Bright 'n Beautiful

My favourite festival of the year is now but a memory. No, not Glyndebourne, or Glastonbury or other words beginning with 'g', I'm talking about Brighton Pride!

Now, I know a few blogs ago I blathered on about London's Pride event, but for me, I look forward to Brighton even more. Its such a fun day and the entire city gets behind the event. All the hotels and B&B's are fully booked and there's rainbow flags everywhere you look.

Scooter and I booked four days into the Holiday Inn, and I think there was a grand total of ten straight people in the whole place and that includes the staff! We got a great deal with their 'Family Rate'. Of course, I thought it meant we had to sing 'We Are Family', so I flounced into the lobby with my backing track, sang the song, and asked do I get the Family Rate? No, not really, but if I had, it would have been fabulous, and I'm certain the front of house manager knows ALL the words to THAT song, if you know what I mean.

We ate two nights at the hotel as it was included in the family rate....shame we left little Timmy and Olivia at home. Oh well. The meals were fantastic, so its a good thing the hotel was about a mile down the road from the main part of the town as we certainly needed to walk off dinner.

The parade was a 'Carry On' theme so cue lots of floats paying tribute to the Carry On films and to make it more authentic, one of the stars, Barbara Windsor was the parade 'Queen'!!

We spent the rest of the day in Preston Park, hung out with the Steelers for a bit, joined the Pride Society which was worth it just so we could use the private area and not queue for the loos. Its the best money we've ever spent not to have to line up for an hour whilst your bladder expands to the size of a football, only to step into a plastic 1x1 room that smells like the biggest sewage plant in the world on the hottest day in the world. You want to hold your nose, but then you're trying to balance yourself so you don't actually touch anything. It's not pretty. So, we were more than happy to spend many many pennies in order to 'spend a penny' in relative comfort.

The best bit of the day for me, and no doubt many others is the cabaret tent, which finished off with the D.E. Experience. She may dress and sound like Dame Edna Everidge, but that's where the similarity ends. D.E (aka, Jonathan) has the uncanny ability to sing like other singers - you close your eyes and you'd swear Celine Dion is in the room (and if she really was, I'd slap her), or Annie Lennox or Karen Carpenter. Thanks to this act, I can never hear 'Closest Thing to Crazy' by Katie Meulua in quite the same way, especially since D.E. has rewritten the lyrics with some of the most disgusting and offensive turns of phrases I have ever heard. I loved it!

We were so pooped by the end of the day, we stopped off at Grubbs ( a little post festival tradition for us ) for the best burgers in Brighton and sat in front of the church green, wolfed them down and watched the fireworks.

Sunday we left the hotel around 11, met our friend on the beach, then ran into our other friends and began drinking steadily for the rest of the day. Its simply what one does on the day after pride....all the bars have open areas and one of the streets is closed off to simply bounce from one bar to the next like some intoxicated glitter encrusted pinball.

We went back to the hotel for another 'free' dinner, then back out into town later that evening and had a few more with some more mates. They were all off clubbing, but we just couldn't be bothered, we're more pub and bar types than clubbing to four in the morning, although it has been known to happen now and again!

Had a bit of a lie in this morning, had breakfast then walked down to the pier for a bit, got caught in a rain storm and waited it out under the pier with a load of other people. We just sat and cuddled and had the odd drip land on us from above. We looked out at some young boys jumping off the pier into the water below and thinking they must be mad. The folly of youth as they say. I used to love swimming in the summer rain as a kid, but was never that keen on jumping into the water from fifty feet above!

The rain subsided and we thought it was time to head back. We collected our bags from the hotel, took the train back to London and arrived home around 3:30 in the afternoon.

Brighton is only an hour from London by train, but sometimes it's like another world down there...you're still in England, but just not as you know it. If I had the money, I'd quite like to live down there. I suppose, however, the novelty would wear off eventually, so for now I'll stay in London and be happy that I can really appreciate weekends like these for years to come.