Sussex is the county which more than any other you don't have to be born in to love. When you meet people from Yorkshire or Essex, say, there's always this element of bitterness and blood-pull mingled with the real affection. But because Sussex is so soft, so sexy, it attracts many wanderers who adopt it as their own and then have all the nice feelings that come with belonging - security, pride; and none of the bad ones - smothering, resentment. Even though I am a West Country girl, I think of Sussex as being home, and quite tear up when I hear the song of my local football team, Brighton & Hove Albion:
"For we're the men from Sussex/ Sussex by the sea/ We plough and sow and reap or mow/And useful men are we./ And when you go to Sussex,/ Whoever you may be,/You may tell them all that we stand or fall/For Sussex by the sea!/ Oh Sussex, Sussex by the sea!/ Good old Sussex by the sea!"
Sussex, or more specifically my 'burg, East Sussex, is small (ish) and spectacular, with all this stuff going on at once - the rivers and beaches, the sea and the Downs and the cliffs - that it makes other counties look rather blowsy and barren. Occasionally, of course, it can have a bit too much water going on, as we learned recently when the Ouse and the Arun burst their banks as one, or when "ancient springs" were discovered under parts of Brighton, making it flood unprecedentedly. But, on the whole, it's heaven.
Brighton, of course, is the sparkling star of the Sussex Coast, a magnet to slackers, runaways and pleasure-seekers ever since the Prince Regent first had his palace of ill-repute built here. "Success smells of Brighton," said the Yorkshire-born Laurence Olivier, who moved here in the 1950s and, when he was enobled chose the title Lord Olivier of Brighton. But Brighton, in its indecent irrepressibility, is in many ways uncharacteristic of the south coast, where life is slow and stately and for good reason the chosen retirement roost of the elderly. Of a weekend, there is nothing my companion and I like more - well, OK, but only about five other things - than to jump in the jalopy, put on some Penguin Café Orchestra and tootle along the coast road in search of the sleeping small towns of East Sussex, some of which have amusingly obscene or scarily Gothic names - Climping and Fulking, Cold Christmas and Hurstpierpoint.
Eastbourne is far from undiscovered, though. In the first part of the century, it was the swell of the south coast, watering hole of emperors and ballerinas, kings and coloraturas. Now, in the words of their most famous sons (since the late Russ Conway) Toploader, it is seen as "the blue rinse capital of the world". Indeed someone cruelly told me that "it makes Hove look like Manumission".
I was initially attracted to it because of my hotel fetish; the 125-year-old, five-star Grand is simply the most magnificent beast in the whole of the south-east. But personally, I also love the tranquil, Morrissey-ish melancholia of English seaside resorts out of season: with their Winter Gardens and bandstands, tiny palm trees and carveries, they are among the few places where you can still imagine what the 1950s felt like, what a world without America would feel like. Eastbourne is strange and beautiful, like Scandinavia or the moon, with rather more to see and do.
The Grand Hotel looms over Eastbourne as defiantly and definitively as the Statue of Liberty loomed over Charlton Heston at the end of Planet of the Apes; it reared up at us out of the night, ice-white and towering, like something out of St Petersburg. All by itself, set back from the road, scorning the neighbouring hotels whose names also recall the glory days of the English seaside - the Albany, the Burlington, the Chatsworth, the Cavendish - you could see why it was known as "The White Palace" in the years between the wars, when the BBC Palm Court Orchestra broadcast live from the Great Hall every Sunday night from 1924 to 1939. Dennis Potter, whose Cream In My Coffee was filmed there, called it "a huge, creamy palace".
Opulent yet easeful, the utterly lush reception has greeted everyone from Winston Churchill, Haile Sellasie and Aneurin Bevan to Charlie Chaplin, Arthur Conan Doyle, Elgar, Anna Pavlova and Paul Robeson, These days it may be somewhat reduced to Harold Pinter, Celine Dion and Liam Gallagher, but you still get the essence of the place where Debussy completed La Mer. As far back as the 1880s, the Eastbourne Grand was, a byword for luxury and progress going hand-in-hand; advertisements boasted of the private omnibus to collect rail travellers, a library and public rooms lit with electric light, a hydraulic lift and separate tables in the dining room. The King of Spain was so impressed by the Grand's cabstand that he had an exact replica built in Madrid; from 1918 to 1952, the hotel was so popular that it had its own farm supplying guests with fruit, veg, eggs and poultry.
