NOW WHAT? • No. 5181: Where's Brighton? ;)

When I opened Google Maps (which, today, decided I was clearly in Oxted) and zoomed out far enough to see London and the south coast in one view, I was amused to see that it chose to display only a few of the the seaside towns' names. Selsey, Bognor Regis, Worthing, Seaford, Eastbourne and Hastings were labelled. Brighton (and Hove), among others, was not. Some few decades ago my grandparents used to live in Bexhill-on-sea. When visiting them I usually took the train south from London Victoria. It went first to Eastbourne. The announcements always went "... Eastbourne, where the train will be divided. Join the rear four coaches for Pevensey, Cooden, Bexhill, St. Leonards Warrior Square, and Hastings." Other seaside towns were on the cheap day-return train list from Bexhill. Hastings was about as far east as we used to go, and Brighton was about as far west. The line from Eastbourne to Brighton looped inland, thus avoiding the port Newhaven and the other sea-side towns between Eastbourne and Brighton. If my grandfather could be persuaded to drive then we might venture inland north as far as, say, Battle or Herstmoceux (then the home of the main working part of the Royal Greenwich Observatory, Greenwich itself having long been swamped by London's lights)...

There was once (1987, I think) a WorldCon in Brighton. PeterM went to it (though maybe only for a day). There's a filk-of-a-filk song that mentions the Brighton Metropole Hotel (briefly)...

It'll be well done out to Luton, we will barbecue Bedford now.
It'll be a roaster up in Towcester(*), but just medium rare in Slough.
Even so and yet, we have one regret, that our delta vee is too small
To reach the coast where we hate the most on the Brighton Metropole.

That's pronounced "toaster"... ;)

Statistics: Posted by LazyLeopard — 30 Apr 2024 08:41

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