‘Give me Victor Meldrew any day, at least he makes us laugh’

Consider our gap-toothed grassy paving. Sussex’s patron saint – Richard of Chichester – is not doing his job. Who to replace him with? St Jude, the patron saint of hopeless causes? Or maybe Patcham’s very own goddess of reincarnation Katie Price?

If you didn’t laugh, you’d cry. A resident in Patcham was recently told that his soakaway is on a, wait for it, 100-year inspection cycle, and since his complaints the council has now inspected it 85 years early. I admit it, I laughed. The very Biblical timescale seemed so out of kilter with modern government.

It deserves a rendition of Victor’s catchphrase “I don’t believe it!”. And there was the thunderbolt. It’s no good asking for intervention from Katie Price – Patcham, Brighton even, is too small. Brighton could learn more from reflecting on the ups and downs of Victor Meldrew.

Victor Meldrew would love Brighton. There’d be so much he could moan about. But Victor was not just about moaning. What made One Foot in the Grave so memorable were the odd things that happened to him – glass eyes and limbs posted through his door; radioactive compost; a neighbour locked in his loft; a lamp post fallen into his bedroom, still lit.

I’ve had a few Meldrew moments in my life. Leafleting is the politician’s bane. Someone should write a book about the trials and tribulations of the loneliness of the long-distance political leafleteer. The rain, the wind, the hills, the steps up, the steps down, the dogs, the cats, the letter boxes – some squeaky, some stiff, some at the top, some at the very very bottom of a door (who invented that?), the resident who tears your leaflet up in front of you to show just what they think. Is a political leaflet junk mail? To post or not to post – these are the philosophical decisions we make day in day out.

We rarely get abuse but I do remember one resident who shouted at me while tearing the pamphlet up – “you’re all a bunch of…!” I did laugh – when I’d gone round the corner. One time I delivered addressed leaflets to the wrong street. Instead of Fernhurst Crescent I delivered 20-odd leaflets to Rotherfield Crescent. It was dark – that’s my excuse. Halfway through some kind soul pointed out my mistake and I went back, torch in hand, pulling them out of the letter boxes.

If they ever decide to reboot One Foot In The Grave – please don’t – Brighton could provide countless examples.

Maybe some of these stories are apocryphal, but they give a flavour of the times: the woman who received her post only once every ten days; a community centre with a dead seagull on the roof; yellow lines painted like Morse code because of parked cars; recycling not collected for three months.

Sometimes I can’t help feeling someone has it in for us. Patcham, maybe Brighton as a whole, seems to suffer from plague after plague – flooding, flytipping, weeds. Carden Avenue is home to the fancily titled Scape project – large holes in the ground to catch surface water with long grass growing out of them to disguise the large holes – everything residents love. Contractors supposedly checked the site for utilities before they started digging these giant holes. Except when they started digging they found utilities and had to start all over again. It must have been a scene – lots of men, I assume, standing around scratching their heads.

Patcham and Hollingbury has areas that are frequently flooded. Old London Road sits on the Wellesbourne River which seeps into cellars and peeks up through drains like a snake. I think the Royal Mail likens this river to the Loch Ness Monster – some mythical beast only Youtubers believe in. Otherwise they wouldn’t want to build a temple to our rarely sighted postal service just up the road. Other streets suffer from flash floods – one minute it’s the Gobi Desert, the next it’s Niagara Falls pouring in to gardens and living rooms. Who’d have thought the highest points of Brighton would have so much water – our patron saint must be turning a blind eye. After all, the council does check the soakaways once every hundred years.

A general election will soon darken the city like a solar eclipse.

It will be Patcham’s misfortune to have would-be MPs bringing their political divining rods and icons of St Keir Starmer and St Caroline Lucas promising salvation. Give me Victor Meldrew any day – at least he makes us laugh.