A local house is identified by this sign outside. I never had
the urge until now. I can hardly wait for my rock climbing shoes
to arrive.

Fork Up

In Britain, by law, you must pay more to eat in some place
nice.

A patron at a local Grease & Chips shop had to fork out
more dough between mouthfuls. He apparently sat in the “nice”
seats, where he had access to amenities like cutlery, padded
seats and a table at the right height. If he were clever, he
would have perched against the wall on the stools up front with
the rest of the lepers and common scum. I know I would have. Not
good enough for us lepers, hmm?

Small Cars Get Smaller

We saw a local contraption that was more motor than car. It
was literally an engine with a seat behind it and three wheels
thrown on for good measure. The entire contraption was about the
height and weight of my cat and went like snot. (What an odd
expression. I better buy some more man-sized Kleenex.)

Surge Tide Warning

Our friends in London phoned us up to bring news of extreme
tides scheduled for our area. “DANGER! DANGER!” said the news. We
live but half a block from the sea in a property that is mostly
sunken compared to our neighbors. “Oh boy!” I thought, picturing
mounting rental discounts as we perch in our upstairs room.
Actually, our six-page tenancy agreement makes us responsible for
most things including floods, pestilence, and famine.

I was rather disappointed when the sea didn’t even touch the
hundred-foot wall guarding the roadway.

The winds did come up quite spectacularly, whisking away
garbage and unanchored locals. That night a clatter arose from
the roof

<CREEK!>

<THUMP!>

<BUMP!>… <Bump>… <bump> … < b i n g
>

I hope that wasn’t Santa Claus.

More likely it was the expensive-looking satellite dish on the
roof going for a wee walkabout. Now we’ll be in trouble for not
huddling on the roof through the storm, bracing the dish. (Or
more likely clinging to the dish with feet flying.)

Movies

We saw
End of Days
in London for $22.50 a person. Good thing we picked the cheap
seats. Got popcorn and a drink too for considerably less than a
down payment on a Volkswagen.
End of Days
is fine if you shift your brain into neutral and learn to enjoy
Arnie’s acting.

They gave us our money’s worth by treating us to an extra 25
minutes of pre-movie commercials. Most of it bizarre enough to my
proper Canadian mind as too quickly slip through the tender net
of memory. One commercial did stand out though:

Audio: Man and a woman in bed giggling and laughing.

Visual: Bedroom, side of bed barely in camera.

The man grunts with effort and a pair of men’s socks in tossed
into view.

Shirt… <giggle> belt… <giggle, giggle>
trousers… and finally with a grunt and sigh his briefs drop
into view.

He sounds pleased and expectant.

“And THAT too!” she chides

<Sigh> <Grumble>… and on the dresser is placed a
large Australian beer.

Voiceover: “Beer too good to put down.”

Advertising

Being loosely affiliated with the advertising industry (or is
that afflicted), I find it disconcerting to be, um, disconcerted
by British ads.

Figure 1

Today’s paper features a full-colour, double half-page
spread for Marlboro. A forest is burning in front of a black,
swampy river filled with brutish crocodiles. “Welcome to
Marlboro country.” I guess we know what happened to the
Marlboro man. He didn’t die of lung cancer. He was an amateur
rural pyromaniac before succumbing to guilt and stumbling into
the turgid river to become crocodile-smoked beef jerky.

Figure 2

A series of huge bus shelter adverts designed apparently to
humanize the perception of the disabled:

2a – Picture: man in wheelchair. Caption: “I spent my
paycheque at the pub.” Oh, I feel so much better about him now.
He’s a drunken git like me.

2b – Picture: Woman in wheelchair with friend. Head: “She’s
such an embarrassment”. Subcaption: “Her laugh is so dirty.”
Ah, another person like me. An embarrassment.

I must be getting old. Subtle reverse meta-humour is offending
my political correctness.

More Financial Fun

We had lunch at the Smuggler’s Pub. (Formerly headquarters for
a successful cross-channel smuggling gang until their leader was
taken away on trumped up sheep stealing charges. I suspect it has
undergone a name change.) Michelle had a nice little sandwich
with fries and a pop. I had some french bread with cheese, raw
onion salad, and a Coke. Being a Stilton cheese virgin, I had to
take it on faith, when my plate arrived, that visible pustules of
mold were in fact intentional and not a result of cost-cutting.
It tasted like extra, extra sharp Mozzarella, vintage 1987. The
pustules were not a result of cost-cutting. Total cost $28.75

The Euro just fell to 1.004 against the U.S. dollar, down 15%
since inception. Hmm.

