(Up to: Calmness In ABig City United Kingdom Places Of Interest )

Well, this is where I live. Brighton's not like a lot of other places. Sometimes, in the winter, it gets grey and drab, like the rest of the country, and everyone wraps up warm and hides in their holes (except the really hard clubbers who insist upon wearing bad orange-and-green lined shirts and proving their manliness in the freezing sodweather - what's up with that, pray tell?). But then Summer comes along. Brighton has a beach, you see, but it's not a sandy beach. Well, it is, kind of, but the sand is really, really large, almost pebble-sized some may say. I think this is what lets everyone go mad - if we had a sanday beach, then people wouldn't hang out down there, they'd be forever saying "No, let's not go to the beach, I hate getting sand in my shoes and socks and sandwiches," and nobody would really do much. Instead, it's a great place to have big bloody parties where the rest of the nation turns up, kind of like the guy at Uni who always hosts parties because he doesn't mind cleaning up and loves the company.

I've also decided that I love the way that the "city" builds up into a densely tangled mass of small lanes, alleys and streets, forging into large hotels and conference centres as you go South, before stopping completely, like someone put Brighton over the edge of a huge table and karate-chopped off the other half. And then you just get sea. Vast, expansive, all-engulfing watery goodness, the yang to the reaching, protectiveness of the big sky above. I like that feeling of facing into a natural abyss of unconstruction, a void where our little anthill is afraid to go. If I moved away, I would miss the sea most, I think. Oh, and London Road.

It's almost the end of May (2003), and we've just had the final day of the Brighton Festival(s, actually - there at least 4 if you count the Virtual one...). The finale was at the Brighton Marina - we went along and got some wacky eFootage[tm] of it.

Yikes! It's March 2004, and the new festival programme is out. Here's my picks. It always comes around far too quickly...

Keeping up with things... Brighton Local Issues

(See also: Photography In Brighton )