Brighthelmstone

(2026 Edit - this post is from the archive; it was first published on 19 August 2008 at 03:44. Facts, feelings, and views may have changed since then.)

Brighton is a wonderful place, cosmopolitan, vibrant, bohemian, colourful, queer and a true 24-hour city of the new generation. But it's also a town with a rich and equally colourful history, part of that iconic history of the town surrounds the lovely West Pier, now little more than a ghost rising from the sea.

Photo Slbs / West Pier, Brighton /

CC BY-SA 2.0

The West Pier has a special place in my heart. Every time I pass it now, I think of the former glory and I feel a strange connection to the distant past. The West Pier was built between 1863 and 1866 by the Brighton West Pier Company and designed by the doyen of pier engineers, Eugenius Birch of Westminster. The original construction consisted of iron screw piles, which supported iron columns with an iron girder work supporting wooden decking. It originally had only two square kiosks at the entrance, two octagonal kiosks with minarets in the centre and four more octagonal kiosks at the corners of the large pier head platform.

Later additions were the central windshield in 1890; the pavilion at the head in 1893, which was designed to seat 1,400 people and converted into a theatre in 1903; the concert hall in the centre in 1916, and the raised entrance at the shore end in 1932.

The pier was closed during the Second World War and was cut in two to prevent an enemy landing. When it reopened, the theatre was converted into an amusement arcade. Scenes in the very famous film 'Oh! What a Lovely War was shot on the West Pier, in which many local people had parts, although I wasn't one of them as it was released four months before I was born!

By 1970, the owners of the pier wanted to demolish part of the structure, however the pier was listed to protect it, yet years of disrepair and neglegt meant the pier head was too danagerous for the public to walk and thus sealed off. Five or so years later, the rest followed suit and completely closed. There have been many plans to redevelop and restore the old lady of Brighton over the years, it became the only Grade I listed pier in the country in 1982. Some basic restoration work had taken place, but two fires have ensured that there is nothing left to restore.

I've watched the pier from afar, walked on part of it when I was a little nipper and seen films about it. I've also watched flames dance over the little that was left and consign the once grand old lady of the sea to history and nothing but memories of a bygone era.

Brighton's West Pier Trust

Love at first sight???

(2026 Edit - This post is from the archive: it was first published on 24 November 2007 at 17:54. Facts, feelings, and views may have changed since then.)

Phew, I've just come to the end of another night shift, and it's been a night where every single hour seemed like two! And, I wondered if there could be any more than 24 hours in the day? Why oh why, when you're watching the clock during working time, those ticking hands rotate at half speed, yet if it's your leisure time, they practically spin themselves off going so fast!

During those long dark night hours, we tried to make up songs about the place that is called work, now I don't claim to be a wordsmith or a clever lyricist, so my addition to the collective collaboration was simply - "I think this office, is like an orifice on the lower portions of a hippopotamus" OK, so perhaps I shouldn't give up the day night job! 

During lunch, David and I sloped off to Shaw Towers to escape, and whilst we were there, I popped a DVD of Sex And The City to while away our hour of freedom. It was one of the shows where someone was getting married to someone else after only knowing them a couple of days, love at first sight, and it's got me thinking. Is there such a thing as love at first sight?

I asked David, and his reply was a firm, vehement, No! A no messing, no nonsense. A non-confusing no. Rach from the office gave an equally strong no. I've just spoken to Jake, and he says yes, hurrah for romance!

What is Love at first sight? Well, according to the internet's equivalent of the font of all knowledge, otherwise known as Wikipedia, Love at first sight is an emotional condition whereby a person feels romantic attraction for a stranger on the first encounter with the stranger. The term may be used to refer to a mere sexual attraction or crush, but it usually refers to actually falling in love with someone, literally the very first time one sees him or her, along with the deep desire to have an intimate relationship with that person. The stranger may or may not be aware that the other person has any such notion, and may not even be aware of the other person's presence (such as in a crowded place). Sometimes two people experience this phenomenon towards each other at the same time, usually when their eyes meet.

