brighton : by the seaside.

When I was young my family would take day trips to the coast. My mum and dad would pack my brother and I into the car and we'd head down the Pacific Highway at midmorning. As we came off the highway and into slow suburban streets, I'd try to be the first to spot the cluttered roof of my grandparents' apartment building in the distance. Then I'd try to be the first to see the ocean. It gave me this feeling of adventure. I was a pirate afoot the crow's nest, scanning the blue distance for land. 

I've been a beach person since forever. I love the grit of salt and sand everywhere and the oily stink of sun cream and the pulsing heat on my skin. I love the endless pattern of cooking in the sun and cooling in the waves. I love just sitting on the sand.

A little while ago, I went to the English seaside. I spent the last minutes of the train trip searching between small hills for the ocean, but didn't find it. I came out of Brighton central station with my pack on my back and the sun on my cheeks. The sea was there on the horizon. I got that same feeling, the first sight that I'd been looking for from the train and that I looked for from my parents' silver station wagon. I was ready for the beach. I had nowhere to be, no accommodation booked, no work for the weekend, and basically nothing that required my immediate attention. The best way to be, especially near the ocean. I marched on down the hill in a straight line to the water. The beach itself threw me for a second – the pebbles-instead-of-sand lark is a bit of a shock at first for a gal from the island continent – but I crunched my way to the tide line and plonked down. And for a few hours I didn't move. I basked in the sun. Then it clouded over. So I put on another cardigan and basked in denial instead.

Initially, the Brighton seafront has that old seaside town vibe. Relaxed, languishing. The pier stands white and wooden during the day like a testament to a decade long past. But the town is also a cultural hub, filled with quirky characters and scattered with places to eat, drink, and be merry. The loose, bohemian atmosphere makes the idea of spending all day and night wandering between pubs and vintage record stores seem perfectly acceptable. 

I arrive on my own but don't stay alone for long. Some fellow expats from the big smoke collect me from my place on the pebbles and we sit a while in the sun outside the charming Fortune of War, a rough wooden pub with  quaint seafacing windows, tattered nautical paraphernalia, and weathered bench tables that sprawl out towards the shore. We have chips for lunch (how could I not?) then take a long walk through the eclectic indie stores and tea shops around North Laine to the flowering spring gardens of the Royal Pavilion, and just generally soak up the vibe of relaxation that seems to saturate the mild afternoon.

The first hostel I find has cheap beds and wonky stairs, but I'll forgive it because of a prime location and the cheerful reception staff. In my room there's one other girl. She's lived with a friend of mine in London. Knowing that makes the city feel small like it hasn't before. I take her to meet my friends at the pier, and we find dinner then we find drinks and a live pianist then we find The Haunt and then we find ourselves on the shore at dawn sharing greasy food with a beach club promoter. And that's a Brighton night. 

The next day, a Saturday, I planned on visiting the pier, but after the night's antics I manage little more than a kind of hungry amble around town: breakfast at a café near North Laine, then midmorning cake, then masses of crepes. The names and exact locations of the places I go unfortunately become totally absorbed in my post-party fuzziness. The weather isn't as pleasant as the day before and that makes the grey afternoon ocean view from the cosy second floor of the Fortune even more delicious. 

When I decided to go to Brighton I guess I thought I was going to the beach. It didn't turn out like that. I went to the seaside, certainly. But I didn't go to the beach. Brighton is picturesque and unique, and oh so charming. It's also bordered by the sea. There are seagulls everywhere. Big, vicious, grey monster seagulls. But it's not the beach. And that's okay, because there's plenty else to do besides just sitting on the sand. Or the pebbles, as it were.

for sale: small car, used condition

There's a story that was apparently written by Hemingway, on a napkin. It's got six words.

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

I think this is quite wonderful. I don't much mind whether Hemingway wrote it or not. People always say a picture paints a thousand words. I'm going to say that for me a few words, and the object they describe, reveal a thousand pictures. That's cute isn't it.

My parents sold my car. A little kia rio, watermelon red, with a ding on the back bumper and a grey plastic dash, my car. Well, technically it's their car. But since I was eighteen I've taken care of him and paid the expenses. I think of it like a temporary adoption. I called him Timothy.

When I left Australia, something like nine months ago, I knew this sale might be on the cards. It didn't bother me in the slightest. It's just a car. It's just a thing, stuff, metal and plastic and malfunctioning gears. But then he was officially sold. Too late I realised I didn't want him to go. Cue Joni Mitchell. Suddenly, all the pictures came beating down on me like hot rain in summer and I didn't want my first car ever to be gone.

I am unlikely to see Timothy again. I hope I don't. Watching him cruise wide Brissy streets without his green P plates would be self-punishment. What I will see -- what I've been seeing in reels this week as I've thought about it -- are the stories that the object tells. Memories of the grains of sand in the worn carpet and the loose leaves in the boot. The tattered jumper leads, so frequently used. So frequently.

This is not an eulogy. Timothy lives on. This is self-indulgent nostalgia.
Ode to Timothy, my first car.

And oh, firsts are given great meaning. The first anything always has a bit of magic, the kind where suddenly you come to understand more than you did before. You know what I'm talking about. If it's the first-and-only, the first-of-many, or the just-kidding-it's-not-actually-my-first kind of first, it's still allowed to have the golden glow. It's supposed to stand out in your memory, that first time.

When I think about that beaten machine what occurs to me is a quality of sunlight that I've only found in the Australian summer. It's cloudy like fresh apple juice. The feeling of being able to move about in that smooth light until I decide to stop. To go fast. I think of driving four hours up the Bruce highway every weekend to see a boy, stopping at the Matilda outside Gympie for petrol and juice. The five-lane dash to the Gold Coast. Straddie camping by the water. Picnics in the boot. Back and forth across the rolling green country to Byron Bay. Lying backwards in the boot with my legs up over the seat and seeing the stars through the back windscreen. Loud, bad music. Learning Brisbane city slowly, lost in the early hours of the morning.

Alright maybe I'm over-sentimentalising it because I'm a tiny bit homesick. And sick for the sun. I've omitted a lot of stuck-in-traffic and stalling-for-no-reason and the steering wheel shaking when I hit one hundred ks from that dappled montage. But hell, maybe it deserves the sentimentality. The object has gone. Hemingway's baby shoes sold, which is a bit morbid really. But I don't need the car. I don't need the car. I don't need the car stop saying I do.

But actually, actually, I don't need the car. You've waded through the nostalgia, and here comes the revelation. If I've learnt anything in the last year it's that actually stuff accumulates at an absurd rate so there's no need to worry when you don't have any. And there's only so much stuff you can plausibly have anyway. Sure I will need another car, but I don't need to keep my old one in the back yard and watch it decay in an attempt to preserve the memories. Ah.

Actually, people who know about this memories thing, you know, like brain science people, say that although the capacity of our memories is theoretically limited, it's impossible to actually use up all the space. You simply can't accumulate enough memories in your lifetime to fill your hard drive. Well. Ain't that somethin'?

So even without my car, especially without my car, I'm disgustingly nostalgic for the good times it represents. My first car and the golden glow. In light of that, let me just sit and consider some more of these endless sappy memories of sunny-faced Australians and drive-ins and long, long, straight country highways.