The Far Pavilion

We went to Brighton for the weekend. This meant travelling out on he 1st October, the day of train strikes.

We got the bus in to Croydon and walked round to East Croydon station.

The train to Three Bridges was empty for most of the way.

Change at Three Bridges for a Rail Replacement Bus straight through to Brighton.

In Brighton:

I’m not sure if this text was added by a graffitist. I didn’t have time to look too closely:

At Brighton Station, superb whorls of light and an RMT picket:

In the Grand Central pub, a table resting on a stack of books:

We went down towards the shops. There was an Enough Is Enough march on the day, but we missed it. Later on I noticed someone with a flyer, and also someone with a placard who must have attended. The nearest we got was being on the other side of the Post Office Sorting Office, which seems to have been the final destination of the marchers.

This mural next to the PO Sorting Office.

The dear old Komedia, where in 1999 I saw Stewart Lee with support act Trevor Lock:

We went to the Royal Pavilion to see the glittering crystal realm where George IV disported himself.

Along with some Indian tourists we read the inscriptions about how the Pavilion was converted to a hospital for Indian war wounded in 1915. There is a blue plaque outside for Mir Dast.

Later we walked along the sea front. We saw the variety of stickers on lamp posts, post boxes and other pieces of street furniture.

This queue was to get in to Drag Race UK:

As we walked past the Grand Hotel, the couple walking in the opposite direction wondered if it was the place of the Bombing of the Conservative Party Conference in 1984. It was.

The war memorial:

Sunday morning was very wet and windy but we had determined to go out and walk on the beach. We saw the Brighton i360, which we went up in on our visit her 2 years ago, when the weather was much better.

The beach, the West Pier, and the various art works along it:

Back next to our hotel we noticed this:

We checked out and went back to the station. We passed some more street messaging, including some on BBC Radio Sussex.

To avoid dragging our bags around for the next few hours, I had booked a slot using a left luggage website that had a location near the station. What it didn’t make clear was that the newsagents involved in the scheme were at the top of the big hill. On my way back down I saw a poor woman pushing 3 suitcases upwards, having clearly made the same mistake.

We looked around the shops a bit more. In the second hand bookshop I saw an extensive set of John Cowper Powys paperbacks with heavily creased spines.