The Brighton steamer

Here is the 16th of 25 stained glass window designs on the Palace Pier which AI and I are using as inspiration for some of these BrightonBeach365 daily posts - see Stained Glass Window 1 for background. The image shows a stylised seascape in shades of blue, white and beige. At its centre is a ship with a single tall funnel and two long decks lined with rows of square windows, suggesting a passenger steamer. The vessel has a solid, rounded hull that sits low in the water, built for carrying people rather than speed. It is sailing from right to left across dark blue waves, with broad cloud shapes filling the sky above. In the foreground, sandy tones and angled forms evoke the shoreline or harbour wall, giving the impression of the ship either departing or arriving at the coast.

A limerick starter

A bright little steamer at sea

Steered a bit too close to the quay.

The captain cried, ‘Blimey

The chalk’s right before me!’

Then dodged it with surprising esprit.

The Brighton steamer (in the style of Joseph Conrad)

The Brighton steamer lay broadside to the cliffs, its hull dark against the pallor of chalk and cloud. A late tide heaved against the shingle, uneasy, as though uncertain of its errand. The vessel, with her one funnel trailing a faint stain of smoke, seemed strangely inert, half-marooned in that restless light, yet she pressed on, slow and deliberate, past the line of the pier.

I watched her from the stones, the weight of her passage pressing upon me as though I were myself embarked. Those rows of windows, dull squares under the whitening sky, were like so many blind eyes - passengers hidden, yet expectant. One imagines them sensing, as I did, the menace of the shore: the pale cliff rearing to the east, sheer and implacable, indifferent to all the little confusions of men.

It is not the sea that alarms me, for the sea, even in its sudden wrath, is honest. No, it is the coast, the narrowing margin where water and rock conspire against the traveller, where a false bearing or a moment’s pride may grind out years of labour in an instant. I thought of the master on his bridge, his hands idle on the rail, gazing ahead with the obstinacy of command, knowing that any falter of judgment would lay bare the futility of his journey.

The ship moved on, a shadow sliding under the immensity of cloud, past the bright disorder of the town’s terraces, into the channel’s uncertain breadth. I turned away then, yet her slow form remained before me, imprinted like a memory of some choice deferred, a fate hovering just beyond reach of the beach and its stones.

The Pirates of Brighton Beach

On a bright morning when the sea heaved lazily against the shingle, five pirates - long since stranded on the Sussex coast - emerged from their hideout near the Palace Pier. No longer raiders of the Caribbean, they had been reduced to guardians of Brighton’s beach, their adventures woven into the chatter of gulls and the hum of amusement arcades.

First was Barrel-Bill, a thick-armed brute with a scarred face and a fondness for rum. He never went anywhere without hefting a barrel on his shoulder, claiming it contained both his fortune and his doom. Most suspected it was empty, but none dared ask.

Then came Laughing Redcoat, flamboyant in a tattered scarlet jacket, with a grin as wide as the Channel. He wielded a cutlass with careless joy, and though his jokes were bad, his laugh carried across the pebbles, unnerving fishermen at dawn.

Their captain was Hook-Hand Harrigan, grim-eyed in a sea-blue coat. His iron claw clicked ominously as he muttered plans of reclaiming the sea. Some said his hook had been forged from the ironwork of the ruined West Pier.

Lurking in the shadows was Skeleton Sam, a half-dead wretch who had once been left in chains inside the cliffside caves of Kemptown. He bore the look of a revenant, bones showing through ragged clothes, always watching the tide as if waiting for some ghostly ship to return.

And finally there was Dandy Jack, a sly rogue with rings on his fingers and a sky-blue hat perched rakishly on his brow. He fancied himself a gentleman pirate, though his pistol was always primed. He had a talent for mimicry, and often mocked the mayor and council from atop the railings of Madeira Drive.

Their tale took a turn one evening many years ago when the tide receded very low, revealing the barnacled hulk of a shipwreck just east of the Palace Pier. The townsfolk gathered, whispering of treasure. Barrel-Bill declared the wreck to be theirs, ‘by the rights of piracy and the law of the sea!’ Laughing Redcoat clapped his hands with glee, Hook-Hand Harrigan sharpened his hook against the railings, Skeleton Sam let out a ghastly rattle of breath, and Dandy Jack simply grinned, tipping his hat.

But as they set upon the wreck, Brighton’s beach stirred with more than seaweed. Out from the tide crawled shapes of old sailors, long drowned, their bones glittering with salt. Skeleton Sam greeted them like kin. The others froze.

The undead sailors demanded their ship back. Harrigan stood firm, barrel raised, cutlass drawn, pistol cocked. Yet the ghosts would not fight - they demanded a trade.

So it was agreed: the pirates would guard Brighton’s beach forever, keeping watch over the pier, the pebbles, and the restless Channel, so long as the townsfolk kept their memory alive. And to this day, on windy nights, when the sea roars and the pier lights flicker, you might just glimpse Barrel-Bill’s silhouette or hear Laughing Redcoat’s laugh carried on the air. 

Bandit at Two O’Clock

Here is the 15th of 25 stained glass window designs on the Palace Pier which AI and I are using as inspiration for some of these BrightonBeach365 daily posts - see Stained Glass Window 1 for background. In this image, two small planes fly low over a bright green landscape beneath a sky of blue and white cloud. The larger, red-winged aircraft (possibly a Cessna) dominates the scene, its nose lifted as if coming in to land. Below it, a smaller pink plane (possibly a de Havilland Tiger Moth) tilts across the fields, wings angled in motion. To the right, a golden path curves towards a pool of deep blue water, catching the eye as it winds away toward the horizon. The whole picture brims with movement and colour, a vivid glimpse of flight above fields and shore.

A limerick starter

A jaunty red flyer on high

Saw a pink one come wobbling by.

They jostled for space

In a comical race,

And both nearly fell from the sky.

