Nothing Earth-shattering today, really. I took the bus into town, wandered around Brighton a bit, and then ended up walking west along the beach to Hove. That's about three kilometers (or "kilometres"), which is about three kilometers further than I'd planned on walking today when I started out.
It's a little odd to think of walking
west along a beach. I'm used to beaches that run north-south, not east-west. Anyway.
Somewhere en route, though, I went down onto the beach for the first time here and read a little
Murphy. The beach here, of course, isn't sand. Not a grain of it that I could see. It's all rocks, most of them just the right size for throwing through a window. I'm surprised there are any intact panes in the hotels and blocks of flats lining the oceanfront, actually. It was overcast, but dramatic; shafts of sunlight touched down on the King Alfred Leisure Center in the distance, and the clouds hadn't yet ventured out over the ocean. I read
Murphy slowly (take that in past and present tense). Very slowly. I think I only got 20 pages in, but at least they were 20 pages I understood. Beckett is... difficult. Or can be.
Murphy gets a little clearer as it goes along, or maybe the reader gets a little weirder just by trying to keep up, and it's genuinely funny, but in the beginning it's a challenge. I actually re-read everything I'd already read the day I bought it. At this rate, I'll have it done long before I have to do my presentation on it, which is good.
It started to get way too cold on the beach. I put on my hoodie and put up the hood, but before long I had to get moving again just to warm up. To my amazement, there were people in the water. How desperate do you have to be to swim in such cold weather? It's probably nothing to them. Like when we call 85-degree weather in Southern California "balmy," whereas here they say "I can't believe how hot it is today!"
After a lot of wandering to and through Hove, I stopped for dinner at this Italian restaurant, and sat outside. Once I got away from the beach it got a lot warmer. There was a party of six or so high school girls out there having a birthday party. They were plenty loud already, but when two teenaged Russian guys showed up, one of them with a guitar, these girls practically lost it. They wouldn't leave them alone. At first, the two were flattered, and maybe up for the flirting, but after a while the girls' attentions turned into abuse and harrassment. I know they're young and have no idea what they're doing, but seriously, shouting nonstop at the next table while they're trying to eat borders on the sociopathic. I think they got the hint when one of them picked up the guy's guitar, and without saying a word the guy grabbed it out of her hands and put it back. Yeah, back off. Even after the left the restaurant, they continued to shout at the two of them from the sidewalk. They probably aren't bad kids. Just idiots.
Also, after I was done and my plate had been cleared away, I had to wait 15 minutes or so for the check. Eventually a waiter passed by, and I asked him if I was supposed to pay inside or something.
"Oh no," he said. "Just say the word and we'll bring you the bill."
"All right. Bring me the bill."
What are you waiting for? You know I'm done eating. You haven't brought me a dessert menu or anything. Let me pay and get away from these girls!
I caught a bus back into Brighton, and then the 25 up to Sainsbury's to do some shopping, then another 25 back to school. While I was waiting for the bus outside Sainsbury's, though, I looked down on the bench beside me and saw four chicken bones. Bunch of savages in this town.
Incidentally, I'm now hooked on Apple Tango.
