What a cute notion to fly a kite next to the crashing surf.
But these were not ordinary kites. The kites themselves were
little parachutes, and their masters were decked out in extreme
kite wear. The huge contraptions seemed to take great joy in
launching their captors high into the air and then dragging them
across the beach. As I recall, sandpaper is made from sand.

Fortunately, Brighton does not have sand.

Brighton has pebbles.

Imagine sandpaper made out of pebbles. Imagine this very
quickly passing over your face. Hence, the extreme wear.

Apparently, I was witnessing para-boarding, or sailing, or
some such thing. Put yourself on a surfboard (tricky), fly an
overgrown kite (trickier), and let it pull you across huge waves
without falling off (trickiest). Here we have a sport that
combines the best traits of frustration and humiliation with
random Pavlovian reinforcement of pain. I was surprised I wasn’t
instantly hooked.

This is a buddy sport. You steady your kite. Your buddy jumps
on you. You bound down the beach out of control with your buddy
affixed to your ankle. He’s not just holding you down but trying
to affix a surfboard to your flying feet. Just when you think you
have it, a huge wave crashes over you, buddy and surfboard. Do
not let go. Repeat, do not let go of the kite, despite pebbles
cramming deeper into your nasal cavity.

Eventually, our hero did get into the water. He sailed at the
speed of sound, hit a sea turd, and did a salty face plant.
Instantly he was yanked full out the water to do the face plant
again.

Yank!

Splash!

Oof!

Yank!

PLOOSH!

Ugh!

Yank!

Do not let go. Remember the mantra.

When he was far, far out, I begin to wonder about the kite
dunking itself. Maybe a 1/2 mile swim through raging surf
attached to leaden kite is good exercise.

Extreme Hazards

Our intrepid surfer would have a much easier time if it were
not for wild Brighton sea turds. Apparently the pipe from my
little commode (and every one else’s) leads directly to the sea.
Yes, folks, raw sewage, toilet paper and all, from a major
population center dumped directly into the sea. But it’s ok, the
pipe goes out beyond the swimming area so your chance of coming
face to face with this morning’s deposit are slim. Thanks to the
tourism board, they process it in the summer into a more
consistent paste to reduce chunkiness. Did I mention the
popularity of curry?

Extremely Commercial Weather

“And now the Barbados Tourism Authority weather: London -
Rain. South East – Windy and rain. Forecast – Dull, wet and
windy.”

It seems English weather is sponsored by Barbados Tourism.
It’s sort of the opposite of trying to sell fridges to the
Inuit.

I wonder if they take plastic? I’d like to order some wicked
sunshine for Brighton.

Extreme Behaviour

This morning greeted us with an exceptionally windy seaside
day. My morning tour to the sea was interrupted as I watched a
familiar face chase his hat down the block. I flapped my arms
lightly against the gale in sympathy. He retrieved his hat, waved
his hands in the air, let out a whooping yell, and marched up to
plant himself but inches from my face. I could see quite clearly
his two front teeth were mostly gold, which worked nicely with
whole rasta-man gig he had going.

My small demonstration of solidarity was all he needed. He
clapped his large black hand on my back and grinned even wider.
We were brothers against the storm.

“Oh what a crazy world it is, mon, ” he exclaimed loudly into
my face. It was genuine Jamaican-rasta with a British accent.
“Why can’t we all a just be happy, my friend? Why just a last
night night I was a singing and a laughing and a yelling MERRY
CHRISTMAS! And you know what?”

I stared into his face. I didn’t know what.

“Well, I tell you what,” he continued with another thunderous
pat on my back. “They came and tried to take me away. Oh, yes,
they did. They wanted to puts a me in an institution just for
being happy now. An institution!” Except he said
INSTA-TOOOoo-SHUN
.

I patted him on the backm and he was satisfied that I
understood. I’m now an unofficial rasta-storm-brother. I get my
secret handshake next week.