Bandit at Two O’Clock (in the style of the Biggles books by W. E. Johns)

The Channel lay calm as glass, Brighton Beach stretched in a golden strip, and the gaunt ribs of the old West Pier glinted in the sun. Biggles held the stick steady, his red-winged machine purring contentedly. Algy, perched in the observer’s seat behind, shaded his eyes with one hand and scanned the horizon.

‘Bandit at two o’clock!’ he barked suddenly.

Biggles banked hard, the aircraft flashing scarlet as it turned seaward. Out of a puff of white cloud came a pink biplane, nose down, engine snarling, its guns spitting spitefully.

Below, holidaymakers thought it part of a show. Children clapped from deckchairs as the two machines roared along the surf-line. Biggles dropped lower still, his wheels all but kissing the spray, the enemy reckless enough to follow.

‘He’s too green for this game,’ Algy shouted over the slipstream. ‘Give him the slip and he’ll tie himself in knots!’

Biggles grinned thinly, jerked the stick, and the red machine shot upwards in a steep climb. The pink biplane tried to match it, stalled, and floundered. In a flash Biggles was round on its tail, the Vickers gun chattering.

The intruder wavered, engine coughing. A plume of black smoke streamed back as it staggered over the Palace Pier. Moments later it flopped ignominiously onto the lawns behind the Metropole Hotel, wheels splayed, wings broken.

When they set down at Shoreham, the word was already through: a foreign agent, papers in his pocket and not a word of English, plucked from the wreckage.

Algy clambered down, brushing sand from his trousers. ‘Another spot of bother tidied up,’ he remarked.

Biggles lit a cigarette, his gaze on the fading light over Brighton.

‘Tidied, yes,’ he said. ‘But there’ll be more of them. Mark my words, Algy - Brighton’s a hotter spot than the holidaymakers ever guess.’

Little ol’ me

Hmm… these green buses aren’t very tasty. All showy paint, no chips inside. Crunchy, yes, but not the good kind. Not like a battered sausage. Or even one of those flapjack cubes from the café with the seafront awning. I miss those. Oh crumbs, literal crumbs - I miss crumbs. These days, crumbs wouldn’t keep me alive for five minutes, not since I’ve grown to the size of an SUV.

People screaming. I don’t want to hurt them. I thought maybe this time one of them would drop something hot and greasy and perfect. I don’t want phones; they taste almost as bad as beach pebbles.

Why did I peck the bus? Why do I keep pecking buses?

Oh no . . . someone’s filming again. Look at them, tiny hands raised like they’re trying to tame me. I’m not a monster. I’m just big. And starving.

That mixer thing, ahead of the green buses. It smells odd. Kind of like eggs? Hot pavement? A building site in summer? Maybe it’s got gravy inside. Maybe it’s a giant sausage roll for machines. Maybe - just one peck. One nibble. Ugh.

I didn’t ask to grow this big. One minute I’m arguing over a churro with Kevin, the next I’ve outgrown the bandstand and I’m scaring toddlers, and their parents are calling 999. I don’t even fit under the pier anymore. I used to roost there. It was cosy. It was safe. Now all I want is food.

There’s another bus. I’m getting a sense that I need to do more, work a bit harder to feed myself . . . The people inside, they’re looking very tasty. Oh look, some of them are getting off at the bus stop. I’ve grown too hungry to control myself, now I see the answer perfectly: this may be a bus stop for people, but it’s a food stop for little ol’ me.

Where the sea has no memory

Here is the 14th of 25 stained glass window designs on the Palace Pier which AI and I are using as inspiration for some of these BrightonBeach365 daily posts - see Stained Glass Window 1 for background. This image shows a coastal landscape. In the foreground, rounded white shapes suggest foamy waves breaking onto the shore, with different shades of blue indicating the sea. To the right, green and yellow forms rise upward like a cliff or headland. Above, a large pale cloud dominates the sky, with smaller purple-tinged clouds drifting across. Cutting through the centre is a brown bird in flight, wings outstretched against the sky.

A limerick starter

Clouds of pale lavender hue,

A bird split the turquoise in two.

Where emerald cliffs lean,

On the foam’s shifting green,

The sky wrote its story in blue.

Where the sea has no memory (with apologies to Cormac McCarthy)

The sky above Brighton was broken with cloud. A bird cut through the wind and went on across the water, dark against the pale. The sea was restless. White spume drifted over the stones like smoke and the tide ran its slow iron rhythm, pushing the shingle, pulling it back.

A man stood at the rail of the pier. His coat was buttoned but the wind got in all the same and pressed the cloth against his body. He watched the bird, the curve of its wing, the small correction of its flight. He thought of how the sea had no memory and how the gull had no home but the wind. Behind him came the sound of coin machines, the bark of a stallholder, the scream of a ride, all faint in the distance like echoes in a dream.

He turned from the pier and went down to the beach. The stones rolled under his boots. He stooped and picked one up, dark and wet, and he held it in his hand. It was cold. He turned it over and over, looking at the way the water had smoothed it, how it had come to be like this from years beyond counting. He thought of his father and the silence of him. He thought of his mother’s warnings about the sea and how she feared it though she could not stay away from it.

He walked to the edge where the water reached. The foam curled white around his feet. The gull cried and turned inland. He looked at the horizon where the sea and sky were one. The thought came to him that a man could walk straight into that line and never come back and the world would not change for it.

A child’s voice rose up behind him and he turned. A boy was running along the beach, chasing another, both laughing. Their shouts carried in the wind. The man watched until they were gone. He dropped the stone and it fell among the others and vanished from him.

The sea kept on. The pier stood in its shadow of iron and wood. The bird wheeled once more above the headland, and then it too was gone. The man put his hands in his pockets and began to walk.

Charting the elsewhere

Found on Brighton Beach: It lay on the pebbles as if dropped or blown ashore. The tide did not seem to have expelled it in a tangle of kelp; there was no fraying, no evidence of long immersion. Its weave was tight, its colours - burgundy, ochre, olive - arranged in intricate, purposeful shapes. 

