All White on a Saturday night ending with a Go Bang

After a few weeks break, our super-team of quizzers won the 1st year anniversary of Horace McSquirter's Quiz me Hardy at the Pond pub. It was very exciting with the place decorated with knob shaped balloons though I'd say we were robbed of the best team name prize (c'mon Horace, keep up with the news) with a nod to Amy Winehouse's year free cold-turkey "They tried to make me go to quiz night but Horace said no, no, no". The music round was a tie-breaker between us and another team but we lost that too. The last laugh was with us as we scraped through to win the grand prize with a cheeky half point.

Fredag (Friday in Swedish)
We celebrated Sukey's first day at work, which started for her on a Friday. Our chosen meet up point was the Northern Lights, the Scandinavian bar on Little East Street. It was a gloomy, wet evening but the atmosphere inside was cosy and cool. Shame their gin and grapefruit speciality was sold out but I did get a chance to sample their long list of flavoured vodkas. Vanilla vodka and coke was delicious whilst observing the half-hat barman and an advert for the world record attempt to do the Timewarp dance on the beach next week. A noisy Globe pub and an after-hours drink at Paul/Sarah's house to round off the night.

Japanese Beer Festival
Thanks to Kerry picking up the flyer the previous week, we dropped into the Moshi Moshi organised 'festival' after our Saturday shopping. I say 'festival' but I would say a couple of small marquees and 3 different beers doesn't qualify for this grand status. For a start where the Kirin! Their special Autumn brew was sampled but was a mistake and wished I'd just bought an Asahi. To make up for the experience, their yakitori chicken was really good and Kerry commended the Shochu cocktail even though the barmen had no idea what they were serving. The karoke didn't really sell the nearby Lucky Voice bar.

White Night
Ahh, bless you Brighton for combining art and a good night out. Greedy for night time attention and not content with Halloween just around the corner, this city-wide celebration has been going on for awhile but we'd somehow missed it last year. We stuck around after the beer festival waiting for the Penny Arcade which consisted of three creepy, interactive, fortune-telling machines and some sound effects from a stripped out piano hooked up to a sound machine. I managed to get first in queue and had my fortune sung to me by a pair of clowns receiving a pencil drawing and the advice to eat mnore ruffage. Kerry's choice was a marionette corpse flying out of a toy coffin delivering a rolled-up scroll of prediction. Just outside the marquee venue was one of the five locations for the Mobile Movie Treasure Trail, a mobilephone bluetooth access point to get short films. Disappointingly, this didn't work and the later ones we tried had no success either.

After some grub at home we returned to the crowded streets heading for the Pavillion walking through the Northern Gate of the gardens to see The Penny Drops light installation. The queue for the Fortune and Destiny event was just too long so walked round to the Old Music Library for Prescription Art's exhibition. We didn't hang around for the music or bands but loved the Insa grafitti art and the downstairs lighting of the band area (See my Flickr photos).

We crossed the road to see the Bang Future Machine projection at the Unitarian church but the visuals at the time we a little boring and the rowdy crowds put us off from staying. Onto Jubilee Square and the Sam Hewitt and Shardcore art experience which consisted of two golden lucky cats which would answer any question you had. Can't be arsed to explain further so just see my Flickr photos to work it out.

Final art visit was at Fabrica for the Chameleon exhibition. The room was full of flat creens showing various faces in still motion then would spark to life with some sort of facial expression of emotion. Below the screens were materials to draw them which Kerry took advantage of (see her results on Flickr).

All my White Night Festival photos on Flickr

Go-Bang at the Globe
Disco DJs Affy and Ali were providing some soulful tunage downstairs in the Globe as their Go-Bang Brighton guise. Paul and Sarah were already dancing within the crowd. Later, the 'council' (James, Julian, ex-member Sukey and others) turned up in their wedding outfits. Nice to trade some old house music stories with Sean though sadly he didn't mention how his ferret mansion dream was progressing. More random conversations at Paul/Sarah's to end the 60 minute-saving night. I've uploaded the best snaps of Go-Bang on Flickr.