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Oh I do like to be beside the seaside.
May. 29th, 2012 09:55 amI have a real soft spot for Brighton; being the closest point with a beach to London it is a town whose entire existence is based around people nipping off from the capital for a bit of weekend seaside how's your father and I do rather like the air of seedy charm about the place. From the impressive Georgian terraces on the front and fancy hotels for respectable well-to-do people to take their bit on the side, to the Royal Pavillion where the Prince Regent used to get his end away with really classy molls to the cheap streets and B&Bs in the backstreets for the lower end of society, there's a real democratisation of furtive weekend fumbling by the briny going on there. I find it all quite amusing in a saucy 50's postcard charming sort of way. Not that I'd ever get up to any of that nonsesnse myself, you understand.
Anyway, seeing as it was super hot over the weekend I did what absolutely everyone else in London did and took myself off down to Brighton for some quality time. Some of those people may have gone for a variety of sordid activities, but I went to take the waters, clear my lungs of the city grime with the sea air, and to laze on the beach like a stranded Baleen Whale with a book.
It was all very sunny and even with teh factor fifty liberally applied I still wound up with a tan, and I lay on the shingle idly listening to the coversation around me and people-watching. The gaggle of students to my left were talking loudly in that 'we're so cool and mature and grownup' carrying way you have when you're 19 about the great night they'd had last night with all the girls they'd pulled, booze drunk, and fake recreational drugs taken. I was uttely convinced by every last one of their stories.
Still, as I looked out over the beach I couldn't help but notice how humanity seemed to be divided into two; or rather, how the people with their shirts off seemed divided into two. On the one hand you had any number of impressively lean, cut, toned or generally muscular sorts who plainly spent a lot of their time engaging in sport or at the gym or whatever, and on their other hand you had the sort of people who a hundred years ago would have been in a carny booth somewhere in Arkensas under a banner reading "Gasp in horror!". I gasped in horror at them. It was odd how the demographic split. When the police describe a criminal on crimewatch they always say "Of average build", but the people of average build were all keeping their shirts on; it was just the ends of the physical demographic.
A few years ago there was an article on the BBC (this one) about how humanity may, over time, evolve into two species rather like the Eloi and the Morlocks. Well, if the evidence of Brighton beach is anything to go by, it's already happening.
Anyway, seeing as it was super hot over the weekend I did what absolutely everyone else in London did and took myself off down to Brighton for some quality time. Some of those people may have gone for a variety of sordid activities, but I went to take the waters, clear my lungs of the city grime with the sea air, and to laze on the beach like a stranded Baleen Whale with a book.
It was all very sunny and even with teh factor fifty liberally applied I still wound up with a tan, and I lay on the shingle idly listening to the coversation around me and people-watching. The gaggle of students to my left were talking loudly in that 'we're so cool and mature and grownup' carrying way you have when you're 19 about the great night they'd had last night with all the girls they'd pulled, booze drunk, and fake recreational drugs taken. I was uttely convinced by every last one of their stories.
Still, as I looked out over the beach I couldn't help but notice how humanity seemed to be divided into two; or rather, how the people with their shirts off seemed divided into two. On the one hand you had any number of impressively lean, cut, toned or generally muscular sorts who plainly spent a lot of their time engaging in sport or at the gym or whatever, and on their other hand you had the sort of people who a hundred years ago would have been in a carny booth somewhere in Arkensas under a banner reading "Gasp in horror!". I gasped in horror at them. It was odd how the demographic split. When the police describe a criminal on crimewatch they always say "Of average build", but the people of average build were all keeping their shirts on; it was just the ends of the physical demographic.
A few years ago there was an article on the BBC (this one) about how humanity may, over time, evolve into two species rather like the Eloi and the Morlocks. Well, if the evidence of Brighton beach is anything to go by, it's already happening.