Extreme Conspiracy

I was greeted by an unusual sight when I finally continued
down to the ocean. A large section of the beach was sectioned off
with high fences and patrolled by plainclothed guards in bright
yellow pants. (On the beach plain clothes include bright yellow
pants.) Far beyond the fences on the beach were more men from the
yellow pants unit scurrying around several large, carefully
tarped objects. I had obviously stumbled across the covert yellow
alien space craft retrieval unit.

I approached the guard. I knew it! He was a dead ringer for
Mulder. Now where was that sexy Sculley?

He ran an unconvincing story about fireworks tonight.
Celebrate the shortest day of the year he said. (He really did
look like Mulder.) Even the English aren’t silly enough to
celebrate the lack of sun, are they?

That night we dashed out of the house into gale force winds in
response to several terrific bangs. The crowds were gathered
thick and sure enough… there were no fireworks. Instead, one of
the large towers, now untarped, was on fire.

Instead of launching fireworks into the sky, it simply fell
over slowly and burst into multicolored flames. <Fzzzz>
<Crackle> <Crackle>

The yellow pants unit scurried like…well, not like
ants…like British. They casually walked around the burning
carcass, as if nothing was wrong, and lit up the ground displays.
These were supposed to spin and sparkle like Chinese wheels. They
flapped madly in the gale, letting off streams of glowing
fireflies.

The second tower did a bit better. Instead of falling over and
catching fire it stood firm and caught fire. <fzzz>
<Crackle> <Crackle>

The yellow unit let the crowds watch the burning towers a
while longer, thanked everyone, thanked the corporate sponsors,
and bid us goodnight. As we walked home, I secretly admired the
cunning of the yellow unit as the alien crafts burned in full
public view.

Indian Pizza. Not surprisingly, and more to my delight than
Michelle’s, Indian cuisine is prevalent here. The local Safeway
has a complete Indian dinner for two next to the frozen pizzas.
I’m curious to discover what lies in the “ethnic” foods
section.

Fish and Chips. Still waiting for decent fish and chips. The
local shop downstairs seems to believe in a long soak in grease
followed by a gentle warming.

Beefy Drink. “Relax and enjoy a comforting Beefy Drink. Just
mix one tablespoon with a cup of water”. Say no more!

Given our new budget I’ve adopted a new diet. I call it
“Anything on Sale.” We’ve had prime cuts of Happy Cow (formerly
Mad Cow) discounted beef.

We’ve been making a study of the locals; well mostly Simon
here at the flat though most people call him Psi. (It’s like
living in a Dr. Who episode.) The preferred diet seems to consist
of grease. Fish and grease. Burgers and grease. Grease and
grease. Every evening we ask Psi what he’s going to have. “Oh, ”
he says getting his coat on, “I think I’ll go out and get me some
grease.” This morning I noted a change in feeding behaviour as
Specimen A dashed out the door with breakfast in hand: Mars bar
and Coke.

Real Estate

I’ve given up explaining what we paid in rent in Canada. It’s
the equivalent to a Canadian being told that we come from a land
where we lived in full sized house with jacuzzi and sauna on a
few acres of green for $200 / month. Be thankful oh you young
Canucks.

Michelle just informed me that we are paying $50 / day in rent
+ utilities on top of that. About the same as a hotel in
Edmonton.

Commercial real estate on the other hand does not seem too far
overpriced. It appears Class B space can be had for £6 / sq
ft or less making it cheaper than our Class A Edmonton office;
well cheaper if we were paying rates than normal mortals pay.

Pssst, Used Railway Tunnel, Sir? For rent. Prime SouthEastern
abandoned railway tunnel. Great for storage, shooting ranges,
bondage and specialty service establishments, clubs. Requires
some cleaning.

Shops and a Jolly Gay Neighborhood

It’s really like living in a giant Old Strathcona. The shops
are just crammed in. Across the street I can see a drugstore,
clothing store, Radio and TV shop, convenience store, bar,
picture shop, knickknack shop and a hardware and ironmonger. The
last one sounds like a crime.

“What are you in for?”

