June 18th

Unfortunately today wasn’t as nice a day as yesterday so we took a trip into town to see if I could locate a pair of these vegan Birkenstocks as they appear to be the only one’s they make in a size 11. Why is that? Do they only have cows up to a certain size from which they source their leather? We’d not been out and about shopping like this for a while and it was nice wandering through the lanes. There’s quite a few new shops and foodie places that appear to have sprung up whilst we were away and we could quite easily have come home two stone heavier had we popped into each one that took our fancy. On the way there we passed a bloke dressed as a hobo playing a violin whilst balancing on a tightrope. Now that’s very Brighton. He also performed a valuable public service and managed to distract people’s gaze from the guy who sells the collection of utterly woeful ‘art’. Art with a capital ‘F’ if you like.
The vegan shoe shop (I can’t even type that without smiling) was closed however so we just made do with checking out some of our other favourite shops. There were some cracking mirrors (no pun intended) in Lavender Rooms and Beth found many sets of underwear that she would’ve looked damn fine in.
Today was the London to Brighton bike ride and throughout town there was a liberal smattering of cycling shorts, gaily coloured latex tops and those odd little sucky bottles that only cyclists have. I have tremendous admiration for those that take part in this event, it’s a fair old trek in hot weather and at the end of it they have to face the final humiliation of being treated by Brighton Council like a bloody nuisance instead of a bunch of decent folk who want a nice day out and raise a bit of cash for charities. This year there were no bikes allowed on the trains at all. Surely there’s a mail-train or something somewhere they could’ve laid on so all these crazy bike kids could get home with ease after the exertion.
Beth had a list of pictures she wanted to get for the picture library so we headed out through some beautiful countryside to Horsham to take a few snaps of the utterly stunning and majorly posh Christ’s Hospital school. The buildings themselves and those that surround it are so amazingly charming in the old English style. All red brickwork, imposing chimneys and Virginia creeper. Given the wherewithal I would’ve happily lived out my days in any one of them. Sadly (though not unexpectedly) the school itself is set back in some pretty impressive private grounds so we couldn’t get close enough to get some decent snaps, still we’d had a lovely drive out into the country though.
We headed back home via the station to pick up the highly preggers Sam (Beth’s sis) and took her home. She turned up with a bag so big I thought she might very well be moving in. Whilst Beth & Sam caught up I went to our scheduled house meeting at Esme’s place. The meeting was pretty productive despite the fact that there were only representatives from three of the eight flats there.
That night Beth cooked some fantastic wild Alaskan salmon with wild rice and we watched LOST, which is getting crazier and crazier with each passing episode. I tried filling Sam in on what was going on but quickly gave up.

Tea drunk: 6
Posh schools visited: 1
Birkenstocks failed to purchase: 1 pair