The time drew so quickly and I find myself celebrating another birthday. Its funny how the days between birthdays seem to get shorter. Whilst contemplating my new obscure age, my girlfriend suggests, as a present, for us to go away for weekend. I think its brilliant idea and suggest - to make it a little bit more adventurous - that we close our eyes and where the pen drops, and that is where we shall go, without question and no second go’s, unless we have been there before. There is an old saying that says, going to a new place is good for the soul, so why not. I close my eyes, swirl the pen in the air and bring it down on the map. It lands on Eastbourne. I can see instant disappointed in her eyes and all the excitement of the pen swirling instantaneously vapourises. She tells me she does not like the sound of it but I say, that’s it, the pen has decided, that is where we shall go, and I see her resign to fate. I know she is not overly happy, but what can go wrong, I mean it is a sea side town and so should have some surprising events or something like that.

A week goes by and the day arrives for the Eastbourne extravaganza. I have to meet her at Victoria station, I arrive slightly early. I am always late and I better not piss my girlfriend off right at the start. I use my time to buy a little bunch of flowers. Just to greet her and to thank her for the trip. Soppy hey. Well it was also because she doesn’t seem to enjoy the destination, and it will make the journey easier. Also apparently the girls love flowers. So I get talking to the florist and we end up talking about my little weekend break. She tells me that she hears Eastbourne is an up and coming place and that its going through a mini renaissance, some regeneration projects are going on down there. She mentions new boutique hotels, excellent eateries and a rather growing night life. Brilliant I think, perhaps we are ahead of the times, despite everybody describing it as an average sea-side town, maybe we have stumbled upon the cusp of some new travel intelligence, now we can brag about how we are "in the know of what’s new". Finally my girly arrives and I tell her about the "inside info" I have just received, I hand her the flowers and give her a big fat kiss and cheesy grin. She raises one eyebrow, smells the flowers and nods approvingly to humour but I can see the sliver of doubt.
 
Well the train journey is pleasant and the sun is setting on the Sussex country-side. It’s very pretty indeed. I tell my girlfriend to look out at the scenery wizzing by as the sun sets through broken clouds. But she has seen it a million times and besides that, she is reading a romantic novel and doesn’t want to be disturbed, probably sulking. We arrive at our destination an hour and a half later and find our way to the taxi rank and I tell my girlfriend with the utmost conviction, "If you want to know the best things in town, ask a cabbie. They know everything, now follow me." This of course instantly qualifies me as an ardent traveller and I demonstrate one of my data acquiring techniques. Actually, thinking about this, with hindsight most teenagers know this. She probably heard that useless nugget of info years ago. Oh well.

So we get into the cab and I open the conversation enthusiastically with the classic line a cabbie hears every day, "Hello, how are you, have you been busy tonight?" I  get through the pleasantries and manipulate the conversation where I can finally extract information about Eastbourne, despite him offering it freely earlier. I repeat the conversation I had with the florist, about the boutique hotels, eateries, night-life and so forth. There is about ten seconds of silence and I can see he is gathering his knowledge and formulating his answer. Finally he starts to utter this ‘nouveau knowledge’ and he says "No, not really, this is a place where people come to die! There is nothing new here that I have seen in the past 5 years." He explains its a retirement town, Seriously, we are on a break at a retirement town!

He drops us off at our hotel and my girly is chuckling at my misguided enthusiasm. The next day we are awoken by Hitchcock’s screeching sea gulls. Not wanting to sound like an ageist, but we discover a place with a myriad of disability vehicles, buzzing past each other like dodgems in slow motion. Tried to hire one, which would have been fun, but couldn’t. There are grandchildren everywhere with ice-cream cones. It’s like a snippet of a scene from Little Britain, but in black and white. Along the beach is a line of equidistant beach stalls, with their candy coloured umbrellas disappearing into the horizon. They only sell one of two things, ice-cream and sea-food. We walk down the beach and it feels like walking on a travelator with the scenery on repeat. We got off the travelator, buy a bottle of champagne and get drunk instead. Ok, I don’t want to knock it too much as I know some people love the place. As a consolation, despite it being the sunniest place in the UK - apparently, we did eat some damn good food. I guess its ok to go there for the afternoon but for a weekend away, I am not so sure. Maybe next time when I am ready to retire and allowed to hire a mobility vehicle.