“Ay, mate, they got me for a bit of Hardware and
Ironmongering.”

The pattern repeats on every street across the city.

“Butcher, baker, chemist. Grocer, convenience, pub.”

*Sing it!*

“Butcher, baker, chemist. Grocer, convenience, pub.”

Oh! “Butcher, baker, chemist. Grocer, convenience, pub.”

Yeah! “Butcher, baker, chemist. Grocer, convenience, pub.”

Kindy catchy!

Just down the street is apparently Brighton’s only gay bar and
coffee house. We’re living in gay central which is good because
apparently it adds character and creativity to the neighborhood
and makes us Uber designers.

Everything is within walking distance. A local Jeweler
advertises “Last Jeweler for 25 yards!”.

Weather

Had some variety today. Big storm clouds instead of grey. I’ve
yet to see a soul wearing sunglasses. Bright sun does not seem to
be a predominant concern. Brighton <> Brightsun.

News Flash: Bright sun for several hours. Sat on the roof
above the fish and chips shop watching the sea and reading the
Inland Revenue guide to taxation. Was inspected carefully by
neighborhood patrol seagull who made his opinion known in a brief
and effective ceremony involving a small rooftop deposit. He
didn’t approve of my sunglasses.

Fall. It’s like perpetual early autumn here. All the leaves
are caught in terrible indecision over the trendy colour du jour.
Some, fearing heavy snow, have given it up for the Ally McBeal
twig look. Most sport fashionable green, yellow and auburn.
Weather remains mild with only occasional call for mittens and
flying umbrellas.

Technology

Have been spending our days researching mobiles. This
apparently is a full time occupation that only anal-retentive
North American’s undertake. The local Carphone Warehouse seems
appalled every time we show up with some obscure question. The
manager’s eyes recede and go all beady . Most people apparently
just sign up to Whatever and when quizzed don’t even know what
network they are on. The Warehouse’s first recommendation to us
would have more than doubled our costs.

When people first recommended the Carphone Warehouse, I
pictured in my mind a smaller Futureshop kinda store. Actually
it’s about the size of a decent bathroom with just enough room to
wind up before you sprint for the door. We’ll likely be back
because they are apparently the best in town. A competing store
would take our tough questions, smile and then quickly phone the
Carphone warehouse and thus still end up with the wrong
information.

Would you believe there’s no way to plug your Mac laptop into
a mobile. The best solution involves having a modem in your
laptop, one in your mobile phone and another (expensive) one on a
card in your laptop. I have a potential solution that involves
four different connected cables and gender changers and will of
God. Maybe.

We’re now experts on the subject having stumped even the 1-800
specialists and will be opening our own shop next week.

High Speed Internet

Whenever we ask for this, we get names of Internet Cafes which
are in abundance here. Nobody quite understands this concept of
fast access from home.

Apparently BT’s (UK’s AT&T) ADSL trials were poor because
their routers/hubs couldn’t handle the load. It’s also going to
be expensive. The cable company is coming out with cable modems
but won’t admit to it. Rumour is around March or April. Unlimited
high speed access if you sign a 1 year plan. Limited access for
month-to-month.

Actually the cable company offers all kinds of phone packages
that blow the lid of phone company. If they can expand their
coverage, BT literally will not be able to compete. It is a
crying shame that the Mews won’t be supported until around
April.

Interestingly the Cable company won’t install ISDN in December
because it’s just too laid back a month for the British and they
don’t want to work their technicians too hard.

Currently, it costs about $30,000 / year to get high speed, 24
hour Internet access. (It costs the office under $3000 for speeds
that are better than double.)

BT is going to be selling ADSL to resellers for $120 / month
soon.

Stay Tuned

More funky adventures from the S&M channel coming live to
you from across the ocean. Next weeks episode: How to live in a
converted stable and not freeze to death; a story of hope,
romance and heat.

Now that I’ve been in England more than one week, intending on
being a permanent resident, I feel I have the right to make
cryptic, cynical pronouncements about life in England. Enjoy this
humorous and somewhat barbed rebuttal to Stephen’s earlier
comments.

