long weekends

are fun. Brighton was lovely, the weather was perfect (sunny and remarkably warm) and the company fun. We rollerbladed, sat on deckchairs, drank in strange bars, put bags of 2 pence pieces into slot machines and even got a little colour in our pasty british-winter skin.

I have never been to Brighton before, and it was … nice. I wasn’t really expecting much, I must admit, but the mix of shops and funky bars down by the beach was really good. When we had an hour to kill on sunday afternoon, we did it by sitting on the beach, listening to bongos and live bands, with tons of people around. ‘It is like being at a festival’, George said, and it was…

Rollerblading was an interesting experience, and again something I have never done before. And I discovered that you need a ‘mindset’ to rollerblade, a mindset I didn’t quite have by the end of our hour (but I wasn’t doing any more!). When you didn’t think about what you were doing, precariously balanced on a line of freely-rotating wheels, things seemed to flow quite nicely. Then you concentrate and bamm – it all goes horribly wrong.

Another hour, though, and I would have been fantastic!