Today the Grand's entirely justified pride in its own singularity can be seen in its huge, gorgeous outdoor and indoor swimming pools, among other things. As a bit of a swimming pool connoisseur, this is the first aspect of a hotel I pay attention to once the register has been signed and the luggage has been dumped, and I've come across some lulus in my time, even in five-star hotels. In Brighton, for instance, the modest Metropole has the loveliest indoor pool imaginable, while the jumped-up Grand next door has an alleged "swimming" pool that I can't see giving sufficient legroom to anyone when Snow White and the Seven Dwarves isn't playing at the Theatre Royal.
But like all great hotels - The Imperial (Torquay), Reid's (Madeira), Pink Sands, (The Bahamas) - the real glory of this hotel is its staff, and what almost seems like the Indonesian wayang shadow ballet of preparation, interaction and performance. This can be seen at its most prancing level of perfection in the Grand's two dining rooms, the Garden Restaurant and the Mirabelle. On the first night, In the Garden Restaurant, I knocked back smoked salmon with quails eggs and Dover sole and thought how very sad it was that now the new Radio 2 is the official home of the Beautiful South and the even more beautiful Corrs, you have to find a restaurant with a pianist in order to hear those wonderful old songs for swinging lovers like Volare, Misty and Baubles, Bangles and Beads.
On the second night in the Mirabelle - according to the Good Food Guide one of 20 best troughs in the British Isles, and I for one certainly wouldn't argue with them - I reflected that any restaurant that has the pianist playing The Shadow Of Your Smile as one sits down, could serve one rancid Pot Noodle and they'd still have my vote. But never one to look a gift horse in the kisser, I nevertheless accepted seared scallops on a cauliflower purée with a dressing of caper and grape, a ribeye of Scottish beef with a rich red wine jus and a selection of cheeses I loved so much that I wanted to put them on my Friends and Family phone list. My young friend grappled with a pressing of pork set in a star anise-infused jelly with a chutney of apple, a risotto of parmesan and thyme and a warm chocolate fondant with white chocolate ice-cream. The pianist played You'll Never Know and the staff performed the arrogant, yielding ballet of service. I felt so lit up, so glowing with pure protein that I could have served as an incandescent illustration for that poor mad old man who used to shoulder his heavy banner along Oxford Street, "Protein = Lust". My friend and I just looked at each other and laughed, it was so brilliant.
The next morning we drove out to Beachy Head in a raging gale, bent on flagellating our swinish selves. Beachy Head is only about 15 minutes from Eastbourne and, with silver sea sneaking round on either side, it must be one of the most beautiful places in England in sunshine. But as we walked the Peace Path around the top of the cliff, all I could think about was all the poor suicides who'd pitched themselves off. I didn't much fancy following them and demanded we turn back, to which my boyfriend replied that we'd feel really righteous once we'd done it. With this, he turned the corner straight into a force-nine gale - the first time I've heard wind actually screaming - which he could barely stand-up in. He suggested that we turn back, and we staggered to the car to recover. It was without doubt the scariest moment of my life (apart from the first morning I woke up in the same bed as Tony Parsons), but it certainly got the adrenaline going.
Be that as it may, I felt that I'd had enough of nature's wild grandeur, and demanded to be taken somewhere totally unnatural. Within 10 minutes, we were in one of the hugest covered malls I've ever seen - Eastbourne's Arndale Centre. A compromise was called for, so we drove down to the seafront to soak up the vibes. The pier is typically solid, boasting both a newsagent's and a flower shop which we certainly don't have on Brighton pier. Not suprisingly, the tattoo shop had closed down, but the charming Bar Copa at the end of the pier proclaimed itself to be the ideal spot "for sporting and cavorting". There were boat trips on offer, too: cruises round Beachy Head and speedboat rides on the thrillingly named 007. Once again, this was in pleasing contrast to Brighton - where it is easier to get raw opium than a boat-ride.
