7th August 10pm, The Lady Hamilton, Portsmouth

Days passed since my last entry but I can tell you I had a lot to digest...

I stayed in Crowborough a couple of days ago, which was a bit of a hick town, nothing happening, so I won't write about that. I got up to go to a place I had looked forward to going to: Brighton. Of course, that meant taking the train from Crowborough to East Croydon, halfway back into London, to then get on the Brighton line. Train ride as usual: Delays, no place for the luggage and crying babies. Totally normal.
I arrived in Brighton at 3pm with no hotel booked yet. Initially, I had planned to stay two or possibly more nights in Brighton, which would not work at all, as I soon discovered. I had to face it: I would have to be happy if I could find something within my budget at all (it was a Saturday; the chance of finding accommodation thereby reduced to 5%). In retrospect, of course, I can tell you that I did find a place to stay. What followed were the creepiest and most surreal 24 hours of my life so far.

On the sheet of paper I obtained from the tourist office I spotted out a hostel called 'St Christopher Hotel'. Once I found it I entered, crossed the extremely loud bar-room and enquired at the bar for any rooms. The guy behind the counter told me that he only had a shared twin room left for £20 - or so I understood. Turns out I misunderstood him, due to the noise, and he actually said £120! For a humble hostel! Greedy b******s!
As I was walking out in disbelief a woman of about 30 to 35 years approached me and asked if I speak English. Upon confirming that I do she revealed that she's "Rachel from from sunny Florida" and hasn't got a room for tonight yet and that the guy inside wanted to sell her one for 120 pounds. Instant thought: If you are from sunny Florida, what are you doing here? Palm Beach ain't good enough? But anyway. So we discovered that we were in the same boat ("totally screwed", as she kept saying) and we decided to go look for a room together. As we were about to head off two men in tight clothes passed, carrying a life-size pink fluffy dolphin. Before coming to Brighton I was prepared for anything (I always am), but not for that. Turned out Brighton is also known as the 'Gay Capital of the UK'. Well, I thought, that at least explains the dolphin...

I can tell you one thing: This place is wicked! Total pandemonium! Nonetheless we found a place to stay: A twin room at the Churchill Palace Hotel (no illusions: you can scratch out the word 'palace' right away). Just this: The inside door-handle kept falling off (even though I screwed it back on twice with Rachel's nail clipper), the shower was missing its shower head and the TV had four channels all broadcasting white noise. In the pub downstairs sat the fat proprietors and some other weird creatures drinking booze all afternoon until late into the night. It was, to summarise, one of the most sorry, run-down, outright miserable places I've ever had the misfortune to stay at. In our room we had a double bed (which I left to Rachel) and a bunk-bed (for me). Now, we paid £60 for the two of us, but what we did was this: Outside a bar we encountered a Spanish tourist who seemed pretty lost (he had no room yet - at 7pm!) so we took him in as a subtenant and charged him a reasonable sixty pounds for the night; so technically Rachel and I resided there for free. It didn't make the stay any more pleasant, though.
In the evening I did not feel a great urge to go eating out, for there were groups of men (or women, it was sometimes hard to tell) standing in front of every pub or restaurant shouting and roistering, and I really didn't fancy being harassed by numerous persons of undefined gender. I stayed in bed, read a book and was miserable. The next morning I was more than glad to leave the place. Our twin room, which became a triple thanks to Enrique's presence, came without breakfast. Duh, who would have guessed...

Brighton was quite a shock to me, if I'm honest. After the somewhat bewildering experience I had enough of all the run-down seaside resorts down there: Shoreham-on-Sea, Worthing, Littlehampton, Lancing, Bognor Regis and the whole lot; I couldn't care less. Thus I took the Coastliner 700 directly to Portsmouth. I found an inn called 'The Lady Hamilton' right opposite the mooring place of HMS Victory (10 points to you if you know who Lady Hamilton was). I will catch a ferry over to the Isle of Wight as soon as possible - and stay there for a bit of time.