Beer, swines and spirits

I was in Brighton yesterday, noting Keith Waterhouse's dictum that it "looks like a town that should be helping the police with their inquiries". It is quick to get there on the train from London Bridge, an hour or so, and to emerge from the station is to be enveloped by a strong and spicy smell - suggestive, perhaps, of a disturbance in the kitchen of an Indian restaurant during which a big pot of curry powder has been knocked flying.

The place isn't sleazy, exactly, just totally, gloriously relaxed, like a middle-aged ale gut or an orgasm on the edge of sleep. I've only ever been there to have fun and, therefore, associate going there with having fun.

Impressions: upsy-downsy streets with bright-painted houses and funny little shops, smoky cafe bars and backstreet pubs with books to read and leather sofas to slump in, the British First Party trying - and failing - to drum up support in front of the pier, fish and chips eaten sheltering from the breeze, a pit bull terrier with its paws on a pavement table trying to knock over a pint of Stella, shabby and not so shabby hotels, much loitering, posing, things and people to look at. I loved it, and will surely go back.

Memo to self: beg, borrow or steal half a million quid and somehow acquire a dear little bow-fronted Regency house - in or near Norfolk Square, ideally - and live happily every after.

===

Yes, the trains are quick, but full of fools. On the way down were three daft lads - one in white shoes, for pity's sake - who passed the time getting outside some tins of Castlemaine XXXX, swearing and fantasising about being police marksmen. Coming back there was a somewhat over-enthusiastic father, whose cooing and mwhahaha-ing at his toddler daughter soon got on everyone's tits. He flung the child around and up and down, trying to tire her out. "Katie, where's daddy, where's mummy?" More horseplay as the train jigged along towards Haywards Heath. "Katie, do you want some attention ...do you want some attention ...do you want some attention? Look at me, look at me....mwhahahaha...haaaaaaaaa". Slowly but surely, the collective will of the carriage turned against him and how the other travellers wished that Katie, instead of oooohing and aaaaahing, would pipe up with: "Shut your yap, you fucking imbecile, you're making a show of yourself."

Got back to town, had a couple of firm G&Ts and went to bed.