Brighton

Right, so I went to Brighton yesterday (meaning Wednesday). That’s the moving situation. I’ve decided that, as Brighton is just 40 minutes away from London (the city centre) on the train, the air is a hell of a lot cleaner, and most importantly, you can rent quite nice places for about the same as you can get squalid dumps in most of London… that’s where I’m gonna relocate to.

The irony is that this is where mom and I planned to move to. We were still talking about this a year ago. It was roughly a year ago that mom started to show symptoms that led to a grim diagnosis and the end of her life. That’s been on my mind a fair bit, for obvious reasons, but I’m trying to not let it get me too down.

I do like Brighton, anyway. The seafront’s a major attraction, and as it’s not all that large, you’re never too far away from anything. I have to go into the city from here if, say, I want to browse a large music store… the only local option is a tiny HMV in Wimbledon. Yeah, Wimbledon turned out to be much smaller and less impressive than initial impressions suggested. :-/

Anyway, I met up with my friend Jackie (a fellow Bowie fan), and then we got together with Dez (yes, the Dez who used to publish Comics International). We went to a coffee shop near the seafront and had a nice chat. Then Dez dropped us off in Hove (he had to go pick up his daughter from school) so we could walk back and browse various letting agents along the way.

I think we went into five places and I left my details at three of them. We were quite wrapped up in talking and probably walked past dozens of others. Still, it’s a start, and it was just a nice visit generally, as it’s such a pleasant place and it was great to see Dez again and finally meet Jackie.

Dez also gave me a couple of local papers, which I need to scan for prospects. I should’ve done that last night, but I was a bit tired. I have prospects of a flatmate too, which I hope will work out this time… I really don’t want to repeat the mistakes I made here.

So, in spite of some reflection about mom, my mood’s not too bad all in all. The cheque came from Hotsauce today, for the work I did on Jonathan’s show (more on that as and when)—actually my first earnings so far this year, as things have been very quiet. Dez had a few ideas/suggestions yesterday which might prove useful in getting more work, but for now the priority is getting moved and settled.

Next week, Paul and I are going to see Rik Mayall in the New Statesman stage play at the New Wimbledon Theatre. I like Rik and it should be a lot of fun.

I also anticipate several more trips to Brighton in the next week or two. It’s not so bad. It’s less of a bummer than having to travel from Birmingham to London repeatedly, as I was having to do back in September.

Oh well, not much else to say at the moment!