...And then, the rain came

and Truck got cancelled. Well, postponed.

Either way, BOOOOOOO.

Be-right-on

So, I've been gone a while again. While one would expect that I would have gathered some humorous anecdotes and the such in my time away, all I have is some paper cuts and a collection of photos from my trip back to Brighton last weekend for one of my friend's birthdays.

There is nothing quite like getting off the train from Victoria and being hit by a pleasant waft of salty air as you catch that first glimpse of the sea. There is nothing quite like a beach, even a pebbly one, to swell the heart of a city person such as myself. I swear, I go a little bit nuts for the first hour.

However, all manner of wonderful feelings and idealistic memories of three years in Brighton were dashed pretty quickly as we walked into the centre of town and were met head on with the scrum that is Brighton on a sunny saturday in July. We were reduced to the kind of crawl you walk at during rush hour on the tube as we pushed through crowds of tourists and people with small children running riot. As usual, a large group of emo scene kids were hanging out on the low walls outside the shopping centre entrance, sweltering in their black skinny jeans and blocking the main doors.

Needless to say, we didn't stay in town long. We foolishly decided to walk through the North Lanes, where it appeared the entirety of Brighton had decided to converge simultaneously and where my photos begin. As we walked through Brighton, it appeared that the hot new thing to do is chuck your mate's trainers over the nearest power cable or lamp post. I lost count of how many pairs I saw.

Anyway. Yadda yadda yadda, we finally got to our friend's house, passed out for a while and then got up to go out. No trip to Brighton is complete without a trip to The Bear which was our collective local for two years. It's since been taken over and lost it's cool-ish indie vibe and the wonky pool table has been replaced with a newer, less wonky pool table and a Top 40 playlist now dominates the room. Boo.

We quickly moved on, into town to a virtually empty pub in the North Lanes. My boyfriend decided to teach us to play a drinking game that involved dousing your finger in Sambuca before setting it alight. You pass the flame from one person's finger to another around the table and whoever makes it go out has to drink their shot. Since I was already reasonably drunk by this point, I was the first to go out through my lack of coordination. Unfortunately, my mal-coordination extended to my camera skills at this point but you can sort of see the blue flame that setting fire to yourself generates.

Once The George pub closed, we decided to continue our evening at Pressure Point. However, cash was needed by many individuals, so we set off on a MAMMOTH trek (rather than do the sensible thing and back track on ourselves for a 5 minute walk to a nearby one). Ali, self appointed leader of the drunken rabble was convinced that walking toward town would yield a cash point far more quickly. As a form of retaliation for allowing this silly plan to happen, we pushed Joe (birthday boy) into a flower bed. I'm not sure how this qualifies as revenge against Ali but I promise there was some kind of drunken logic behind it at the time.

Once we had our money, we walked as fast as our little legs would carry us, back to the bar. From here on in, I concentrated on drinking as I was in no doubt that if I tried to use my camera, I would probably break it, lose it or drop it in a pint glass. The next morning, I awoke on the floor of Joe's living room, contact lenses from the night before stuck to my cheek and a desperate need for a Coke. Once we'd gathered our stuff, we stopped at the off license to pick up some cans.

Now, you would think that buying two Cokes from one store would yield identical cans. Oh, how wrong you would be. One can was French, the other was Russian. I got the Russian which was not only the smaller can but also went flat about five minutes after I opened it. In contrast, the other Coke Classique stayed sparkling for the whole train journey. Bastard can. And it was bigger too.


The final photo from my weekend was something I noticed as we were walking to the station. It was in the shop front underneath one of my friend's old flats. There's not much story behind it, I don't even know what the models they want are for but it got my attention.

And so, that was our 24 adventure in Brighton. This weekend's mini-adventure will take place in a field outside Oxford, at Truck Fest. Expect more next week.