What's Brighton all about?

(2026 Edit.  This post is from the archive. It was first published in 2008, and things and views may have changed since then.)

I've been home now for a few days and have gotten over the jet lag, which tore at me like a weeping sore, not enough to lay me down but more than enough to be annoying. I guess the thing I hated most was not being with Matt, spending time with him or being able to reach out and touch him. Yes,  we've spoken on cam, but as we've both agreed, it's just not the same, and we can't wait for him to come over to my side of the pond. He has to get his passport first, which is already in hand with all the documentation sent off and all that. I just hope he can make it over soon, sooner the better as far as I am concerned. I can hardly wait to show him this fair city and see what he makes of it; it sure is a lot different from Marion, Vienna and the rest of Southern Illinois!

If been asked a couple of times what Brighton is like, by Matt and others, it's a hard question to reply to as Brighton seems to offer lots and lots and means different things to different people. But basically,  here are just some of the reasons I have come to choose Brighton as my home.

Chinese, Goan, Indian, Italian, Jap, Lebanese, Tex-Mex, Thai, Greek, French, Spanish - you can sample food from all over the world in Brighton and Hove's 400+ cafés and restaurants! Enjoy a show at one of the 8 different theatres around this groovy city. Shopping - yep, this place has the lot, for all the best high street names, try East Street, North Street, Western Road and the Churchill Square Shopping Centre. OK, so the prices are not as low as in America, but there is still a lot of choice. Upper North Street has a range of antique shops. And don't forget Hove and Upper Kemp Town for antiques and bric-a-brac. Brighton Marina offers factory outlet shopping on the Waterfront, with top quality goods at discount prices (down to about twice US prices!). Explore The Lanes, with its narrow, paved streets full of shops selling antiques, jewellery, hats, designer clothes, steeped in history and much more.

Visit the North Laine area, Brighton's Bohemian Quarter, with quirky and unusual shops selling everything from bonsai trees to vegetarian shoes!! 

There are 5 museums, 3 cinemas, and 1 massive pavilion. Brighton hosts the UK's largest and boldest arts festivals, complete with a massive upside-down purple cow and also the largest 'free' gay pride event anywhere in Europe.

All this and I've hardly touched the surface of this great city, god, reading this, it's a wonder I don't work for the local council in the tourist department, it sounds like a bloody advert for the place. But, as I said before, there is so much Brighton has to offer, I've not even touched on the vibrant bar, pub and club scene, which is pretty wild at times.

David says, 'No one comes from Brighton, we all come from other places and settle here in town'. Indeed, he's right, in all the years I've been here, I can't remember the time I met someone who hadn't moved here from some other town, city or country.

Jake says, this is the city other cities try to be like but fail! Where else can you get a crate of beer delivered at 5am to the house of a drag queen with everyone in dresses after enjoying an evening on the beach and club with no one batting an eyelid?

The only way you'll even know what Brighton has to offer is to see for yourselves, which is what Matt is doing, and I recommend that anyone else do the same, come for a day, a weekend, a month or even a lifetime!

So there ya go, that's Brighton for you, or rather a little taste of it, a tiny slice of this funky city by the sea, which at this very moment is calm and still, the starlight shining on the black rippling surface like a mirror. I only wish I didn't have to go back to work after my lunch break is over. It's been good getting back to work, OK, that's a complete lie, it hasn't, it's been hell, I've not missed it a single bit while I've been away, but I have missed the folks I work with. It's been fab catching up on almost three weeks of gossip. The queenie strops are going on all around David, up on his floor, the damp flats that Rach has been looking at until she found a nice one for her and her fella, another David, to settle into. Quita telling tales of her wild housemate and declining four-somes, and Nyree laughing until she almost wet herself at my new dark denim dungarees!

Matt's out tonight with his friend Daved, which is good, he hasn't had much of a chance to socialise with his friends for a while, as I seemed to monopolise most of his time when I was over there, but a little secret, I don't half miss our brief but significant lunch time chat!

OK, that's ya lot for now, don't forget to keep coming back, comments are always welcome and tell ya friends, I need all the readers I can get. Strangers are just friends I haven't met yet!

mucking fuddled

(2026 Edit - this post was found in the archieve, dated 6 Oct 2027 at 12:04.  I was working for a large American company at the time, living in Brighton, Sussex.)

