Innocent circle?

Here is the 23rd of 24 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 circular scene of rolling countryside rendered in bold, simplified shapes. Sweeping green hills overlap in layered bands, with deeper greens suggesting shaded folds in the land. Brighter yellow paths or fields cut diagonally through the slopes, adding movement and contrast. Above the landscape, large billowing clouds stretch across a clear, bright sky, their rounded forms outlined in dark contours. The whole composition has a stylised, almost mosaic-like quality giving the landscape a rhythmic, patterned feel.

A limerick starter

A rambler set out with great pride

Across hills rolling green, far and wide;

But each curving bright track

Led him cleanly off track -

Now he’s still in those fields, trying to decide.

Innocent circle? (after Thomas Pynchon)

On a Tuesday of no particular consequence - though the gulls claimed otherwise - Vasco found a circular picture half-buried in Brighton’s shingle, its colours too bright for English weather, its hills too neatly curved to be trusted. The thing gave off the faint chemical optimism of a 1970s educational poster, the sort issued by governments hoping children might one day become engineers instead of anarchists.

He picked it up. Warm. Suspiciously warm.

A woman in an orange raincoat, passing at speed as if pursued by minor debts, shouted, Don’t look at it directly! Then she vanished behind a windbreak plastered with QR codes and promotional offers which, if decoded, might or might not summon a free ice cream. Farther along the beach, a group of students were conducting what they called ‘an unauthorised topographical intervention’, which mostly involved pointing surveyor rods at the Palace Pier and arguing about the metaphysics of load-bearing structures.

Vasco had the distinct impression that the picture in his hand - this innocent circle of rolling hills and friendly clouds - was part of a much larger operation, though whether artistic, military, or merely bureaucratic he couldn’t yet tell. Brighton had always been like this: sunlit afternoons perforated by intrigue. Even the pebbles seemed to be signalling to one another, clicking out messages in some forgotten coastal Morse.

He turned the picture over. Nothing on the back but a faint smell of ozone and custard cream. Classic misdirection.

Somewhere beyond the West Pier’s skeletal remains, a low hum gathered - something between distant surf and an idling generator. Vasco couldn’t be sure, but it seemed the landscape in the picture was beginning, imperceptibly, to move.

Out and Along and Over

Here is the 22nd of 24 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 three people riding in a small, bright red-trimmed speedboat skimming over rough stylised blue and green waves. The boat’s wooden decking is sharply angled, two passengers sit at the back, with a helmsman at the front. The sea curves beneath them in bold, flowing bands, and above them a wide expanse of blue sky is broken by big, rounded white clouds. Off to the left, a red sail or distant vessel adds a point of contrast on the horizon.

A limerick starter

A day-tripping trio left shore

In a boat that was really quite poor;

When it smacked through a swell

They all yelled, ‘Bloody hell!’

‘That’s an oath,’ they added, ‘not a port we’d aim for.’

Out and Along and Over (loosely inspired by the rhythms of James Joyce)

They shot out from the shingle as if the whole beach had given them a shove. A jerk, a cough of the engine, and then the little red prow lifting, nosing, finding its run along the bright-slap water. Tom felt it under him, the shudder and lift, the hard rattle in his knees, and he thought, yes, this is it now, this is the going, the real going, and not the standing and watching and saying one day, one day. Behind him the pier stretched its legs into the sea, iron and timber, rattling with music and gulls and the clank of rides starting up, and all along the shore the people like shells scattered, small and safe and stayed.

His father had both hands on the wheel, knuckles yellow, grinning into the wind that peeled his cheeks back, and every now and then he’d glance to the side, to the left where the open ran out to France, to everything else, and to the right where Brighton curled round on itself with its terraces and hotels and its white-faced houses pretending not to look at the water. The boy watched his father’s eyes and thought of how they looked at the kitchen table, grey then, and how they looked now, lit from below by the jump of the waves and the fat high sun.

‘Hold on there, Tommy boy,’ he shouted, and the sound was whipped away, cut to bits by the speed and the salt. Tom laughed but the laugh stayed in his chest, a rising bubble, and he dug his fingers into the warm rail, feeling every bolt, every scar where the paint had run or been scraped back by someone else’s summer.

Beside him Mum sat forward, one hand on the side, one hand in the air pointing at nothing in particular - a buoy, a line of foam, a flash of glass in the west where the drowned pier lay flat as a drawing on the water. Her hair flew back and slapped her face and she pushed it away and laughed, a proper laugh, not the small kitchen laugh, and in her eyes he saw the beach as it had been before him, before Dad, Brighton before Brighton, a strip of stones and a strip of sea and the old idea of going, always going, out and along and over.

