All Things Bright and Beautiful

It is Christmas on Oxford Street. A busy, noisy, fabulous Christmas, if a tad early. Prosaically enough, I bought myself a pair of badly needed trousers, but I made up for that by losing myself at Waterstone's until I could not remember ever coming in. I was enormously impressed by Stephen Baxter's Destiny's Children trilogy, starring perhaps someone whose name sounds like 'Beyonce'. It occured to me that I haven't read a good book - textbooks and guides to consulting aside- in a long, long time. But then, the long bus rides I used to take in Athens are impossible here -the Tube is just too overwhelmingly practical.

It is a difficult time for the MSc people. London may be at its festive best, but, with the deadline for a big Valuation project looming ever closer, we are left longing for consumerist silliness but having neither time nor energy to pursue it. Add to that my job hunting, which is itself a full-time occupation, and it all starts looking positively dismal. Enter Dot Richards and the Brighton trip schedule. A weekend spent with our dodgy faculty in the closest thing the English have to Mykonos? Well, let me check my filofax... I think I've got something arranged with the Scandinavian Bikini Team... nope, that was last week.

Now Brighton is an excellent town by anyone's standards. But it is hard to appreciate when one sits sleepless, stiff and cold inside a coach. Checking into the Royal Albion Hotel, which is a lot less impressive offline, we didn't quite know what to make of this place. We did know, however, that we could look forward to a free meal, unheard of in London, and wine, lots of wine. So we binged away. Oh, some of us complained that the beef was inedible and we were all impressed at how the Royal Albion could mess up the chocolate cake so bad. I mean, you have to do ugly things to five layers of chocolate to make it taste bad. But we survived. Or maybe we died and went to karaoke purgatory. Because what happened afterwards was good and evil and definitely sublime.

In Greece, faculty members will not so much as talk to you unless they a) want you to carry their bag for the following year, b) are looking to shag you in exchange for passing grades in Macro II, or c) are trying to con you out of insane amounts of money trading currencies. Don't laugh. I got into the LSE on this guy's letters of recommendation. I have nightmares of explaining to Dot Richards why my referee is in jail. Anyway, my background left me ill-prepared for the lost Blues Brother, the talented Mr. Macve, and his indian partner (a noted academic himself). The holding hands part killed so many of my brain cells that I screamed.

Now my own favourite faculty member is Dr. Al Bhimani of Summer School fame. I took the man's course before I even knew what was in it and was very disappointed he'd lost that moustache. But what a cool guy nonetheless. He wanted to sing Abba's "Money, Money, Money". After all, as he said, what else would a guy from Accounting sing? Rrrriiiight. Anyway, the karaoke people would not oblige and he was stuck with "Take a Chance on Me", a song I had once heard an Erasure cover of and badgered my English teacher with for a month. How it all ties together, eh? At least Dot Richards (left) and Mary Comben (right) joined my man Al on stage. I could at least tell myself they were doing an Abba impersonation. In his video I went on record as having said "I don't like Abba!" It will come in handy when I'm rich and famous. At least allegations of homosexuality will not stick.

Purgatory is never the end of the story, is it? After the last echoes of "Let it Be" had died down, it was time for the afterparty, and that was held -of necessity- at the only place big enough to let us all through: Creation. Now Creation is one of those clubs that inspired the Matrix cave dance scene. It feels like you've died and gone to hell and found all the other wicked sinners are down there with you. (The Lunatic at Earl's Court Station objects: you don't get to keep your body in Hell, so don't you be gettin' anae idees). But it is a cleverly designed club, catering to the less-infernal crowd as well. An 80's club, shameless but not tacky, lies just behind the main stage, well insulated from the punishing sounds of Creation proper.

Now I am no clubber, and in such places I tend to drink a lot early on so I can take the noise and the crowd. I think a lot, as I always do when drunk, of bizarre things. This time, I thought of the English and why they are so degenerate. Is it the cold? Is it the sun setting at four o'clock? But by the same token, why isn't Iceland submerged in a sea of beer and vomit? Is it the long history of drinking excess escalating into something worse? Then how come there's any Irish people left at all? Is it dysfunctional families? Possibly. I see women pushing baby carts in England that would never be allowed to push crack in Athens. But there must be more. Why are English women such complete tarts, and how does that figure into everything else? I have come to the conclusion that, uniquely among nation-states, the English are the only people who collectively despise themselves. That's why they they never miss an opportunity to act in a self-destructive fashion.