If you ask me, I'd love to believe in love at first sight. I like the idea of romance, of the whole possibility that you can, possibly see that one person that you instantly know you want to spend the rest of your days with. You know what I'm talking about, the one person that presses all your buttons, that lights all your fuses, that ignites the fire within? As I say, I'd like to believe that you can see them, just once and know it's them for the rest of your natural born! But I think sometimes those four-letter words that both begin with L often go together, yet have completely different meanings. I am, of course, referring to love and lust, and when they collide, it can be fatal!

Love at first sight, I so want to believe, when I started writing this, my mind travels back a few years to a time in a smoke-clouded Revenge nightclub here in Brighton. I was walking through the lower floors bar with my pals DB and Dan, when all of a sudden, walking in the opposite direction was a single young lad, around my height, with dark hair, wide eyes and a strange yet intriguing smile. Our eyes met as we passed by each other. One, two, three, I turned to see at the same split second he also turned around. Humperty humperty humperty went my heart. However, my friends were still walking toward the bar, and he was walking towards the dance floor, and I thought, 'what a cute guy,' yet continued to the bar. Drinks were consumed, and dances were danced - with my friends. Then, we took a stroll on the upper level. Suddenly, as we were walking toward the upstairs dance floor, walking toward the bar.....yep, you've guessed right, that boy again, we smiled, we passed, one, two, three, we turned at the same time. Was it love at first sight, or was it lust? This time, we walked towards each other, no words were spoken, but our lips came together, as our lips parted and our tongues met each other, our hands explored each other's backs. Our chests were pressed together, and I swear I couldn't tell if the pounding I felt was our hearts beating at the same time or the thumpingly loud music. We broke this snog and smiled at each other, and then parted again.

I never did get to bed with that boy, although we've snogged each other many times on numerous nights after that first electrical meeting, we never took it to the next level. I have no idea if what I saw that first time in Revenge was love or lust; I can't tell, I don't know. But what I do know is, I have not forgotten that boy. I've often thought of him, I've often wondered about him, I've dreamt about him, I've not met him in the intervening years, yet, but he still controls a part of my heart and mind, and perhaps my very being. Whenever I hear the phrase 'love at first sight', I think, with a smile crossing my lips, I think of that night in Revenge when I saw him, that boy, who got the nickname 'cap-boy', for the very first time, and I wonder whether it was love at first sight or lust at first sight.

It's up to you now. Is there such a thing as love at first sight? Does it really happen? If so, who does it really happen to?

Madness!

(2026 Edit - This post is from the archive; it was first published on 19 November 2007 at 01:06.  Facts, feelings, beliefs may have changed since then.)

I woke with a full bladder and a howling in my head that struck my very core. Yet as I emptied my bladder, the howling continued unabated, either I have a brain tumour or it's windy outside, I reasoned with myself! I padded to the lounge and found the window open and thankfully gazing down the street to the sea, I could tell that the brain tumour had not struck me down during the hours of slumber - it was windy as hell! I could see the white water of the waves racing to shore and pondered going for a ride, obviously, it being a Sunday, I dismissed that thought straight from my head in an instant, I'm not that mad!

After I had ventured round the road to the little corner shop, which must be the only one left in England that isn't run by Asians and got the Sunday papers. I felt the wind on my face and decided to take a little walk along the front, so I went down that way and nearly got blown off my feet; it was then decided to be a short walk! I was along the front, looking at the waves and saw all these people along the bottom. There was some kind of commotion going on! Upon further inspection, I found it was the Brighton 10k run. These brave, or mad, fools were running a race with the wind in their faces; it must have been bloody hard, as I was having a job just staying upright, and I was standing still. I watched these athletic fools in admiration mixed with sympathy for a while, until my fingers had turned to ice and numbness was setting in, and my nose resembled Rudolf on the eve of Christmas!

So that was my morning, my seafront walk curtailed by the bitter wind and the rumbles of an empty tumtum! I relaxed with a bowl of muesli and worked my way through the papers whilst a seemingly unending circle of Grand Designs repeats played on one of the freeview channels. Whilst I was relaxing, on the other side of town, Jakey was working his little tush off in his part-time extracurricular paid activity. A rather well-paid part-time job that isn't conducted in an office, if you know what I mean? Still, a boy's gotta do what a boy's gotta do, especially one whose putting himself through university without rich parents to bankroll him.