And the boat ran on, skimming the chopped blue, throwing its own white script behind it, a long curling sentence on the water that said: we were here, we passed, we were going, we went.

The Shingle That Waited

Here is the 21st of 24 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 window - the only one of the 24 designs so muted, so unlit from behind - shows a semi-abstract landscape: a tall tree stands in the centre with a brown trunk and deep green canopy. Behind it, rolling hills sweep across the scene in bands of varied colours. To the left, a structure suggests the outline of a windmill. In the distance, layers of faded blue and purple evoke sea and sky, creating a sense of depth. (See below for an AI enhanced copy of the image.)

Limerick

A lone tree stood proud on the rise,

Where the hills blushed in patchwork disguise;

By a windmill’s red crown,

Colours drifted and wound,

As if landscape and daydream were allies.

The Shingle that Waited (with apologies to Gabriel García Márquez)

At first light on a morning without memory, a solitary tree stood on the Brighton Beach shingle where no tree had stood the day before. The tide had withdrawn in long blue breaths, and the stones around the tree seemed to have shifted to receive it, as if saving that space for longer than anyone had lived. Its leaves shone with a green so new the gulls wheeled in uneasy circles above it.

People approached quietly. They felt a warmth rising from the stones but did not lean close to confirm it. A boy of about ten pressed his ear to the trunk and later told his mother the tree was humming. He said it felt like a forgotten memory had entered him by mistake. When he stepped back, he stared at the horizon with the solemnity of someone recognising a distant call.

Days lengthened, and colours around the beach began to behave in unfamiliar ways. The sea deepened into shifting turquoises, the sky into purples without sunset, and the distant hills changed tone with the tide, warming as the water withdrew and cooling as it returned. Residents felt the changes but did not question them; they sensed the beach had entered a season beyond explanation.

Late in the month, a shape gathered itself on the horizon. Each dawn revealed more: a red-roofed windmill with long blue vanes turning steadily in air that held no wind. No one claimed to understand its arrival. The old ice-cream seller simply nodded, saying, ‘The sea keeps its stories. Sometimes it gives one back.’

One afternoon a young woman knelt beside the tree, drawn by a breath of warmth beneath her feet. When she parted the stones she saw, only for an instant, a faint radiance below the surface, colours laid out in careful layers like the remains of a celebration the earth still remembered. She withdrew her hands, and the glow vanished. Those who later dug in the same place found nothing but cold grey stones.

As the season shifted, the marvels retreated. The sky returned to its familiar greys, the sea to its disciplined blue, and the hills to their customary restraint. One morning, without any sign of their leaving, both tree and windmill were gone. The shingle showed only a slender arc of lighter stones tracing a path toward the water.

The boy who had heard the humming did not seem surprised. ‘They were waiting,’ he said. ‘And they heard what they needed.’

Sometimes at dusk, when the tide lies perfectly still, a tall, delicate shadow stretches across the stones, cast by nothing that stands there. Those who see it feel the shingle shift almost imperceptibly beneath their feet, as if making room again for what has not yet been forgotten.

The Mystery of the Crowded Boats

Here is the 20th of 24 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 four small boats are clustered together on lively, broken water, their hulls overlapping as if pressed close at a busy mooring. In the foreground, a yellow boat and a white-and-red one tilt toward each other, their cabins and decks picked out in clean, angular lines. Behind them lie a vivid red boat and a pale grey one, half-hidden but still distinct, riding at slightly different angles as if shifting with the tide. Strong verticals rise from all four, suggesting taut mooring lines or slender masts, while the sea around them is fragmented into sweeping bands of deep blue, light blue and green, giving the whole scene a sense of movement and bright coastal weather.

A limerick starter

Four boats on a restless blue sea

Were tangled as tangled could be.

Said the yellow one: ‘Mate,

Is this some kind of date?’

Replied red: ‘Only if you moor with me.’

The Mystery of the Crowded Boats (with apologies to Enid Blyton)

Julian spotted the cluster of boats first. They were moored oddly close together, their bright colours bobbing on the choppy water just east of the old West Pier. The four of them were almost nose-to-nose, as if whispering secrets. George shaded her eyes and frowned.

‘They weren’t like that yesterday,’ she said. ‘Look - they’re practically jammed together. Something’s happened.’

Timmy barked in agreement and pulled at his lead. Anne, who always noticed the smaller details, pointed to the sandy shingle at their feet.

