I’m still in Brighton where I’ve had a relaxing weekend. On Thursday night I attended the Short Fuse Short Story Slam. The quality of the stories was highly variable but I was pleased that one of the winners was Bill Jones, who read at Telling Lies last year. As with poetry slams, comedy did much better than serious pieces.
I didn’t mind too much not reading my story (called ‘This is not a true story and happened to someone else anyway‘) as it meant I could relax and enjoy the night. The story was a throwaway, so will probably not now see the light of day.
Friday night I watched the movie Be Kind Rewind. It was a fun, uplifting film (a couple of people applauded at the end) but somehow felt slight. It’s interesting how many recent films have been about ‘little media’ and/or overtly undermine corporate copyright.
On Saturday I hung out with Beth. She’s been working on some interesting projects recently, such as Node 101 Brighton and it was interesting to hear about those. We had breakfast on her allotment, on the hillside above the Lewes Road. I’d not been there before and couldn’t believe how beautiful it was. I imagine it’s even better in Summer with warm weather and everything flourishing. I saw Beth again in the evening and walked to the marina and back. The marina is beautiful at night, and I actually think the Roaring 40s is going to look pretty impressive, setting aside the problems with the project. It will certainly add to the feeling that the marina is a JG Ballard theme park.
On Sunday I attended a friend’s daughter’s Harry Potter themed birthday party. I don’t remember children’s parties being that noisy and intense but had a good time. It was fun to see games I remember as a kid, such as the eating-chocolate-while-wearing-gloves-and-scarf game.
I still don’t have a camera and have packed up the cable to copy images from my phone, so can’t post any photos of the weekend. Hopefully I’ll have a camera again next week, ready for my arrival in Coventry.