Sometimes life is all straight forward with hardly a kink and then at other times it's a right old mucking fuddling puddle of tangledness! I've just finished work and feel about as normal as a washing machine in the desert, my mind is pretty much mush ( some of you maybe thinking, nothings different!)

I've been kinda bitchy to my mate David tonight, but it wasn't my fault, he needed it, and it's because he barged his way into Gabriells dressing room the night before last and I always blame him a little bit of the god awful state I was in after our drunken night on the town!

Everything seems to be confusing me at the moment, first there is a new film about the life and times of Bob Dylan that's been approved, but there are six people going to be playing the music man. Richard Gere, Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Ben Whislaw, and young black actor Marcus Carl Franklin in his movie debut all play the great man, the sixth person in the film to be Bob is.....Cate Blanchett! Yep, confusing!

Troubled actress Lindsay Lohan, yeah that young soak, has checked out of a rehab clinic in Utah where she went in August following charges of drunken driving and cocaine possession, because she says she doesn't have a problem! Yeah right!

Nearly 300 participants started twisting and turning a small multicoloured cube on Friday on the first day of the Rubik's Cube World Championships in Budapest, the birthplace of the cult puzzle. Hello, the Rubik Cube? Have we gone back in time? Didn't we have that in the 80's? Is it back? I've not seen one in peoples hands since, well since I was at school, surely we're not back in the 1980's again, surely I've not slipped back to those heady days when the only thing I had to worry about was beating Marcus 'Fingers' Totting in matching the six colours on the six sides! Well that and not getting caught behind the groundsman's shed having a crafty fag with Gary or a sly five knuckle shuffle in the art store room with Jon! Actually come to think about it, perhaps it would be nice to be back in those days again! But, I'm not going back to having blisters on my thumbs from twisting that poxy cube for anyone!

It's not quite "Jurassic Park", but Swiss archaeologists were in a state of high alarm yesterday after thieves stole traces of a dinosaur footprint from an excavation site! Yep, apparently they just waltzed in and whipped away the footprint said to be 152 million years old. But the experts say that if it comes up for sale they will know about it! Yeah no shit Sherlock! I mean how often do you see a sale for something that old?

A Texas woman has escaped being charged with 'negligent homicide' (only in America!) after she killed her husband with a sherry enema. Tammy Jean Warner was due to go on trial last week but she's been let off due to the lack of evidence! But why on earth would you shove sherry up the arse?

A thief has stolen a cardboard cut-out of a policeman which was put in a store to deter shoplifters! Yeah honestly it's true, Derbyshire Police said a man had been seen on CCTV walking with the picture under his arm from a shop in Grasmere. The cut-outs were first introduced in shops in the area in 2005 in the hope that, at a glance, thieves would think the image was a real officer. But if that was the case, then why did the publicise it, with photo's clearly showing it was a cardboard cut out?

That's ya lot for today!

Drunken adventures.....I'm never drinking again.

(2026 Edit. This post was found in the archive dating back to 4th October 2007 at 12:07.  I was working on the night shift for a large American company in Brighton, Sussex when this was written.)

I'm not sure who I blame, whether it's our Rachael or perhaps our David, or maybe even me! I arranged to meet up with David on Tuesday and then by the fickle finger of fate we happened to bump up into little Rachael, so then we popped off for a beverage. Well, one beverage turned into two, which in turn turned into three, and then four and then oh my god it's morning! Yes, the three of us started out little escapade in red painting of the town in St James, a pub on St James Street, which as thats where we were seemed like a good starting point. Then after that we headed off to The Amsterdam, after sitting on the terrace for a couple it was on to Charles Street and then we twinkled round to VaVoom. Now I dont know how this happened, or why, but after that we went in to Revenge and I tried to pull a student young enough to be my son and then I danced like my dad! 

Oh how embaracing it was, well actually it would have been if the alcohol had not softened my memories of such events. After clubbing in Revenge, we trapsed up to Legends, which is usually my start and ending venue on any night out. It was great fun being out with David and Rachael, letteing our collective hair down, slagging off the world and enjoying the simple act of being British and perhaps over indluging! 

Rachael is great fun to be with, so full of life, and energy and she'll talk to anyone that one! Yep, in VaVoom she talked to a cute curly haired student, and when we got back to Legends she found a table and talked to a group of trannys! I cant believe it, so we chatted away like a house on fire to these three ladies, who had rcenetly come back from a competition at The Old Ship Hotel. Now one of the ladies was 73, I was shocked, surprised and my ghast never quite so flabbered! Look good for her age she did, and they sure knew how to have a good time. I'm not saying who is who or which one is 73, [Photo deleted] just the one in the middle without the wig is David! 

