Going stir crazy.

Good news at last, the Herald passed it's MOT! It's one less thing to worry about. The guys were great when Martyn went back up - no problem.

We tried to have a standard kind of weekend. We spend most of our days on the laptop searching for jobs or waiting for a reply so we thought it a good idea to put the computer away and try and enjoy some of Brighton. I was excited on Saturday as a new shop was opening in Brighton 'Dolly Dagger'. They sell 'Vintage' clothes - lovely 50's and 60's styled dresses, cute hats and fabulous shoes. It seemed like a good enough excuse to step out for the day. It's a good 40 minute walk into Brighton but on a sunny day it doesn't feel like far. We hit 'Dolly Dagger' first, it's a very small shop but full of lovely styled dresses. It may be some time before any of my cash passes over the counter though! We then hit 'The Lanes' a famous area of Brighton and the place that most reminds me of Hebden Bridge. This is where all the quirky, independent shops are. You can buy clothes from any era here amongst the second hand and vintage stores. You can buy vinyl records, old postcards, new postcards, ethically sourced goods of all manner and description. You can eat Vegan, Tapas, Chinese and catch a comedy show or just chill out at a cafe bar or pub. If you can't find something to please you here you won't find it anywhere. You can even get away with just mooching round soaking up the atmosphere and 'window shopping'. They have one of the oldest street markets here on a Saturday. One street is taken over by stalls selling all manner of goods from second hand books to silver jewelry and plants in old tins. It's a crazy old place and buzzes with people of all age routing through looking for bargains. It seems that more than ever everyone wants something old these days. If it's not old fashioned it's just not cool enough...... We went to one of Brightons most popular shops, a 'vintage' warehouse. To many of the residents and cool, hip visitors of Brighton this is 'the' place to shop for a new outfit, to me, it reminded me of jumble sales at Midgley Methodist Church in my home village. Nothing wrong with either but the smell of dust and mothballs didn't really do it for me. Maybe it's just me (well obviously!!) but old bobbled jumpers and second hand shoes selling for £15-£20 a time.....? The thing is the high street shops are selling new clothes in the same style for a similar price. Oh dear, time to stop the rant - second hand clothes, shoes etc. just aren't for me.

We wandered back through Kemp Town, one of our favourite places in Brighton. It's a street that runs above, but almost parallel to, the sea front and takes us in the right direction home. Kemp Town is one of the most chilled out areas of Brighton and we enjoyed a couple of drinks in two of it's pub as we made our way back. Brighton city centre is great but it is one hundred mile an hour all the time, in Kemp Town you can take a breath. We headed home as the sun set behind the pier, another missed photo opportunity. As we made our descent to the marina we spotted a motorbike just outside Black Rock train station. It must have been some kind of stunt artist, we watched as he/she pulled wheelies and stoppies and things I have no names for. It was clearly somebody practising for some kind of act. It felt a bit like we were spying, just us watching this person on their own, in their own world. Set against the setting sun it made for quite an amazing spectacle. Sometimes you are just in the right place at the right time.

Sunday followed, we had a walk, watched a disappointing Grand Prix and ate Sunday lunch. All very normal. The idea was to get a nice early(ish) night and get up ready to get the old job search going again bright and breezy. I won't tell you what time we actually woke up and got up it's quite shameful, but we awoke to quite a calm day and thought we might take the boat for a run..... We checked the weather - wind speed N/A, force 1 - 2 visibility good. It sounded perfect - it was rubbish! It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't fun. As a precaution I had moved everything that normally went flying and good job too. We got further than we had last time we went out and could have gone further but decided to head back in. It's no wonder that people come here and never move again! I thought that moving here would mean we could get out more often, I never once imagined that those days would be so few and far between.

Today was calm but foggy, we arose at a decent hour and hit the job centre - that's an experience I can tell you! We have decided to look into getting Martyn set up as self employed, there seems to be a lack of people doing engineering work around here so it seems like a good option. He might stand a better chance doing contract work rather than going 'on the books' in one place. We thought we should try at the job centre first to see if they had some sort of advice / support section. I had already been on the Business link website and registered. The advise we were given was, "try Business link"...... I guess if you want to do something in this country you've got to do the walking yourself. I for one spent the afternoon walking around the town C.V. in hand looking for shop jobs, I found two but something tells me I may be too old....!

We'll keep going, we have to the money won't last too much longer and we both need something more to think about on a day to day basis. Maybe tomorrow we'll get that e-mail or phone call................

Rocky times ahead....?

The local paper yesterday officially announced the end of summer....! Following four lovely sunny warm days we are back to rain and low temperatures. The perfect time then for both of us to get our hair cut really short! We don't like to follow convention and a new haircut seems the order of the day when embarking on a new adventure. So this is it, Elephant Daze and crew all ship shape and ready for whatever lies ahead! Only thing is we still don't have jobs. Maybe we are unemployable?! What if no-one want us?! We have only been seriously looking for work and applied for less than half a dozen each in the last week - yes we are already getting panicky! It's not that we miss working - we just want to have some money so we can get out and about and see all that Brighton has to offer. We do a lot of walking and a lot of window shopping. Every day we find something that we will buy 'When we've got a job!'. At the rate we're going these jobs are going to have to pay well! I guess we need to be more patient and maybe just try that little bit harder instead of squandering what cash we have left on the lottery...it's a lovely dream though!

Yesterday Martyns Triumph Herald went for it's MOT - always a worry trying to get it MOT'd in a new town. We have been trying to spot some of the less salubrious garages for a couple of weeks now. With todays rules and regulations it's not easy to get a pass on an old cronk, especially one that's slightly modified. Unfortunately the garage we chose took it upon themselves to fail it on something that was working perfectly well when we left it there. Hey hum, I guess they're just testing us - fingers crossed it will pass today. I think the garage owner was surprised to find that Martyn had owned the car for nearly twenty years and done all the work himself on it. Sometimes it doesn't pay to age so well when people treat you like you're young and naive!

It's been fun being out and about in the Herald recently. It makes people stop and look when you're driving down the street. It makes people want to talk to you, it just makes me smile! It's fun and that's what life should be about! When I used to drive up and down the motorway the business people in their prestige cars would pass me in my Citroen Saxo. I often thought how it would be to be the person driving such cars. These are people that probably spend 80% of their working day in that car, on the motorway, on their phones. They probably have high pressured jobs, high salaries and high blood pressure to boot. It's not for me. You don't see a lot of that in Brighton funnily enough. There are more bashed up bangers and rusty push bikes around than I've ever seen in one place. The roads are mad - it's like the wacky races - it's not the place for prestige cars and I for one like it that way! In fact if I get my way I won't be driving a car at all, it's so easy to walk about or catch the bus, 'normal' cars are not essential. I may have to invest in another scooter though if at all possible. There are loads of them around. Back home if someone rides a scooter there's every chance they are part of a club or do scooter rallies, here, it's just another form of transport and another way to look cool of course!

We have been told by our next door neighbour, who has just returned from a trip to the Scilly Isles on his boat, that it's not just water that comes over the sea wall. Sand and shale and pebbles have regularly been found on the decks of his boat! As I type the masts are clattering around us (they don't clink clink gently here!) and we are rocking from side to side. This, apparently, is quite calm. Our sea legs will well and truly be tested this year and we will find out if Brighton truly is the vibrant, quirky, fun place we want it to be - here's hoping!