I live in an old Georgian rectory in Hastings Old Town
with a walled garden in the back and a pub that brews
its own beer across the road. The Lower Torfield Allotments
are just up the road. You can see the sea from the top
of the garden and it's a few minutes walk to have a swim
in the protected waters of the harbour arm, which was
built in Victorian times and promptly hit by a storm that
knocked away its centre. The charm of Hastings is that
it never quite made it - each time it raised money to
build a harbour a storm blew it away, thereby ensuring
a fate of genteel poverty and freedom from the development
that has spoiled the rest of the South East coast of England.
