Diary: Brighton, Adelfia restaurant

To a Greek restaurant, Adelfia in Preston Street, last night with Sue & Lil, Jaq & Lynne. We met beforehand for a drink in the Royal Sovereign. We laughed about the hammering Crystal Palace (Sue) had recently inflicted on Arsenal (Lil) and got tips for hangouts in Cristianos (The Hideaway, a pub near the church and the petrol station). Hotel California started playing on the pub sound system, at which point Sue asked me to name the band. When I replied the Eagles, she punched the air with a yell of EEEEGGULLLS (Crystal Palace), and I knew I’d been had. The music continued and I noticed at one point three of us quietly swaying in our seats to the country rhythm, mouthing the words to Take it Easy: ‘Don’t let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy.’ Jaq did not attempt to hide her disgust.

Adelfia was friendly in the way we have come to expect from Greek restaurants and the staff’s happy mood infectious. The menu had other Mediterranean touches: halloumi dusted with flour before frying; the cheese stuffed into the peppers was softly spiced. During the mains (me, chicken souvlaki), Sue dropped a biggie. When Sue, Jaq and Jane were at university together, an older student they all knew not very well turned out to be the Westminster bomber. Cue them all trying to remember something about him that set him apart as a would-be mass killer. He was not interesting in any way, they reported, or they would have remembered more about him. Not like the gender fetish bloke who did things with raw chickens on the weekend. I spoke to Lil about Brexit and whether he feared for the future of his two daughters, 17 and 23. He was sure everything would turn out OK.

Diary: Brighton, Western Road

Walking west along the north side of Western Road, about half way between Currys-PC World and Argos, I spot an outstandingly overweight woman bouncing along in front of me, pitching and rolling from side to side as if trying to keep her balance during a choppy sea voyage. I started to think unkind thoughts about her. Should she have equal entitlement to nhs services? Should she be charged double for the two seats she occupies on buses and trains? That nasty sort of misanthropy. Then I spotted her male companion. He was much thinner, but still probably obese by modern measuring methods. His outstanding feature was the pair of grey cotton jogging pants he was wearing – loose fitting and stretched droopy enough to exhibit his arse crack, but murkily stained in the rear toilet area. The single mark wasn’t big enough to spot from a distance, so not majorly embarrassing, some might think. But walking behind him was not a treat. Just as I expected to again to be taken over by hateful snobbish thoughts, instead I started to wonder whether I should tell him about it, and if I did, what might be his response. I found it hard to believe that his wife/girlfriend/spouse-equivalent wasn’t aware of his soiled state. Then I thought maybe they both knew but didn’t care. Maybe it had only just happened and nobody but me knew about it. All the time these thoughts were distracting me, my eyes were fixed on that humiliating patch. It got to the point where I started deliberately to look away in case anybody thought I had a thing about staring at men’s dirty arses. Then they both squeezed through the door of Foodilic and I was free.