Thursday 23rd October 2025. Recently I crossed Warrior Square to get to the Goat Ledge café on the beach. It was overcast and lightly raining, but I was in one of my cream linen summer suits. As I crossed the road, a woman stuck her head out of a passing car and shouted at me: “What are you wearing?”
I shouted back: “Optimism!”
I’ve been living in St Leonards-on-Sea since June 2024. When I moved there, a London friend told me: “You’ll get bored.” This may have been true of St Leonards a few years ago, but there’s barely a day here now where there’s not a new exhibition opening, or a new dress-up event, or indeed the appearance of a new record shop. Even the coffee shop on the platform at St Leonards Warrior Square Station has a turntable, with a copy of Mr Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde usually propped up beside it.
Today I’m in London to have my hair cut and coloured (at Open Out , formerly Open Barbers, on Clunbury Street), and also to visit the bar Colony Room Green. This is in the basement of Ziggy Green, one of the several David Bowie-themed bars and cafes in Heddon Street, the site of the Ziggy Stardust album sleeve. Bowie is a big draw for London now: the new V&A East in Hackney has a permanent David Bowie Centre.
In Haddon Street there’s a plaque marking the Bowie connection, close to a pub opposite called The Starman. The “Green” in the title of Ziggy Green is due it being part of a franchise of cafes, all with “Green” in their title. In the case of Colony Room Green, though, the title is a neat pun. The original Colony Room members’ club, in Dean Street, Soho, had distinctive green-painted walls. I became a member myself in November 2007, just before it closed. Sebastian Horsley and Sophie Parkin were my referees.
Colony Room Green is a bar decorated in tribute to the old Colony Room, with green-painted walls covered in photos of the old regulars in situ at Dean Street: Francis Bacon, Jeffrey Bernard, Tom Baker, George Melly. There’s a picture of Sebastian H by the till.
I chat to the bartender here, Genta. It turns out she lived in St Leonards for a while, over a decade ago, and can only think of how that place used to be, with not much going on but sea, sun, and drug-related violence. Things change, I muse, and with consummate irony I order an alcohol-free beer. I’ve given up drink for good now. It’s been forty days and counting.
London is more expensive than ever, but it’s still the centre of all things, and still where all the big concerts and shows and art happen. The public transport is as frustrating as ever: the last train back to St Leonards is five to midnight, assuming there’s no engineering works and replacement buses.
Hotels are as overpriced as everything else in the city. However, there’s now a new solution, which I’m curious about. A ‘capsule’ hotel has just opened in Piccadilly Circus, the Zedwell. You can have a clean, modern, cosy room of your own there for just £30 a night. The only drawback is that the room is the size of a coffin. It’s a self-contained windowless bunk: you can’t even sit up.
Still, capsule hotels have already been a success in Japan and around the world, and a second one in London is already planned, in Leicester Square. I’m not claustrophobic; indeed, I’m a fan of minimalism, so I’m keen to try one.
I tell this to my hairdresser today, Davidas, who says they’d rather sleep on the streets.
Tags: bowie, colony room, david bowie, open barbers, st leonard's on sea
