to newhaven near brighton at the weekend to visit my oul’ college buddy andy gibson, as his short film ‘consider yourself at home’ was showing at the NFT in london as part of this year’s london film festival. another epic drive for me and wee mazza. we set off at one in the morning from manchester, after a wee noggin of ’sherbet’ to keep us awake for the journey and didnae arrive in newhaven til half eight. we could have done it a couple of hours quicker if we’d taken the motorways, but i much prefer the fun and sense of adventure you get from setting off into the unknown by taking the A [and in some cases even 'B'] roads.
once at andy’s we had the luxury of an hour in bed to rest our sandpapered eyeballs before it was time to get up and set off for london with him and his girlfriend becca.
much chaos and frivolity ensued as we met up with various other member’s of andy’s posse on the train and in the NFT itself. a couple of lines on the underground [including of course the one we needed] were closed due to overcrowding, so we had to charge round like eejits finding a bus to waterloo and the embankment to get there in time. once at the NFT, it turned out that we had about 8 people and only four tickets to go round so cue more ‘blue-arsed fly’ impersonations, this time from andy, trying to use his status as director of one of the films on show to get us all in.
eventually we all made it and sat through a pretty mixed bag of short films - and here i’d like to give a special mention to the american yaniv raz, the director of ‘things fall apart’. not only was his film one of the most boring to watch, but the great man himself sat in front of me and spent the duration of the afternoon, wildly swinging his head from side to side while reading the subtitles on the other films being shown [most of which were foreign]. having this human metronome swaying constantly to and fro across my field of vision for nearly two hours, i came to understand why those of a moslem fundamentalist nature might consider the removal of certain americans‘ heads a worthy goal.
after the NFT we repaired to dogget’s coat and badge pub by blackfriars bridge, where we were later joined by another buddy of mine joe cribbin, who now lives in london and came across for a pint or three. joe’s a proper moston born and bred lad and surrounded by all these ‘geet southern puffs’ he really sounded like a proper full-on northerner. funny. i’d never really noticed his accent that much when he lived up here amongst his fellow mancs.
after several pints at the pub, we all dispersed to go our seperate ways. it had pissed down most of the afternoon but now the rain eased off and walking along the embankment and manouvering round the underground to get back to victoria station, i experienced that nice surreal feeling i often get when visiting london [especially under the influence of booze or other substances] where i feel like none of it is real and i’m just wandering round a huge film set. i must say the london eye is pretty impressive. having only seen it on telly before, i’d just thought “a fairground big wheel - so what?!” - but you need to see it in the flesh to appreciate what a huge and mighty piece of engineering it is.
the train journey back to newhaven [or lewes actually to change for newhaven] was enhanced by a group of four annoying loud spurs fans, who’d obviously had too much to drink and were trying to provoke people by throwing balls of paper and polystyrene cups down the carriage at folk. the purveyors of these hilarious schoolboy antics were a group of four blokes, all of whom were in their forties. well done lads - way to impress the birds! eventually they got into what seemed to be a friendly chat with a chelsea fan of similar age who’d come down to talk to them. but inevitably, when the train got to gatwick where they were getting off, they started offering the chelsea fan out with clichéd cockney classic lines, such as “do you fackin’ want sam then chelsea, or wot?” the chelsea bloke’s wife then got up and ’shoo-ed’ the most obnoxious of the spurs fans off the train, telling him “leave him alone - he’s my fackin’ hasband!” as the spurs twats de-trained and began to walk off down the platform, another mild-mannered grey-haired bloke, who’d until this point had been sitting in first class minding his own business, emerged from his compartment and started shouting “fack off! fackin’ spurs!” at the retreating figures - provoking a muttered “that really fackin’ helps the situation mate!” from ‘mr. chelsea’.
aah! scallies - dontcha just love ‘em?!
crisis defused, we eventually got back to newhaven and nipped to a curry house near andy and becca’s where i got a superbly hot chicken vindaloo. it was so glorious that when i missed my mouth with some of the sauce i could actually feel it burning the skin on my cheek - heavenly! we scoffed our curries and sooked a few more beers and then hit the sack for our first bit of real sleep in many an hour.
[and thus ended the first day]
