Come join Hi Cacti & our fellow 7 Dials independent businesses for some late night shopping, festivities & share some community cheer
18+ of our local neighbouring shops, cafes, pubs, and businesses are all joining together to bring you festivities & late night shopping!
Kitsch Santaās grotto Treasure Hunt Christmas Carol Singing Local Pub Crawl for a free drink Christmas lights & window displays
More to be revealed & all are open till 8pm to bring you sales & discounts to help you Christmas shop locally & support your 7 Dials community businesses this Christmas.
During Very Merry 7 Dials your favourite independents will be open 5pm-9pm to bring you vinyls, vintage, houseplants, cakes, fashion, local art, mulled wine, Christmas trees, raffles, mince pies, wreaths, home goods, festive cocktails, local makers, late night shopping & sales, essential oil samples & workshops, coffee, gifts, charitable causes, & more!
Well, you can do rock climbing in the mountains, but generally when you go to the mountains, itās more… Itās not as technical as rock. You can climb up a mountain, depending on the mountain, but itās not so technical that you need loads and loads of equipment like you do with rock climbing. With mountains you donāt necessarily need a harness, whereas heāll be in a harnessā¦ā
It wasnāt a conversation I was expecting to have in a fabric and upholstery shop, but then again āAnd we donāt know what happened, but he ended up in the back of an articulated lorryā isnāt a sentence I expected to write when transcribing the interview tape.
The Whistler is with Denise Robins, wife of Adrian Robins, they of the fabric and upholstery shop of the same name in Guildford Road. Weāre surrounded by rolls of beautiful fabrics and textiles and just lovely stuff you just want to touch and cover yourself with.
Adrianās not here – āAdrianās off rock climbing in Scotland at the momentā ā and Denise is only here because sheās done something unnecessary to her knee. āI wonāt climb this year. I think⦠maybe the winter, late winter. But I think itās a good six months.ā
Itās a nice contrast, isnāt it? The delicacy of the fabric world and the out and about mountaineering and all that.
āWeāre passionate about the outdoors, which is quite funny because everybody expects us to be passionate about our home, and you know, weāve got a nice home, donāt get me wrong, weāve got a nice home. But itās just a nice home. I wouldnāt say we were passionate about our home and about everything being just so, thatās not really who we are.
As much as they love fabrics, itās the white knuckle stuff thatās in their blood. āWe did loads of that. We still do. We were away every weekend in various clubs. We met in the Brighton Explorers Club, we were in the Sussex Mountaineering Federation, we were in Hastings Rock Club, the Brighton Excelsior Club. We were doing all that, all the time working, thatās what we did. Yeah. And then when I was 27, I had our first child. So I kind of stopped all the mountaineering and stuff then because I just did stuff with the kids. Adrian carried on I just thought I was way too valuable to hurt myself!ā
Do you still cycle and..
āYeah, yeah, mountain bike. Adrian had a very bad cycle accident 15 years ago and he was told he would never work again.ā
Wow, what happened?
āHeās like the bionic man. He was training, he was doing triathlons at the time, and we donāt know what happened, but he ended up in the back of an articulated lorry. He broke his back, very badly punctured his lung, broke lots of ribs, sustained a head injury because his helmet split into and was in intensive care. He had to have surgery on his back, so had bone taken from his hip, put into his back and heās got big metal rods in his back holding his back together. And slowly, being Adrian and because heās so fit, he got back to swimming and, and then wanted to work again. So he only actually ended up having less than a year off. And then he was back at work.ā And now heās off rock climbing in Scotland. Crampons and ropes and all that.
Denise is Brighton through and through. āYeah my lot go back to the 16th century. My great, I think itās great great great grandfather, was the last map person off the chain pier, the last person off the chain pier before it collapsed. He was head of maintenance or locked it all up or something. But itās mentioned in a few books, because my maiden name is Fogden in which is an old Sussex name – and āAdrian Robinsā the shop has been on Guildford Road since 1983.