If you examined it closely, you might think of Kashan or Samarkand, the way the patterns interlocked like conversations in a crowded tea house. Yet the dyes were wrong for Persia, the silk too fine for Turkestan. I brought a friend of mine - a textile historian from the university - to examine it. She knelt on the pebbles, and did something unusual: she sniffed it. She said she had caught the faintest trace of myrrh and woodsmoke, and beneath that, the sharper scent of a salt that does not belong to any sea in Europe. She suspected the carpet had crossed more than geography - that it had come from a coast where the tides are measured in centuries.

By the third day, I noticed it was moving very slowly - not dragged or blown - a measured distance westward, towards the West Pier’s blackened skeleton, aligning itself, pattern-wise, with the central ruin. I continued to observe, day by day. No one touched it. No gull tugged at its fringe. Yet, I was sure, the carpet was creeping, pebble by pebble, as if drawn to the pier’s iron bones.

I say no one touched it, but I was not a lone observer, A wizened old soul, clearly more at home on the pebbles than at home, had begun to use the textile as a kind of marker for taking photographs. Several times a day he would approach the textile very gingerly, never stepping on it, but aligning his tripod according to its position - seemingly to photograph across the sea to the horizon. 

One evening, it was dusk, I asked him what he was seeing, what he was photographing. He showed me on the camera’s display: faint, translucent outlines above the waterline, shapes like hulls or wings. The textile, he claimed, was a magic carpet, a base from which the invisible could be photographed - vessels, for example, from elsewhere.

‘What do you mean, ‘elsewhere’, I asked a little too sharply. His only reply was to look westward into the sky, where Venus was shining in brightness.

I returned at dawn the next day, and at dusk, and then again the day after, but the old soul was gone, and the weaving too. I stood for a while each time, scanning the sea and sky. Once, I fancied I saw the faintest glimmers just above the horizon - a shimmer too steady for cloud, too high for a sail - but I’m sure that was my imagination.

Perhaps, I thought, the carpet’s origin lay not in any country but in the seam between countries, woven from places that exist only in the moments they are crossed. Its destination was always the next seam, wherever that might appear. And its purpose on Brighton Beach had simply been to open, for a brief span, a doorway into the atmosphere - one the old man had managed to capture with his camera.

For those few days, Brighton Beach and its piers had been a port again, as in days of old - not for excursion steamers or motor launches, but for travellers charting the elsewhere.

Tuba or Not Tuba?

Here is the 13th of 25 stained glass window designs on the Palace Pier which AI and I are using as inspiration for some of these BrightonBeach365 daily posts - see Stained Glass Window 1 for background.  The image shows the backs of two uniformed figures, possibly musicians, wearing dark caps with red bands. They are holding brass instruments, one of which appears to be a trombone and another a tuba. The background consists of a clear blue sky with stylised horizontal lines, suggesting a scene of a marching band or parade.

A limerick starter

Two bandsmen set off with a grin,

But one had his slide stuck right in.

He puffed and he blew,

Till his face turned bright blue —

Then sneezed, and played jazz on his chin!

The Case of the Missing Marching Band OR Tuba or Not Tuba? (From a recently-found episode of The Goon Show.)

FX: [Sea gulls. Waves crashing. Brass band warming up tunelessly.]

SEAGOON: Good morning! I am Major Horatio Seagoon, OBE, MFI, RSVP. I have come to Brighton Beach on a matter of national importance.

FX: [BAGPIPE WAIL]

SEAGOON: Shut that manhole cover, Eccles!

ECCLES: Sorry, I thought it was a new type of sunhat.

SEAGOON: It’s got wheels on it and says ‘Brighton Borough Drainage Department’!

ECCLES: Modern millinery, man!

SEAGOON: Silence! Now, according to confidential government memos, intercepted via a fortune cookie in Worthing, an entire marching band has gone missing from the seafront.

GRYTPYPE-THYNNE (smooth): Ah yes, the Royal Regiment of Reversible Saxophonists. Last seen marching confidently into the sea during a rendition of Anchors Aweigh.

SEAGOON: You mean they drowned?

GRYTPYPE: Not exactly. They’ve formed a successful underwater jazz trio off the coast of Rottingdean.

SEAGOON: By gad, we must rescue them before they collaborate with French crabs!

FX: [Marching footsteps, slowly getting squelchier]

BLOODNOK (exploding out of nowhere): Ahh! Not them again! I still owe the euphonium player two guineas and a cod.

SEAGOON: Where were you when the band disappeared, Colonel Bloodnok?

BLOODNOK: Nowhere suspicious! Merely camouflaged inside a tuba disguised as a deckchair.

FX: [Deckchair collapses with a metallic clang. Distant tuba fart.]

ECCLES: Ooooh! I think I sat on a B flat!

MINNIE (sing-song): Henry, Henry! There’s a man in the shrubbery playing a clarinet with his nose!

HENRY: That’s not a clarinet, Minnie. That’s my bicycle pump.

MINNIE: Then who’s playing the triangle with our haddock?

FX: [Loud triangle ding. Distant fish slap.]

SEAGOON: Enough! We must assemble the backup band!

FX: [Horrible discordant crash of spoons, combs, and someone playing a mop]

ECCLES: I got my washboard tuned to C-sharp! But it only plays in the rain.

GRYTPYPE: Congratulations. You are now all part of the official Brighton Beach Auxiliary Marching Misband.

SEAGOON: Forward! Left–right–left–ooh!

FX: [Marching. Then a mass splash.]

BLOODNOK: Wait, wait! The tide’s back in! ABANDON INSTRUMENTS!

FX: [Chaotic retreat, a trombone honks like a goose.]

OMNES (singing): ♪ For we are the band that sank with pride, Near Brighton’s bins and paddle tide. . . ♪

VOICEOVER (LEWIS): And so ends The Case of the Missing Marching Band, sponsored by the National Society for the Prevention of Seaside Serenades.

FX: [Final tuba bloop, fading under waves.]