God, I'm not sure how much was drunk but my wallet was empty when we returned to my place, when and where Rach me and David played on the internet for a while till time for bed it was. Our own seperate beds in our own seperate places of course! When I woke yesterday, I wish I hadn't! My head spun, my stomach churned, my body ached and a few moments later my bladder emptied and my bowels exploded. It was the mother of all hangovers, never ever have I felt that bad after a single night out, and never ever ever again am I drinking. I could hardly move, so most of the day I stayed put on the sofa, with the occasional walk for more water to flush the evil poison from my system. I would have stayed on the sofa for the rest of my life had little Jake not forced me out and demanded I suffer the indignity of downing a couple of pints in Amsterdam, the bar not the city. Thank god it was only for a couple and then the little student treated me to a bag of chips on the pier! I know, how touristy, how common, how just perfect! We nattered about this, that, life, universe, number 42, love and pretty much everthing as the wind and dampness blustered at out faces and bodies. Oh the wonder of living by the sea. 

Eleswhere in the real world, the inquest into the death of Dodi and Princess Diana has begun in London and the jury have been shown new pictures and CCTV footage of the couple as they leave The Ritz in Paris on that last night of their lives. I'm not sure about any of the conspircy theories that have been banded about since that sad day, but I sincely hope this inquest will answer some of the questions still hanging in the air and put to rest all the stories, gossip and romours. Hopefully, when this inquest has been completely, we'll be able to say for syure what really happened and for all our sakes, especially Harry and William, we'll be able to let her rest in peace! 

Fifty years ago a team of Russian scientists had worked long and hard on the first man made object to end up in space, it was ' Sputnik' and was the first of it's kind to take to the region of space. It's amazing how far we have come in thsoe fifty years. The technological advances are sumpremely impressive, we've come a long long way, sadly they still dont have a cure for the common cold, but hey we know who to send things up in to space! 

House DVD of series 3 comes out over here toward the end of the month and I'm so blooming glad about that. Regular readers will know I'm a big House fan, HL is simply great and Jesse Spencer is a dream to watch. Oh that sweet Australian voice, I could paper my walks with that voice, not to mention drift away staring into those eyes....gosh I'm almost getting carried away into fantasy land!. Anyway, the point being.....actually I've forgotton the point of starting this take on House so anyway, the DVD comes out the end of the month and whoopee! Fab, fancy buying it for me> Oh and having mentioned Jesse so much, seems to me a good reason to put on a pic of him! Ahh well then there was a point to my babbling!

Right, here we go, that is the end of it for today! More soon! .

Spice up your life!

(2026 edit - This is one of the oldest posts I found in the archive of this blog. It dates back to 2007 when I was a multifunctional night worker employed by a large American company, in Brighton, Sussex.)

Wow, a whole four nights at work have passed by so very slowly, two nights of boredom and two nights of semi-boredom! It's not been the busiest of weeks at work, which is good in one way, meaning we can relax a little, but in another way, it seems like each passing hour is 120 minutes long! 

While I've either been working or sleeping, the world has carried on revolving, and democracy in Burma has been defeated yet again. The military crackdown in Burma is a reminder that street demonstrations and protests do not necessarily lead to success for the people. The military leaders in Burma have seen that the popular uprisings for a more democratic way of life have been squashed, well, at least for the time being. Some say China was partly responsible; the crackdown was like something from a Chinese handbook on how to halt protests. 

About 4,000 monks have been rounded up in the past week as the military government has tried to stamp out pro-democracy protests, led mainly by these compassionate people. The monks are being held at a disused race course and a technical college. Sources from a government-sponsored militia said they would soon be moved away from Rangoon. The monks have been disrobed and shackled; it's believed they will be moved away from the public spotlight, where they will either be forced into hard labour or executed. 

These demonstrations and protests have been the most serious challenge to the military leadership for more than two decades. And what have we done? Well, the rest of the world has stood back and watched; occasionally our leaders have uttered words akin to 'Oh that's bad, you shouldn't do that', but that was about as far as it went. Oh, how easy it is to be complacent, how easy is it to do nothing? 

