Scoop and Crumb

Scoop and crumb is the fab new name for a scrumptious ice cream parlour - come cafe - come sarnie shop- at 5-6 East Street in the lanes of Brighton.

Owners Jonathan and Helena Dickson have been trying to get it off the ground for years and believe you me it's worth the wait. Lots of stylish modern art on the walls and an amazing choice of home made ice cream using local ingredients. My favourite - Christmas pud flavour! It also sells some very special sandwiches - Scandinavian open sandwiches - so you can check out the ingredients in situe as it were.

Definitely recommend you pop-in when you are next in town.

They are currently developing their own website but here's a link to their page on visitbrighton.com.

Scoop and Crumb web page on visitbrighton.com

Nick

Baroque Rocks

The usual motley three witches AKA Charlotte, Liliana and Richard were invited to the first birthday party of Baroque Jewellery in the Lanes, a collaboration of several talented designer makers. The design of the shop is amazing with dragon wallpaper inspired by the Royal Pavilion, display cases made specifically for their work and even a contemporary chandelier made of black porcelain fronds .... wow!!

We were taken round by one of the designers who showed us the workshop on site and the gorgeous jewellery some of which was inspired and indeed used natural products such as feathers and slate to cast their pieces. All the designers together offer a diverse yet cohesive mix of styles from traditional to contemporary, and prices range from around £100 to £10k. The evening was sponsored by Tuaca and scrumptious food from Maugherman's Deli also in the Lanes, we particularly loved the baby stuffed peppers with cheese, they were to die for darrrrrling!

The drink flowed and was served by the cute barman who can normally be found at Blanch House or the Hanbury club and he shakes up a mean Tuscan Mule.

So if you are looking for that special gift for a loved one look no further and take yourself down to Baroque Jewellery, an Aladdin's cave of inspiration. To see exactly what we are talking about go to their website http://www.baroquejewellery.com/

VisitBrighton Film night

Last night we were at the Sallis Benney theatre for the Visit Brighton film night. The evening was all about how Brighton has been depicted on film, I don't mean in fictional films such as Brighton Rock and The End of the Affair but in tourism films and some early footage from the pioneers of film making. Some of the footage shown included an eccentric man who would keep the visitors amused by peddling his bike off the end of the West Pier and another one where they were experimenting with special effects which showed a man diving off the pier and then apparently jumping back onto his diving board. The films were shown in chronological order from the early 1900s up until the 1950s.

The films shown included a promotional film of Brighton from the '50s. What struck me was that our key messages have not actually changed as much as I expected. The video included the Royal Pavilion, The Lanes and of course the beach. However what surprised me was the range of restaurants on offer and the fact that they used the word cosmopolitan and we thought we were being terribly modern with our marketing strategies, well I guess what goes around comes around, or as the fabulous Dame Shirley would say it's all just a little bit of history repeating! Although I think that is what is so great about Brighton in that while there are always new things happening such as the i-360 there are certain things that will always be here such as the sea and the cosmopolitan atmosphere

The rest of the evening was given over to our film competition. For those of you who don't know, we worked with Final Cut and held a competition for people to film a 60 second promotional short about Brighton. So last night we gave out the three judges awards, the peoples choice award and the runner up prizes, all of which can be seen on our YouTube page: www.youtube.com/VisitBrightondotcom
The People's Choice and third with our judges was Daniel Parsons with Hold Tight: Brighton, second was Drew Cameron with B Right on (you know it makes sense) and congratulations to Tony Moon who won first prize with Brighton's Worst Kept Secret:


If I'm honest I origianlly only went to support our work bit of it but it was actually really interesting seeing all the old footage of Brighton & Hove particularly the aeroplanes flying very low over the beach, I doubt they'd get away with that today! To find out more see the Screen Archive South East website

Charlotte

The Toy Museum

I was wondering where to take a 9 year old child now that the weather has turned, and then I happened upon the Toy Museum which is on the way to Brighton Station or if you are looking at the station then the museum is underneath.

As you enter the first thing you see is this great big helicopter that actually was someone's remote control toy. Other exhibits include Corgi cars and trains and lots of other old-fashioned toys where you are bound to say "Oh yes I remember those" There are also a variety of machines where you can actually see puppets come to life for only 10p, there is also a big model railway set up that you can press to activate as you walk round.