‘There are fresh imprints here,’ she said. ‘Two sets - and one of them looks as though the person was carrying something heavy. The prints sink deeper.’

Dick, who was already scrambling towards the nearest groyne, gave a low whistle. ‘And here’s another clue - look at this rope end. It’s been cut clean through. Someone’s taken one of the boats out, and put it back in a terrible hurry.’

George’s eyes shone. ‘Let’s hire a dinghy from the fishing hut and go over to them. If someone’s been up to mischief, we might still catch them.’

Minutes later, they were rowing hard through the shifting green-blue water, Timmy perched at the bow like a proud figurehead. As they drew nearer, the four boats looked even stranger. The yellow one was scuffed along its side, the grey one had a new dent near the stern, and the white-and-red boat was sitting lower in the water than any of them liked.

‘Julian!’ Anne cried. ‘It’s overloaded!’

They pulled alongside, and Dick leaned over. Inside the half-sunken boat lay a wooden crate, still wet and half wedged beneath the seat. Rough stencilled letters ran across its side: BEACH HUT 243 - KEEP SHUT.

‘It must have come loose from its mooring wherever that was, and drifted here’ Julian said. ‘And now it’s stuck between the other boats.’

George tugged at the crate and the lid came away with a snap. Inside were neat rows of shiny tin canisters, each labelled MODEL ROCKET FUEL - CAUTION.

‘Rocket fuel!’ Dick said in astonishment. ‘What on earth is it doing here?’

Julian looked back towards the beach, where the line of colourful beach huts curved towards Hove.

‘I think someone’s planning something they shouldn’t,’ he said. ‘And whoever keeps hut 243 may be in danger, not involved. We must inform the coastguard immediately.’

Timmy barked triumphantly. The children tied the red boat up to the others, and hauled the crate into their own dinghy before setting off to return to shore. Behind them, the four boats rocked together as though relieved to have given up their secret.

By the time the sun dipped behind the West Pier ruins, the Famous Five had uncovered a plot, saved a string of beach huts from a fiery mishap, and earned themselves enormous ice-creams from the grateful hut-owner - just the sort of ending, Anne thought happily, that Brighton Beach always seemed to give them.

Domes Beneath the Waves

Here is the 19th of 24 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 stylised architectural scene dominated by domes and towers. The largest dome rises centrally, flanked by smaller ones, all with bulbous, onion-like shapes that evoke an exotic, palatial skyline. Vertical pillars and arch-shaped windows support the structure, while the sky behind is rendered in soft blue tones that contrast with the golden and amber hues of the domes. The whole composition has a rhythmic balance, with repeating ovals and arches giving it a sense of harmony and grandeur.

A limerick starter

A palace of domes in the sky,

Seemed built for a dream passing by;

Its minarets gleamed,

As if Brighton had dreamed

Of being a Sultan’s Versailles.

Domes Beneath the Waves (with apologies to Salmon Rushdie)

On certain evenings, when the tide withdraws like a curtain from a stage, the domes of the sea begin to rise. Tourists do not see them, of course - their eyes are fixed on the Pavilion up the road, that grand, improbable wedding cake of empire. But the locals, the old strollers of Brighton Beach, know: when the light dips and the gulls turn black against the sun, the reflection in the shallows is not a reflection at all. It is memory - architecture dreaming itself back to the sea.

A boy named Karim sells shells from an upturned ice-cream tub near the Palace Pier. He has heard his grandmother’s stories of domes that float like lanterns under the Channel, relics of the Prince’s folly that slipped from land into myth. One evening, as the beach empties and the gulls fall silent, he wades out where the surf softens into glass. The water trembles with colour - amber, sapphire, milk-white - and beneath his toes he sees, for a heartbeat, a city of gold and glass, breathing.

The domes pulse, as if the Pavilion itself is exhaling through the seabed, sending bubbles that smell faintly of cardamom and salt. Within them swirl voices - Indian servants gossiping about the mad English prince, sea-bathers laughing in the cold, a band tuning for a ball that never quite ends. Karim reaches down; the glow flickers like a lantern in wind.

Then a voice speaks - not to his ears but through his bones. We are the domes that England dreamed, it says. Half built from desire, half from guilt. When you look at us, boy, you look at both.

He blinks, and the light collapses. Only the Pavilion remains behind him, ridiculous and beautiful against the dusk - its turrets dark with evening, its minarets poking holes in the last of the sun. The sea lies flat and grey again, as if nothing has happened. But in the shallows his footprints still glow faintly, like a script written in a language the tide refuses to erase.

