Escape from the Hipster Hellmouth

Had a day trip to Brighton - not work, simply because I could - seeing as it's roughly an hour away ( on a bad day ) I popped over on a whim. Came back a couple of hours later with a pair of exceptionally good shoes, a William Hunt tailored Jacket and a moss green Louis Feraud Military style double breasted coat, for less than the price of an evening out.

Brighton is worse than ever, PACKED to the gills, so many people jostling for pavement space. Lots of very young students indulging their hipster fantasies - they seem to be having a fantastic time - everyone dressed to the nines, behaving exactly as they want in little bubbles of their own making. I wonder what happens when their course finishes and they have to go back to their drab little lives from before? I saw two young blokes, aged about 20 - talking loudly and animatedly about sex outside a cafe - one of them caught sight of the old woman in front of me and you could see a look of contempt and disgust on his face - as if they will never get old ( to be fair - she looked fantastic, pink and green check mohair coat and massive tortoiseshell sunglasses )

Many shops have vanished and been replaced with near identical stores selling slightly more expensive versions of the previous stock, and many of the 'nice' retailers are only selling things that the owners like for themselves. It's just pointless - the retail is awful - stuff you don't need, don't really want, and can't really afford - but people still buy it. I was shocked at how many new jewellers there are in the Laines, and most of them selling diamond engagement rings - hoping that people come down for the weekend and get carried away. I saw a coffee shop called 'naked' coffee - what the fuck is all that about -and they had a sign to their 'designer lounge, upstairs' - what??? Is it just for designers - or is this the 1980's?

I saw a lot of big hair and a lot of very silly body piercing. There seemed to be fewer bad tattoo's this time - perhaps they have all been sent home.

I saw 4 people sleeping rough - that worries me.

They are already putting up the xmas lights.

On the train home - I had the misery of being trapped in a carriage with 4 drama students. They were aged about 20, going on 40. They were so precocious it was nauseating. Each of them seemed to think they were already in a scripted sit-com, everything they said was derived from something they had seen, probably an episode of Miranda - they even did the 'internal dialogue to camera' thing, repeatedly. One of them was talking about her brother - he's said to her "I don't know if I want to be an ambulance driver or a bush pilot'.

 They were all quite keen on musical theatre "Oh My GOD!!!! - Cats is coming back next year!!!"

One of the boys looked like David Oweleyo - and he knew it - in fact, he seemed to have 'become' him, both of the girls really fancied him. At one point, in an attempt to be 'clever' he said 'so - what do you think, should Scotland become independent?" - "Independent from what?" said the pretty redhead who really wanted to sleep with him ( she was wasting her time )

They were with me all the way to Bexhill.