Some nights ago I had the funniest dream I've ever had. Sean Connery was in it, I have no idea why, or why it occurs to me now, drinking an average coffee in a bar on the 7 dials, one of Brighton's shabbily desirable areas. Brighton's shabby desirability is what has attracted so many more people here than there were twenty years ago when I first knew the place.
The narrative of a city is like the narrative of one's life; everything was always better before, everything has gone downhill, oh you should have seen it then, and so on. This is a 
false perception of course, the reality is that what we invested good time in getting used to gets dismantled and taken away, replaced with the new which we have no time for. The young people I see walking past the door here in the rain, they know these are their good old days, it's written on their faces, but do they know how much they won't like what's to come? Only the shallow will survive the world of tomorrow with their sanity and values intact. Beware of those who move too easily with the times, they had too little of themselves invested in the first place.
Everyone cycles in Brighton now, but you don't see as many people unicycling as you used to. I like unicyclists, you always knew you were having a good day when you saw one, and that they were coming from or going to some madness or other. There's still madness around, but it's not like it used to be, everyone's trying too hard. The really eccentric people, the ones who were out to amuse themselves, were priced out long ago. The few lucky ones got famous, others moved away or became addicted to something to fill the void. It's important to note here that a stable life can be maintained while filling any two of the preceding conditions, but never all three.
In my dream I was out with friends, I forget who, and we were with Sean Connery, I forget where. Those of
us who weren't Sean Connery were playing a game where we were trying to get him to say the word “bond” in conversation. Whenever he did we would break out into the James Bond theme. He was getting really annoyed. I forget how the dream ended but I woke up laughing.
The rain does to a city what it does to the personal narrative, the memories. Rain takes away the sunshine illusion and shows up what's wrong with the place, the leaks and cracks in the buildings that never got fixed, the dirt in the gutters. The only people you see on the streets when it's raining are the ones who need to be out, or have nowhere else to go. Not many people will walk in the rain with you, treasure those that do.