We were fortunate that Stephen’s cousin Julian offered to
put us up for the first two weeks after our arrival here in
Brighton. Of course, if one is to believe Stephen’s account of
Julian’s apartment, perhaps the offer wasn’t all that fortunate
after all. Myself, however, being made of far sterner stuff than
Stephen, I found Julian’s apartment to be perfectly fine for a
cheap place to live. Now, you might not think that a £600/month
place is a “cheap” place to live but, given the housing situation
here in Brighton at the moment, and the fact that Julian has a
3-bedroom, 3-storey house, £600/month is almost reasonable. Cheap is
what enables us (and Julian!) to save so splendidly on heating.
After all, if the heating doesn’t actually function, then you can’t
spend a fortune on electricity attempting to use it, right? Cheap
is also what enables us to almost never have to vacuum. When the
carpet throughout the house is the colour of dirty sand, you just
don’t easily notice the dirt on it. Ahhhh! The luxuries of
the bachelor apartment!

For a cheap place, though, it has large windows everywhere,
single-paned to be sure, but large windows nonetheless. The walls
and ceiling even bear evidence of recent painting too. What more could a
bachelor ask for? Cable, mobile phones, PlayStations, VCRs,
stereo equipment, and sound editing equipment apparently. The
sandy floor in the living room (or lounge, as the locals
refer to it) is festooned with high-tech music equipment, two
televisions, a PlayStation, and a digital equipment cordless
telephone (DECT phone). This is very amusing when you consider
that the actual inhabitants of this flat spend far less time
here than we do. Maybe they’ve figured out how to use this
stuff remotely?

I hope that the picture I paint of Julian’s flat is neither too
contemptuous nor unflattering. I rather like it except for the heating and
the carpet. I had secret plans to sell all of Julian’s stuff and just take
over the place in order to solve our housing problem. I figure that any
place that is not home to more than 20 species of bugs (unlike some other
places in which I lived) is a fine place to stay. Any place where the roof
doesn’t leak into the walls is also a fine place to stay. Any place where
turning on the microwave doesn’t interfere with television reception
because of ‘noisy power’ is a fine place to stay. If you manage to not
have all these problems in one place then you’ve found a fantastic place to
stay, even if it doesn’t back onto a ravine!

For some reason, completely unfathomable to me, Stephen decided that
finding a place of our own in which to live wasn’t that high of a
priority. After all, what can you do with your own personal place:
open a bank account, have proof of address to get cell phones, have a
place to forward your business calls to, have a place to put all
of your stuff coming by container from Canada, have a place to
sleep after your relatives boot you out on the street? Those don’t
sound all that important, right? Well, apparently they weren’t
to Stephen but luckily I convinced him that we absolutely needed to
find our own place to stay as we could only stay with Julian for
two weeks and then with Anna, a friend from Sussex University, for
the month of December.

Finding a place to stay in Brighton lately necessitates a lot of
visiting estate agencies. Apparently, since the last time I was
in Brighton two years ago, lots of people in the London area hit
upon the clever idea to move to Brighton because they could commute
faster from here via train into London than they could navigate
about London. The result of their cleverness is that the demand
for housing in southeast England, especially Brighton, has skyrocketed,
pushing prices for housing up and seriously impacting the amount of
housing available. For us this meant that we could visit an estate
agency in the afternoon, peruse their daily list of available
properties, and discover that 2/3rds of them were already gone by
the time we’d arrived at the agency. The turnover of rental properties
is really high.

One of the first places we examined was a 1-bedroom apartment that
had sea views from its windows. I think the 1-bedroom part of the
apartment description was being overly generous. When the agent
showed us the bedroom, I couldn’t resist commenting that I’d seen
walk-in closets that were larger. The “bedroom” was just wide
enough to fit a single bed into and then be able to walk in the
narrow aisle created between the bed and the wall to the window.
The rest of the apartment was likewise small, even if it did feature
an “electric shower.” This device, not intended, I’m sure, for
auto-erotic stimulation, heats up your shower water to the desired
temperature using electricity, thus eliminating the need for a
hot water tank which never has enough water anyway.