Today has been a relaxing day for me; however, not the same for another of my work colleagues, David, who had a bit of a 'Spice' Meltdown! Now, our David is a bit of a 'Spice Girls' fan to say the least. I mean, he once had to be dragged away by security one time when he refused to let go of Mel C! Anyhow, he got an email saying he was one of the lucky ones and was able to get tickets for the upcoming tour. He had internet problems and various other events seemed to transpire against him, but he's got some, he thinks. But, the world of the Spice doesn't stop turning there, oh no, after talking to David, I turned on my PC, checked my messages, I too got the Spice email, and now, I'm the proud owner of 4 Spice Girls tickets for one of their shows at the O2 arena in London in January! They are £80 a pop, and I don't even like the Spice Girls, well not that much anyway! Mind you, I'm kinda looking forward to going to the O2 Arena, which is inside what we used to call the Millennium Dome. I haven't been back there since the millennium, so it will be cool to see how much it's changed! So Spice Up Ya World! 

It was rather strange, in the media it was reported that the reunion concerts sold out in 38 seconds, but they went on sale at 9am, and I purchased mine just after 6pm! But hey, even if I don't go, I can always flog the tickets, apparently they are currently on sale on eBay for nearly £900 each! Now that's one hell of a profit! 

Have you ever seen that TV prog called Made on MTV and other channels? It's all about these normal American kids who want to do something else or become something else. There was this young lad, who was a little nerdy and wanted to become a B-boy and breakdancer, the main reason was so he could get confidence and pull girls. Another in the series featured a girl who wanted to become a bike racer, so they worked hard on her cycling, and the reason she wanted to get a guy. So far, all the Made's I've seen feature young high school students who want to do something different in order to become more popular, turning their backs on their true friends during the process. It seems so darn shallow to me. I mean, is this what young people, our future decision makers and possible leaders, are like? Completely selfish, shallow and want other people to make them popular? Is there hope for a world? Does every generation hate the one before and fear for the future of the next one? Ya never know, maybe they will make a Made, where someone wants to do something positive, for the benefit of others rather than themselves! Maybe it could happen, but I doubt it! 

So that so-called singer Britney Spears has been ordered by the courts to hand over her two young children to her former husband, Kevin Federline of K-Fed! He's been given custody of Sean Preston whose just two, and one-year-old Jayden James, until further notice. Thank goodness for that; at least now Britney can completely self-destruct without the children being harmed or put in mortal danger. I mean, if they were still living with her, she might start singing to them, which is dangerous enough, and that's surely reason to take the poor little buggers away! Or, am I being too harsh? I suppose, being charitable, this at least gives her the space she needs to get the help she deserves.

Image by Arthur Halucha from Pixabay

52 two years ago, the Hollywood film star James Dean was killed in a road accident in California, USA. The 24-year-old actor was behind the wheel of his German-made Porsche Spider sports car when it was involved in a head-on collision with another car 30 miles east of Paso Robles on 30 September 1955. Dean, who was dead on arrival at the hospital, had suffered a broken neck along with other injuries, had only just filmed a road safety commercial in which he urged drivers to slow down and not drive too fast! The young star only finished working on his third and what would be destined to become his last film, Giant, the day before the accident. Can you believe James Dean only made three films, East of Eden, Rebel Without A Cause and Giant? The latter two, not having been released at the time, yet within a year of his death, nearly four million people had joined his fan club, and his studio was receiving around 4,000 letters every day. Even now, his posters, photos and the very image of rebellious youth continue to make in excess of £100 million every year. 

Of course, like any cult hero, there have been conspiracy theories and rumours, one of which began shortly after his death that he was not actually killed in the car crash but was hideously deformed and is still alive in a Californian hospital. If that is the case, it has to be the best-kept secret this world has ever known! 

Another story was from Alec Guinness, who is said to have had dinner with James earlier that week on Alec's first visit to Hollywood.  and warned him directly, "Please do not get into that car at all, by 10 o'clock next Thursday, you'll be dead, if you get into that car".  It is a tale that the actor even repeated on Parkinson!

The car itself, which had the horrible name of 'Little Bastard', has also had some 'way-out' tales about it that have gained light over the years, not least that two parts salvaged from the wreck were used in other cars that then went on to crash. Years later, a garage it was in burnt down. Other tales include a mechanic's leg being crushed as the car was being transported to another exhibition display, which promptly collapsed after it was set up. According to gossip, there was another story going around after a bloke broke his arm whilst trying to steal the steering wheel. I have no idea what the truth is; all I can remember is that the car went missing en route from Miami to Los Angeles in 1960, and nobody knows where it is to this day!