In 2016 I left London to house sit in the small town where my grandparents had lived. After a sequence of unfortunate events involving electricians and train strikes I ended up spending the whole summer pretty much alone in a town full of old people, where I knew no-one and there was very little to do, and I had very little in-person contact with other people. A situation a lot of other people can relate to at the moment I think.
Tag: Sussex
Robert Smith’s Cabbages
A couple of years ago I went down to Aldwick, near Bognor Regis for the summer to house-sit a relative’s house. I ended up being stranded there due to a lengthy train strike. Robert Smith of the Cure is probably the only famous local resident. The owner of one of the local shops told me where he lived, and I went along to see it once out of curiosity. The house was dull and expensive looking, but the beach it stands next to was much more Robert Smith like, with windswept shingle like Dungeness and rare sea cabbages. I never bothered to look at Robert Smith’s house again, but I made many trips to the beach because I liked it so much. I was usually the only person there.
Fanzine Ynfytyn 27
I’ve done a new zine about that time in 2006 I accidentally spent a whole summer alone in Bognor Regis. For £2.50 you get both the zine and the mini zine I made at the time for the 24 hour zine challenge. Find them here.
Toy Cameras in Brighton
My flickr account has 370 albums on it, dating back to 2007, before I started this blog. A little while ago I dug out some pictures of Bracknell from the archives, and I thought I’d find some more things from the oldest albums.
Fishbourne Palace
A while back I went to Fishbourne Palace. In the 1960s engineers digging a new drain in a village just outside Chichester discovered some Roman mosaics. When they were excavated, they turned out to belong to the one of the largest Roman palaces outside Italy. My thing I wrote for Storyboard this month is based on it (and yes, the building really does look like a swimming pool). No one is one hundred percent sure who it belonged to, the most common guess is Tiberius Claudius Cogidubnus, the local chieftain / Roman ally / client king, but there are no inscriptions or historical records either backing it up or proving otherwise.
москва в брайтон
I have been busy recently, and the ever-present backlog of photos and so on I mean to post gets ever longer. Here’s some photos I took of Brighton Pier at some point. I have no idea when I took them, probably when I lived in Brighton, but I scanned them the other week.
Cake mistakes
These are a couple of photos from the end of a roll that I forgot to scan. Me & Marcos went down to Brighton for the day in March, and it rained torrentially, so we basically went from cafe to pub to restaurant. We went to meet up with my friend Vicky first at the Mock Turtle, a tea room down by the seafront that looks like a grandmother’s dining room. I’ve been there lots of times, and their food and drink is nice and reasonably priced. Vicky was running late, so I decided to get a cake for her as a surprise. I saw they had added a rainbow cake to the menu, and she loves that kind of thing, and I was curious about what it looked like.
Hastings Summer of 2006
I got some films developed a little while ago, and it turned out some of them are from quite a while ago, and had been lurking around in drawers for a long time. This one is from 2006. I’m not sure what camera I took these with, some kind of box camera or Diana or something.
Anniversaire de Victoire
On Saturday I went to Brighton for Vicky’s birthday. When I arrived at her flat, she had a full birthday tea laid out with all kinds of treats and drinks, and a red velvet cake that looked like a giant cupcake. Everyone should do that for their birthday, it was so much fun
Drink-drawing & Reading Objects
My friend Adam from art college runs a pub drawing game night called Drinky Doodle in Brighton. I couldn’t make the first one, but I managed to get to the second. It’s at a nice scandinavian themed bar. There are assorted themed games where you have to either draw what’s on the card you drew out of a hat, or draw the things that are shouted out. Sadly I missed out on the That’s Life Drawing they did last time, where you drew stuff out of the magazine. I love those awful “REAL LIFE DRAMA” magazines.
The occasion of my 26th Birthday: in which I venture lead poisoning and eat a lot
I’m doing an art MA at the University of Brighton. I was living in Brighton, but I’ve moved back in with my mum in Kent recently because I ran out out of money. I only have to be there in person one day a week though, so commuting’s ok. My stuff still wants unpacking
Day out with my sister
In October, my sister came to see me in Brighton (I miss you!) with her 3 sons, dog and boyfriend in tow and we went for a walk on the beach and an excellent pub lunch. I took some pictures, but didn’t scan the film until recently. No spectacular pictures, but a nice day out.
White Night 2010- all night arts festival
On Saturday I went to White Night rather than doing anything big for Halloween. It’s an all night art festival in Brighton on the night the clocks change. I knew some people who were doing stuff in it, and there was plenty of interesting stuff to come across anyway.
Brighton Zinefest 2010
I just realised I forgot to put the photos from the 2010 Zinefest on here. I’m going to write about it in more detail in issue 13 of my zine, but to summarise: It was good, lots of people came, the Bobby McGees were fantastic, I got the flu on Saturday, was tired and irritable.
Tea & Sympathy
Earlier today me & Vicky planned to go to an Alice Tea Party that was advertised in a vintage clothes shop. We dressed up Alice style, her in a grey dress with a bow and white tights with black ballet shoes, and me with a chequred skirt, silver and black stripy jumper, and silver ballet shoes. We got there and the “tea party” turned out to be a shop assistant on a small table with some styrofoam cups of tea. Very disappointing
Fisheyes
Fisheye photos from various occasions on the beach. With help from Madame T.
Pier Kaleidoscope
A couple of weeks ago I took my cheesy 70s kaleidoscope filter to the pier. I didn’t really get the shots I wanted, and I dropped my lens cap between the slats, but I managed to get a few ok shots.
Bramber & Steyning
Bramber’s a small village inland of Shoreham, it’s got one street with a couple of pubs and houses, a ruined Norman castle, and an intact Norman church (ie they’re about 1000 years old)
Shoreham
On Saturday I went out with my dad to have lunch out and a wander. We went to Shoreham, a small coastal town near Brighton, and Bramber, a village with a ruined castle. Here’s Shoreham.
Brighton Aquarium
When Chris was down the other week we went to the aquarium because I had a half price voucher. I love aquariums, and I’m going again on Monday evening for a work thing.
Hazy Sea
I went for a walk along the beach whilst waiting to meet up with my cousin, who’s just moved to Brighton. There was a haze on the sea that day, and the pier looked like it was floating on nothing. I never get tired of photographing the seafront.
A wander along the beach
One of my New Year’s Resolutions was to trawl back through forgotten photos on my hard drive/negatives folder and post-process them. This was one of the first untouched folders I found. Back in September, I went for a walk along the beach along Hove Lawns, right up to Portslade. It was a beautiful day, and there was hardly anyone about, because it was the middle of the week, and the tourist season had pretty much finished.