On another day, we were able to view two potential places.
The first was a relatively modern apartment with two bedrooms,
partially furnished. There wasn’t anything much exciting about it
except that it may have had cable and it cost £700/month! It was
neat, cheerful and bright, but BORING and expensive. Definitely not
EinMaterial.

The other place we were to scope out the agent was reluctant to show us.
Apparently they’d had trouble renting out the place and it had stood empty
since the end of August. The property in question was a converted mews.
For those of us not in the know (like me!), a mews was a place where horses
and carriages were stored and often featured a space for the grooms and
horseboys to live above the horses and carriages. The original building
was constructed in 1860 and featured “unusual decor”. This sounded more
like it. We were far more enthused than the hesitant agent. I loved
it from the moment we stepped in, even if it did smell somewhat musty.
Lots of brick. Lots of wood. Lots of windows. Lots of stairs. Every
single room was on a different level than the others. There was a bedroom
upstairs with two beds, a lounge at the front of the house, a small
sitting room with french doors out to a sunken garden, a small, efficient
modern kitchen, a bathroom with a nice deep tub, and the dining room.

It was the dining room that featured the odd decor. The two walls of the
dining room had been papered from floor to ceiling in a gold wallpaper that
had yellow flowers and vines crawling up it. It sounds rather odd but
given the light in the house and how what little light there was reflected
off the gold paper, it worked wonders to lighten up an otherwise quite
dark area of the house, despite the number of windows. The house did
have windows but they all face west and most of the house was down from
street level. It was, however, a mere block from the sea. If we looked
around the corner from the mews, we could see the sea. We could definitely
hear the gulls.

I loved it. I had to have it, even if the place was furnished was already
well furnished with antiques and rugs and wall hangings and we had a big
whack of stuff arriving from Canada. The agents had recently reduced the
price from £650/month to £600/month in an attempt to get
the place rented out. We had to have it. We pestered the agents
daily. We would have pestered them hourly if I had thought it would
have helped. They provided us with a set of three two-page forms. One set
for each of us and the third set for somebody who would act as a guarantor
in case we decided to skip town. Having only just arrived from Canada, we
of course didn’t have any UK credit history which is what they wanted to
check. We had to provide details of our jobs, our places where we lived,
personal references, and get all this stuff from our guarantor, too.
Again, Stephen’s relatives came to our rescue, with Maggie providing the
needed guarantor reference. Indeed, she turned out to be a Class A
guarantor, just in case anybody else needs one in the future. Even
with her all checked out pure as the driven snow, they still gave us
grief. Stephen’s personal reference turned out to be out of the country
and they were going to hold us up just on that even though everything
else had worked out. After several anxious days, we were finally given
the keys after we gave them £1450 (or more than $3600 CDN)! That’s
almost enough to have a down payment on a house in Edmonton. This was only
the deposit and the first month’s rent and we only have the house until
August. I guess we’ll do the whole thing over or maybe consider buying.
It’s almost as cheap if we could come up with the 15% deposit. <sigh>

Well, at least we’re housed now. Stephen can concentrate on his
number one priority: making us rich so we can afford to shell out
$1500/month in rent. (:

Some time back, bemoaning the lack of trees in our neighborhood, we adopted a couple of stray Christmas trees and lured them back to the flat. (They were lost on the street and it was either that or take them to a shelter or, well, firewood.) Luckily they came with their own pots full of dirt.

These Christmas trees relate to toilets in a way you just don’t want to know. Hang in there.

One of the trees blossomed under our loving care but the other sadly was losing its lust for life. We thought perhaps it had been affected by salty ocean spray. You see, when I found it, it was taking a not-so-thoughtful sojourn to the sea-side.

