Blissful Brighton

Swiftly glossing over the fact that I had been sufficiently ill-organised to take advantage of a free gig by Clearlake being put on as part of the Brighton Festival and was in fact waving OH off at Heathrow just as the band would have been going on stage this evening, I have had a fantastic long weekend in Brighton with a work colleague and their friends.

I now have a fairly good mental map of the late night bars in Brighton - why am I incapable of ever managing to get to bed before 2-3am when alcohol is involved (although to be fair, one late night/early morning was due to forming an informal search party for an errant member of our merry band of reprobates); know where some of the best Thai restuarants lurk and also just how long some people take to get ready!

And of course there was the rather neat music shop (Essential Sounds - most old cds about a £5) where the till bloke had it just right - instead of just doing the "thank you, here's your card" gubbins, he had it far more spot on as the dismissal after he'd married up case and cd was the rather cool "Go man".

But the whole time wasn't totally spent getting pissed and acting like a music crazed teenager (Hmmm, maybe it was) - I did get the opportunity to look at weird stuff in the Laines and was most gratified to find one of the best bits of flyposting I'd seen for a while.

However I did do a very passable impression of a teenager by taking part in the obligatory trip along the pier. Oh what fun to get drenched by the water splash thing - and yipee it was the V2005 look all over again as wearing light jeans and sitting on a wet seat is not a good look (and thanks so much to the person with the camera who captured my posterior for posterity). I flatly refused to go on "The Turbo" - my breakfast had threated to have an encore after I went on the rollercoaster and stupidly did agree to go on the naffest Ghost Train in the world.

Obviously it wasn't billed as such but the greatest fear I had was that the flaming thing was going to groan (haha) to a halt and I was going to have to get out and push it. If there is a benchmark for what a good ghost train should have (athmosphere, dangly bats, groans, zombies, speed), Brighton Pier wouldn't even make the first notch. I don't think going on this at night would have added to the "experience" - brilliant daylight certainly didn't. If they had still had a freak show it would have probably been the local ugly baby photo contest. But that is all part of the naffness of seaside attractions. yay!

Brighton - must do it more often, but less pissed.