Western Road/Lansdowne Street, Hove
This was a few months ago (It’s now June 2020), but I’d been out for some drinks with friends and was a bit drunk. On my walk home I was approached by a man on a bike with a food delivery bag (I can’t remember what kind). He stopped me and started chatting, quite friendly at first and asked what I’d been up to that evening/where I was going etc. I spoke to him for a few minutes then carried on walking home, the guy walking alongside me. I decided to go onto Western Road and walk the long way home to make sure I was on a main road as I felt a bit uncomfortable.
The guy then grabbed my hand and tried to guide me down a poorly lit road, telling me I should go to his house with him as he has loads of booze and drugs back there, which I declined. I managed to call my friend without him realising and pretended she was calling me and had to leave. I said my goodbyes and stayed on the phone to my friend until I was pretty much home. I hung up the phone and got my key out. At this point I realised the guy had followed me home and was stood at the top of my steps, shouting at me to come with him and not leaving me alone. I managed to get into my house okay and the guy cycled off. I didn’t feel safe in my own home at all until I had moved out.
Lansdown Street, Hove
I had an issue with damp in my last flat and needed someone to come out to have a look at it - there was a whole thing with my landlord and the workmen so it ended up that a guy who was a ‘friend of a friend of the landlords’ came to take a look. He asked me several unprofessional and irrelevant questions about my personal life and who I lived with. He then made some comments about my appearance and how I was ‘really hot’ and ‘surely you’re not single’. I was so shocked that a man about twice my age would ask me things like this in my OWN HOME that I didn’t really know what to say and just tried to make him leave. I reported it to my letting agents after it happened, but they didn’t seem to be bothered and nothing happened about it, making me feel like I was just overreacting.
Danni Golding