Before the dog show I went with Em down the beach where there was a 'Paddle Round the Pier Day' or something. I think people have a race around the pier in various home made boats, but I didn't see any of the contraptions because the race took place at 9:00am in the morning.
I was fast asleep of course.
There was however a miniature fairground of sorts - ferris wheels always look good, BMX bikers who were oddly impressive and a tent in which an American sounding rock band were playing.
The dog show was far better.
It seemed to be a far more provincial affair, small with only a few stalls dotting the outside, selling various canine oddities. And lots of dogs of course. Dogs are always good. Particularly if they have beards.
We met the woman who went to school with And Also The Trees again (I met her for the first time at the dog show in St Anns Well Park last summer) and sat about on the grass, drinking pineapple juice and trying not to melt in the sun.
After the dog show we wandered round the recreation ground for a while. I had never been in before, though passed by hundreds and hundreds of times. I liked a very narrow strip of woodland at the western edge of the park. It ran the length of the park and was no wider than the length of my room. It was wild and tangled with undergrowth, a path snaking haphazardly through. Little obscure places like this always fascinate me.
Well, we are stranded in summer now. A few days of heat and it seems like summer has been forever and will be forever. The air tastes constantly of metal, and the nights bring a pale imitation of darkness. Most of the people on the streets of Brighton look like they are on holiday, and the bars are continually packed. Actually the last is a lie, but I couldn't think of anything else to add. Went to the Good Companions last night for Andy's birthday and the place was pleasantly quiet and chilled out.
But it feels like all the bars are packed. They are down Western Road anyway.
For little apparent reason, these last few days have strongly reminded me of the summer of 2005, I'm not sure in which capacity though. I had been on a rather excellent holiday with Mum and Dad back to Scotland where I used to live. This had kick-started a number of imaginative shifts, namely an interest, after over a decade of no interest at all, in comics, horror comics especially, and a deeper fascination with all things Fortean. The latter due to reading a number of books on the paranormal up in Scotland. I have always been interested in the field of course, but being back up in Scotland, where my interest in 'ghost-stories' really began seemed to fan the flames even more. Anyway. I returned back to Brighton after the holiday, and I found that I began noticing previously ignored places in Brighton and Hove as potential sites for mystery, namely that walled wood on the Old Shoreham Road that is actually the grounds of a school. I remember the wind blowing through the thick leaves when I used to pass by at night.
I suppose my contemporary reading matter had made me more aware of the mysteries and possible 'ghost-stories' inherent in summer, and this summer has fragments of that feeling too. A vague daydream-y notion that Brighton and Hove seems a far more mysterious and interesting place than normal, that there may be pockets of shadows and intrigue and arcane possibility which were not previously noticed. Or something. Not explaining myself very well here tonight.
Case in point though. Last night, before the pub, and going to meet Em after work on Dyke Road, I passed a building I had passed by numerous times before. Some kind of business / office type affair, just off Davigdor Road. Anyway, outside of the building was now some kind of installation next to the pavement. This seemed to consist of a single, needle-shaped standing stone, slightly yellow, and taller than me. I had never noticed it before. I could imagine some old seventies television programme, or maybe a lost Doctor Who story, about a business corporation who find such a stone underneath the building. Unwittingly displaying it as some historical artefact, they unleash buried elemental energies, which manifest themselves in lots of deaths, sub-Exorcist style possessions, new-age philosophy and cheap but effective psychedelic special effects.
Anyhow.
I'm tired now and must go to bed, even if it is only 9:42pm.
I watch 'The Haunting' first though -the original black and white version of course.
Or a cup of tea. Indecisive and tired.
