The burning orange sun is dropping into the sea, far beyond the charred iron skeleton frame of Brighton’s West Pier. I am shivering inside a tatty blue beach hut outside the ‘old’ Gemini bar on the seafront, and the glass bottles and empty pints are racking up on the wooden table. New Order’s ‘Decades’ is blasting from my tinny phone speaker. The world tilts precariously on its axis.
Seated on the opposite side of the table is an old mate come good out of the shadows, a soul brother from down the ages, and we are rekindling our decades long friendship. Firework sparks of sharp banter, cutting hilarity, and incendiary jokes are flying in the chill winds and ocean spray off the old beach promenade.
It’s a welcome drunken reunion and nostalgic trip down memory alleyways for doom fuelled days of Armageddon.
Two o’clock sharp, we clocked-in at the Grand Central boozer, a beach pebble’s throw from the station, and immediately began banging the world to rights over premium priced IPA.
Two serial wanderers returned to pick up on respective life battle stories and strategies – knee deep in raising kids, implementing masterplans, and picking at the scars of old war wounds from the Trenches.
After sinking a few jars, a thirty-strong Brighton troop of the Peaky Blinders rocked up to the Central in sharp suits, matching waistcoats, and razor-sharp haircuts, for a boozy funeral wake of some heavy gravity. And, before the alcohol mists descended, we took it as a fitting cue to embark on the second leg of a spontaneous circular crawl of the Cities public houses.
Time is circular, it moves in spirals, is the pissed-up thought germinating in the dregs of the liquid hops, as we move into more progressively mashed-up banter.
The evening is closing its doors to the lonely life-soured day drinkers and opening its doors to the night doves and hawks. Making the inspired executive decision to switch to the rum n’ cokes, getting sozzled in the I-am-the-Walrus watering hole, I marvel at how my fellow journeymen and women spiral through existence and can resurface anywhere along this circular beer-soaked pub hop through life.
After a raucous giggle over a po-faced karaoke crooner farting out crowd-pleasers – from Adele to George Michael’s ‘Faith’ to a stripped-down and hand sanitised Covid audience – the hunt is on for a rebel bar to take my dirty cash, which is burning a scorching lava hole in my wallet.
Staggering through the Laines, reminiscing on the roads behind us, reflecting on those ahead, we chance inevitably on the ‘old’ New Kensington. Swigging down one for the road, I eyeball the pub floor where the modern punter is rubbing shoulders with the lairy ghosts of street savvy schemers, anarchist rabble-rousers, and hardcore battlelines of crusty dread-locked traveller mobs.
As the Brighton Station clock ticks down on last orders, the swaggeringly pissed vibrations of the late-night drunk tank becomes abundantly clear, blowing on the chill night breeze across the concourse. And it’s homeward bound, with a cheesy grin written across my boat race.
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