Two Grey Herrings

Here is the 12th of 25 stained glass window designs on the Palace Pier which AI and I are using as inspiration for some of these BrightonBeach365 daily posts - see Stained Glass Window 1 for background. This one shows a stylised coastal landscape. In the foreground, two fish lie on a pebbly or rocky shore, their bodies rendered in shades of green and outlined in black, with prominent red eyes. Behind them, a golden-yellow beach meets a bright blue sea composed of layered bands of darker and lighter blues. In the distance, a white sailboat with a red sail floats on the water under a sky filled with stylised white clouds and pale blue light. 

A limerick starter

Two fish on the shingle lay low,

With clouds and a sailboat in tow.

Said one with a grin,

‘We’re caught in a spin -

Glass trapped us, but what a great show!’

Two Grey Herrings (with apologies to Agatha Christie)

It was just past eight on a damp August morning when Miss Ada Fossett, retired milliner and part-time crossword champion, made her habitual stroll along Brighton Beach. The tide was out, the air thick with salt and gossip, and the seafront unusually quiet - save for a small cluster near the Banjo Groyne.

Laid side by side on the shingle were two fish. Not just any fish - herrings, unmistakably grey, and arranged with such unsettling symmetry that Ada stopped mid-step. One pointed east, the other west, as though in disagreement over where the truth lay. Between them, embedded in the pebbles, was a torn page from The Times crossword, Tuesday’s edition - curiously, only one clue had been filled in: 8 Down: Red herring (6,7).

Inspector Blodgett of the Brighton constabulary was summoned. Gruff, sceptical, and already two sugars into his second tea, he at first dismissed the fish as the work of pranksters. But Ada, glancing sideways at the crossword, murmured, ‘Not red. Grey. Someone’s being precise.’

The investigation led them through a web of local characters: a disgraced professor of ichthyology turned beach artist, a jilted puppeteer whose seaside show had recently closed, and a fortune-teller with a vendetta against crossword compilers. All had motives - revenge, reputation, or riddles.

The breakthrough came not from forensics, but from fish. A witness recalled seeing a man in a pinstripe suit carefully placing the herrings at dawn. Not just any man - Mr Edwin Trellis, publisher of The Times puzzle section, known for his weekly beach swims and unorthodox marketing tactics.

Confronted, Trellis confessed. It was a publicity stunt for a new cryptic clue series, inspired by Christie’s own fondness for misleading leads. But the twist - and there always is one - came when Ada, flipping the paper over, found a scribbled name and date. That very morning. Trellis hadn’t written it.

The real mystery had been hijacked. Beneath the herrings, buried shallowly in the pebbles, police unearthed a small locket containing a photograph - and a name long believed lost in the postwar chaos. The fish were not just herrings. They were a sign. And someone, somewhere on the Brighton seafront, was using sleight of species to point towards a cold case, about to be warmed by the sun.

‘Grey herrings,’ Ada murmured, eyes narrowing. ‘Not a distraction. A direction.’

A truck in thought

This photo shows a Davis Trackhire truck, equipped with a hydraulic crane, unloading or positioning a large stack of heavy-duty panels - temporary ground protection or trackway, designed to create stable surfaces for vehicles and crowds on uneven or soft ground. In the background, you can see the calm turquoise sea with the silhouettes of the Rampion wind farm turbines on the horizon, under a clear blue sky. What is the truck thinking?

‘How curious it is, to pause amid the salt-kissed air, steel sinews humming with potential, beneath the ever-watchful sun. They call me Davis - a name painted boldly upon my flanks, though what is a name to a mind busy with purpose and observation? Here, perched between shingle and surf, I contemplate more than just my cargo.

I have journeyed on many roads: winding motorways by dawn, city grids pulsing with restless ambition, and now the still calm of the coast. Each mile of my travel has etched stories into my chassis - patience when the world is slow, resilience when the elements test me, satisfaction upon completing my duty.

Today I am burdened, yet unbowed; my payload stacked with the meticulous care of intent and design. My mechanical arm curves with the choreography of industry, a testament to human ingenuity and my own quiet resolve. I find purpose in service, pride in precision. My mission is as clear as the horizon: to deliver, to build, to form the bedrock upon which progress is staged.

Yet I am not without wonder. As I gaze seaward, turbines spin far off, guardians of a future knit with wind and light. I marvel at what I carry, but also at what carries me - the systems and hands, decisions and designs, that coalesce in a moment like this.

I am more than machinery, more than fuel and metal. I am a witness to endeavour, a bearer of burdens, a contemplative spirit at the margin of earth and water. My wheels may rest, but my mind, galvanised by quiet reflection, wanders still.

So let it be written: I am truck, yet thinker; labourer, yet philosopher. On this stony edge, I am at once at home and ever in motion, ever turning ideas as surely as I turn my wheels.’

Lens or no lens

The tortoiseshell glasses lie crooked on Brighton’s pebbles, one lens popped clean out, the other clouded by salt and tiny scratches. A careless loss, perhaps, or a deliberate abandonment. But pick them up, put them on, close one eye, and what do you see?

Close your right eye first, and your left eye is looking through the lens, a single murky pane. Brighton dissolves. The horizon bleeds into sea into sky, a soft bruise of grey and lavender. Pebbles lose their edges, merging into a gentle shingle fog. People drift past like half-remembered stories, voices muffled by distance or time. The gulls are mere pale smudges, their cries dulled to far-off keening. Somewhere, laughter unspools, slow and echoing, as though the beach is remembering a day long gone - a day of dancing on warm stones, of salt-sticky kisses under the boards of the pier. Colours fade into a tender hush. The world is no longer urgent; it sighs, lingers, closes its heavy eyes. Brighton becomes a place not quite here, not quite then - a beach caught halfway between waking and a kind, salt-scented sleep.

