Saturday, August 21 2004, 11:00

Brighton rocks

A few weekends ago I, and a fairly large portion of London, decamped to the south coast for Brighton Pride. Our not-so-little crew made our way past the parade, replete with spandex and glitter, on past a sale at Habitat, down to the sea front. It was a glorious day, but it was a sad sight to see the remains of Brighton's original pier sticking up like a charred forest out of the sea into the blue sky. Last time I was there, it was looking a little shabby, true enough, but since then it has been struck by fire and finally collapsed into the water after weathering the elements since 1866. The remaining east pier, a tacky modern construction offered us our lunch of fish and chips before we trekked off to Preston Park for the main event.

The Park was crammed full with people and we lost ourselves there for several hours, wandering around in the sunshine. It'll come as no surprise to anyone that I got sunburnt. Not just an even reddening - no; I did my classic performance again and missed several areas with the sunscreen, leaving me with red patches around my shirt and arms... I'm clearly not capable of looking after myself :(

The atmosphere was really good although it's quite hard to describe it, other than friendly and welcoming. All too soon we had to make our move and squeeze into a train home, although being typically dizzy, we left in three groups, heading in different directions to the same station...

As well as being the weekend of Brighton Pride, it was also Tony's last night in London before heading back to sunny Sydney. In true (and rather predictable) style, we saw him off with a night out clubbing, then straight from there to his place to help him pack and freshen up, then off to Heathrow to see him off. He looked pretty good, but Paul, Petey, and I looked like crap no doubt. And smelled bad.

Tony's back there now, and much missed already. Six months until I'm back there on my hols, so counting down already...

Wednesday, September 1 2004, 12:26

A bit of gay Paris

Travelling on Friday the 13th always makes me nervous, and so Pete and I calmed our nerves on the Eurostar to Paris with a few stiff drinks. "Stiff" is one word... "corrosive" is another. We decided that after two bottles of Chateau Paintstripper, the next two bottles probably wouldn't taste so bad. So it was that we met Glenn at Paris' Gare du Nord a bit pissed! We went to visit Glenn one final time before he leaves to return to Sydney after his year-long stint in Europe.

On Saturday, Pete and I took one look at the queue for Notre Dame and thought, screw that... So we checked out Sainte Chapelle - a chapel built by St Louis IX to house his relic collection in the 13th Century. We had to queue for ages. But it was worth every second. The sunlight filtering through the huge stained glass windows coloured the larger chamber gold, blue, and red; unfortunately it was a bit cloudy outside, so it must be even more breathtaking on a sunny day. Our next stop was the Conciergerie, Philip the Fair's palace on the Ile de la Cité, which was used as a prison during the Revolution, and in which Marie Antoinette spent her final days. I'm glad I finally made it inside, I've been meaning to go for ages!

The evening was carnage. Pete and I had a few drinks at Pete's friend, Fabian's place, before heading back to Glenn's for more drinks, and then out to Queen - Paris' most famous venue for friends of Dorothy. It didn't disappoint. :) Pete and I stayed until 7am, getting to know the locals (Pete got to know a lot of locals...), and then we headed home... and then I decided I hadn't had enough, and went to find Sebastien and Afif - two nice guys I'd chatted with, and we went on to another place near Bastille where we partied on until I crawled home for 11am.

Pete and Glenn were merciless... I had time for a shower before going off for a champagne brunch, and then I collapsed for a power nap while the boys went out for some cocktails. Sunday evening was spent touring Paris in a rather unique fashion. Have you heard of Segways? We toured Paris on these crazy motorised things for 3 hours! They were actually heaps of fun, although it was hard to ignore the fact that I looked like a complete twat, and everyone else thought so too. Everyone stopped, stared, and pointed. I tried to ignore the cringe factor, but it wasn't easy. We had great fun though.

Our last day had three objectives: firstly, to get my other friend Pete's birthday present - a Pompiers (firefighters) t-shirt. There's no sexy boutique selling Pompiers merchandise on a high street - it's a small room in the bowels of the Pompiers HQ, and we were led there (after showing some ID) by a cute little frenchman through a lot of his equally fit colleagues. I must have been momentarily stunned, because I even forgot how to say "small" in French; but we emerged with a purchase, still dribbling. Our second objective was seeing Paris from the towers of Notre Dame, and so we queued in the bright sunshine until we could gaze out past the gargoyles and chimeras from the gothic magnificence that is Paris' most famous cathedral. And continuing the theme of the weekend, the third objective was stocking up on plonk before our return home.

Despite being loaded with booze on the way back, we decided against getting loaded ourselves, and just had a couple of beers on the train. A great weekend, if not the relaxing experience I was planning on (doh!).

Wednesday, September 1 2004, 17:55

Running batteries flat... followed by a full recharge

Paris left me a bit knackered, if truth be told, but I knew I had a bit of "a large one" lined up to follow; two friends of mine who are Brits living in Sydney were back in London for the weekend, and they wanted to experience a bit of London nightlife, so just for a change... we went out clubbing. Of course, I've had an awful lot of practice at that, so I'm pretty good at it - and as expected, we had a great time. But despite spending a fair old part of the weekend with Stu and Mark, it wasn't long enough, and it was with heavy heart and not a few tears that I said goodbye. The thought of them jetting back to the warmer winter climes of Sydney left me blue for the rest of the week.

But the week wasn't all gloominess - it's with a fair bit of excitement that I can tell you that I've got myself a new job, working for a web agency called Victoria Real, based in Shepherd's Bush. It's a permanent role, building a site to support the upcoming Teachers' TV channel; those of you who've known me for long enough will know that I've always had a keen interest in education and teaching was my intended vocation for a long time until greed and impatience with children led me off towards IT, my other love! So that's good news: I start on Monday :)

Also, this long weekend just gone was marvellous for recharging my batteries. Vicki and I went to a wedding on Saturday, and I heard the best groom's speech ever. I've never heard so much sincerity in my life - the happy groom actually managed to hold off tears on three separate occasions! I was very impressed. The new Mrs Anna Standing is a supremely lucky girl to have bagged such a guy. I also did my usual and spent the entire day planning my own big day, and of course getting tanked. Marvellous.

If that hadn't filled me with enough happiness with the world, we went shopping on Sunday! A bit of retail therapy at IKEA, Next, and H&M left me feeling satisfied and at one with myself, and the following day spent chatting on the phone to Scotty and Darren down under, doing a tiny bit of cleaning, but mostly doing bugger all has left me in a very positive and relaxed state of mind. Bring it on!