A bike ride in London with it narrow streets, cobble stones and double decker buses bearing down on you is an experience. The cabs are the worst, they have the taste for blood. Thank heaven we weren’t on the cbd side of the Thames, I can only imagine. Nothing that a good cooked English breakfast, obviously serious modified from the tradition four meat spread, couldn’t fix. Ah, that was better we sat a while under that grey sky feeling rather contented, churches, slate tiles and business suits. Another slightly less chaotic ride to the tran station and soon row houses, then green fields were bumping by on our way to Brighton.We arrived to sunshine. Perhaps the grey was just a London thing (spoiler: it’s not). The gulls were calling us into a holiday mood, blue sea at the end of each cream concertina of houses. The buses and cabs were still a bit wild, so we headed unto Hove and the luxury of extended family. Louise and Dylan’s sort of uncle simon welcomed us in with open arms and it was such a relief after nothing but the road for so long. A warm bed, two cats and union jack pillow.

At the local sainsburys the clerk went all glazed eyed in rapture when we asked him to tell us what pims was. Cucumbers floating in a punch bowl, summer weddings and fruity bliss, all this was promise to us, but not in a can. We bought it anyway. Then a celebration by the rocky English beach: a picnic dinner, clunking cans of sort of pims and bobbing fairy lights.