Brighton/weddings/winnings

So we went to Brighton on Saturday, the events of which basically nixed my lofty ‘write-every-day’ ambitions. Thankfully some new ideas around worlds-within-worlds have started to bob to the surface in the absence of the thousand or so words I should have produced, like long-forgotten corpses on a moonlit lake. Purple simile use aside, Brighton was as predicted – inherently smug, full of crap vintage shops, but not short of a beer, so all was well. Chloe turned up, we bought her dinner in a US diner, we sent her home, the roof of her hotel room collapsed. The usual.

Yes, the roof of her hotel room had collapsed while she was out for dinner! Typically for someone who has only ever taken the cheapest available route to anything, our Chlo had needlessly placed herself in danger by paying under £30 for a night’s accommodation in a room barely wider than the bed at its end, with ‘bathroom on the second floor, showers on the third’, apparently. Jesus. Who does this in 2013, I hear you cry? Even as a witless borderline alcoholic idiot, I would probably have factored the cost of a decent room into the photography-course bottom-line before booking it. She lives in Newport, so three hours’ drive across the country (away from the outright ugliness of Wales, which isn’t worth photographing, obviously) resulted in a near-death experience. Fuck that.

Anyway, all was well – she hesitantly got a refund, and will be billing the OAP Chinese (!) people in charge of the hotel for ‘the cost of cleaning her camera’, in a vibrant seizure of her inalienable rights as a consumer, and not in a limp and half-arsed way, of course. Personally, I’d have been down the road in the Premier Inn for another £50 anyway, or at least gone there, explained the situation and then wrestled compensation from the fuckers on my return. To take being moved to another room in the same dilapidated shithole is to infer that it’s inconvenient, not outright dangerous. I hope she grows a pair as a result of this, I really do. It would be about time.

I may not have mentioned the nuptials of Andy and Sasha on here before now – a brilliant afternoon/evening in Bath, catching up with all of the Future gang (or those that are left, anyway). I’ll do a full post on the state of the old Alma Mater in due course. Suffice to say I seem to have put a bizarre, 7-fold spread on Barcelona, Real, Bayern, Chelsea and all kinds of other stuff, which all came in, meaning I’m into three figures off an initial stake of £5, in two months! £108.11! Who says gambling’s for fools (besides Lemmy)? This means that the round of international matches due tomorrow – which contains some seriously lopsided affairs such as Spain vs. Belarus – could be another bonanza.