Close your left eye, and your right eye is looking through no lens. The beach glares up at you, alive and unashamed. Each pebble is distinct - ochre, slate, coral pink - jostling for its moment in the sun. Gulls wheel overhead, white knives against a cobalt sky, their cries cutting clean through the warm hum of voices. Chips wrapped in paper steam on picnic rugs, vinegar spitting under bright fingers. A child’s shriek rings out, pure and startled, as a wave snaps at his ankles. The pier stretches out brazenly, strutting on iron legs, hung with lights like careless jewellery. Everything is immediate, urgent, shouting to be noticed: the salt on your lips, the warmth seeping into your soles, the wide-open promise of the afternoon. Brighton is a riot of small perfections, each clamouring for your eye - and nothing is softened, nothing spared.

Tomorrow? The history of sunglasses!

Our hopes spin with her

The Argus - 5 July 2125

Brighton Space Centre stands proud on the Brighton seafront this evening, its slender tower catching the reflections in a sky tinged faintly by dust from the Martian frontier. At precisely 23:00, MarsBright - that now-familiar mirrored sphere - launched on its third mission to Mars.

From the beach it seemed to hover impossibly still, balanced atop the old i360 column, now transformed into a humming magnetic launch spine that pierces the skyline like a futuristic needle. The promenade fell silent as countdown lights winked along the tower’s ribs. At the final mark, a deep harmonic vibration rolled through the shingle, rattling faraway deckchairs and drawing startled cries from gulls overhead. Then, with a sudden controlled fury, electromagnetic forces surged through the spine, hurling the pod skyward in a smooth, corkscrewing ascent.

Inside MarsBright, the six-person crew are floating in a stabilised magnetic cradle, insulated from the crushing G-forces that once defined the early days of spaceflight. External cameras are beaming back breathtaking footage of Brighton slipping away in fragmented flashes of myriad lights, of the Palace Pier shrinking to a spindly ghost against the surf, and of the entire coastline curling into a bright seam on the edge of the world before vanishing behind the curvature of Earth.

It was only two decades ago that a handful of newly minted Sussex University physicists, armed with grant money and audacity, discovered the tower’s hollow steel core could be adapted into a vertical electro-magnetic accelerator. Their early tests - pinging lumps of iron skyward at modest velocities - were reported almost as an oddity by this very newspaper, tucked beside stories of seafront bandstands and municipal parking rows. Who then would have imagined that these playful experiments would one day give Brighton a front-row seat in humanity’s reach for the stars?

The city’s first Mars mission in 2115 was a triumph of daring engineering, delivering five astronauts into a fast transit orbit around the red planet and returning them home in a time once thought impossible. By 2121, MarsBright’s second venture established a semi-permanent outpost on Arcadia Planitia, where automated rigs began drilling for ice and testing on-site oxygen production, sketching the first practical outlines of a human habitat.

Now this third expedition will press further still, aiming to lay the groundwork for longer-term habitation - greenhouses seeded with engineered microbes, larger habitats to shield settlers from radiation, and new systems to tap Martian brines for water. MarsBright carries not only fresh crews and equipment, but also the weight of hope from a small seaside city whose name is now quietly etched alongside Houston and Baikonur in the chronicles of exploration.

As the gleaming pod dwindled into the night sky, the launch teams at Brighton Space Centre stood watching in shared, almost reverent silence. Then someone let out a breathless cheer, quickly joined by others, a fragile human sound carried down the wind to the waiting crowds on the beach. Another chapter begins - and as MarsBright spins toward that distant rust-red world, our hopes spin with her. 

Double six every time

No one had asked for them. They weren’t on any plan, proposal, or procurement list. Yet there they were, two enormous red dice, half-buried in the shingle between the pier and the overflowing litter bin.

Councillor Denise Griggs first spotted them on her brisk morning walk. She frowned, took a photo, and sent it to Highways, assuming they were bollards gone rogue.

By lunchtime, a petition was circulating to keep them.

Locals swore blind they’d been consulted. ‘It was in the newsletter,’ said a man who had never read a newsletter in his life. ‘A playful intervention in public space,’ chirped an art student, taking selfies with them in six different outfits. ‘They soften the hardscape,’ said a yoga instructor who had just learned the word ‘hardscape’.

But others were less charmed. ‘We need benches,’ muttered June Tranter, aged 84, who sat on the dice because it was the only thing lower than her knees but higher than the ground. ‘And I slipped on one last night,’ said a man who had, in fairness, slipped on most things.

By Friday, the dice were on TripAdvisor. ‘WHIMSICAL INSTALLATION! So Brighton! 😍🎲🎲 #DiceLife’

‘Can’t tell if they’re art or bins. Love it.’

‘Would recommend for ten minutes.’

Then came the theories.

One woman claimed they were part of a secret casino testing public tolerance. A boy in Year 5 declared, with perfect sincerity, that if you rolled both sixes, the West Pier would regenerate like Doctor Who. A retired magician offered £500 to anyone who could make one disappear ‘properly’.

Denise Griggs, meanwhile, was deep in council minutes. There was no funding. No invoice. No artist named. A FOI request revealed only a baffling line item: ‘Urban Dice (2) - As per civic gamification strategy. Approved retroactively.’

Retroactively?!

At the next council meeting, the Leader, Julian Parkes, admitted - off the record - that the dice had been ordered by his predecessor during a failed - Playful Urbanism - initiative meant to make Brighton a finalist for the European City of the Unexpected. ‘There was a deckchair maze too, but it blew away,’ he mumbled. ‘And we think the dice were meant to be mobile.’

‘On wheels?’ Denise asked.

‘No. Metaphorically.’

Weeks passed. The dice stayed.

Teenagers lounged. Seagulls perched. A local poet declared the left die ‘a metaphor for uncertainty’ and the right ‘just another lie.’ Someone started leaving single dominoes around them. A TikTok trend briefly flourished: #DiceDance. Then vanished.

And every so often, late at night, under cover of darkness, the dice would jiggle themselves, just for a few seconds, smiling urbanely at each other, before re-settling - double six every time.