This just might answer my friend Haris' question the other day: why do the English consider Boudicca, who led an army that burnt ancient Londinium to the ground, part of English history? Why does Tennyson get so excited about her? They do because they secretly wish someone would burn nowaday London down, I think. They have a monument to the Great Fire of 1666, as well. Coincidence? But all of this still begs the question of how the English came to despise themselves so. Another day's blogging, I guess.

But enough of these depressing thoughts. The night ended abruptly with fluorescent police barging into Creation. It turns out one of our party was not just drunk, but a complete and utter lunatic on top. Fear not, the sterling reputation of the LSE is safe. And it was time to go anyway. We went to sleep and woke up to the most dazzling sight imaginable.

On a sunny day, Brighton is paradise. The Lanes, Brighton's picturesque market, is built, oddly enough, much like a Greek island hora, with narrow cobblestone roads lined with cute little shops. You can navigate simply by picking the most downward-sloping road every time. And the crowds of happy people that come and go seem to think it's exciting as well, even though it's home. But what I was most suprised to see, in wintertime England of all places, was that molten-gold glow of the sun bouncing off the sea and onto the pavements. I walked around with a massive purple afteglow in my eyes, I stood staring so long. A friend once said while driving down Vouliagmenis that these things nourish her soul and I thought little of it. I understand things a little better now.

This seemed like a good opportunity to get my first upright picture taken for the blog. Well, it didn't quite work, but here goes anyway. I could have picked someone shorter than Thanos to stand next to, but such things aren't always easy to arrange.

As you would expect from a sunlit city by the sea, there is a marina in Brighton. In my homesick mood I thought at the time it looked much like ours in Phaliro. But it doesn't, of course. This one is a huge commercial complex that would put all of Glyfada to shame, and with better service as well (though that is not hard to beat, if memory serves). We had coffee here, and, when the sun had finally set, made our way back to the hotel.

There was an opportunity cost to all this walking around in Brighton. We missed our 'motivation seminar'. More accurately, we woke up early, went to the seminar, and walked out in five minutes. There's only so much "BELIEVE IN YOURSELF YOU CAN DO IT" bullshit I can put up with, especially from a ridiculously gay guy I'd learnt to despise on karaoke night. Is it just me who thinks if you're useless you will not and should not get a good job? What's wrong with the world being fair for a change? When he suggested that we repeat positive affirmations to ourselves every morning, I nearly threw my chair at him. Let's just hope he wasn't paid for this.

Night fell over Brighton, and the MSc people headed for the famous Pier. I never miss an opportunity to act childish, and (a relief, this) neither do all of the other business-savvy cutthroats at the programme. So we hit the rides, and the bumper cars, and even the cans-hitting range that is always rigged (bottom ones are full of sand). And we hung upside down. As a rule, one should never trust people who refuse to hang upside down for a while. No-one should take themselves that seriously.

It is easy to underestimate how cold it can get down by the sea. I should have known better, but then the Aegean is a tame sea and she looks after us most of the time. The ocean, however, knows no master, and while we were going about our amusement park business, it froze our immature asses off. Stiffly, we made our way back to the Albion, to plan for the night.

It always pays to have contacts. One of the Albion's employees, Akis, was a Greek studying in Brighton, and like most Engineering folks, he was a helpful and deeply decent guy. Upon hearing that we had been to Creation and were headed to the Walkabout that night, he shook his head vigorously. "I wouldn't go near either place". Instead, he pointed us to the Saqqara , a club for actual, honest-to-god humans. Certainly, I was in no rush to meet the police again, and everyone was looking forward to some decent folks for a change. So we changed course, braved the inner city streets and spent the night at the Saqqara. The night blurs for me at that point (Red Bull + Vodka does not help maintain focus), though I remember eyes and ankhs looking out at me from wall and pillar and a few exquisite women. What I do recall, most vividly, is the way back.

Our group was divided for a while. Some of us set off to the hotel, while others stayed at the dodgy-looking seaside chipper , not eating any of that stuff I hope. Then a white car pulled over next to me and the door opened. My eyes trailed it all the way back, and there didn't seem to be an end to it. Was I being invited into a limo? Not wanting to wake up minus one kidney, I hesitated. But it turned out the rest of the guys were inside, and had hired it much like one would flag down a cab. I went home in style, and fell into a stupor. Riding a pimpmobile is hard work and I had SO much work to do come Sunday...

...I am doing it now.