As well as all of these things to see there is a meccano and lego set where children can sit and play and build their own things which should keep them amused for a little bit longer. And if you still have any money left they do have a little shop that sells toys and games. It's certainly a place worth a visit and not just for children.

And afterwards why not stroll down into the North Laine for a coffee avoiding the big chains and go to one of the independent cafes for a home made cake.

So has anyone else been to the Toy Museum? Let me know what you thought

Liliana

Go to bed

You may have noticed that the blog posts have slowed down a bit recently, this is because poor Sarah has been manically working on re-branding the website, apparently it’s not quite perfect yet but I think it looks great, so well done Sarah.

As for the rest of the contributors, well a couple of us have been off work due to illness. This is rather ironic as apparently we live in the healthiest city and it was thanks to Dr Richard Russell proclaiming the benefits of the fresh sea air that originally made Brighton a popular place to visit. However even us healthy Brightonians are powerless when it comes to the world’s mightiest foe; the common cold. Personally I find this to be the most annoying sickness as there is always the dilemma about whether to go in to work or not, if you have the ‘flu and are semi-comatose then obviously you cannot work equally with a stomach bug you need to stay near the loo. But sneezing and coughing don’t really stop you from doing your work do they?

So initially I did come in to work but who benefits from you making the effort? You are not able to work to full capacity and you are risking passing the germ on to everyone else. So in the end I took a day off and while I don’t like to argue with the lovely Dr Russell I have to say that my miracle cure was not a swim in the sea but sleep as I slept on and off for about 14 hours and after that I felt much better, I still had some cold symptoms but overall I was much better, so much so I thought it was worth sharing with all of you!

So don’t be a hero, go to bed. Unless anyone else has any miracle cures they would like to share?

Charlotte

Guess who invented the scissors!

It's strange how life throws you little lifelines sometimes. I just can't seem to fit everything in this week and was quite frankly starting to panic. Miraculously, my daily dosage of 'Interesting Facts of the Day' came to the fore when it pointed out that Einstein calculated in his youth that putting his socks on in the morning and taking them off at night would occupy him some hundreds of hours during the course of his life, and thereafter went sockless. So, I've done the same this week and although my tootsies almost dropped off from exposure yesterday, I've been ever so productive with the extra time.

In fact, sockless as I was, I had so much time on my hands that I frivolously clicked on 'Random Fact of the Day' and found out it would have been significantly cheaper to build an identical replica of Titanic than to make the 1997 film of the same name. The original ship was built in 1912 for £1.5m, the equivalent of £66m in 1997. James Cameron's film cost about £200m.

And then this got me thinking about the film industry that used to thrive just down the road in Hove and nearby Shoreham By Sea. There were some quite pioneering filmic things done there at the turn of the century and in my experience not that many people know about it. Its fascinating stuff and if you're into film or local history its worth checking out the Hove Museum, where there is a permanant exhibition on display all about it.

Let us know if you know any interesting Brighton filmic facts.

And if you must know, apparently Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors...

Sarah

Murmuration

Murmuration. What a lovely word. Until this morning not one I'd ever got my lips around but now its firmly ensconced in the hundreds - or more optimistically - thousands of words that rattle around my brain.

So what is it? Well according to our handy intranet at Brighton and Hove City council its when tens of thousands of Starlings come together to form an aerial ballet. And for us Brightonians we're very lucky that the Brighton branch of Starlings UK choose to do it over the 'ravaged but proud' remains of the West Pier.

This weekend (16th - 18th November) you can see it in the company of some friendly RSPB volunteers. Go to www.rspb.org.uk/brilliant/sites/brighton for more.

And if you already have enough friends you can pretty much see it anytime of the year. See our website http://www.visitbrighton.com/ to start planning your trip. Best time to catch them is about an hour before sunset. And being Brighton there's a number of options for how to see it. Maybe over a glass of red and some Ditchling lamb at Due South (http://www.duesouth.co.uk/), while watching the kids running around the Pavilion inspired playground, or perhaps over a fortifying pint of Guinness at the Fortune of War. Enjoy.

Nick, VisitBrighton