Dec. 23:

T and I had dinner at Evelyn's. A woman at the next table fed her tiny dog from her fork. Passing by the bars there was a very "Wednesday before Thanksgiving " crackle in the air.

Dec. 24:

Walked to the corner store for a few last items, realized as soon as I got home that I forgot the eggs, walked back. This experience confirmed my finding these past few months that a 5 minute walk is less annoying than a 5 minute drive. I got the sides and dessert from Marks and Spencer so other than the ham, which I didn't do much to, I didn't really cook lunch so much as warm it. Not having a microwave, that was somehow still a complicated experience that took much longer than anticipated.

The 7 pm Mass (10 pm too late, Christmas morning would be a lost cause) was packed. We sat in the loft next to a guy who said he is there every week and it is usually not that crowded! Unclear whether he was more annoyed that the C and E types don't come more often, or that they were there at all. Music accompanied by a single violinist which is really an unfair lift, but the priest was upbeat and pithy. Since we were at the church that is part of the kids' school we saw a lot of their classmates and their families, and it was easy to feel like we were part of a cheerful hive on what might have otherwise been a slightly subdued and lonely day. Our local was full and festive, all the more so after Mass let out.

After everyone else had gone to bed, I had to stay up for a little while for operational reasons. To kill time, I watched "A Ghost Story for Christmas" on iPlayer. I'm not a big horror person but was only 29 minutes and the guy from Starstruck was in it, how creepy could it be? TURNS OUT VERY. Luckily there was a soothing plate of cookies on hand.

Dec. 25:

I forgot the crackers at lunch the previous day, so we did them at breakfast. Contents from the M&S crackers I picked up on Black Friday (which in Britain seems like it could be any random day in November): a mini cheese grater, a mini whisk, measuring tape, keychain with bottle opener, keychain with ruller, keychain with a token the same size as the 20p coin you need to get a shopping cart at Aldi. These in addition to the gold paper crowns and jokes which are now engraved permanently in the childrens' (very lean) joke lineup. Lunch at The Wharf, v. good and enjoyed all the more because the payment had been made weeks ago and could now be comfortably forgotten. When we arrived, there was a package of chocolates next to each child's place setting. People who had brought their dogs (seated in a separate uncarpeted section) got a package of dog treats.

Special celebrity episode of Bakeoff including Olivia Colman, who cried "Oh, bums!" when she realized she'd made a mistake with her biscuits. My children have been been understandably drawn to emulate this national treasure.

Dec. 26:

Long drive to Brighton. I woke up with a red and gunky eye possibly because a young person coughed directly into my face. Through the private health insurance I get from work I was able to get a quick video appointment with a doctor, although setting up this appointment required an app that you can only get if your app store location is set to the UK and it was a tedious process untangling all that. He told me I would have no problem getting antibacterial ointment over the counter at a pharmacy.

We stopped for dinner in Cambridge. The streets were full of tourists trying to figure out what was open (chain stores, maybe half the restaurants) and what was closed (anything of cultural or educational value). I went to Boots to get the ointment but met unexpected resistance. I asked for the ointment, but the guy at the counter thought my level of gunk was insufficient to establish bacterial rather than the viral conjunctivitis. We discussed the gunk and its progression throughout the day, but he remained skeptical. Luckily the video doctor had sent a report to my email and that settled it, and when I think about it maybe there was a little less gunk than the many other times this has happened to me since I had children, and perhaps in light of the crisis of antibiotic resistance it made sense to be cautious? But moving on! At my mom's request we ate at the Eagle, the pub frequented by James Watson when he was at Cambridge. At this point I think I can clock a family in which a parent is a scientist with some accuracy, so without understanding the Portuguese conversation at the next table I am fairly confident a father was trying to psych up his son about the location.

Getting to your AirBnB at night is always such a vulnerable moment. Which is the key to the gate and which is the key to the front door? Am I leading my children down the right dark narrow alley, or to our doom? Will the fob to the parking garage work, and will it indeed be only five minutes' walk from the apartment as stated in the listing? On the latter two points, the answer was no. Other than a very brief visit about ten years ago, I hadn't been to Brighton since I was there as an exchange student at the University of Sussex in 2005. Driving through the dark city, I hadn't recognized anything. The day ended on a note of disorientation.

Dec. 27

The narrow lanes around the apartment were hushed in the morning when my mom and I went out to get groceries. The shelves were very Soviet looking as several quiet days' worth of expired products were being cleared away. Nowhere more melancholy than a beach town on a winter morning, no lives more unknowable than the people walking alone through the damp chill. I felt ghostly pangs of the tedious anxiety of those old days of $1.98 to a pound. But by the time everyone was fed and watered and we headed back out, the stores were all open and the streets were packed. Unlike 2005, I had a job, and the dollar had rallied. Not everything about 2025 is terrible.

Lunch in Portsmouth. Lots of naval stuff if you are into that sort of thing. For my part, I perked up when I saw the logo of a charity shop that raises money for mental health services, but was disappointed to learn that this particular location was where they actually provide the mental health services.

Dec. 28

We took a tour of the Brighton Pavilion. I couldn't remember whether I had ever been inside, but as soon as I saw the pink wallpaper I thought OH RIGHT YES.

I did not take many pictures because it was such a bombardment of Georgian chinoiserie madness with Christmas decorations to boot that I had a little bit of an aesthetic short circuit, but it is...something. There was an exhibit about the Indian soldiers who were brought there to convalesce during WWI because it was thought the setting might make them feel more at home which is...something.

The children wanted to go ice skating on the temporary rink outside. I was under the impression that my younger son could skate well enough that my husband could focus on keeping me steady (N zipped off immediately). It turned out that B still needed plenty of steadying, so I did a solo lap clutching the rail and then just observed.

We'd made it through skating without anyone's ankle snapping, so why not tempt fate further with a scramble down the pile of Twinkie-sized rocks along the water. At home, I'm always telling myself I should go to the beach more often because once I get through the schlepping and hauling it always feels worth it. In Brighton in 2005 I remember making one token trip. In 2025, I realized why I'd left it at that.

The ghostly remains of a pier that burned down in 2003 were still standing. The main pier was still in operation and abuzz with activities that would have been more or less recognizable to a Victorian. The log flume was running which felt reckless in this weather.

We passed through campus on the way home. It was built in the sixties so it didn't take the splendors of Cambridge for comparison to make it look a little underwhelming, although there had been enough progress for my old dorm to be torn down with several large towers under construction in its place. At this point I realized I had spent all day feeling twitchy and ready to go home. I felt like I was back on tired and well-trod ground, but without any glow of familiarity or nostalgia. Along with the strictures of the weak dollar, I associated Brighton with the crushing revelation when I arrived that there was no place on Earth where I could show up and discover that here I was cool, actually. But it had been an adventure, by my sheltered standards at least. I learned so much about myself and the world, and I'm still friends with some of those people today, and it's possible that without those months in 2005 I wouldn't be back here now. Looking back on it from my desk in Manchester, I think maybe the biggest issue is that I am more of a northerner at heart.