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Battle of the Bulge

(Top note: the personal posts are back!! Please tell me this isn’t a mistake.)

NEWSFLASH: I need to lose weight.

REWIND: I think it’s fair to say that I’ve had my ups-and-downs, weight-wise!

I was always pretty skinny up until about 1988, when I first gained a bit of weight. And I do mean a bit. At the time I was drinking some alcohol and also smoking an amount of pot (which, I’m sure many of you know, gives you “the munchies”). So, I was aghast enough, after seeing a photo where I looked kinda round-faced, to go on a diet! I probably weighed 11 stones. But by mid-1989, I weighed a mere nine stones—the lightest I’ve been my entire adult life. In fact, I was a bit too light. I am, after all, 5’8″, and my build, while not large, is not petite—so nine stones was pushing it!

It didn’t last long. I was back up to maybe 10.5 after a few months. And that, to my mind, was a good weight for me. Anyhow, I have to say that at the age of 20, losing weight was a breeze. I had a simple method: I just ate exactly half of every meal. The weight came right off, quickly & efficiently.
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Now It Can Be Told

I’m moving tomorrow. To Fulham.

It’s been an interesting past month or so. I got a cold which didn’t go away and it became apparent it was glandular fever. I’m still not 100%—the weakness and lethargy can last a couple of months—but I’m not too bad. (Having said that, I do feel a bit rough at the moment, but I hope it’s just the fact that I got a bit drunk last night, against medical advice…)

It is really, REALLY unpleasant to be actually quite ill in a town where you don’t really know anyone. I’d have really appreciated someone being able to do a bit of shopping for me, or walk the dog once or twice, just to allow me a couple or three days of complete rest. But it wasn’t possible here in Brighton. I had to drag myself out at least once a day to walk the dog and get food. It was, on the whole, a hellish period for me.
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Lotsa Weather

Now, look: it’s the middle of May and it’s the middle of the afternoon. You take the dog for a walk. What do you expect? Well, a la Brighton, what you get is you and the dog repeatedly being almost blown off your feet. Literally.

If this was an isolated incident, fine. Hm, okay, today is particularly bad, and you normally get this of a night. But still. I didn’t get anything like this in the depths of Winter in London (or Brum, very often).
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A Farce, You Say?

Hmmm… haven’t felt much like writing on here for a while. Real life gets in the way sometimes, have had a really, really weird three weeks, sometimes very depressed and generally disorientated.

Well, the move to Brighton happened. And about five seconds after, I realised it was a total, fucking mistake. You can’t begin to imagine what an amazing mind-fuck that is. This is what happens if you’re stuck in a too-expensive place on your own—you don’t think things through properly.

How can I detail my problems with Brighton? *sigh* Let’s try a bulleted list…

* I actually have friends in London.
* I miss them.
* It’s not as quick/easy to get to London as I deluded myself.
* It’s even harder to get to anywhere else in the country. Travel from here is just a total pisser.
* I got shit on by a bird for the first time since I was about seven years old within a couple of days of coming here.
* The coastal winds are utterly vicious, especially at night.
* And the nights are cooooooooold.
* Spiders and woodlice and bugs generally… lots of them. Everywhere.
* Nothing resembling a ‘proper’ city locally.
* Most of the buildings are ancient and in a shockingly awful state of decay. Even the really expensive ones. Double-glazing hasn’t been invented here yet.
* Living in an ancient, conversion-job building with a shared entrance and paper-thin walls really sucks. I don’t want to know when someone in the floor above farts, but I pretty much do.
* This Hobbit-hole won’t even allow a single divan through its doors. I still have neither a proper sofa to sit on or a bed to sleep on.
* Fresh coastal air, yes, but tons of earthy dirt and grime and dust nonetheless. Everywhere. Poor pooch Fred had a totally black belly within a week of being here.

And on and on and on. Think you get the idea. Brighton’s a beautiful place to visit, but man, living here is another matter entirely.
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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. :-/
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Brighton Comic Expo Report

I have been somewhat tired and distracted, but I thought it was about time I posted the full Brighton Comic Expo details on here!

On the whole, it was a fabulous weekend. Last Friday (18th) was a late afternoon set-off for me, leaving for Brum at 5pm. This was a bit later than planned, so a taxi was needed to speed things along. Travel the whole weekend was expensive, coming to a total of just under £95 in the end! Anyhow, in spite of the lateness I got into London, Euston at 7.30pm and met up with Paul. From there, it took us another hour-and-a-half to finally get to Brighton and check into the Hilton Metropole (where the Expo itself was being held).

Here’s a Saturday sea front view…

Brighton Beach November 19 2005
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