Beanster
Chris Bean Joined: May 15th 2008
Logged in: September 3rd 2011
Logged in: September 3rd 2011
Travel Blog Posts
Aiiieeeee it's been 4 months! Good thing writing this blog isn't my job; I would've fired myself ages ago. Here is the news: the reason I am writing this now is that I've finished my dissertation 2 weeks before the deadline (shouts of applause) and am thus reduced to the tedium of applying for jobs and looking for a flat. That's right! We're moving out - the landlady wants to sell, and we don't want to freeze in the next few months. Summer, however, has been most excellent: a brief retrospective at the calendar reveals that we have done a week's tango festivalling, Mon's been back to NZ, I have ridden the mighty CBR around France and Spain, and we've just been to Bruges - I am in fact writing this under the influence of Belgian ... read more
Winter is over. Thank (insert chosen deity) for that. Those of you who were unfortunate enough to talk to us during this time will know that nothing preoccupied us (me) more than getting some kind of insulation in our flat – glazing, curtains, plastic sheets, anything. It was freezing. Others tried to comfort us with tales of snot icicles in bed, but we were inconsolable: our place was an ice-box. What now, then? Double-digit temperatures, that’s what! Wooh! The view from the lounge gains more colours every day, and the number of layers we need to wear drops proportionately. I’ve never been so happy to welcome spring. This weekend was spent on our bicycles, tootling about Brighton and Hove wondering at how easy it is to get around, cars and pedestrians notwithstanding. Mon has taken a ... read more
Hello and welcome to possibly the most-infrequently updated blog... in the world. As you may be aware, we are living in the white-person's paradise that is Brighton (well, Hove, but close enough). Brightonians are all, without exception, convinced that they live in the coolest, most cosmopolitan town in the UK (London's not a town, man, it's a crazy place). This is always uttered by someone white and middle-class - no-one remotely dissimilar is ever in sight when you hear this. So, what then? Well, for one, there are marginally less chain-stores than you might find in other towns. Don't panic - you can still get your insanely cheap clothes at Primark, and the literary heaven that is WH Smith is there; but there isn't a Starbucks on every corner, and you can walk for a good ... read more
You may recall that last year, we were lucky enough to stay at the family home of some friends of ours. Well, we obviously behaved; the offer was there to stay for a week. I refer of course to Wester Bavelaw, near Edinburgh. Mum promptly fell in love with the Aga - this deserves some elucidation. An Aga is a giant stove/oven/plate warmer/ clothes dryer, built in the days when planned obsolescence was but the spark in some fiendish marketer’s eye. It is always on - like a fire, it gives a house its warmth. And can boil a kettle in seconds. Anyway. Scotland. Yes. Some houses had their floors reinforced to get an Aga in, they’re that heavy. We spent two days at the Edinburgh festival, which was just right - lots of people and ... read more
Mummy!
Right. It’s going to be a challenge to get all the material into the sort of size that will appeal to today’s fast-moving professional blahblahblah. Having successfully wasted some space, let me say this - we had a quite extraordinarlily excellent couple of weeks driving around. Mary (Mon’s mum) was with us, so we were keen to put on a jolly good show. All got in the car, and into the ferry! Going by sea seems to be the option of choice for the guilty middle classes - no Easyjet fodder this. Carloads of kayaks, picnic tables and squalling children. Bliss, presumably. We arrived and stopped in Honfleur for our first meal in the land of yum. It didn’t disappoint. Indeed, I may very well use this blog to belabour the point that dammit, you simply ... read more
Our room
Ahoy, I'm writing this on the spur of the moment, after 5 days of generally buying furniture, tidying the flat and doing administrative stuff (they're big on that over here). Our new flat is between Hove and Portslade, which are themselves just out of Brighton. Portslade is, for practical purposes, our hood. It consists of a fairly solid high street which caters to the needs of the many nearly-deads and badly-feds that populate the area. Personal favourites include Wimpys, a fast-food chain which has apparently taken on the mythical status of Georgie Pie in NZ (the notable difference being that it actually still has outlets), and a charity shop that sells exactly the kind of furniture I'm looking for: the cheap kind. More expensive purchases will come, but I need executive approval for those... Further east ... read more
Festival!
A lot has been going on! The move to Brighton is in full swing - haven't actually shifted yet, but more on that later. We went to The Best Rock Festival in Europe (TM), Rock Werchter! Twas awesome - acts included Muse, Green Day, Pearl Jam, Pink (somewhat incongruously) and a raft of others, including your favourite theatre metallers, Rammstein. There were flames coming out of his, erm, rocket. One of the more intrusive elements was the heat - 41C at one point! The pink varnish on my toenails was melting; we reached the Terminal Festival Ickiness stage within hours of arriving. Green Day were huge - their set included letting a couple of moshpit members get on-stage and sing; one of them was rewarded with a guitar! Very cool. The whole shebang is super-impressive - ... read more
Another day, another ending... I finish my contract at 3, a mobile company, at 5 pm tomorrow. I've had a great time there, and it was a necessary springboard for our plans to move south. Mon has found a job in Worthing, which is west of Brighton. She has a contract with a water company - this is good, because people need water (and sewerage systems!) so it's a keeper. We're in the process of deciding whether to live in Worthing, which is clearly the retirement capital of West Sussex, or Brighton, which is young, funky and alternative. What will it be... It sounds like a no-brainer, but what with Mon having to commute every day, we figure it's kind to find a flat that doesn't involve her sitting in traffic while I sip lattes on ... read more
London under a brooding sky
Recently, we were lucky enough to house-sit a converted barn which dates back to the 17th century. Ish. I dunno, it’s old. So old, in fact, that it’s sideways. I kid you not, it’s on an angle, as you’ll see in the photos. The house came with a couple of dogs, much to Mon’s delight. We were, thus, put in charge of a huge house with an equally massive garden, complete with fountains shaped as nubile ladies. Little did I know I would be cruelly pulled away from this bucolic fantasy by a recruiter. Called on Monday, started on Tuesday. Sort of a Craig David song, but not quite. It was a bit of a shame, really, as we were having some great weather which meant there was a lot of sunbathing to be done. But ... read more
First days back
2010 is whizzing by! Here we were, thinking we still had plenty of time to enjoy the summer after our wedding, and it’s gone! We are having some much needed R+R after working solidly through our time in NZ, as well as organising our wedding. The major feature of post-wedding bliss is the pleasant novelty of having time - several evenings were spent doing exactly what we felt like, be it eating pizza, walking around town or drinking with friends. Indeed, the previous sentence speaks volumes about our the tenor of our intentions this summer - as we look at photos taken over the last couple of months, a tale of time spent friends and family unfolds. In more wistful moments we wonder where all the time went... A few days after the wedding, we looked ... read more
