As part of the Streets of Brighton section of the Festival, we went to 2 of the free events last Thursday evening. The first was The Constant Soldier, and the second was Sister Sister.

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The Constant Soldier was a bit beyond us, as we didn’t know the original Andersen story but it seemed to be quite well thought out, although I thought that the turn out was a bit poor.

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Sister Sister was really well put together, and very enjoyable (although very hard to take photos of as they didn’t stand still very often). It was a mixture of trapeze, video installation and anarchic circus and a decent crowd turned up to support them.

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As part of the festival, last Wednesday evening we went to hear a talk by Colin Pillinger and Steve Squires about Mars, and the Beagle 2 and Mars rover missions to send rockets there later this year. They talked very well, and in an “everyday” kind of way, so we weren’t baffled by technology (which I thought was quite an achievement).

They talked for about an hour, and then the floor was opened for questions. One of the questions was “How much are the missions costing?”. Colin refused to answer, and only told us what his original budget was (£25m), and not what the current costs where. Steve told us that the Rover project was running at around $800m. So, quite a difference then!