Society
I can only enjoy my trips to Brighton if I move my bed three feet nearer the window
Published 13 December 1999
Even though it sent the headboard crashing to the floor I finally managed to manoeuvre the bed a good three feet nearer to the window and rearrange the duvet and the pillows so that later on that night I'd be able to sleep with my head towards the sea and hear the familiar screeching of the shale as it sped downhill after the retreating waves.
Nowadays I regard it as critically important to have everything shipshape for my trips to Brighton. Even before I leave I like to tell everyone in earshot Keith Waterhouse's joke about the place - "looking like a town which should be helping the police with their inquiries" - and I make certain not only to book into the Old Ship Hotel but also insist on being given one of the sea-facing rooms on the fourth floor which allow a perfect night-time view of the illuminated pier.
Once my room at the Old Ship is in proper order I'm off round the corner of the hotel to Dr Brighton's for my standard five pints of Bass. At ten o'clock on the dot I drain my last pint, cross the road to the beach and yomp unsteadily along the high bank of yielding pebbles in the general direction of the Conference Centre and a late-night fish supper with a pot of tea and double bread and butter.
All this ritualism is a way of coping with the dispiriting knowledge that I can now find little pleasure in novel environments. In common with most of my friends, I've tried in recent years to ring the changes with my annual holidays and conscientiously exchanged Tuscany for the Dordogne and Paris for Prague. But although I can make the right admiring noises when confronted by new landscapes, cathedral squares and tourist menus, I find I miss the special frisson of mere repetition: the delight of knowing that in the past I've slept in the exact same room and bed, stood at an identical point on the beach, moved my bread and butter plate precisely two inches to the right to obtain a better leverage on my haddock fillet.
Neither is this crass nostalgia, an attempt to re- create good times from the past. There have been nights in Brighton that have been anything but pleasant. Janet found the atmosphere in Dr Brighton's far too smoky for her taste and insisted on shifting to the cocktail bar at the Ramada; Liz was caught by a heavy wave on the way along the beach towards the haddock and had to be taken back to the Old Ship for Twinings tea and sympathy; while Dave became so irritated by my constant suggestion that he drag his bed across the room that he abandoned me entirely and stormed off to the Zap club in search of foreign language students.
Some weeks ago I fell into conversation with a graduate sociologist who cheerfully confessed that she'd been earning extra money from telephone sex. She'd quite enjoyed pretending to be erotic while completing the Independent crossword, but had frequently been irritated by the meticulousness of her gentleman callers. Before they asked her to undress they'd have to make certain that they were sitting at exactly the right angle in their favourite chair, and that they had their favourite piece of music playing in the background. "That's what I can't stand about wankers," she confided. "They can only get excited if they follow a precise routine. There's no room for any novelty."
I decided on balance not to ask her if she'd ever encountered a client who could only really begin to enjoy himself once he'd moved his bed a good three feet nearer to the window.
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