Children In Need raised £19 million, £20 million, or £21m depending on which paper you read and with variables of 2 million between three newspapers, it makes you wonder how much of what they print as fact you can actually trust. But, whatever the actual bank balance, it's still a hefty sum of charity donations to help give the needy kids of once Great Britain get more smack, crack and coke!

The Christmas spirit seems to be a bit lacking in Australia, store Santas have been banned from chanting a merry ' Ho Ho Ho' because, in this 'politically correct' madness, it might offend some women; instead, they have to chant the un-traditional 'Ha Ha Ha'!

One of the funniest moments recently watched on 'I used to be a celebrity get me in here' was former boy-band member J, not having a clue of the running order on one of his own band's CDs. Luckily, from the group, dumb blonde Gemma the ex-actress from Hollyoaks, was a fan and got the question right, and they were rewarded with chocolate-covered strawberries. Oh, and staying with the show, I must say hats off to Geordie hosts Ant and Dec, for making this car-crash TV look good and almost interesting, which it has yet to be. Oh, and one other thing, is there ever anything that doesn't get a loud belly laugh from Mr Christoper Biggins, who must surely be the biggest and campiest creature in camp? You can say what you like about ol' Biggins, but he's sure put some life into this already dull show, so long may he continue and with a bit of luck and some double-sided sticky tape, he may yet be crowned King of the jungle!

I've always thought X Factor judge Louis Walsh was a bit of a knob; now he's just gone and proved it. Speaking after appearing on the really dross Katie & Peter Unleashed, he said of Ms Price, 'She asks the questions everyone at home is thinking? Really? Is that what he thinks? I would have thought most people at home were thinking the same as me, when is this fooking crap gonna end!!!!

Winter again

(2026 Edit. This post is taken from the archive. It was first published on 18 November 2007 at 00:03. Facts, details, and views may have changed since then.)

Today's weather - wet, windy, cold, I think winter is here at last!

I was a good lad, when Jake said come down for one last night, I took him at his word and went down for one, which, as is always the way, turned into two, but that kinda goes without saying. I mean, I'm a gay man, and we just can not have just one pint in the pub, it's not the done thing, it's just not gay-legal!

Besides, I just had to get out of the house, I was suffering Charity over-load! The annual Children In Need was dominating the BBC schedule, and I'd had about as much as I could take. I mean, we had old Terry Wogan hosting along with flighty Fern 'Xtra Factor' Cotten, which was OK, but I think I do sigh at the constant demands for me to pick up the phone and give my hard-earned dosh to kids' charities by various celebs, who, if they gave just one day's wages, would negate the need to have such appeals in the first place. 

Anyways we had John Barrowman singing, which was good. I can hardly believe he's 40, ya know, or he's been with his partner Scott for 16 years, but I'm digressing. Back to Children In Need, I'd got bored of the charityfest, OK, so I may sound tighter than a Pygmy gnats arse, but I do give time and money to charity, I just don't like being asked for it, and besides, we had Jason Donovan singing Too Many Broken Hearts and looking like a complete startled rabbit. Oh, the shame of it all, so when Jakey texted the location of the beverage-taking establishment, I slid on my slingbacks and hared down the road to the venue that was once Charles Street and is now just Messy Road!

So after a couple of pints had turned to four, it was time for Jake to do some work and me to head home, which reluctantly we did. Oh, now, I did something I don't usually do, I approached this young thing in the bar, as if I was going to chat him up, which is something I never do, because....well....I can't! Anyway, he was about 24 or so, slim, dark hair, the kinda boy who would not look out of place grinning up from the pages of a magazine, well at least that's what I thought as I was getting to the end of pint number four. Anyway, as Tom Cruise would have said in the 80's before Scientology took over rational thought, I crashed and burned!

