Brighton

Last month I presented at my second professional conference: the British Association / College of Occupational Therapy Annual Conference, which was in Brighton. I decided to take my beloved back to there yesterday to have a little fun by the sea. When we arrived we walked down the hill straight for the beach, which was pebbles instead of sand: witness my tootsies to the left. Sitting on the beach in the not-so-warm-English-summer was actually quite pleasant. The sun made appearances at regular intervals from behind moderately-sized clouds lazily floating past, so it was not oppressively warm. So we sat quite comfortably on the pebbles. Eventually I stuck my feet in the cold Channel. I am not sure why parts of the ocean I have never been to before call to me to stick my feet in, but they do. Thankfully, I am deaf to this calling on snow and ice covered beaches. There were very few takers rising to the challenge of bathing in the channel. While walking barefoot in pebbles is not the most comfortable sensation, it was agreeable not to have to spend ages brushing sand off of and out of everything only to find that you somehow managed to stow away about of quart of the stuff.

After enjoying copious quantities of fresh air, we wondered over to Palace Pier, which is a cute little pleasure pier. We wondered around it, had a snack, and head over to The Lanes, an older part of the town that supposedly follows the street pattern from the 14th Century. The buildings are considerably more modern. The Lanes is now a shopping district. After a bit of shopping we strolled over to the Royal Pavilion, which was a royal palace. But apparently the arrival of the railway in 1841 made Bristol too accessible to the general public, so The Royal Family decided to summer elsewhere. The town managed to purchase the palace from the Government in 1850. As you can see (below), it is quite interesting looking. The arrival of prevailing winds made Bristol too accessible to heavy clouds, so our family decided to summer elsewhere.

Photo Credits

Palace Pier

The Lanes

Royal Pavilion

Accident

Accidents are inevitable. I had one a few weeks ago. One minute, I was riding on my bicycle preparing to turn left onto a little road. The first picture is from Google Street View and shows the view from about where I was preparing to turn left. A few minutes later I am sitting on a chair on the road that I was going to turn into. The second picture (also from Google Street View) has a red circle of where I think the chair was if I remember correctly.

How I ended up in that chair is I fell (and broke my arm in the process). Then a young lady passing by on foot and three waiters from a restaurant on the corner stopped what they were doing and attended to me. The third picture is an interior view of that restaurant from their website… perhaps it was even one of those chairs! I have to say that London has been an amazing place for me in this way. Whenever anything has happened and I needed help, someone is always right there offering it. In this case it was a bunch of strangers who decided to help me. They didn’t wait to be asked. They just gave of themselves.

They waited with me, and the ambulance they called eventually came. Oddly enough, the ambulance got into a minor accident as it left the scene, but no one was hurt. And they even brought my bicycle along for the ride. The road surface and bicycle are fine by the way, no damage, but I will need a new helmet as it is cracked. I am planning to go to the restaurant some time soon. I would like to say thank you to the complete strangers who could have chosen to focus on the details of their lives but instead chose to help me.

Photo Credits

Google Street View

Yia Mas