Brighton Beach (England) Memoirs

*Note- This American werewolf is currently in Germany, but decided her time would be best served updating the blog. So, here’s an account of Brighton, England. Germany’s to come shortly.

“Guys,” I smiled, bouncing up and down in my seat, “Aren’t you excited? We’re on a TRAIN. To BRIGHTON. On a FIELD TRIP.” I kept fidgeting like a little kid at Disneyworld. “Come on, aren’t you at least a little happy?”

Jack sighed and buried his head in his hands. “Someone, please, calm Anne down before she wets herself.”

“It’s just Brighton,” said Josh, characteristically the Debbie Downer. “And stop taking pictures!”

Of course I had my camera out. I had just picked it up an hour before. It had been getting repaired ever since a tragic run-in with the hard floor of a pub. Unable to go more than a couple days without my beloved camera, I lied and told the people at the shop that I had a trans-Atlantic flight to make, shortening their normal repair time from 5-7 business days to 2. “Anne, I’m serious, I might just stab you in the eye if you take a picture of me putting on my make-up.” Ally waved the applicator around menacingly. I took one anyways. But hey, I was excited.

It all started the day before. My roommate Jess was pacing the room, deciding on an outfit and clearly angry at having class on an uncharacteristically sunny London day. “Ugh, I can’t believe I have stupid Latin when it’s summer.”

“Um,” I answered, looking up from my computer, “It’s March and windy. Not exactly summertime yet…”

“You don’t understand, Anne, you haven’t been in England long enough yet,” Jess replied, throwing her books in her bag, “Summer in England is whenever the sun shines!” Sadly, she looked out the window, clear cerulean expanding out into the distance. “It doesn’t happen enough for separate seasons.”

I shrugged. I’m more of an indoors person. I like museums. While I sometimes find myself worshiping the sun in an effort to bask in its heat, I don’t really mind if it’s cloudy. Jess, however, needs sunshine. “I know!” she said out of sudden epiphany, “Let’s go to Brighton tomorrow! It’s still supposed to be nice then, and we can go to the beach!” Jess then commenced to text everyone we knew with the random plan.

Which is how we found ourselves on a train from London Bridge heading south, to the Channel coast, and a little seaside place called Brighton. I was just happy to be with friends and to experience something different, a change of scene from our normal hang-outs, and what I kept calling a “cultural experience,” because I’m a massive nerd and the only American out of a group of eight university students. After getting up early to rescue my camera, I started snapping pictures immediately. This meant that we were only halfway through the hour long train ride and everyone was already sick of me.

The train reached the station while it was still early in the afternoon, and we immediately made our way to the ocean. The entire time I had Queen’s “Seaside Rendezvous” stuck in my head, with visions of a sandy umbrella-filled beach, bright blue water, and clear skies. After picking our way down the hill I soon saw this was not the case. There is a beach, per se, but instead of sand it is made up of rocks, similar to gravel, that were nearly impossible to walk in for any long amount of time. The water was a churning gray, with a sky to match, and instead of sun we got clouds and wind. Instead of Sanibel Island on the Gulf of Mexico, I got Milwaukee and Lake Michigan, at least coastwise. Clearly the town of Brighton itself had missed the memo, as it made up for its lack of familiar beach trappings in spirit. But more on that later.

“Guys, we need to get Brighton Rock!” exclaimed Jess, and Ally quickly agreed. Dumbly I thought, “Rock? But, they’re EVERYWHERE…” until we stumbled upon one of those old timey candy shops, run by a helpful little old lady filled with everything sugar imaginable. Rock, it turns out, is like a massive candy cane only minus the curvy part and in pretty much every flavor you can name. I got mint, which had a red outer shell and white inside, with the words “BRIGHTON ROCK” emblazoned even on the inside, reminding you what you’re eating with every bite.

The main attraction of Brighton, however, is the pier. Brighton Pier is like Chicago’s Navy Pier and San Francisco’s Pier 39 combined. It has a little amusement park, which was closed due to weather, and an arcade, surrounded by those little wooden things you stick your head in for a picture. Naturally, I made us stop at every single one of them.

Our destination was the noodles. I think the only reason a couple members of our group even went all the way to Brighton was on the promise of world-class noodles, made in a little stand on the pier, by a random guy. Everyone makes fun of me for eating Asian food, ok, specifically Oriental Star all the time, but I didn’t make everyone come out with me an hour away for a noodle stand. But, as much as I hate to admit it, the noodles were worth it, even though we were given covers for our food as seagulls have been known to swoop down and take the noodles right off your fork. Literally the only time we spent on this famous Brighton Pier was in pursuit of noodles. I never thought I’d write an entire paragraph on noodles, but there you go. They were probably 90% of the reason we went to Brighton in the first place.

