Brighton wasn’t just home to FantasyCon this weekend. Taking an early morning walk along the beach on the Saturday we discovered that the city was also playing host to the 2011 ‘Brighton Breeze,’ an annual rally of Volkswagen camper vans. There really was something fantastical in the sight of literally hundreds of these vehicles lined up along the front. In fact the entire three days felt vaguely unreal. Looking back at the city from the pier I was struck by the dangerous vividness of everything, the knife-edge clarity, as if the whole scene had been cut and assembled from coloured paper. Everything was in technicolour, the buildings along the seafront so white-hot they hurt your eyes.
There were thousands of people on the beach and in the water. It was like a scene from Ballard, or Rene Clement’s Plein Soleil. It was difficult to believe this was still England.
The Royal Albion was horrendously noisy – the night-long festivities on the beach and along the promenade made it feel as if we were inhabiting an airport terminal rather than a hotel – but that rather fitted in with the restless weirdness of everything. The company of so many other writers made this weekend, as always, a unique experience.
Brighton and FCon go together so well it’s supernatural…..
Brighton Breeze 2011