Brighton. A small town by the sea, directly south of London. Not big enough to be named a city, so it has to be twinned with Hove - anyone who has never been to Brighton might think 'Oh, fair enough, some towns are quite small' - but alas, it's more to do with the problem of urban sprawl, making Hove and Brighton blur into one large indeterminable bulk of city, pushing forwards but never being beaten by the mass of sea it looks out onto. Due to this blur, we now live in Brighton and Hove. It's impossible to know which settlement our house actually sits in. In the address it says 'Brighton', but I know addresses can be wrong: my parents address is ended with Suffolk. We live north of the waveney, therefore our house is in Norfolk. Damn Bungay for being on the other side of the river.
So, we've moved. It was a very emotional, sleepless few days in which every obstacle that we feared, we faced, and it seemed to be that nothing was going smoothly at all. But we powered on regardless of wind, rain and the fates challenging us, and finally we are here. We've yet to get internet, so this post is hopefully going to be a short one, so as not to cost too much. Life is looking up, things are happening, and those obstacles we faced feel like a test to see if we truly wanted and deserve this new start. And dammit, we do.
This place amazes me every day. I used to have this impending fear of being laughed at constantly for wearing something that made me look silly. Now, I'm more scared of leaving the house in my Jack Wills hoody than I am of going out in the birthday suit. The statement I'd be making would be far better than that of Jack Wills.
The sea is so fresh and ever-changing. A mass of greens, blues, purples and blacks, it looks the same every day yet it's always different. It's water from the carribbean, and from Florida, and it's got all the way here, just to smash against our coast and fuck off to spain for a while. It's amazing to think of the currents in the ocean, in the whole world, when all that you can see is the 7-mile distance from our tiny eyes: the horizon of water, the colourful sand banks and the massive ships that linger in the distance and thankfully, we cannot hear. Ships in Southampton are like chavs in Yarmouth: big, ugly, hang around in dodgy-looking areas and just blast out this incredibly rude, vulgar sounds all day and all night long. I'm so glad to be miles from both those entities.
So this is our new start. This is my life, starting, beginning in this beautiful city, where anything can and will happen, where people are so so keen for exercise, and more men have painted nails than women.
I wonder what will happen now...