The ball’s still in the air

Here is the 18th of 24 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. A lively soccer match is underway. In the foreground, a large black-and-white football dominates; to the right, the leg and foot of a player in blue shorts and striped socks is shown in motion, suggesting a kick. Behind the ball and player, a crowd of supporters fills the background, represented in bright blocks of colour - yellow, red, blue, green, and brown - with raised arms and cheering stances, creating the sense of excitement in a stadium atmosphere. The overall style is bold and simplified, with clear outlines and vivid colours.

A limerick starter

A striker with socks blue and white, 

Kicked a ball with incredible might. 

The crowd gave a roar, 

As it sailed to the score, 

And victory gleamed in the light.

The ball’s still in the air (with apologies to Nick Hornby) 

I was standing on Brighton Beach, staring up at this stained-glass window in one of those seafront cafés, the kind that smells of chip fat even after it’s closed. It showed a football frozen in mid-flight, with a crowd behind it looking like they’d just seen God, or at least Peter Ward in his prime. The socks on the kicker were the clincher: blue and white hoops, the Seagulls’ stripes.

And suddenly I was back there, twelve years old, thinking Brighton & Hove Albion were going to change my life. Dad took me to the Goldstone Ground and I saw Gerry Ryan run down the wing like he’d been shot out of a cannon. That was it. I was hooked for good. But football - especially Brighton football - is like the sea here: it looks glorious when the sun’s on it, but most of the time it just drags you under and leaves you coughing up salt.

On the beach that morning, you could almost hear the echoes of promotion parties and relegation heartbreak. I’d been through them all, right down to the protests when we nearly lost the club. We stood outside with banners, shouting until our throats cracked, while inside men in suits plotted how to flog the ground for a Sainsbury’s. It felt hopeless. And yet here we still are, with a stadium on the edge of town, European nights, a place at the grown-ups’ table.

Looking back at that window, I realised why it hit me so hard. The crowd in the glass isn’t celebrating a goal. They’re waiting. The ball’s still in the air, and anything could happen: joy, despair, a dodgy referee’s whistle. It’s Brighton Beach in a nutshell. You sit on the shingle, you watch the horizon, and you think: maybe today the tide turns. Or maybe it just keeps rolling in and out, same as ever.

I finished my tea, wiped the crumbs from my lap, and thought about the next game. It’s ridiculous, really, this endless faith in a team, like waiting for a miracle on a beach that’s seen more storms than summers. But if you’re a Seagull, you don’t stop flying. You can’t.

The Brighton Reduction

Here is the 17th of 24 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. One might see this image as an abstract landscape scene made of coloured shapes. Below are layered blue and turquoise forms suggesting water. Above are green and brown rounded shapes that resemble hills or fields. Higher up, soft beige and light green tones appear like distant rolling hills. At the top, pink and lavender shapes resemble clouds or a sky tinged with soft light.

A limerick starter

A hillside of blobs blue and green,

With clouds that look oddly obscene,

The mountains all bend,

Where no rivers descend,

A landscape both lumpy and clean.

The Brighton Reduction (with apologies to J.G. Ballard)

The last tourists arrived on a Friday afternoon, their coaches idling on the front while drivers smoked in the lee of the Palace Pier. They spilled onto the shingle in the usual choreography - sunhats, selfie-sticks, chips in cardboard trays - but something in their gait betrayed a hesitation. The sea no longer looked like sea. From the shoreline outwards it unrolled in flat turquoise planes, one after another, each without sound, as if a giant had pressed the surf beneath a sheet of glass. The air was heavy, a silence broken only by the cries of gulls that circled higher than normal, as though afraid to descend.

By the West Pier’s wreckage, a group of students sketched the horizon. They told each other that the Downs had shifted shape in the night. The ridges beyond Hollinbury now resembled swollen mounds of green enamel, smooth and depthless. The fields appeared as luminous discs of beige, stacked in tiers like a diagram of the earth’s crust. Clouds passed overhead in soft slabs of pink and violet, no longer responsive to wind but drifting according to some private geometry.

No authority acknowledged the transformation. The council issued bulletins about water quality and lifeguard patrols, as if the flattened surf were nothing more than a minor anomaly. The Argus ran a front-page photograph under the headline Another Record Summer Expected. Yet anyone who lingered on the beach knew the world had begun to surrender detail. Pebbles lost their speckles, reduced to uniform ellipses. Beach huts faded into primary blocks. Even the i360 seemed less a tower than a single unbroken line drawn against the sky.

