OR, TRAVELLING WITH MY NEW RAILCARD, BEING ANCIENT HAS SOME COMPENSATIONS.
I have been missing as I’ve been working on the farmyard collection that I’m doing for a show while trying to write my book and running around to the gym and sauna and drinking too much as I’m in my arty phase. An artist when inspired gets a little crazy about a project so my no drinking, no smoking is done after the forty days of abstinence. I am now traditionally foul and busy for a patch. Forgive me!
While writing a book about my more exotic destinations, I felt the dreaded itch to at least get the hell out of London. It’s more and more of a nightmare to live in Soho and now they are encasing our poor little courtyard villette with aggressive scaffolding to replace the windows. With all the cloud cover from the equally aggressive chemtrails I am now walking around in the dark there. Oppressive and depressive.
So I looked in my freezer and shouted “I need fresh fish” and bought a ticket to Eastbourne. I am on the train now and already feel better just to escape.i love trains anyway, and I’m eating a big tub of organic plum and blackberry yoghurt and have chucked in loads of nuts and dried fruit. No tea flask as I will shortly be weighed down with loadsa fish.
The beach shack does the best hot salmon ever and I’ve found out I can freeze that to with maybe just a slight loss of texture. They butterfly sardines there too for you so you can load up on oily fish galore! Slight compromises have to be made but generally it’s local and line caught.
Last time I also got some Dover sole (disappointing) and mackerel (couldn’t fancy them out of freezer)so will leave them out this time and get the brill (brill) squid and halibut. I feel a bit guilty about the squid as it’s so intelligent, but it’s also equally so delicious. I’ll be paddling and doing a bit of qigong on the beach there too. More later.
AT THE WINTERY BEACH.
I was so full of hope for my gut to feel better and the weather to ‘brighten up’. God bless me, the eternal optimist.
It was beautiful to get down to the sea but a niggling tummy ache had been getting worse since the morning. I decided to get a cheap cab straight to the fish shack in case they ran out of the best bits. I love them because they’ll tell you properly about what’s what with the fish. No farmed crap for me, and it must be line caught and relatively local . Their hot smoked salmon I leapt upon, and monkfish, sardines, squid, (yes I do feel the shame) haddock and mackerel. No brill to be purchased but I got a lovely slab of red snapper to make up for it. I left it with them to hold in the fridge while I went walkies. Well actually I just walked over to the beach said hello to two ambitious fishermen and scurried off to the working mans club.
I nipped into their powder room for indeed it has a sign saying powder room and then got myself half a pint while I pondered my low spirits and how I would pass the time until my booked ticket later that afternoon. My belly ache I felt was causing me to have the blues. Lucky I am such a good girl scout as I had some pain killers in my ever prepared bum bag and opted to take one before all the joy was sucked from the day.
I then went out and had a good walk along the beach in the opposite direction to the pier, for that was my cunning plan, to look up the other end then pick up my fish and walk to the pier and finally station. I took my shoes and socks off to earth myself and had a paddle while looking for pretty stones and shells, sat and horizon gazed a bit and then creakily got to my feet (for indeed my knees were achy and weak to add to my feeling of being the original ancient mariner in my eight quid charity shop oilskin.
Not so cunning actually, it was bitterly cold and very windy and the endless groynes, which on a warmer day I would love seeing (geddit?), left me indifferent and cranky. Some big rocks and beach houses were about my lot so I decided to carry on back and pick up my fish and head towards the pier. Yes it was that dull, and even the coastal road was so noisy I could barely hear the fucking waves. Here you go a little history from world guides:
A SEASIDE RESORT
“Eastbourne was relatively slow to transform itself into a seaside resort. When King George III sent his children to Sea Houses in 1780, it was still just a busy fishing village.”Eastbourne was relatively slow to transform itself into a seaside resort. When King George III sent his children to Sea Houses in 1780, it was still just a busy fishing village.
It’s thanks to the arrival of the railway in 1849 that Eastbourne owes much of its popularity. The town’s owners at that time were William Cavendish, later to become the seventh Duke of Devonshire, and John Davies Gilbert. They planned to develop the area – at whatever cost. Their plans came to fruition in 1860, when a series of improvements were made, including spacious boulevards and streets, as well as a promenade. Later, the Meads was added, along with a proper town drainage system and Devonshire Park.
The Winter Garden was opened in 1875, shortly after the pier. Perhaps most notable of these plans was that no shops were to be built along the seafront – this is still true today. In 1883, Eastbourne became a municipal borough. Just three years later, the new Town Hall was opened. Built to luxurious standards, its lavatories were even graced by Minton tiles.”
There you go enough said. Even it’s bogs are great, if only they weren’t all locked up.
I walked back down and felt better. The pill had kicked in finally and my fish wasn’t too heavy. Walk to the pier and find a nice pub. Except they were mostly hotels. It just wasn’t going my way and it started to spit, I glanced up at the pier, pier done I thought, then walked into town to the good old Wetherspoons at the station.
The pub was lovely and jolly and I got bought a drink but the journey back seemed interminable. The train was boring and long as it was getting dark, and when I arrived at Victoria , the buses were playing up too. Not to be a baby but it was too much in that kinda weather. When I got home shivering, I bunged the fish into some silica zip lock bags and threw them into the freezer in a very unceremonious way while drinking a beer and having some of that lovely hot-smoked salmon as I worked. Then I dragged my weary bones up to bed and fell asleep like a child at 8.30 in the evening.
Top Tip: Most of it was amazing and I got plenty of briny air and felt great the next day, but for me it was a tad dull because I’m spoilt. If I’m going to get cold it must be in Russia where you’re ready for it, but generally sea days must be abroad in the heat or somewhere that’s very interesting. Be prepared to not be feeling your best on some outings that are nearer to home, it happens it can’t all be sunshine and roses. Think of me and know that it doesn’t matter if you have your off days
OVER AND OUT FROM THE COLD CRANKY CHILD THAT IS THIS OLD BIRD.
Old Bird Travels Solo! 