Brighton is a tease. One would think with the Atlantic Ocean pulsing a steady ebb and flow, it would be a committed place, decisive and true, but instead the combination of sea-breeze and sun is intoxicating, filling the heads of those who drink it in and causing them to, shall we say, lose their balance, especially when circumstance nudges them especially hard in one direction or another.
Or maybe it’s just me.
Whatever the case, my visit there this weekend was full of ups and downs, attraction and repulsion, but also an overarching giddiness of a sun-drunk lover stumbling past the shops, the lights of the pier, the smell of a carnival and the crunch of feet in the pebbles of the beach. It was a love/hate relationship, heavy on the love.
Love at First Sight
Friday had been grooming me for love with its continuation of a three day streak of sun and 70 degree weather. It just took one glimpse of the beach and its backdrop of unparalleled deep blue that can only be created by the kiss of sea and sky for me to be head over heels. Our hotel was called the King’s Hotel, and it was a friendly-looking white building only divided from the beach by a street. Apparently the hotel had originally been three private Regency residences which I only found out after our stay was over, but now I understand why we had to enter a maze every time when wanted to make our way from the lobby to our room and vice versa. However, I still have no explanation for why the beds were on wheels with no way to lock them, unless the owner just wanted to take rock and roll to a whole new level.
Despite these oddities, our GSE crew was content with our living arrangement and set out to forage for food with a spring to our steps. We had Thai and I tried samosa for the first time. Mmmm. Deep fried deliciousness. Then Mike the program director pointed us in the direction of the clubs and left us to our own devices. As the night progressed, these devices evolved into wandering around Brighton, stopping at a convenience store and buying blue raspberry WCK, and skipping stones as we sat on the beach drinking in the sound of the waves and the feel of the night on our faces.
Trouble in Paradise
It started when a baby screamed in pain outside my window early Saturday morning. Oh wait, that’s just the seagulls. No, actually the day started off just fine. We went to explore The Lanes (a cluster of little shops and markets) and the Royal Pavilion (the exotic-ly furnished [as in from China, you pervs] palace of King George the IV) before eating lunch on the pier (a place complete with carnival rides, arcade games, food stands full of burgers, chips, ice cream, and every other food that’s probably super bad for you, and all those other things that go so well with sun and water).
Then Meghan and I attempted to sun bathe on the beach even though it was a tad chillier than acceptable sun-bathing weather. In the moments when the wind lulled and I had straight sunshine on me, it was quite nice. Unfortunately, these moments were so infrequent that we called it quits early and went to do more shopping (and flirting with an English skater-boy in the DC store we chanced upon). We had a GSE meal at a Mexican restaurant with warm conversation and a couple shared pitchers of margaritas. It should have been followed by a perfect evening of Brighton raging and the slim but existing chance of running into aforementioned skater-boy, but trouble had been brewing. All afternoon something had been a little off. The stupid roller beds combined with the location of the dresser and my natural gracelessness had caused me to give myself a bruised lump in my knee. My eagerness for a hot shower after being chilled by our sun bathing attempt had made me inattentive to which side of the tub the shower curtain was on, this leading to slight to heavy flooding and a call from reception because the room below us was getting leaked on. I was out of my zone and I couldn’t figure out why. I thought I recaptured it in my chicken fajitas and piña colada, but I was wrong. Oh so very wrong.
We left the Mexican restaurant. We parted ways with Big Mike for the night (resolved in our conclusion that we are his favourite GSE group ever). We found Club Audio and made our way inside cover-free. We waited in the bar for the club to open, sitting in a raised area with a table and large booth and debating if we should get drinks yet or not. We realized we didn’t know if the club part was upstairs or downstairs. I volunteered to find out. I stepped off the raised section. It was dim. The step was abnormally tall. I am abnormally uncoordinated. In half a second I was transformed from a vivacious prancing girl to a vivacious crippled girl laughing so I wouldn’t cry.
Needless to say, I did not go clubbing last night.
No, I hobbled back to the hotel with Meghan, reassuring two drunken men that ‘no, I was not a lesbian, I was simply holding my friend’s arm BECAUSE I COULDN’T WALK,’ and then talking with a group of native Brighton-ers, one of which was also limping, but she turned out to have high heels that didn’t agree with her feet. I reassured her that flats were just as dangerous.
My night of Brighton merry-making and been degraded to lying in the hotel bed watching the only thing on TV, which was, ironically, ‘The Idiot Awards.’
This morning we took the train back to London, and much hobbling later, I am now back in Nido using my unpacked backpack to elevate my foot and a bag of ‘Mushy Peas Cook and Serve’ from the 24 hour shop to ice my grotesque looking protrusion of an ankle.
(Sigh) I forgive you Brighton. It’s easy to hurt the ones we love. I’ll never know why you pushed me away, but I’ll never regret the times we had together. The blue bruising on my ankle is the same shade of your sea sky kiss.
XOXO
Sarah
