There's been a kidnapping! It's Rachel, the daughter of the President of Sercia!

[davywavy]

Woke up at about 4:00am this morning feeling profoundly unwell, so I’ve decided to skive Wade International today. I’m sure they’ll survive without me. If I feel up to it later I may stroll to the park or into town, though.

On Saturday it was a pleasant sunny day and I was feeling restive, so I hopped on the train to Brighton for want of something else to do. It turned out to be a good move, as I had a pleasant and interesting day, starting with me looking up from my book on the train and realizing that I was sitting opposite Patsy Kensit. Thus far everyone who I’ve told about this has told me that I must have been mistaken, that it must have been a lookalike, but I’m firmly convinced; she’s aged a bit since Lethal Weapon 2 - and not necessarily well, either – and she was reading through a stack of newspapers (Telegraph, Mirror, Guardian), presumably looking for mentions of herself. Determined not to be a sad gawper, I read Breakfast at Tiffanys and reminded myself just how irritating Holly Golightly really is.
Arriving in Brighton I paused in a charity shop where I found a copy of Dave Lee Roth’s autobiography, which awakened in me a desire to play Jack Lewis again complete with yet more tales of crap rock & roll excess, and then headed to the arcades on the pier where my trip took the form of a ‘Best of David’: Time Crisis 1 & 2, Vampire Night, Daytona, Street Fighter 2 and Gunblade. If they’d had Double Dragon, Twin Cobra, and Narc then my voyage of electronic death nostalgia really would have been complete.
Went to the beach and read for a while – and Brighton beach was full of people snogging. I don’t know if this was some sort of deliberate scheme to make me feel left out, but it seemed that at every point of the compass as I looked around there was a couple with tongues firmly buried in each others faces. Eventually I gave up trying to read and stared at the sky, dreaming of distant people and distant things - and part of me wishing I weren’t there on my own.
After a few hours I went off to meet interior_lulu, whom I haven’t seen in some years – not this century, I don’t think. It’s always difficult to know how to start a conversation after such a break: “So, what have you been doing for the last four and a half years” always seems the best I can come up with but feels (and is) false and contrived. After an initial period of being stilted we found out that we still got on and chatted enjoyably and I ended up feeling that we had both mellowed considerably since we saw each other last. Sometimes it takes a reminder of the past to bring the changes into focus.
Cheers, Al, it was a good day, and hopefully I’ll see you again before 2009.