Uncomfortably, we sat in the gravel, on the beach itself, watching the waves crash on the coast. Three additional members of our group, Alliey, Chris, and Lucinda, joined us from London, though sadly sans noodles. Our little tribe basked in the lack of sun, lying in the dearth of sand, and listened while the gray sea made the acquaintance of the rocky shore. It was wonderful, and I mean that completely without sarcasm. It was one of those simple moments you never pay attention to, and I couldn’t have been more content. Even when Jack hit a random person in the face with a rock, the rest of us at least were still able to enjoy the ocean atmosphere, with that calming influence water inevitably has on us. The sea stretched into oblivion, gray on the gray sky, seeming to form a monochromatic wall that while not altogether bright, still had a sort of quiet, unassuming beauty. I knew theoretically France was on the other side, and with it, Europe, but as far as I could tell, the ocean went on forever.

I’ve always been surrounded by random bodies of water. I grew up a short drive away from Lake Michigan, and lived for years as a child on an inland lake until my parents' divorce when I was 6. Since I was 15 I’ve lived on Pewaukee Lake, which, though of course pretty small, treats us with views of sailboat racing during the summer time and ice fishermen in the frozen winter. Ever since I was a toddler, I’ve made the trek, often several times a year, to a family-owned condo on Sanibel Island, off the Gulf coast of Florida. Some of my earliest memories involve scampering along the beach, looking for treasures washed up on shore, and sometimes finding them in the form of stingray eggs or live octopi stuck in massive shells. I grew up knowing more about the different species of Gulf of Mexico fish than all the animals in Wisconsin, as my dad took my siblings and I fishing since pretty much birth. One of my earliest memories is, as a six-year-old, “helping” my dad reel in a six-foot tarpon, after a day of deep-sea fishing. I didn’t understand the ecological dangers of fishing, or the environmental concerns. I just knew I was excited whenever we caught a massive cow ray or black-tipped shark, because I wanted to see it, to feel it, to be somehow close to something that I would never just see on my own. We would go out with the net, pulling to shore and subsequently freeing the hermit crabs, baby pufferfish, and minnows we’d find caught. Maybe it was animal cruelty, but as a kid, I loved it. I could identify the different species- ladyfish, grouper, red snapper, sheepshead- by sight, and got excited to walk on the beach and see an area cordoned off, with a sign labeling it as the nest of a loggerhead turtle. I haven’t gone to Sanibel since I turned 18, but that moment at Brighton Beach made me miss it more than any family vacation photos ever could.

All eight of us spent a good amount of time skipping stones, or at the very least attempting to, while I snapped away on my camera. Laughter was punctuated by the satisfying ker-plunk of rocks meeting the surface and the cries of seagulls overhead.

We were interrupted by a couple of kids our age, offering us free vitamin water if we posed for a picture with it, debating the pronunciation of the word “vitamin.” In America, it’s “vie-dah-min,” with a long i and the t pronounced like a d, but to the Brits, it’s “vih-tah-min,” which of course meant another all-the-English-kids-gang-up-on-Anne moment. If I hear one more “But we invented the language,” I might have a mini freakout.

Then Jack handed me a rock, as part of the “traditional English rock, um, tradition,” where, according to Jack and Josh and no one else, if an English person gives you a rock at the sea you need to make a wish before throwing it as hard as possible into the water. Then, no matter how much they bug you, you can’t tell anyone what your wish was. So, I took the rock, made a wish (cause a little extra wishing couldn’t hurt, right?) and threw the rock as hard as I could… all of like, four feet, before it splashed into the sea. And I will not tell anyone what that wish was, even if the tradition is fake.

I’m not really an outdoorsy person, as I’ve said before, but I was having a good time. I had my camera, I was with friends, we were all hanging out… and then I nearly broke my camera. Or maybe I should correct myself- JACK nearly broke my camera, by pushing me into the rocks, where I heard the metallic ding of my camera hitting a polished stone. It was fine, but there would’ve been bloodshed if that camera was broken. Legit, this could only end in a murder trial. THAT’S how seriously I take my photos.

Getting cold, we made our way to the street, where, beachside, there was an aquarium. Since Jess works at the London version, she could get us all in for free. The aquarium had been in use since the 1800’s, and you could tell from the great hall. Although all the actual equipment was pretty much state of the art, the architecture was clearly Victorian, with painted fish carvings set into slender pillars holding up the ceiling to the massive hall, filled with all different sorts of fish. In the side of the room was an open pool filled with different rays and crabs, which I swear came closer if you talked to them. I think we sat and talked to rays for twenty minutes. If someone waved their hand over them, they would move up, exposing the faces on their undersides. Gracefully wafting through the water, the rays were the stars of that particular pool, and likely would’ve been, at least for us, for the entire aquarium trip until we saw the sharks and sea turtles.

