Although I've lived here in Brghton almost five months now, remarkably little of the town is yet familiar to me.  I've kept to the bits I do know, fight shy of buses going anywhere else but places I've visted - like the Universities or Brighton Station.

This makes me feel - claustrophobic.  I'm a great urban walker.  In preparing thispost in my head I realised it's 50 (fifty) years since I began exploring London on foot - discovering, for example, what lay above ground between two tube stations.

Part of the problem in Brighton is that I had lost my map.  I bought a new one day.  Before that I gave myself time to wal to my Pilates class in Hove - not, as usual, along the coast, but in land a bit.

I discovered smart, beautiful houses, lots of antique shops yet to open at 10.00.  An empty shop witha sign scrawled: "No Off Licence here.  NOT EVER", a plaque on the YMCA celebrating the fact that Winston Churchill went to prep school there in the 1880s, and just beyond, a Bhuddist Meditation Centre:  "Everyone welcome....  at present closed to the public".

This post has no punchline.