Beyond the Boundary

Here is the tenth of 25 stained glass window designs on the Palace Pier which AI and I are using as inspiration for some of these BrightonBeach365 daily posts - see Stained Glass Window 1 for background. This image features, in close-up, a batsman’s arms and legs positioned next to a set of cricket stumps and bails. A bright red cricket ball, about to be hit, is shown close to the bat. The background includes a green field and blue sky, with an additional white section, probably a sight screen.

A limerick starter

A batsman once played by the sea,

With stumps by the pier and great glee.

He swung at a ball,

Gave Brighton his all

And bowled out a deckchair for three.

Beyond the Boundary (with apologies to the greatest cricket writer of all, C.L.R. James)

Brighton, summer, when the sea air is thick with sugar and salt, and the pier groans beneath the weight of tourists and time. It was here, just beyond the promenade, that the boy made his wicket from driftwood, balanced on a patch of shingle that passed for turf, and dreamed the game into being.

They called him Clem - short for Clement, though he bore little resemblance to that noble prime minister. Dark-skinned and limber, Clem bowled with a whipcord wrist and batted with the elegance of the ancients, though his audience was mostly seagulls and the occasional retiree resting on the bench with a copy of The Argus folded on their lap.

But this day was different. This day, a man in white trousers and a Panama hat approached from the pier, sipping tea from a paper cup like it was silver. He stood for a moment, watching Clem drive a cracked red ball through an upturned deckchair.

‘You ever played proper?’ the man asked, voice smooth like varnished mahogany.

Clem shook his head. ‘Just here.’

The man nodded slowly. ‘Then you’re overdue.’

That’s how it began. Brighton CC had lost two of their colts to summer jobs and one to sulking after being benched. They needed a number seven with sharp reflexes. Clem had never stood on grass so green or worn pads so stiff. But when the new ball swung like a gull in crosswind, he held his ground. And when the slow left-armer dropped one short, Clem pulled it into memory.

Yet it wasn’t only about cricket. Not on this coast. Not for Clem, who knew his grandfather had first disembarked here in ’48, wearing his Sunday best and carrying his bat like a suitcase. Not for Brighton, whose seafront had once denied men like him entry to clubs even as they cheered Caribbean tourists for ‘spicing up the season’. Not for England, where the empire was gone but not forgotten, not even under the shadow of the Pavilion.

That summer, Clem became more than a boy with a bat. He became a conversation. Old men leaned in to discuss his footwork. A local paper ran a headline - New Hope on the Boundary. And down by the pier, tourists took pictures of the match like it was theatre.

In the final game, as dusk rolled off the sea like steam from a kettle, Clem stood with his back to the setting sun. The bowler ran in - tall, wiry, South African. Clem stepped out. The ball pitched short, rose up, and Clem hooked. The ball soared, high over square leg, higher than the Pavilion roof, and for a moment it seemed to pause mid-air, suspended between sea and sky, past and present.

Then it landed - with a kerplunk - into the Channel.

That ball, they said, was still floating somewhere off the coast of Newhaven.

But Clem, barefoot in the shallows that evening, didn’t look for it. He knew it was not the ball that mattered, but the boundary it had crossed.

Monster moaning

Oh, sure - laugh it up. Take your selfies, poke my chest, comment on my ‘classic look’. I’ve stood here on this splintered pier through wind, rain, stag dos, hen parties, and the occasional rogue seagull attack, and not once has anyone thought to ask how I feel. I’m Frankenstein’s MONSTER, damn it. Not a prop. Not a photo op. A BEING stitched from human remains and existential dread - and yet somehow, I’ve become a mascot for your wretched seaside giddiness.

Every day, thousands of you shuffle past, sticky with candy floss, reeking of sunblock and regret, funnelling into the haunted house behind me like sheep queueing for a predictable fright. ‘Ooh, spooky!’ you say. Is it? Is it really? I’ve seen scarier things in your pop culture. You’ve got real monsters now - algorithmic surveillance, climate collapse, influencers. But no, you want a 1950s rubber mask and a few jump-scares. That’s enough horror for your Instagram.

And don’t get me started on the paint. Who keeps giving me these slapdash touch-ups? I look like someone tried to fix a Renaissance fresco with emulsion and a plastic spoon. My hands are scuffed, my bolts are rusted, and my suit - my suit - was once the pinnacle of stitched-together sophistication. Now I look like a bouncer at a discount Halloween disco.

I hear your conversations. I do. ‘Look, it’s Frankenstein!’ No. Wrong. Frankenstein was the doctor. I am the nameless creation, the wretched patchwork soul who wandered the Alps questioning the morality of man. But go ahead - reduce me to a misunderstood Halloween cliché, why don’t you?

And what is this cursed playlist on the pier? I’ve listened to ‘Agadoo’ more times than I’ve contemplated mortality. Which is saying something. You think eternal life is glamorous? Try standing motionless next to a coin-operated skeleton that laughs every time a child screams. I once pondered the ethics of divine creation. Now I know the true abyss: karaoke night on a bank holiday Monday.

Do I get a break? A moment of stillness? No. Just endless photos, drunks trying to grope me for laughs, and the seagulls - God, the seagulls. I was struck by lightning to be brought to life, and now I live in constant fear of bird droppings and chip theft.

So yes, I’m angry. I deserve better. I deserve a gallery, a plinth, a plaque explaining my tragic origins. Not this rotting boardwalk of flashing lights and bubblegum detritus. Well, fine. Take your photo, but just so you know, my true creator, Mary Shelley, is turning, eternally, agonisingly in her grave.

World Exclusive - neural sedimentary formations

It can now be revealed, publicly for the first time, that a remarkable discovery on Brighton Beach six months ago sparked an unprecedented global scientific investigation into what researchers are calling ‘neural sedimentary formations’ - naturally occurring stones displaying complex branching patterns that appear to encode structured information. The initial specimen, designated BRS-001 (Brighton Research Sample 001), was recovered from the characteristic flint pebble deposits that define this stretch of the English coastline.

