You Can Read About Day One Here
I was awoken at about 5am by the familiar sound of a young child sleepwalking and crying outside my door. Going to boarding school meant I have heard that before, I was contemplating whether I should go out and check on him as I did not want him falling down the stairs but his mother came out and ushered him back into their room.
Thanks to this whinging wandering child I could not get back to sleep so ended up watching cartoons on ITV & Channel 4 before eventually falling asleep again at about 7am but only for a couple of minutes. I was woken up again by the wafting smell of breakfast being prepared downstairs, boy was I regretting not having breakfast, damn by self-consciousness when eating in public!
I decided to go for a walk through the town centre to grab myself something to eat and a local newspaper, I was expecting to be confronted by the same scummy pikey bastards that I saw last night but what I saw was completely the opposite. There was a flea market type thing going on with lots of middle-class and elderly people milling about buying books and nick-knacks.
Today I planned on going to watch Hastings United take on Lewes in a friendly. I worked out with Wayne the night before that going to Ore station would be closer than going to Hastings station. Hastings has the most fucking hills I have ever seen, not once in the eight hours that I was there did I go down a hill! I met God three times!
The game was not very memorable, sadly I forgot to bring my digital camera with me so I could not take any pictures of the mighty Hastings United beating the also-just-as-mighty Lewes 1-0.
With the match over it was now time for drinking, the only problem was I could not find a pub that was open! I walked for almost 45 minutes straight before I stumbled into Hastings Old Town and found a pub, by the time I stumbled into the pub I was panting like a dog.
I went into a second pub and wish I never had. As I was served by a nice young barmaid (who was WAY too friendly for my liking) there was an elderly man sitting at the bar who I could feel was burning a hole right through my head with his eyes.
I ignored him & his apparent hex vision and went and sat down at a table with my pint of Black Sheep, next to the table was another table with newspapers spread out. I asked the landlord, as he came by, if it was OK to read one and he said it was as long as I put it back after I’ve finished so I grabbed a local paper and started thumbing through it.
I then heard the old man start grumbling and every now and again I would look up and see him eyeballing me from his position at the bar. He then started swearing louder and louder until the landlord came over and told him to shut up. The old man did not like this reply and started swearing and pointing at me and the landlord told him if he did not like strangers coming in here then he should fuck off and drink somewhere else.
It ended with the old man storming out in a huff. As I went back to the bar for a refill I apologised to the landlord and he brushed my apology away and explained that the guy hates strangers coming into the town and me helping myself to a newspaper in HIS local pub was the straw that broke the camel’s back. “Anyway,” he said, “he will be back tomorrow as normal.”
I wandered into a third pub and was served by a young barmaid who was wearing a top that not only showed her assets but her nipples as well, from my newly found seat I could see she was getting angry because the place had a few young men in and they were blatantly eying her tits.
The fourth and final pub I went into turned out to be not a pub but a restaurant where I had the best roast dinner I have ever had in my life, washed down with a few pints of a beer called something weird.
The barmaid was also acting as the waitress and she was wearing a thong that kept popping out to say hello (despite the many times she pulled her trousers up) because she kept bending over tables; men were obviously having a good look and she, like the barmaid in the previous pub, was getting angry at this.
I understand that barmaids are encouraged to wear sexy outfits but why wear a top that has your boobs fully out and a thong that is clearly on display if you do not want people to lear at you?
I headed into Seaford and checked out some of their pubs (a bitter called Sussex Best Bitter from a Sussex brewery called Harvey’s went down very nicely) before walking into The Beachcomber, a pub that I used to get served in when I was a 17 year old at boarding school and the venue for the called-off Seaford music festival.
I ended up staying in The Beachcomber for a couple of hours playing pool with the regulars and having an absolute blast. I only left because I did not know what time the last train was and I needed to get a train back to Newhaven.
By 10pm I was back in my B&B room and thought I’d nip into Newhaven town centre and have a few more beers before closing time. I was standing in the corner near the bar when a gaggle of cackling women came in and were downing shots like they were going out of fashion.
They saw me on my own being all quiet and shy and made a beeline for me and before I knew what was happening I had been dragged over to their group and was being introduced to everyone as they cackled like witches who had hatched an evil plan concerning me.
One of the girls in the group was called Daphne (her mates kept calling her Daffy which they thought was the funniest thing ever) and we got on very well. She lives and works in France, who would have thought that I would get on with a French person!
We were soon kicked out of the pub as it was closing so the girls kidnapped me and took me to some night clubs in Brighton, if anyone fancies a night out then Brighton has to be the place to go. There were so many places to choose form we barely stayed anywhere for more than 30 minutes.
I got on very well with Daphne, so much so that when everyone was parting ways and kissing each other goodnight she opted to come back to Newhaven with me. I was not sure about the rules of bringing people back to the B&B but when we got back there was nobody around so we sneaked up to my room and did what two single people do.