A retired teacher named Meredith returned every morning with her binoculars. She had once catalogued the wildflowers along the promenade, recording the subtle shift of colour and petal. Now the planters yielded only solid discs of green. ‘It’s not erosion,’ she told anyone who would listen. ‘It’s design. The place is redesigning itself.’ Few paid attention; the visitors still wanted their ice creams and their photographs.

One evening, as the sun lowered into the sea, a strange glow filled the beach. The light had no source - it seemed to seep from the flat horizons themselves. Couples packing away towels paused, their shadows no longer falling behind them but spreading in perfect circles around their feet. A boy kicked at the surf and watched his leg pass through a turquoise panel that closed again without a ripple. When he pulled his foot back the skin was unnaturally smooth, like polished stone.

The following week, coaches stopped coming. The esplanade emptied except for a few solitary figures staring across the new landscape, waiting for some sign of reversal. But the sea continued to harden into pure planes, the hills into abstract domes, the sky into coloured strata. Brighton Beach had shed the clutter of its past - the piers, the bathers, the trivial architecture of pleasure - and revealed its true intention. It was becoming a diagram, a place stripped to its elements, ready for an order that was utterly indifferent to memory, or to man.

The Brighton steamer

Here is the 16th of 24 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.

Bandit at Two O’Clock

Here is the 15th of 24 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.’

Where the sea has no memory

Here is the 14th of 24 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.

Tuba or Not Tuba?

Here is the 13th of 24 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 24 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.’

Cheese and Clarity

Here is the 11th of 24 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 is a vibrant and inviting still life scene. At the centre, there’s a tall green wine bottle labeled ‘WINE’ next to a filled glass of red wine. To the right, there’s a rustic loaf of bread and a large wedge of cheese adorned with a couple of red grapes. On the left, a plate overflows with colourful fruit - bananas, red apples, oranges, and dark grapes. The background features a bright blue sky with white clouds, visible through a window framed by stylised golden foliage, giving the whole scene a cheerful and leisurely atmosphere. 

A limerick starter

A bottle of red by the shore,

With brie, crusty bread, and much more - 

The waves kissed my feet,

The camembert sweet,

And I burped, ‘This is what life is for.’

Cheese and Clarity (in the manner of M. F. K. Fisher)

It was on Brighton Pier, one sunny morning in July a long time ago, that I tasted what I can only describe as a moment of suspended truth. The sea, more aquamarine than English Channel has any right to be, lapped beneath the boards with that sly, deceptive calm particular to days just before a storm. I had walked the length of the pier, past the thump of arcade machines and the shrillness of seagulls, until I found a place to consumer my picnic lunch, a place of improbable peace: a narrow table-for-one outside a shuttered café, laid not with linen, but possibility.

The meal had been packed by a friend in Hove, a woman with the kind of confidence in food that doesn’t require apology. In the small canvas tote, wrapped in wax paper and string, was a half-round of Sussex Slipcote - creamy, yielding, its curd scent as tender as memory. There was a baton of sourdough, still warm from an oven I imagined tiled and sunlit. And there was fruit: a fist of dark grapes, each like a polished bead; a plum so ripe it might have been holding its breath.

But it was the cheese that made everything still.

I remember how the knife slid through it, a slow sigh of a cut. How it spread against the bread with the texture of late-summer longing. I bit in, and everything dissolved: the salt air, the pier’s old iron bones, the sound of a child crying for more coins. For a moment, it was just me, the Slipcote, and a glass of red pulled from a thermos flask and tasting improbably of the south of France. There may have been a crust of honeycomb too - my memory folds here - and a wedge of quince paste, amber and dignified like a grandmother’s brooch.

Brighton’s beach glinted distantly, pebbles fizzing in the sun like soda water. I could just make out the broken skeleton of the West Pier, its frame ghosted with rust. I wondered, not for the first time, what it means to love a place that is constantly eroding, and whether that same principle applies to people. Or cheese.

I stayed there a while. Long enough for the gulls to give up hope, and the sun to soften everything into shadow. The clarity of hunger had passed, but in its place: something softer, wiser. Not fullness, precisely, but a kind of peace.

If there is a meal worth remembering, it is never because it was perfect, but because something in the bread, or the cheese, or the view from a rickety pier told you a secret you didn’t know you needed to hear.

And the secret was this: You do not have to earn pleasure.

Not with labour, or loneliness, or a perfectly laid table. Not by pretending not to want it. You are allowed to sit on a salt-bitten bench above a bright and battered sea, and let a little wheel of cheese remind you that the good things - rich, ripe, sensuous - require no justification. They exist, like the sea and the sun, and so do you. That was enough.