The discovery - last December - occurred during routine geological surveys of Brighton’s distinctive pebble formations. Unlike typical flint deposits released from adjacent chalk cliffs through natural erosion, specimen BRS-001 exhibited unprecedented dendritic patterns resembling neural networks or vascular systems. The stone’s surface displayed intricate branching formations with mathematical precision suggesting fractal geometry, similar to patterns observed in natural phenomena such as Lichtenberg figures and biological structures.

Dr. Sarah K. Morrison, lead researcher at the Institute for Anomalous Geology, noted that while fractal patterns occur naturally in various forms - from plant leaf veins to coastal lines - the regularity and apparent information density of BRS-001’s patterns exceeded all known natural formations. Preliminary electromagnetic analysis revealed unusual crystalline matrices within the stone’s flint composition, suggesting possible piezoelectric properties that could theoretically store and transmit data.

Sophisticated imaging techniques revealed that the branching patterns extend throughout the stone’s interior in three-dimensional networks. Unlike surface Lichtenberg figures that form during electrical discharge events, these formations appear to be integral to the stone’s formation process. Spectroscopic analysis identified trace elements not typically found in Brighton’s geological composition, including rare earth metals arranged in geometrically precise configurations.

The breakthrough came when researchers applied quantum resonance scanning to the specimen. The branching patterns began exhibiting coherent electromagnetic signatures, suggesting active information processing capabilities. Computer modelling indicated that the stone’s internal structure could theoretically store approximately 2.3 petabytes of data - far exceeding current human storage technologies.

Following private publication of preliminary findings, the Global Anomalous Materials Consortium launched Operation Neural Stone, a worldwide search for similar specimens. Research teams were deployed to coastal regions across six continents, focusing on areas with comparable geological characteristics to Brighton Beach’s flint-chalk formations.

Within the last six months, thirty-seven similar specimens have been recovered from locations including the Normandy coast, Tasmania’s eastern shores, and Nova Scotia’s Bay of Fundy. Each stone displayed unique branching patterns while maintaining consistent internal crystalline structures, suggesting a common formation mechanism operating across geological timescales.

The discovery has revolutionised understanding of natural information storage systems and raised profound questions about the origins of complex pattern formation in geological processes. Current research focuses on determining whether these formations represent an unknown natural phenomenon or evidence of technological intervention by unknown entities.

The scientific community remains divided on the stones’ origins, but all agree that it is time to reveal the astounding discoveries to the general public: BRS-001 and its global counterparts represent one of the most significant geological discoveries of the modern era, potentially reshaping our understanding of information theory, crystalline physics, and planetary formation processes.

A Seaside Romp

Here is the ninth of 25 stained glass window designs on the Palace Pier which AI and I are using as inspiration for some of these BrightonBeach365 daily posts - see Stained Glass Window 1 for background. This image features a person lounging in a green-and-white striped deckchair, positioned on a pebble beach. The figure is shown from behind, legs outstretched, with arms resting on the sides of the chair. Beside the deckchair are a blue-and-white beach ball, a yellow spade stuck upright in the ground, a black bucket, and a sandcastle. In the background, the sea appears deep blue, and above it, dramatic blue-grey clouds sweep across the sky, adding a slightly moody atmosphere.

A limerick starter

A sandcastle, flagged and grand,

Was built with much toil on the sand.

But the tide, with a smirk,

Would undo all that work

And leave wet chaos where art used to stand.

A Seaside Romp (with apologies to Jilly Cooper)

Clarissa’s deckchair had collapsed again.

‘Bloody vintage chic!’ she shouted, flinging a sunhat with all the grace of a woman three spritzers into a Tuesday. The Brighton sun was out, her ex-husband was back in town with a woman who looked like a sentient yoga mat, and someone had just tried to charge her £9.50 for hummus on toast.

She glared at the sea. It glared back.

To her left, a man lounged shirtless in a deckchair so smug it looked like it paid private school fees. He had a bucket, a spade, and calves like minor deities. She knew the type. Retired banker. Probably called Giles. Probably knew how to pitch a tent and your body confidence into chaos.

‘Nice pail,’ she muttered.

‘Inherited it,’ he replied. ‘Passed down through four generations.’

She looked him up and down. ‘You from London?’

‘God no. Tunbridge Wells. But I did a stint in Shoreditch. Gave it all up for sea air, spades, and spiritual clarity.’

Clarissa raised an eyebrow. ‘Spiritual clarity?’

He glanced at the spade between his feet. ‘Tried celibacy. Lasted a bank holiday weekend.’

A beach ball bounced over - thrown by a child named Persephone whose parents were arguing about NFT art - disturbing the moment. Clarissa and Giles were both on their feet, cheeks flushed, knees dusty, bucket and spade forgotten . . . ready for the next moment.

Later, as they lay entangled in a damp windbreak and the faint honk of chip fat and regret, Clarissa sighed.

‘Do you believe in fate?’

Giles considered this. ‘Only if it brings wine.’

She smiled. ‘Fetch the bucket. I’ll go get ice and Cava.’

The tide rolled in and the fizz fizzed (for want of fireworks).

The eye as old as time

Found just east of the Palace Pier, half-submerged in the pebbles and facing out to sea, a strange piece of driftwood has captured the imagination of beachgoers. At first glance, it’s a gnarled, salt-bleached log - but closer inspection reveals something far more curious. Weathered hollows and ancient cracks form what many claim resembles a vast, watching eye.

Locals have taken to calling it ‘the eye as old as time’, and the name has stuck, partly for its poetic ring, partly because the formation feels oddly deliberate. Smooth rings surround a deep hollow, like iris and pupil, worn not by carving tools but by tide, time, and wind. The shape is uncanny, as though the beach itself is peering out from beneath the stones.

One long since retired fisherman - Silas Finn - recalls a local legend claiming that whenever such an eye appears on Brighton Beach, change is coming. He remembers a similar shape washed ashore in October 1973 - just before the terrible barge accident that destroyed the pier theatre - and another just before the Great Storm of 1987.

