offered as a free download on Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, and Amazon.com. The Amazon.uk site still lists it for £2,35 despite having been asked to price match. Please find a £0,00 version of the download while this promo lasts. There’s no need to pay for something you can find online for free, and I’m the one who listed it for free until the end of this year, meaning I absolutely want you to take advantage of it.

The trailer below is targeted at animal welfare volunteers, advocates, and groups in the U.S. who will find some of this novel’s subject matter very relevant. Steemhouse Publishing will release another trailer later for mainstream audiences. But if you love animals--and most people in Eastbourne seem to--have a click and see what I was writing about before I came to the UK. It’s a doozy.