WHITE SILVER CITY. BRIGHTON

The weather was changing with amazing speed, exposing rain or sun randomly. I saw the city from the train's window - the emery of low jagged roofs. I left the train station and was going down the main street, already having guessed where it would lead me... Читать далее | More The noisy road fell silent and empty abruptly and struck into the coastline highway. From the left and right whizzed cars, having reached incredible speed on this track, which seems to stretch infinitely along the coast. Gusty wind flapped me in the face, and i heard the noise of the Ocean. Many russian people have been on the sea. Someone - on the Black sea, with parents, as a child, some - on the northern White Sea or the Baltic as their Navy service, on Mediterranean holidays in Turkey or Spain when the borders opened. But not many have seen the open ocean, I am sure. The mighty waves of the ocean are incomparable to the short waves of inner seas. Already crushed under its own weight, the wave fades for 500-350 feet on the shore. The water mass slides on the brown gullies of Brighton beach and retreats back, leaving the hissing tongues of foam. A man and his loyal labrador run to the sea, then pace away from the oncoming wave. White cliffs vanish in the distant haze. ***************************************** My story, incoherent as ever, dropped its anchor during the lunch-break in a Brighton pub (yes, as a loyal tourist I ordered Fish&Chips). It set asail again in the dry wind of Lawrence of Arabia's military prose. I my train back to London passed M40. Here remembered that I forgot to tell you of the main Brighton's tourist spot. King George's IV palace About the king King George IV was a tall stocky man with soft features of explicitly slavic type - as he is depicted on the ceremonial portrait written 150 years ago. Not a fool, he loved two things in life - the beautiful things themselves and beautiful women. And, as the spanish say in their wishes, he had 'both time and money to enjoy that'. To cut short, the king had the taste. But, apparently, he wasn't a king until he got 58. When King George got 22, his father was acclaimed to be insane. But our hero, the ancestor and prince, couldn't inherit the King's title with the monarch alive, though mad. In 1811 George the IVth (he was 49 at that time) became a Regent, and the time of his reign is called Regency. Actually it is not precise, because George the IVth finally became a king in and ruled for 10 years afterwards. The king was married twice (the second time secretly, of course), and the number of his fiancées the guide refers to ‘a chain of mistresses’. I honestly want to put a smiley here. There were 17 of lovers George had. Hard to say who and how kept account on that, but private life of the royal family has always been of an utter public interest in England. To attract and astonish these women, King George built a fascinating palace. Some day ago only a forgotten farmhouse stood on the sea shore, and the young 22-year king came here with his girlfriend. He found the farmhouse lovely, and the trip from London to the sea he would describe as the happiest time of his life ever. Obviously the king was not an excessively sensitive nature, as he started ruthlessly rebuilding the old house. With the help of architect John Nash he turned it into an Indian palace. John Nash was a kind of Norman Foster of that time. He built loads of other stuff in England (in Oxford, for example), but this palace he designed by sketches, which were brought by the military, travelers and merchants. It would perfectly fit the jungle, but in the architectural environment of that time it was looking as weird as the Federation Tower skyscraper in today’s Moscow. The building caused outrage among the contemporaries, but the Englishmen were discontented mostly not with the exotic looks, but with the amount of money chucked into the exterior. The king was so disappointed, - perhaps one of the many guests dared to express his opinion (that is a guess), that abandoned his by-the-sea residence and came here only twice more in his whole life. Now the palace is used as a perfect background for wedding photography. Despite the fact that the architect John Nash has never been to India, his masterpieces are a setting where legalized Indians make snaps and send them to their historical motherhood. To those who are less interested in these purposes I highly recommend going inside the palace - as I didn’t tell you anything about its wild interiors. ************************************************* The cars run round in circles. The labrador and his master disappeared. Foam boils on the brown gullies. Armada of waves crushes in high fountain over the piers. White cliffs vanish in the distant haze. Dmitry Artyukhov На русском