The esplanade was pleasantly melancholic: a sign threatened a whopping £500 fine for cycling on the seafront and a yellowing poster promised The Manfreds with Chris Farlowe, Alan Price and Cliff Bennett (but sadly, no Rebel Rousers) at the Congress Theatre. Best of all, in a basement beneath the Cumberland Hotel, we were Invited to "In-Step Sunday Club: Ballroom and Sequence Dancing with Peter Harvey's Hi-Fi Show". It made me miss my mum and wish Alan Bennett was with me and I thought how very pleasant the old English way of taking one's pleasure was, without all that neurotic chasing about and taking pictures of everything, just so the folks back home will believe you were there.
It was about 5pm on a Sunday afternoon, just getting dark, and then the most gorgeous thing happened. We went up the front steps of the Grand and into the lobby - and there, in the Great Hall right in front of us, was a string quartet playing chamber music. Smart old couples took tea at tiny tables, and as we went up in the lift, suddenly it could have been any year between 1924 and 1939. The immaculate Grand could have been the rundown Overlook from The Shining, full of between-the-war ghosts.
The music followed us right up to our suite, then faded away. It was one of the strangest and most enchanting things I've ever experienced. Indeed, being in Eastbourne was in many ways stranger, more foreign than being abroad - particularly the Caribbean, which in its more profitable enclaves can feel like lodging in a luxury franchise of America. But you can occasionally find good parts of Britain - Porthmadoc in Wales is another - where the American takeover seems never to have happened. And never underestimate the refreshing qualities of sneaking off the Yankee yoke, if only for a weekend.
After five years of feverish globetrotting in the course of my work, I can honestly say that, particularly this year, the holidays I took at home - in Torquay and Portmeirion - were far more enjoyable than my holidays in Jamaica and Corsica, very agreeable though these were too. I'm not sure what the definition of sophistication is, but I think a good part of it is the ability to derive as great a kick from humdrum pleasure as from exotic ones though, of course, it probably doesn't signify unless you've tried the exotic ones, too. Eastbourne isn't St Tropez, but I had a brilliant time there. And far from taking this as proof of my infirmity, I'd prefer to think that it merely shows that I am not yet some sad old sack who needs the warmth of the Med or the Caribbean to fire up my chilly English blood.
Really, I'm the last person to refuse a bit of long-haul winter sun, but I do believe that (and this must, sadly, be the one recorded incidence in which my views tally with those of the Green lobby and the anti-suntan-bores) we often go much further than we need to in search of our rest, recreation and restoration when often a change of scene and someone else making the bed is all we need. I know people who routinely take 14-hour flights to faraway countries where - reeling from jetlag, inoculations and delays - they spend 10 days burning off their outer epidermis and 10 nights drinking cheap booze before taking another 14-hour flight home - where they'll complain they feel exhausted! Whereas I left Brighton on Friday night overworked and undersexed but, after three rainy nights in Eastbourne, came back feeling a new person. I hope you'll excuse the smutty gag, by the way - but I always find that there's nothing like an English seaside town, however genteel, for effortlessly doubling one's entendre.
The practicals
Julie Burchill stayed at The Grand Hotel, King Edwards Parade, Eastbourne East Sussex BN21 4EQ (tel: 01323 412345, www.grandeastbourne.com).
The short-break rate (min two-night stay) starts at £195 a night for a deluxe bedroom based on two sharing and goes up to £450 a night for the presidential suite. Prices include full breakfast, three-course dinner, newspaper and use of the health club. Until Dec 22, there is a special rate of £125 per night per deluxe bedroom based on two people sharing. The four-day Christmas House Party from Dec 23 includes full board and entertainment starting from £790pp.
