Tag: Brighton

Final Cut December

Tonight is the December Final Cut screening at Komedia, and I’ve not had chance to blog about the last one I went to in October. As it starts in an hour and a half, I’ll just quickly say it’s an evening of short films. All sorts of short films: funny, serious, animated, local… I’m not sure if there are any rules.

We primarily went in October to see Dave’s Work Socks, but I enjoyed every minute of the whole evening. Go to it, it’s good.

Tonight is a Christmas special. With mince pies… but I’m going to miss it. 7:30 at Komedia, £4 on the door.

Adult Cereals

We were in the new look Sainsbury’s in West Hove yesterday, browsing along the cereal aisle, and then we spotted it – “Adult Cereals”. This isn’t really a term I’ve ever come across before, I’d considered Cereals as a whole category, or maybe with sub-categories, such as muesli or cornflakes or whatever. So, does this mean that to differentiate the regular, every-day kind of cereal they need to be rebranded as adult cereal?

For the interested, the cereal offered in “Adult Cereals” were things like Fruit and Fibre and All Bran. Definitely NOT more interesting than frosties, cocoa pops or rice crispies.

Sunday bike ride – 24.5 miles!

Clouds and South Downs Way

We headed off for a quick bike ride today, and ended up getting home 4 hours later after a catalogue of missed turns and optimism that resulted in a 24.5 mile ride. Our first obstacle was getting through the cyclists and spectactors watching the Triathlon, from then on we were aiming to do a route we used to do quite often, but somewhere along the way we missed our turn and so ended up heading along the South Downs Way for a while. We took a look on the OS map and decided to head towards Southease railway station and catch a train back to Brighton – we even used the power of mobile internet to check that they run on a Sunday. We rolled up at the station (after heading off down the wrong road to Piddinghoe for a mile or so) about 5 minutes before the train was due only to discover that there were maintenance works on the line and they were running a replacement bus service. We didn’t think the bus would like us and our bikes very much and so turned around and headed via Telscombe and back to Brighton stopping at Ovingdean for a slice of cake and a can of fizzy pop.

The Undercliff walk

We tracked our route using the GPS unit on my Nokia 6110 navigator, and have added it to our collection of GPS routes.

World Beard and Moustache Championships


Musketeer bear
Originally uploaded by Jane Dallaway

On Saturday, the World Beard and Moustache Championships were held at the Brighton Centre.

The event started, for the public (and for us thanks to a tip off from Andy) with a parade from the town hall, through the lanes to the Brighton Centre before starting for proper an hour or so later. Prior to the event starting, I thought it would all be a bit of a joke, but I hadn’t been prepared for the sheer amount of effort that people had gone to, especially their costumes. As if growing a large amount of facial fur wasn’t enough, at least one guy had painted himself silver for the occasion.

We met up with friends and headed off and the girls watched the ‘tache competition whilst the boys spend an hour (yes really) queueing for beer at the bar (which had 5 members of staff serving for 2,300 people – nice). After finally getting our beer we sat down in comfort for the freestyle moustache and the partial beard categories. Jeremy, Kirsty and Rory headed home mid way through partial beards, and we spotted Dom, Fiona and Amelia and so went and watched a few more rounds with them before deciding we were all bearded out and needed to head home.

There are, of course, more photos to be perused. The next championships is in 2 years time in Alaska, somehow I don’t expect we’ll be attending.

Dosas


Dosa at Waves
Originally uploaded by Jane Dallaway

Many thanks to Andy for telling us about Waves in Hove. They are a Dosa Diner, and carry dosas as well as idli, pooris and other indian “street food”.

We headed out there this evening and gave them a try, and we’ll be back having had a most satisfying eat on dhai poori, masala dosa for me and a spring dosa for Richard. All washed down with a glass of red for Richard, and a couple of sweet lassis for me.

Geek Wine Thing


Checking the colour
Originally uploaded by Jane Dallaway.

Last night we attended the first Geek Wine Thing organised by Danny and held at the Regency Town House.

Henry Butler from the Butlers wine cellar led the tasting, and for the cost of a tenner we tasted 8 different Spanish and Portugese wines. As a total novice in the wine tasting world, it was interesting to learn more about how to smell, look at and taste wine. Henry was an excellent and enthusiastic teacher.

The tasting started off very quiet and subdued, but before too many glasses had been consumed we got noisier and noisier.

The wines we tasted were:

Whites
Pares Balta Blanc de Pacs 2006 – Spain
Soalheiro Alvarinho 2005 – Portugal
Castello D’Alba 2005 – Portugal
Navajas Crianza 2003 – Spain

Reds
Monte Real Reserva 2000 – Spain
Clos Le Fites 2002 – Spain
Quinta de la Rosa Tinto 2004 – Portugal
Niepoort Redoma 1994 – Portugal

The white wines were split into unoaked (the first 2) and oaked (the second 2) with one each from Spain and Portugal. As usual I preferred the unoaked – so another nail in the coffin of oaked wines for me.

Next time, and I hope there will be a next time, I’ll try and remember to bring a pen to make some notes, as somewhat unsurprisingly I don’t remember too much beyond the first couple of glasses 🙂

As usual, my photos from the evening are all on flickr.

Brighton Festival

Well, it is festival time again here in Brighton, and so today I headed off in search of the Streets of Brighton, open houses and more of the 41 places installations.

Despite having lived in Brighton for 5 festivals, I’d never ventured into an open house until today – and I’m converted. I visited 3 and found them all to be of a really high standard. The first was Rod Clark.

Rod Clark's Open House

The second and third were both down Tidy Street. They were Shadow Box and SQ1.

The Shadow Box Artists Open House

I will be visiting more of them.

I managed to catch a few different street performances, the Deep Sea Jivers performed by Swervy World and Eco Pirates performed by Desperate Men.

Desperate Men

Has anyone seen our Universe?


Bob Nichol
Originally uploaded by Jane Dallaway.

Last night we went to Cafe Scientifque and heard Bob Nichol talking about cosmology.

It was quite a complex subject to talk about but Bob Nichol was excellent, very engaging, enthusiastic and able to explain things to those of us who haven’t studied science in over 20 years. I’m still too baffled to consider either the supernova that will cause earth to vapourise, or the fact that there might be 11 dimensions. It was also the biggest crowd I’ve seen at a Cafe Sci since it moved to the Branch Tavern from the Terraces.

It was also good to catch up Dom, Sophie and Tom.

Fabrica: Beneath the Strides of Giants


See no evil
Originally uploaded by Jane Dallaway.

We popped into Fabrica yesterday to see what was on display at the moment and found Beneath the Stride of Giants by Brian Griffiths. It is a wooden boat, made from other people’s junk.

Fabrica is such a lovely place to stop, it’s always peaceful and cool and its often hard to remember it is in such a busy location.