The rail replacement bus service does its best to ruin trips to Brighton at weekends, but after a calming plate of root vegetable curry and a lovely chat with Jane about music, art and our Offsprogs, everything felt okay and I went for a walk along the pebbles and gazed at the pale green sea, which for some reason last night was the colour of an Alpine stream.
A cormorant flew along the sunset skyline, the first one I've ever seen in Brighton.
People eat upstairs before climbing down the spiral staircase into a bijou room with a teensy bar at the end and car seats masquerading as sofas. It felt like playing at a house concert, but with a bit more fizzy excitement about it.
It takes quiet genius to think through a venue like this, to guide people gently downstairs after their dinner and get them seated on chairs with multi-coloured cushions, and to make everyone feel so effortlessly relaxed, including the person playing. Actually, I can't put into words how it felt last night. I really, really appreciated seeing friends from when we were nineteen, twenty; and also a couple of people who I had been worried about but who are OK, and that is such a relief. There were a lot of really good singers in the audience, some of whom like Pete and Lisa perform there too (and Jane and Eliza, of course).
The rail replacement bus on the way back was a red double decker that roared along the A23 at a terrifying speed, rocking from side to side alarmingly: but I was somewhere else in my head, with an unaccountable lump in my throat.
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