PS – We’re having fun. Really we are. All these files should
be taken with a smile and a smirk. Tomorrow we get to party like
it’s 1999. And eight hours ahead of all you Millennium laggard
Canadians. Happy New Year!

PPS – It would be interesting should the millions that head
into London by rail to party discover that Y2K has stopped the
trains at midnight. At least the party hats will keep their heads
warm.

Food must either go bad faster here, or we North Americans are
used to rancid. The roast chicken is labelled EAT WITHIN 24
HOURS. It’s good for up to an hour unrefrigerated. My grapes
almost expired by the time I got home.

On the plus side, food seems to be less Americanized here.
That is, the ingredient list does not take up two panels of the
cookie box. There is also a lot more organic and vegetarian food
readily available. Well, readily if you are readily rich. Grapes
are $6 a pound. It’s cheaper to fly to Spain for $125 and pick
your own.

Our fridge is small. You might know this, but you do not
understand this. It is SMALL. We have two (2) shelves. Neither is
big enough to fit a 2- litre carton of milk at any angle. The
crisper is the size of a very large hamster. I would kill for the
bar fridge at the office.

In a way, it’s very much like camping out. You carefully pack
and unpack your food each time you need some, taking care not to
create empty pockets. You light your stove with a match. You wear
multiple layers of clothing. It’s the West Coast Trail X 2.5.

Our Beautiful Mews

We live in a mews. It’s much better than living above a fish
and chips shop. It has heat (mostly).

A mews is a converted stable. Our house is a little cottage
(room upstairs, room downstairs) connected to a mews down some
steps. The mews has a very high ceiling but little light because
the only windows face northwest onto a sunken, walled garden.

The obvious solution to this is to put the most outlandish
wallpaper you can imagine up your one-and-a-half-storey walls.
Say, solid metallic silver with deep blue vines and giant yellow
tulips the size of your head. The agent had listed it as
“unusually decorated.”

Actually, the end effect works surprisingly well. It’s like
being a cat crouched in deep grass.

The mews itself contains a kitchen, dining nook and reading
nook plus glass french doors leading out onto a garden. The
kitchen is wide enough for two people stand if they intend to get
very intimate. The garden is big enough to stand with your arms
out and spin if it were not full of shrubberies. It is full of
shrubberies.

Each room is heated by a little wall heater that is
reminiscent of a fireplace. We’ve taken to heating just one room
of the house at a time. At the fish and chips shop, our favourite
saying to anyone who got uppity about the lack of heat was “Put
on another jumper!” To which the standard reply was “I’m already
wearing all my jumpers!”

The English don’t actually believe in insulation. Their
concept of insulation is to build your house smack against your
neighbours’ to steal their heat, those rich coal-hogging
bastards! Hence, our house is surrounded on three sides by our
neighbours sucking our hard-won heat, you coal-hogging bastards!

I think part of our ceiling is someone else’s floor. It’s hard
to tell in urban jungles like this.

The entrance to the house is past a very tall gate and into a
little courtyard, a couple of feet wide and the length of the
“cottage”, filled with plants, stone and shrubberies. At the end
of this, there is a drop into the tiny mews’ garden and a look
into the french doors. When we first arrived, Michelle looked
ahead at the mews and then to the “cottage” on our left and said
“Who lives there?” To which I replied, “You will, Love.”

We live on a dead end back alley lane just a half block from
the main road that runs along the sea wall. Heading few hundred
feet down the sea wall and across another road and an acre of
small stones brings you to the crashing surf! I bounce in my head
every time I think of this.

The whole house is pre-furnished. This is good, because
unfurnished houses are often missing things like carpets, fridges
and stoves.

Cozy is an apt description. Everywhere, there are rugs and
carpets. Rugs on the walls, sofas with cushions, pictures of old
time scenes. Little notes are scattered throughout making the
whole experience seem very much like playing a game of Myst –
exploring someone else’s world.

Despite having minimal light, the place is very lovely and
charming. This is exactly the character-rich kind of house that
one needs in order to know where they truly are.

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.