Day 12: Brighton
Nau mai
Yesterday we wrapped up our time in the British Isles with a show in Brighton.
Vacating the most comfortable bed of my life was a career low point. It had been a triumphant evening but there wasn’t time for a victory lap, despite the temptation to stay on London’s crowning piece of infrastructure the M25 orbital motorway. Teddy drove us south until we were too hungry to continue. We found breakfast at a café that called itself 51° North and was located at a latitude of 51.2715 degrees north in the town of Mickleham. This wasn’t their first rodeo. This restaurant knew a thing or two about plating design and my veggie breakfast came out as a flower ready to brighten up my morning. The pollen filled centre was baked beans garnished with chives and around the outside were fried eggs, tomato, avocado, sourdough, hashbrowns, halloumi sticks, and roasted button mushrooms.
It was a pleasant afternoon that we arrived to in Brighton, and the fact of it being a Saturday meant that the cafes and bars were well populated as we drove through the centre of town. The venue was called Chalk, a club with capacity for 850, mostly standing patrons, set in the busy streets a block back from Brighton Beach. We loaded in, rolling everything up a cobbled street and then up a nice long ramp in the back of the building. It was a cave inside, the sunlight replaced by fluorescent worklights that illuminated the black painted walls, and a low ceiling held up by massive concrete beams. We said goodbye to the warm seaside air and began chipping away at the mechanical tasks that make up so much of a musician’s life.
Three hours later and the stage was set, and we were thoroughly soundchecked. There was time for a wander down to the beach before showtime and we found that Brighton hadn’t lost any of its 19th century charm with the old carnival rides rattling around at the end of the pier and the sparkly amber bulbs of the carousel lighting up against the dusk.
The venue had surprised us the day before with a change of schedule; our show would now be an hour earlier so they could put on a club night after our set. We would also get to perform the procedure known as a disco loadout which involves rushing all your equipment off the stage minutes after the show has finished so they can bring out the DJ table and hang the giant disco ball for the club night. Although playing your set before the hour of 9pm is not a very rock’n’roll outcome we enjoyed ourselves greatly and played our songs with the energy that a Saturday night deserves.
Thankfully we had several friends at the show to help us pack down quickly. Everything was whisked off stage and placed in a back room where we could organise and put things away in their places. Once the van was packed, we headed to the green room to collect our bags only to return to find that Teddy and the van had been chased away by the venue security who needed our parking space to set up an extremely long queuing area for the club. We met Teddy a couple of blocks away and climbed in for the drive to the hotel and the welcome prospect of an early night.
This is what friends are for.
The world is a beautiful and vibrant place and that generalisation extends to the hotel rooms of The Hickstead in Haywards Heath. Art corner was lucky enough to spot these beauties, perhaps a rendition of curtains or some other model of drapery, oil on canvas presented in the traditional square frame.
