Brighton

Ah Brighton, Brighton, you stale seedy old secondhand woman! Every corner I turned, memories hit me over the head, some too horrid to mention.
The flat above a restaurant where a cockroach ran across Tracey's face when she was resting her head on the arm of a chair...
The street where Charlotte marched up the road whacking men's bums one after the other in broad daylight to get her revenge...
The road where the police stopped us because I was singing the theme from 'Robin Hood' at maximum volume on the back of a moped at 2 A.M...
The night-time trees packed with squawking starlings at migration time, splatting their poo on the pavement, Brighton being the end of mainland England. 'What are they saying?', I asked Big Bruv. 'Each of them is shouting, 'SHUT UP! I'M TRYING TO GET TO SLEEP!', he replied.
The first party I went to at the Resource Centre, where a tall transvestite stood at a trestle table, her long blonde hair swaying from side to side as she mixed something sloppy in a bowl. I was fascinated by her thick makeup, her gingham dress, her frilly waist pinafore and her Alice Band. Eddie asked her what she was making. 'Peeaaancakes', she drawled theatrically...
The Fortune of War pub on the beach, where we saw a Frank Sinatra lookalike sing an entire set to his reflection in the massive mirror at the back of the stage, accompanied by Bill Oldie on piano, an ancient gentleman with grey fur sprouting from the neck of his shirt, who had to be helped up by two people from the piano stool when his lunch was ready...

Sara's party was lovely, she looked stunning, and there were people there that I'd thought I would never see again; we all survived the same strange happenings in the late 1970s, squatting, sharing food and experiences and danger (stabbings, smackheads slumped obliquely on the stairs, collapsing ceilings, electrically charged toilet handles that zapped you when you flushed, you know the sort of thing). Sara liked her song, and danced to it, and I was glad I'd written her some pop instead of a mawkish ballad.