Mix together an Abingdon reunion, a plethora of beautiful Brighton ladies, my birthday (coincidentally) and the Lewes beer festival, and the result could only be a sucess.

Of course, the options of travelling the 70-odd miles to Brighton from Canterbury are many, and to begin with I thought I'd be green (and lazy) and go for the train. Except this involves either going via London in a 3 hour and 80 mile detour, or changing 3 times and still taking 2h 45mins. And costing 25 quid. The alterative is National Express bus - which also detours via the joys of Victoria, in a stunning 5+hour trip. Suprisingly I ended up in the car, expecting to take an hour and a half, and then sitting on the M25 for an additional hour because the outside lane had randomly (for no apparent reason) been closed, causing a 8 mile tailback. But at least I got to spot a Gingsters van on the M2.....

Three of us kicked off the Saturday afternoon with food in a small village local, where the landlady's comments on "bloody foreigners stealing our jobs" spurned a dozen conspiracy theories as to whether she was ringleading the local BNP faction, and how her and her attractive daughter/waitress might be planning to instigate white supremacy in rural Sussex.

So we swiftly moved on to Lewes, where we caught up with two more drinkers - and headed into the fest. About half the beers were left, and were of good quality. Apparently they'd got some extra barrels in the day before to cope with the demand. Tasting notes were pretty good, and there was loads of seating in the town hall (although we had to wait for ages for the lightweights to start leaving before we could get a table)

Here's the beers tasted:

Naturally the day didn't stop there, and we headed into Brighton to meet up with our sixth member. Cue a pub crawl of Brighton suburbia which included (in no particular order, as I can't remember):

	Popping back to Rich's gaff (which is right on the beach :-) ) and checking out passing talent...
...a pub with what looked like chamberpots adorning the ceiling but which had a very fit barmaid...
	...chilling on the beach in the sun with a bottle of Bud; followed by a trip into Hove for the quickest Chinese ever...
...going to a pub with the tallest blonde lady bouncer in the world; then chilling on the beach in the late evening with a 6-pack of beer around a fire...
...going back to Rich's pad, then said pad suddenly becoming full of people in an impromptu party-til-3am moment; and beautiful women magically appearing from every doorway ...		...and finally running out of tonic at around 1am, so having to spend the rest of the night on neat Bombay Sapphire...
		Perfect.