We entered a massive stadium-type room with a large pool of water filled with the same black-tipped sharks I used to accidentally catch while fishing with my dad ten years ago. Underneath was a tunnel, where you could walk under the water and see the fish up close. Automatically the group deferred to Jess, who is passionate about sharks (and that might even be an understatement). I think it’s pretty awesome, cause I remember when I loved sharks as a kid, though never parlaying that into the actual activism and academic study that Jess supports. I just thought sharks were cool, envying the natural confidence the animals embody, their sleek fierceness mixed with a beautiful grace. I like predators, and as a supremely morbid human being, I found the Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916 to be a fascinating topic, the most interesting thing to come out of Jersey since Snookie (I’m JOKING, The Situation is clearly more intriguing). I don’t have the patience nor the passion to actually go out and study sharks. Jess does, and will over the summer (still jealous). So naturally we all sat and asked her questions about the sharks circling above us (though not necessarily in a menacing way, we were like, twice their size). She explained how to tell the difference between boy and girl sharks, where we then spent at least fifteen minutes analyzing the gender of every shark that swam above our clear tunnel. The animals took on personalities, including one sea turtle that was clearly embarrassed when it tried to glide all smoothly by but ended up getting caught on a branch. Our excuse to get out of the cold ended up becoming unintentionally educational.

After leaving the aquarium, we threaded our way through narrow streets filled with multi-colored houses- Brighton is clearly the San Francisco of England, in more ways than one, what with the bustling gay community and seaside culture- until we found a decent pub. While there we stole a bunch of condiments, and then I got made fun of (again), only this time it was for taking pictures of the mint sauce- in little green ketchup packets- and some condiments with the Houses of Parliament on them.

Soon the day was at an end, though we decided we had one last stop to make- for fish and chips. England is well aware of its international stereotype for foodstuffs like tea and the combination of fish and chips, only of course chips actually being fries since our chips are called crisps here. The fact that I haven’t eaten fish and chips after months in England confuses pretty much everyone I know, except for my close friends and family. Cause while I’ll eat chips, I absolutely cannot eat fish. Never could. Those childhood trips to Sanibel are marred by the memories of every meal, when my dad and later with my stepmom, would force me to eat fish. I’d gag, and sometimes start to cry, when I’d be hungry after a day at the beach and the only thing on my plate would be grouper or snapper, which I had to finish, no excuses. Even in Wisconsin I wasn’t safe, since my dad and stepmom love fish and would still force me to eat it, until only within the last year or so when I was finally allowed to pass. Even at restaurants until I was 18, I wasn’t allowed to order for myself, often facing down a plate of the dreaded fish, trying to hold my breath and covertly pass it to my sister. I’m picky as it is, but nothing makes me actually feel sick to my stomach on the scale fish does, nor does anything bring such annoying memories.

When we did make it to a fish and chips shop, with adorable painted dancing fish on the walls, I had to wait outside. I had to stand a few feet away, making a point to inhale the salty sea air, as far from the disgusting fish as possible. Some people might laugh, but it’s only funny until I throw up on you. I’m serious. Just last week, someone (and by someone I mean Chris), thought it’d be funny to try and smuggle some dried fish into my bed. Luckily, the door was locked, otherwise someone else would be dead right now. And I’m not talking about me. I don’t do well with dead fish, especially when it’s meant for consumption. I prefer to think of it as a charming eccentricity, though I’m sure most people just think it’s weird.

After the fish and chips excursion, we finally made it back to the train station, ready to put an end to a long day of new experiences. Expecting a relaxing train ride filled with conversation amongst ourselves, it was surprising and more than a little scary when a man walked into the train car with his girlfriend, covered in blood. The entire front of his shirt was stained red, and he had cuts all over his face. His head was topped with a green Guinness hat, because, well, it was St. Patrick’s Day. Of course, the man chose a seat right next to us, even though the rest of the train car was empty (some people on it actually moved when he came on the train), and asked if we had a problem with him “lighting up a fag,” as fag means cigarette here.

“So mate,” started Chris, since god forbid we not antagonize the man who clearly is unbothered by stab wounds, “What happened?”

Clearly drunk, Stabby McStabberson (as we had dubbed him) began his tale. “Well, I was just sitting at the pub, ya know, havin’ a drink and mindin’ my own business, havin’ a good St. Paddy’s Day, when this man just comes up to me and stabs me! Well, I started fighting back, and you shoulda seen him, you think I look bad, you shoulda seen him. They just patched me up and sent me on my way.” Clearly, he wasn’t just minding his own business, but this wouldn’t exactly be a prudent thing to mention. Stabby finished his cigarette (a massive fine if he got caught) and promptly passed out, causing him to miss his stop and us to help his poor girlfriend help navigate their way home.

Coming back to London was a relief, because it was home. Nothing beats the place you call home, no matter how temporary that home may be. Sure, it’s not my familiar bed in Wisconsin, but that doesn’t mean it’s not comforting after a long day. Brighton made me miss the ocean and my past life, my childhood running along a beach I haven’t been to in years. A place located thousands of miles away conjured up memories I had tried to ignore for months, even years, and the sound of the waves hitting the shore was enough to shorten the distance, erase the time, and take me back. I’m living in London, having experiences I couldn’t have dreamed about even three months ago, when I nervously packed my bags and left New York, confiding in my friend how terrified I was to start over again, meeting new people while leaving the old friends behind. Yet I still find there’s no way to separate my past from my present, and how even things we think are so insignificant at the time can shape who we are forever. My Brighton Beach Memoirs wouldn’t have so much of Brighton itself, though that was a truly awesome, eclectic place with a spirit of its own, but rather the memories Brighton provokes in me.