But worse than being rejected, turned down, kicked into touch, this lad with the dazzling smile, even had the cheek to call out 'See ya later, pop's' to me as he made his exit! Pop's? Me? No, I'm only in my thirties for fuck sake? Surely pop's is reserved for men of much more advanced years? Like grandfathers, or grandpa's for example, not mere thirty-something year olds like myself. I mean, I'm still in my prime, a hot specimen of pure maleness, I'm not over the hill yet, am I?

I suppose there is that 'age' thing that surrounds the gay population, or at the very least, some of it. You know that ageist mentality that pretty much adds twenty-odd years to your age once you go past 29 for the last time. So I may be 38 in the real world, in the gay world I'm more like 58, far too old for wearing Prada Jeans, Abercrombie tops and chatting up 23-year-olds?

Talking of bright smiles, have you seen the advert for the new Colgate Total, Professional Weekly Clean toothpaste? Apparently, it's formulated with the same stuff the dentist uses to clean your teeth with something called prophy-silica or whatever. Anyway, it comes in a box and is supposed to make your mouth feel amazingly clean. So I got some, first of all, £3.29 for a tube of paste for teeth is a little on the side of expensive. Then, when I got it home, I was even more disappointed, the rather chunky box is just that, a box! There's nothing in it except this tiny tube of paste, and mark my words, the tube is tiny. The box proudly proclaims it's got 6 weeks usage, that's all, jolly good until you remember 'Weekly Clean', you only use it once a week, therefore that's 6 cleans - £3.49 for 6 cleans, what a waste of money. Still having splashed the cash on it, I used it, and to be frankly honest, it made my mouth feel fresh, but only about as fresh as popping in two pieces of Extra chewing gum! So this 'Professional Weekly Clean from Colgate Total is more like a total rip-off!

The Box makes it look good until you put a normal-sized tube next to it, and then you see the real size. But it's not until you take the tube out of the box that you see the actual size of your purchase! Is this clever or misleading packaging?

 

Apparently, you can forget Wii's this year as they've sold out long ago, but the next big thing on kiddies' Christmas lists this year is going to be Dan Dare! Yeah, apparently, the strange superhero of the 50's is making a comeback. He's all set to be the next big thing in kids' entertainment. Which begs the question, is everything old going to become new again?

I think I might be about to get into classical music, violin music to be more precise. Is this because as those years advance, my tastes are becoming the same as my crusty old father's, or because Joshua Bell, who's storming up the charts if a fit bit of totty? That's him on the right, make ya own mind up!

I'm still getting to grips with this cyber social interaction malarkey, I've got profiles on various different sites because friends have told me I should be online and up to date, yet I've only got 19 friends on MySpace, and I need more? But what's the etiquette about asking people to be your friend on MySpace? Is it considered bad form to just nip into someone else's friend list and then invite those other people - is that pinching your friends' friends? Will I get the Internet police after me for pilfering other people's mates? How do you get more MySpace mates without seeming like a desperate Billy-no-mates needing to be popular?

I've had an email informing me that two of my friends on Facebook have invited me to a quiz and sent me a beer - now that's nice, isn't it? Although I don't understand how I'm going to enjoy a beer on the Internet without blowing up the PC, it's still a nice thought! This whole Internet socialising trend seems to have taken over the world, once just the domain of the younger generation, is now home to middle-aged mums, dads and grandmas, indeed even the odd pop's! But as we get more and more social in cyberspace are we getting less and less social in the real world? Are our social skills becoming less about talking and more about typing?

If reality is no longer real, when is reality actually reality?

(2026 Edit - This is a post from the archive; it was first published on 16 November 2007 at 23:23. Facts, things, and views may have changed since then.)

The whole of the south has been bathed in clear blue skies and watery winter sunshine for the past couple of days, which has made my time away from the office all that much much more enjoyable. Yesterday I got the old cycle out and trundled off to Portslade and met up with Mo! Mo, for those that don't know, is a 50-something lady with the energy of a 20-year-old who loves to club to really hard dance music that's so hard it makes the ears of your average hoodie boy bleed! We nattered and chatted and then cycled down the prom. She went off to meet her daughter, and I came home to relax my aching muscles.