Beyond the Boundary

Here is the tenth of 24 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.

A Seaside Romp

Here is the ninth of 24 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 Brighton Fixer

Here is the eight of 24 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.

The Dome of Light

Here is the seventh of 24 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 depicts two large trees with brown trunks and green foliage, set against a sky-blue background. To the left, there is a stylised white architectural structure resembling an archway or pavilion, reminiscent of classical or Mughal architecture. The foreground is adorned with bold, colourful flowers-large red and white petals with dark centres-creating a lively and inviting atmosphere.

A limerick starter

In a garden where poppies convene,

With trees tall and temple pristine,

Said the daisy, ‘I vow,

I'm more sacred than thou!’

But the oak rolled its eyes at the scene.

The Dome of Light (in the style of William Wordsworth)

I.
There lies, not far from Brighton’s pebbled shore,
a quiet dome of softened light and stone,
where seagulls wheel and salt winds lightly roar,
and oft the thoughtful go to sit alone.
Upon its wall, in coloured pane confined,
a glass of wonder greets the roaming mind:
red poppies bow, and daisies wide and bright,
beneath tall trees and sky of ocean light.

II.
Young Thomas came, a boy of nine or so,
with sand-stung cheeks and shoes still full of brine.
He’d left the surf and Brighton’s bustling row,
drawn inwards by a hush near the Palace fine.
He climbed the steps, and in the silence deep,
he saw the glass, and there he stood in sleep -
that waking dream when hearts begin to stir,
and all the world grows soft and feels unsure.

III.
For in the glass he saw his mother’s hand,
once firm in his, now ashes by the sea.
She loved the Downs, the flowers, sky, and sand -
and made a garden by the old oak tree.
She’d told him once, ‘Where poppies ever grow,
you’ll find me there, beneath the evening’s glow.’
Now here they bloomed, in crimson glass agleam,
their black-eyed centres caught in ageless dream.

IV.
And there - a gate. No house stood near its path,
no road, no hedge, no stone, no sign of man.
Just open sky, and grass, and ocean’s wrath
tamed into lines of blue within a span.
He traced it with his eyes, this quiet place,
and knew it was not Brighton, yet its grace
felt of the town - of pebbles, gulls, and shore -
yet bore a silence Brighton never wore.

V.
He wept but once, then wiped his face and smiled.
A daisy turned toward him - glass beguiled -
and in that dome, beneath the window’s gaze,
he whispered thanks and walked into the haze.
Back down the steps, and past the salted air,
the beach still roared, the world went unaware.
But in his heart there bloomed a clearer sight:
Brighton, beneath a mother’s dome of light.

The Crimson Banner

Here is the sixth of 24 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 ship, a galleon perhaps, with large white sails, a bright yellow sail at the stern, and a deep red hull. The sea is rendered in shades of turquoise, teal, and white, representing waves. The sky features soft pastel clouds in pink, purple, and blue, with a crimson pennant flying at the top of the tallest mast. The overall style is vibrant and stylised, with bold black outlines separating the coloured glass segments.

A limerick starter

A vessel once sailed through the pane,

Though how it got in, none explain.

It’s stuck there in hues,

Of purples and blues,

Forever becalmed in a frame.

The Crimson Banner (in the style of Robert Louis Stevenson)

The wind had a salt tang to it that morning, and the gulls wheeled in lazy circles over Brighton Beach. I had gone down early, before the town was fully awake, drawn by a dream that had clung to my waking mind like seaweed on a boot. In the dream, I had seen a ship - not of this age, but one from tales of treasure and peril - its sails full-bellied and a crimson banner flying high.

To my astonishment, that very vision met me on the seafront, not in the sea but in glass. Set into the round window of a crumbling bathhouse on the Esplanade was a stained-glass panel of a proud galleon with billowed sails, riding a crest of jade-green waves, the red pennant aloft as in my dream. The window caught the morning sun like a gem, and I stood spellbound.

‘You’ve seen her too,’ came a voice, old as rope and salt.

I turned. A man sat hunched on a nearby bench, his beard tangled like kelp and his eyes sharp beneath bushy brows.

‘I - I don’t know what you mean,’ I said, though my heart beat strangely.

‘She was called The Mirabel,’ he said, nodding toward the window. ‘Built when pirates still thumbed their noses at the navy. She set sail from this very coast with treasure enough to buy all Brighton. Never returned.’

‘What happened?’ I asked, stepping closer.