āNo, no, we didnāt have this one. Adrian rented the shop next door for two years. Heād finished an apprenticeship in town in upholstery, and then he set up on his own, and by time weād got together this came up for sale, and he desperately wanted his own shop. So we sold my flat and bought this. When we bought it, it had been rented out to students as individual bedsits each room for about 10 years. It was utterly hideous. hideous, you know, it was it was so funny because we, you know, we were so young and people would come along and I just, Iād look at it and they just didnāt know what to say everybody thought we were completely mad. Because we had no money. And we bought this wreck. And, and they just say the word that was said all the time was potential.
1983. Thatās a fair while ago. The area must have changed hugely since then. āThere were lots of shops which have gone. We always fought to keep the shops because once theyāre gone, theyāre gone. They never come backā
Do you remember what other shops they were on this stretch?
āThere was a restorer. That was a few doors down. There was a TV shop. Right on the corner. There was a basket making. That was a basket making shops and guys sat in there making cat baskets all day, and then at the top on the corner was like a wholesale butchers. Actually, this had been a butcher at some stage before because it had all butchers hooks in the ceiling.ā
Or maybe that was just for the students.
Denise, it should be said, is a great interviewee in that she likes talking. And sheās a terrible interviewee ā because she likes talking.
āDo you want to know about the shop?ā
OK, letās talk about fabrics. Do you design your own fabrics? āWe used to do a lot of that years ago, but I like to advise rather than design. I like to tap into peopleās personal taste, and then help them look good.
āThere are certain things that we donāt do much, for instance and I donāt have many glitzy books here. They donāt sell in Brighton, I think thereās an understated look they want, people want things to look really nice, but not in a flashy way.
āIf I was going to say whatās the best seller, it would be probably plain and natural weaves. Very natural. So cotton linen blends walls, things like that. But sadly, plain, actually.ā
And whatās your favourite?
āI love William Morris. I really like William Morris. I like prints. I like bold prints. So yeah, I mean, itās you know, itās funny when we were redoing our sofa Adrian said āWhy donāt we just have plain velvetā and I was like āNo. No wayā, you know because⦠we just shouldnāt.ā
Do you often find yourself talking to customers and theyāll pick something out and you think to yourself āAre you sure about that?ā
āYes, and I would say that because I really want people to be happy with what weāve done. Iād be mortified if we did some work and then people didnāt like it, they felt that theyāve made a mistake, because itās a lot of money. I mean, Iāll say to people, itās not like a dress you bought that you can hide in the wardrobe and pretend you didnāt buy it. Itās a sofa, itās a bay full of curtains. Once youāve got it, youāve got it.
āIf you came in here, I would look at how youāre dressed and it would give me an idea of what to pull out. Some people donāt think theyāve got any idea, some people donāt even think theyāve got any taste, but everybody has. I find that quite fascinating.ā
Have you noticed over the years, how tastes have changed? āPeople are far more conscious, environmentally conscious. Iām being asked for things that are natural, all natural fibres. Iāve got some (fabric) books that are made from recycled fabrics and things like that. Also I think the air miles of fabrics, people are more conscious of that, where things are made.ā
Itās time to go. You donāt want to take up too much of peopleās time so a bit of small talk while I pack upā¦
Good luck with the physio and I hope you get out and about sooner rather than later.
āItās OK. Iām not going to get back into it till the end of the year, and until then Iāll do all my water sports.ā
I thought you were resting up?
āIāve bought a paddleboard. And Iām a sea swimmer and try to do lots of sea swimming.ā
Clearly we have different ideas about resting up.
āYeah, I bought a dinghy and Iāve started sailing, so Iām a member of the Brighton Sailing Club as well. And I like to do some surfing if I can kneel OK.ā
So thereās mountaineering, cycling, surfing, the dinghyā¦. Anything boxes not ticked?