As one reality TV show takes to the airwaves, another finishes relatively unnoticed. Celebrity Scissor Hands, a show where allegedly celebs cut various poor sods' hair, all in the name of reality TV and charity. I'm not sure where they've got the idea of Celebs from, I mean, on this hairdressing disaster show they had tiny wee teen rapper 'Lil Chris' equally tiny yet much older actor Warwick Davis, DJ Brandon Block, some young Aussie geezer called Ben Nicholas who is/was an actor apparently, also a radio producer and some silly girl no one's every heard of. Oh, and some girl from Hollyoaks, which I haven't seen for some time. Obviously, not your A-list celebs feature on this BBC offering, which, as it was over on BBC3, had an audience of about 40 and a dog! Still, hey, it was for charity, so I shouldn't knock it too much. I'm just left with contemplating the question, why? Is this what some fat over 50s executive things the youth of today want?

So as the last snippy snips of the celebs' scissors fade into the distance over on ITV, their flagship reality show 'I used to be a celebrity and now need something major to relaunch my now dead career,' has started. OK, so perhaps I'm being a little unfair, I've previously enjoyed 'I'm a celebrity, get me out of here', I've liked the fact that these odd bods of z-listdom have had to sleep rough in the Australian jungle and do various horrendous stunts and trials to get food for the evening meals, obviously all under the watchful eye of hundreds of cameras.

Now this years collection of show business hasbeens included - Lynne Franks, Public Relations guru and New Age feminist who allegedly inspired Jennifer Saunders’ Absolutely Fabulous character, Edina Monsoon. Marc Bannerman, an actor Marc found fame playing Gianni de Marco in EastEnders, and has since undertaken a variety of new challenges, mainly signing on the dole! Gemma Atkinson, It’s hard to miss former Hollyoaks star Gemma, she’s usually plastered across the pages of lads’ mags, newspapers and women’s magazines. She also appeared in the last series of Soapstar Superstar, so in other words, she hasn't had a proper acting job since Hollyoaks. Jason J Brown from a now debunked boyband called 5, that lasted for all of five minutes. Anna Ryder Richardson, a pint sized designer that used to work on the BBC show Changing Rooms. Rodney Marsh - who? A moody chef John something race, who actually seems quite normal which is rather strange for a reality TV show entrant. Katie someone from another reality show, so hardly a celeb at all and then you have a former model that's was last seen in the 70's and should have stayed there and has the loudest mouth on the show and that's really saying something - Janice Dickenson. Oh and a former Brighton resident, a larger than life rollypolly Christopher Biggins, who'll go anywhere for a glass of champagne, indeed he was even spotted at the opening of an envelope recently.

So, this years collection is showing signs that even this flagship show is finding it tough to get decent celebs on board, could this be an indication that reality TV shows are on the way out and we, the viewing public are seeking an altogether more sophisticated form of entertainment?

Mind you, reality is less reality these days, previous revelations from various other progs in the same genre have shown us that the only reality left in reality TV is the editors knife. In the passed year we've had made up kids winning competitions, producers phoning in shows pretending to be the audience, a dangerous bear actually was a man in a bear suit, Gordon Ramsey fishing with a spear, yet the fish he 'caught' was actually one caught by someone else an hour before. We've seen clever editing making villains and hero's out of people that really don't deserve either title. And now, I'm hearing gossip on the 'jungle' drums that not all the pretend celebs over in Australia are spending all their time in camp. Oh no, from various reports received from one of the crew over there, certain celebs are nipping out of camp to the crew village, relaxing in the warm, having proper toilet breaks, beer and energy bars proper nosh up. Timmy M is working on the ITV2 version of the show and told of how he went to one of the drinks areas for a beverage for his shows presenter Matt Willis and found two of the supposedly 'imprisioned celebs' lounging about. So it would appear that even this reality is not actual realatiy, just a TV version or what reality would be had it been left to be real. Which begs the question what really is rreality these days? And, is it really reality if there are no reality TV show cameras there to record it? And does an warbling tree knat's farts sreally smell if there is no-one in the Queensland jungle to smell it?

I'm going for a lie down now, I think I've overdone the whole reality thing! I can not cope any longer, I need a break from all of this, give me a dose of normal TV, please!