‘Some say storm, some say mutiny. I say she still sails - beneath the waves, mind you. Waiting for the one who remembers.’

The man rose, reaching into his coat. He drew out something wrapped in oilskin - a compass, brassy and old, its needle spinning wild until it settled true north.

‘I’ve watched that window forty years. Every spring tide, I look for the sign. And now you dream of her, lad. The sea remembers.’

I took the compass. It felt alive in my hand, pulsing with the mystery of tides and stars. I didn’t protest when he pressed it into my palm. The man tipped his cap and walked away, limping up the stony beach and vanishing into the mist that had begun to gather.

I turned back to the glass ship. The sun had risen fully now, and in its blaze, the red banner in the window glowed like fire.

That evening, drawn by the whisper of gulls and something deeper, I followed the compass along the beach. At the edge of the water, as the tide pulled back with a sigh, something gleamed beneath the surf - a coil of rope, the curve of a mast, the barest suggestion of a deck.

And the banner. Red, like a blood memory, fluttered once - and vanished.

Some say Brighton’s just a place of deckchairs and chips, but I say look deeper. The sea holds its secrets. And sometimes, just sometimes, it offers them back.

A Flickering, Fractured Vision

Here is the fifth of 24 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 conjures up an age gone past, the age of steam. A train - with its various components rendered in different colours of glass - is pulling into the station. In the background, the upper portion of the window features a light blue sky with curved lines suggesting the roof structure of a train station. Below, are depictions of passengers in red standing on a platform.

A limerick starter

A steam train set off with delight,

Through glass, it gleamed bold in the light.

Past the sea’s rolling tide,

On the pier it would glide,

Bringing dreams of adventure in sight.

A Flickering, Fractured Vision (in the style of William Gibson)

The station was empty when Daniel arrived, the faded hum of its electric lights stuttering like an old circuit board. The Comet sat there, the blackened metal of her boiler catching what little light filtered through the stained-glass window - a relic, buried beneath years of rust, forgotten by time.

But time, like anything else, had its own rules. And those rules didn’t apply here.

Daniel had seen the way the glass glowed, each shard a window into another world - a flickering, fractured vision of something long past, but present. He could almost hear the hum of the engine in the glass, its rhythm in sync with the pulse of the station’s ancient electrical grid. He’d watched it so many times, but tonight, something in the light made him uneasy. Something - darker.

Then the glass moved.

The first tremor was almost imperceptible, a shiver of static in the air. Then, with the kind of impossible grace that only something broken could possess, the Comet stirred. Steel shrieked, pistons groaned, steam bellowed. For a moment, the whole place seemed to be held in stasis, frozen in the glowing prism of colour.

Daniel’s hand slid to the lever at his side, automatic, muscle memory. But he didn’t move. The engine - silent, dark, lost to a world that had moved past it - woke.

It rolled forward, a ghost from another time, its brass a muted reflection in the cracked glass of the window.

‘No way,’ Daniel muttered, his voice barely a whisper, swallowed by the hum of the rails beneath. The machine moved - slow at first, hesitant, like it wasn’t sure if it belonged to this world anymore. It shouldn’t have been possible, not in the way it was happening.

The station, with its peeling paint and a forgotten sense of grandeur, blinked as the Comet began its descent down the hill. Gathering speed, the sound of the train’s wheels clattered against old tracks, and rages of steam left a confusion of fog in its wake.

There was a glitch in reality somewhere, and for a second, it felt like the whole world was briefly on standby. The Comet wasn’t supposed to be here - not now, not like this.

It was onto Volk’s Electric Railway before anyone could blink. The narrow-gauge tracks, once built for something smaller, were too fragile to support a full-sized engine. But the Comet wasn’t following the rules. The metal of the rails rippled under its weight as though it too was caught in the glitch.

The train sped down Madeira Drive, steam boiling and the sea churning, as the city passed in flashes. For an instant, the rails crackled - unused electricity - life syncing with the pulse of the past. The engine moved on its own terms, like it always had, like it was never going to stop. The whistle tore through the air.

Daniel ran to catch up, his feet pounding the pavement, but the streets were foreign, faster than he remembered. The flicker of neon signs bled into the fog, the city bleeding out from the station’s forgotten corners. He didn’t know whether to follow or to let it go.

At Black Rock, the Comet slowed, the city finally catching up with itself. The engine sat, quivering, waiting for something Daniel wasn’t sure he was ready to see.

