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................