Everyone in Brighton is cool, cooler than me and cooler than the coat I bought in Cornwall. It feels jarring to be in a city again - aware of myself and my appearance in a way I never bothered with in the countryside.
The sun came out after a morning of drizzly rain but the waves are still swollen, violent, crashing on the cold beach. I’ve pictured being in Brighton for three years now. It’s amazing how anticipation taints your vision - if you don’t love it you’ve wasted three years, so you pretend to. But that’s not fair, I do love Brighton. I love the pier with its shitty blinking sign, I love the wind blowing strongly off the coast. I love Brighton like I love Coney Island, not for its vintage stores and mediocre wine bars, but for its old school seaside charm, its shit holes - the brightly colored doughnut shops and ice cream stands, overpriced and under delivered. I love the aggressive breeze, the carnival music, the crowds of children sitting on pebbles in their school uniforms.
Part of my Brighton fantasy was eating cod by the sea from a paper boat - just as a friend described it to me - the steam puffing off the fish, thick chips soaked in vinegar, a greasy paper bag that you dig into unabashedly, licking the salty, malty oil from your fingers as the ocean roars in front of you. It’s supposed to be raining, in the fantasy, but just drizzling.
So I bought fish & chips from a tourist trap on the ocean front. It was shit, I knew that, but the chips were properly soggy and the fish was surprisingly fresh-fried and it all cost me 10 quid with curry sauce and mushy peas and tartare. Walking across the street to the water I was ambushed by a flock of seagulls. I didn’t see them coming, but it was loud - one landed on my shoulders while its friends fought for my fish - and within seconds my cod was in pieces on the concrete being devoured by twenty seagulls at once. People were laughing and gawking and all I could muster, alone on the crowded street, was “there goes my fish.” An old man giggled and I walked back to the shop and ate the seagull-soiled fries and mushy peas.