He placed a hand on cool metal, tracing the edges of something once forgotten. He expected to feel the weight of something unshakable, a solid connection to an age gone by, but instead, it was like touching something that had always been here, in the air, the wires, the hum of a signal.

A fraction of a second later, the Comet vanished. The rails, still warm, were silent.

By morning, it was as though it had never been. The station sat in its quiet decay, the stained-glass window intact, but something was different. Daniel stood in front of it, the edges of the glass still rippling as if caught in some loop. The faintest trace of steam lingered in the air.

He knew better than to question it. Time bent here, had always bent. Maybe it was the glass, maybe it was the wires, but the Comet wasn’t finished. Not by a long shot.

The Secrets of Silas Thorne

Here is the fourth of 24 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 depicts a lighthouse standing tall against a deep blue and red-toned sky, possibly representing dusk or dawn. A bright full moon is visible near the horizon, and the lighthouse’s beacon shines in a sweeping beam across the scene. Below, stylised waves and rocky shores complete the coastal imagery. 

Limerick starter

There once was a lighthouse so grand,

In a window, not out on the sand.

Though it shined with great might,

It had one major plight - 

No ship ever saw it firsthand!

The Secrets of Silas Thorne (in the style of John Buchan)

The salt-laden wind whipped at my tweed coat as I stood before the small, circular window in the vestry of St. Nicholas Church. It was a peculiar thing, a stained-glass lighthouse, nestled amongst the more traditional depictions of saints and biblical scenes. The colours, a swirling vortex of deep blues and fiery reds, held an almost unsettling energy, the lighthouse beam cutting through the glass like a celestial sword.

‘Odd, isn't it?’ A voice, dry as parchment, startled me. Reverend Ainsworth, a man whose face seemed etched with the same lines as the ancient stones of the church, stood beside me. ‘Not quite what one expects, is it?’

‘Indeed,’ I replied, my eyes fixed on the window. ‘Do you know its history?’

‘A tale best told in whispers,’ he said, his gaze flickering towards the shadowed corners of the vestry. ‘It was commissioned by a man named Silas Thorne, a notorious smuggler, some seventy years past. He’d made his fortune running brandy and silks along this very coast. But Thorne, you see, was a man haunted by the sea. He lost his son, swept away during a storm, and sought solace in this . . . peculiar offering.’

The Reverend paused, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur. ‘They say Thorne believed the lighthouse in the glass was a beacon, a guide for his lost boy’s soul, trapped in the watery abyss. He’d sit for hours, gazing at it, convinced he could see his son’s face in the moonlight reflected off the glass.’

‘A tragic tale,’ I said, my fingers tracing the cold stone of the window frame.

‘Tragic, yes,’ Ainsworth agreed. ‘But there’s more. Thorne was a man of dark secrets. It was whispered he’d made pacts with . . . less than holy entities. The lighthouse, they say, isn’t just a symbol of hope, but a conduit.’

‘A conduit?’ I raised an eyebrow.

‘To something . . . other,’ he finished, his voice barely audible. ‘They say on nights of the full moon, when the tide is at its lowest, the lighthouse in the glass glows with an unnatural light. And if you listen closely, you can hear the faint sound of a boy’s laughter echoing from the depths of the sea.’

The Reverend’s words sent a shiver down my spine. I glanced at the window again. The moon, a pale disc in the stained glass, seemed to pulse with an eerie luminescence. I felt a strange pull, a sense of unease that settled deep in my bones.

That night, I found myself drawn back to the church, the moon casting long, skeletal shadows across the graveyard. The tide was out, the sea a dark, undulating expanse. I slipped into the vestry, the air thick with the scent of damp stone and incense.

The lighthouse window glowed with an unearthly light, the colours swirling and shifting. I pressed my ear to the glass. A faint sound, like the distant echo of laughter, drifted from the sea. It was a chilling sound, a sound that spoke of loss and longing, of something trapped between worlds.

Suddenly, the glass shimmered, the lighthouse beam intensifying. I recoiled, a sense of dread washing over me. The laughter grew louder, closer. I felt a coldness, a presence, pressing against me.

Then, just as suddenly, it was gone. The light faded, the laughter ceased. The window was still, silent. I stood there, my heart pounding, my breath catching in my throat.

I left the church, the salt wind biting at my face, the moon a silent witness to the night’s strange events. As I walked back towards the lights of Brighton, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had glimpsed something beyond the veil, something dark and ancient, stirred by the haunted lighthouse in the stained glass window. The secrets of Silas Thorne, it seemed, were still alive, waiting for the next full moon, the next low tide, to rise again from the depths.