The Ein had a cunning plan. We would wash the tree. Not only would we wash the needles, but we’d, um, wash the dirt and rocks in the pot. And to make the poor distressed tree even happier, we’d kick his brother out of his nice pot where he was happily thriving and trade pots.

“You’ll kill both trees and plug up our septic system,” I pointed out. I had my doubts about the ‘cunning’ in the cunning plan.

“Maybe everything will be OK, ” she beamed, “and we’ll have lovely, lush trees!”

Maybe.

Well, we washed the tree, the pot, the roots. Despite our best intentions most of the dirt and crap seemed to disappear out of the tub. And now the toilet makes funny noises every time we flush.
You see, our toilet, being a late installation doesn’t flush down. It flushes up. A little pump valiantly lifts all the water and stuff over the wall. Normally it goes “whirrr whirrr whirrrr” combined with a satisfying “grump grump grump” of stuff being pushed up and over.
Recently it started going “whirrr whirrr whirrr” with not so satisfying addition of more “whirrr whirrr whirrr” followed usually by “whirrr whirrr whirrr”

Flush!
Whirrr
Whirrr Whirrr
Whirrr
Whirrr
Whirrr Whirrr Whirrr
Whirrr
Whirrr
Whirrr Whirrr Whirrr Whirrr
Whirrr Whirr
Whirrr Whirrr Whirrr
Whirrr Whirr Whirrr Whirrr Whirrr Whirrr
Whirrr Whirr Whirrr Whirr
Whirrr Whirrr
Whirrr Whirrr Whirrr Whirr Whirr Whirr Whirr Whirr
(wheeeze)

“Perhaps we could suggest to the landlord that the pump isn’t working so well anymore”, Michelle suggested last night.

The last tenants who did this had the pump taken apart and it was found to be clogged with several hundred condoms! We’re not quite certain how he explained this. “Condoms? I have no idea how all those condoms got there! What kind of guy would flush a condom?”

I have visions of the pump being opened up and us having to explain how it came to be covered in pine needles.

“Maybe it wouldn’t be covered in pine needles,” Michelle suggested optimistically, “Maybe it’s covered in rocks!”

“Pine needles and rocks?, ” we would say, “in our pump? No we haven’t been flushing dirt and rocks down our toilet. Of course not. What kind of idiot puts dirt and rocks in the toilet. And we, of course, haven’t been washing Christmas trees or anything like that in the toilet. That’s just silly. They would go round and around when you flushed.”

Of course, if they asked us if we were dumping rocks and needles down our bathtub we’d have to ‘fess up and it would be the end for the adventuring S&M.

The dream? Oh, of course. After a conversation about this right before bed I proceeded to spend the night dreaming about an airplane flight where each window seat had its own toilet conveniently placed at about elbow height into the wall. The toilets were used as a kind of messaging and transportation system. You shoved an object into the back of the toilet next to your seat (at convenient elbow height) and it would be magically transported to one of the other toilets for retrieval. A very classy airline.

I was debugging Michelle’s toilet and was having trouble getting the Hot Wheels car suitably in the back of the toilet. It was clogged with thick mud, rocks and shit. So to speak. As I was up to my elbow into the muck, trying to place my Hot Wheels car, it occurred to me this transportation system may not be too popular with the ladies. Just another crappy airline.

[tweetthis]

I went to the library yesterday expressly to find the supposedly available copy of Delany’s Babel-17. After fumbling with my card at the turnstyle (no instructions were provided — in fact, I just guessed that it wanted to scan my library barcode), I went on a exploratory mission to the deepest, darkest depths of the library, hunting for the elusive, improperly signed ‘PZ’ category which holds the library’s limited science fiction collection. As I went down darkened row after darkened row (yes, dark!), lights magically came on before me. Actually, I thought this was an excellent new feature of the library. After all, many areas of the stacks are very lightly trafficked, if at all, so only turning lights on when someone is in them and moving is probably a win-win situation for the environment, for electricity costs, and for cooling costs in the summer. Now we have a library that keeps terrorists out and lights up the lives of permitted patrons. Will wonders never cease?