UK Trip! Thurs Aug 24/06

Right. So where was I? Oh yeah, Gatwick airport. No photos though, it was pretty overcast. Too bad.

So we landed just fine, and got off the plane. The lineup for customs was enormous - but we got through it in about 45 minutes, and we had the nicest customs officer on the planet, seriously! Luggage showed up pretty quickly too, and then we were out to the public area, where MS was waiting for us - aw, MS, bless you! He rented a car for our stay with him and R, so of course he had a bit of trouble finding it in the parking lot, but it wasn't so bad.

The drive to Brighton was uneventful, relaxing even. We got to their place, went in for a little bit to settle down and put our luggage in the bedroom, then the four of us went downtown to have lunch at a pub, wander through the streets, the shops and the seaside!

Started my shopping of course - bought a fun new wallet, black with white skull & crossbones, with the reverse inside, with a chain on it, so I look well 'ard *grin*, and I also got a polo-ish shirt that looked fun. Horizontal stripes, might not be the best idea, but I like it anyway, too bad. Also got an emergency rain poncho to keep in my bag, as I didn't have anything like that - and this was England after all!

Then we walked down to the seaside and sat for a coffee break before wandering along and taking pictures and such. The West Pier is just the coolest thing ever - I have a great love of falling-apart places, and that's definitely a place that's falling apart! Age, fire, and a badly-piloted speedboat have all taken its toll on it, and it's now a hulking skeleton, just gorgeous. We walked between the West Pier and Brighton Pier, just ambling and taking it all in, and I stopped to buy some postcards and a magnet, which were just gorgeous. Brighton Pier is huge and gaudy, in a great shiny way, such a summer seaside kind of place!

Anyway, we wandered for a while, and then we got a cab home - the cabs are so cool! Really, they're huge inside! We need those here. We had pizza and ice cream on a stick (MS is a doll), and then MS asked if I had my cable for my camera - I'd taken about 120 pictures or so - and I said no. This was an assumption, which I should have checked. Anyway, he had a card reader, so he said I should pop my memory card in and we could transfer the pix onto his computer.

Popped out my 1G card from my camera and slid it into the card reader. A program started on the computer, to read the card, and it tells me there are a bunch of folders on it, but no photos! NOOOOO!

So I pop the card out again and put it in my camera... which tells me it can't read the card! NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

Panic set in, wobbly chin, the whole bit! MS came and did some online research, went through my camera book, and after an hour declared that the pictures were still on my card - but my camera wouldn't be able to use the card. If I had the cable, I'd be able to get the pix off. So off to my suitcase I went... to find that I had, indeed, brought my cable. Damn, if I'd only thought to look first, this wouldn't have happened! So the pix were still there, and we downloaded them with the cable - but this still left me with an unusable 1G card and only an emergency 64M card, which would be good for maybe 100-150 shots, for the whole two weeks! No way! I decided that, once we got to Swansea, I'd need a new card. Damn, it was going to be expensive too. Unwound with a some episodes of Coupling and went to bed, to rest up for our drive to Wales...

Oh, btw, pix from Brighton are up on my Flickr page...