Deliverance of Shopping & Eating

The annual distribution diary of events has many deliveries listed but none as eventful as that of the Shopping & Eating Out Guide. Tuesday saw me on ‘lorry watch’ duties from the Balcony Suite of the illustrious premises of VisitBrighton (back of Brighton Town Hall) as the clocks approached 10am. At 10.30 I spotted Maddy’s copper mane glistening in the morning sunshine (next to the red pillar box). I decided to join her… and so did Julian and Gavin. I was very glad to see that they are all most pleasing to the eye and in exceptional physical shape. It was the later quality found eminently useful. Everybody is now dying for me to introduce you to all these people. Maddy and Gavin are from our local business forum, publishers of the guide, and Julian produces it. They had all come to (physically) give me a hand with unloading 75,000 of them from a lorry and bundle them into my store room in the vault that is the town hall basement with the aid of assorted trolley of all shape and sizes. Julian communicated to the lorry driver who was stuck somewhere on the seafront but a few minutes later the full lorry watch committee (now including Tony, the suited master of the business forum) sighted it angling precariously around another delivery lorry.

The lorry driver was physically matching his newly found entourage and went on about health and safety but the distribution officer reassured the gathering that she is also wearing the hat of the official VisitBrighton health and safety officer and first aid appointed person. With such an arty bunch it was not surprising that boxes were arranged rather artfully – as opposed to practically - on top of trolleys but I could not fault the enthusiasm. A convoy of loaded trolleys soon made its way along the corridors of the town hall basement to the pre-allocated hole on my storage facilities. We were only briefly interrupted by the VisitBrighton divisional assistant looking for curtain rails (??????). Tony Big Master did not winch once (well, once perhaps) when the health and safety officer got him to trap his finger in between a swiftly moving trolley and a door frame whilst she was chatting away about the less known history of the ghost ridden town hall basement (but this is anther blog entirely). On the way back out we bumped into Cllr Pat Drakes, no less, by the entrance of the Police Museum. I told her that Tony was doing heavy labour and she agreed that the old Victoria police cells are just the right setting for this.

One hour down, job done! Maddy got dispersed back to her office to sort out the fireworks for the Christmas lights switch on at 1800 on the 15th Nov by the Clock Tower. If you see some exceptional well toned biceps wandering around Brighton say hello to Gavin, Julian, Maddy or me (Tony is wearing a suit). All that remains to do now is to extend my introductions to the new Shopping & Eating Out Guide 2007/8. Packed full of shops and restaurants galore, copies of which can soon be found all over our city, in tourist information centres throughout Sussex and partner hotels. Note to our most treasure partners: the order form for the guide should hit your doormat any day now, give me a shout if not.

Luzia



http://www.brightonbusiness.co.uk/

http://www.visitbrighton.com/home/shopping/default.asp

http://www.visitbrighton.com/home/where_to_eat__drink/default.asp

http://www.visitbrighton.com/bs/thedms.asp?dms=13&param1=Places+to+Visit&GroupId=2&venue=3312331