In the past, most have dismissed the legends but others have theorised ‘the eye as old as time’ is part of a vast, submerged creature of folklore, returning infrequently and briefly to survey the coast. Others consider it marks a shift in the beach itself - that Brighton’s shoreline, long tamed by groynes and breakwaters, may be awakening to older rhythms.

As of this afternoon, the driftlog still lies where it landed, above the tideline, unclaimed. Children poke at it, walkers sit for a moment, dogs - alas - pee on it, but more than one wizened old soul is sure to hold its gaze, and read into the future.

The Brighton Fixer

Here is the eight of 25 stained glass window designs on the Palace Pier which AI and I are using as inspiration for some of these BrightonBeach365 daily posts - see Stained Glass Window 1 for background. This image features two jockeys riding brown horses, both in racing posture. The jockey in the foreground is wearing a pink top and white pants, while the jockey behind is dressed in a red top and white pants with a yellow helmet. The background shows stylised green fields, a blue sky, and white clouds, with a prominent red circle in the sky, possibly representing the sun or a race marker. 

A limerick starter

Two jockeys sped off in a dash,

Each hoping to pocket the cash.

Their horses, inspired,

Look secretly wired -

Did someone spike oats with panache?

The Brighton Fixer (in the style of Dick Francis)

I saw it again this morning. The stained glass roundel above the old betting shop door on Brighton seafront. Two jockeys, mid-gallop, frozen in coloured glass - one in rose, one in red. Odd thing is, I know them both.

The one in rose? That’s Charlie Fielding. Dead two years now - trampled under six hooves at Plumpton. Officially an accident. Unofficially, I never bought it. And the other jockey? I’d bet my last losing slip it’s me.

I retired after Charlie’s death. Couldn’t ride without seeing him in my periphery. But I still walked the beach every morning, boots crunching shingle, past the piers and peeling Victorian arches. That’s when I noticed the stained glass, installed suddenly in the old Seagull Tote, long closed and boarded until recently. No artist’s name. No sign. Just that image - and the past, staring back at me.

That morning, a figure was watching from inside. A flicker behind the coloured panes. Curiosity overrode my better sense. I crossed the promenade and pushed through the warped wooden door. It creaked open.

Inside was dim, the salt air clinging to dusty formica. A single bulb buzzed above a folding table. And sitting at it, with a bookmaker’s ledger open in front of him, was Julian Kemp.

He’d trained both Charlie and me once. Slick, silver-haired, with a fondness for quiet threats and sudden debt. He didn’t look surprised to see me.

‘Thought the window might bring you in,’ he said, without looking up. ‘It’s good, isn’t it? Custom commission. Memory’s a powerful lure.’

I didn’t answer. My eyes scanned the room. Beneath the table: a floorboard pried loose. Inside, stacked neatly - old betting slips, laminated, coded. Duplicates of Charlie’s last race. And photos. Surveillance. One showed Charlie arguing with Kemp, another showed Kemp at a late-night meeting with a farrier who’d been banned from every course south of the M25.

Charlie had known something. Tried to back out. And now the glass showed him forever racing to a finish he never reached.

‘You killed him,’ I said quietly.

Kemp smiled like a man remembering a clever joke. ‘He wouldn’t play ball. But you? You stayed loyal. Fancy another ride, Ben?’

He nodded toward a fresh set of silks on a hook: rose pink, like Charlie’s.

I picked them up, felt the weight. Then turned, sharp and fast, and cracked the brass hook against Kemp’s temple. He crumpled silently.

I left him tied with his own power cable, his precious stained glass glowing behind me as the dawn caught the curve of the beach.

I’d call the police once I reached the pier. First, I stopped and looked out to sea.

This time, I wouldn’t be part of the finish line.

Bring me . . . a sausage roll

[Scene: Brighton Beach. Two seagulls, Eric (taller, dafter) and Ernie (shorter, primmer), are perched near the ruins of the West Pier. With apologies to Morecambe and Wise.]

Eric: [pacing like a detective] I smell something, Ern. It’s in the air. The scent of danger. The perfume of peril. The unmistakable aroma . . . of pastry.

Ernie: Oh no. Not again. Last time you followed your beak, we ended up dive-bombing a hen party from Essex. I still have glitter in places no bird should sparkle.

Eric: I’ve refined my technique! Watch closely - I’ve developed a glide approach known only to the gulls of Monte Carlo.

Ernie: Monte Carlo? You’ve never even made it past Worthing.

Eric: I’ve got continental instincts, Ern. I’m like the James Bond of birds.

Ernie: You look more like the pigeon off the end of the pier.

Eric: That's rich, coming from a gull who’s scared of crisp packets.

Ernie: They rustle, Eric. They rustle menacingly.

[A tourist drops a sausage roll on the promenade. Both freeze.]

Eric: Did you see that?

Ernie: I’m not blind. Unlike your landing skills.

Eric: Right! Formation Gull Delta. You go left, I go elegant.

Ernie: Eric, no. We agreed - no more ‘interpretive flying’.

Eric: It’s not interpretive! It’s graceful. Like a feathered Bolshoi.

[Eric attempts a flamboyant leap off the wall, flaps wildly, and crashes into a deckchair.]

Ernie: Very Bolshoi, that. Nearly took out a pensioner.

Eric: It's all part of the act, Ern. People come to Brighton for entertainment.

Ernie: They don’t come for you flattening their nans!

[They both spot a child waving the sausage roll like a beacon.]

Eric: Right. This is it. All or nothing. If we time it just right . . .

Ernie: Eric?

Eric: Yes, Ern?

Ernie: The kid’s eaten it.

[Both birds stare mournfully at the now-empty wrapper.]

Eric: I blame the economy.

Ernie: I blame you.

[Cue them waddling off into the sunset, wings round each other, humming ‘Bring Me Sunshine . . .’]