āIāve always been a bit of a thrill seeker. So⦠Iāve never done any diving and then somebody mentioned to me that where Iām going on holiday thereās a dive school… ā
This week weāre with Andy Lynes, food writer for The Times, Telegraph and The Independent and one of the people behind Brighton Best which, well, as it says on their website, Brightonās Best Restaurants awards were set set up in 2016 to celebrate the cityās dynamic restaurant sceneā. Theyāre also behind October Best, the cityās celebration of quality restaurants where you can eat for just Ā£25 a head. Ā The awards come out in April and thereās a big interview with Andy in the next edition of your friendly neighbourhood Whistler about all that. We sent our intrepid reporter, The Whistlerās food editor Gilly Smith to meet him at The Chilli Pickle, The Whistlerās favourite to get his top tips for the Best places to eat in Brighton over the festive season. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Harry Hillery, a veteran of Prides past, on how Pride has changed, how he’s changed and why it’s still powerful
I moved to Brighton in 1988 to setup a small business and decided that setting myself free should also be part of the adventure. In London Iād lurked in the shadows, fearful of what people might think.Ā
This might sound over the top nowadays, but it was different then. I remember testing the water with a āfriendlyā boss once, only to be told that if my news went public, any hopes of progression would evaporate if I wasnāt sacked first. So, I came to Brighton to be reborn and vowed to never lie about myself again.
In 1991 I met Alf in the Black Horse and we soon fell very much in love. Looking back, I owe so much to his gentle nudges and knowledge of all things queer. He introduced me to new ideas, new writers and helped me navigate a new queer reality. My first Brighton Lesbian & Gay Pride with Alf was in May 1992 if memory serves.
I remember how moved I was by the spectacle and how overjoyed I was to be holding hands with my boyfriend. At the time, Brighton was gripped by the AIDS epidemic and the fallout of Section 28, which made it doubly important to shout our presence and challenge a tsunami of hate and misinformation.
As we walked along Western Road towards Churchill Square, chanting āweāre here, weāre queer, weāre not going shoppingā there was a tangible sense of loathing from the pavements, that sometimes turned into abuse or occasionally a missile. Although I was nervous and a little frightened, I felt a belonging that Iād never had before as a queer man ā a kinship with those whoād trailblazed for me ā Marsha P Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, Antony Grey, Jackie Foster, Peter Tatchell. Lesbian & Gay Pride had to be loud and angsty to be heard above the din of hatred – we were under attack and our friends were dying.
I havenāt been to a Pride event for many years now for a number of reasons. Apart from getting older and a general dislike for crowds and mess, for me that sense of kinship and a link to the past has gone. Dropping āgayā and ālesbianā in the title and the rebrand to Brighton Pride made me uneasy. Although queer as I prefer to call it is thankfully less siloed these days, the dropping of these words still felt like a watering down and a betrayal of sorts. A bowing down and compliance that was perhaps necessary to attract corporate sponsorship from banks and other institutions that would not have been welcome (or wanted to be associated with us) in days gone by.
The event struggled for years due to alleged financial mismanagement and in fighting, so things had to change, but I for one would be happier if the activism backbone was more prominent and given centre stage. I recognise things are better now, but gay marriage and the proliferation of rainbow flags to sell anything and everything, hasnāt made everything OK.
Our hard-won rights can be taken from us in a heartbeat, and there are many out there who still wish us harm. Queer Pride (or LGBTQ Pride if you prefer) is not just about getting horny and high or listening to Britney Spears, itās about kinship and remembering how we got here. Thereās also still so much more to do ā look at all the venom around Trans rights for example – thatās surely what āPrideā still needs to focus on.
On a final positive note though, it is wonderful that Pride is now so fully embraced by the city. Itās also wonderful that it raises such large amounts of money to help organisations close to my heart like Lunch Positive and Mind Out continue their amazing work. And lastly of course, whatever we call it, it continues to be the best of parties, and a great excuse to be loud and proud.