Usually on a Sunday I wake up about noon, having driven back in the small hours from a wedding disco somewhere on the other side of the M25. For all I knew, every Sunday morning Brighton & Hove could have been hosting weekly running street battles between giant lizards and man-eating spiders. Or locals might have been scampering around doing their mid-morning shopping in regular fear (or hope) of being scooped up off the pavement by a fifty-foot blonde dressed only in a skimpy push-up bikini fashioned from animal hides. Our efficient road-sanitation operatives would have had the streets clear of arachnid corpses or the broken bodies of discarded macrophiles long before I was staring at my stubble in the bathroom mirror.

Yesterday I was certainly busy, but not with a photo job, and today I was meeting up with the Anonymous Economist who was passing through town on his/her way to do whatever it is that overpaid US corporate policy wonks do when they are zipping around the planet in business class. This meant my getting up at six in the morning and walking to the station. So I made the most of it, picked up one of my cameras and a wide-angle lens, and squinted through my sleep and the viewfinder at some of the sights on the way. The light was dreamy, and I bumped into a fellow film freak down on the beach who was busy setting up a large format camera just to shoot the empty sea. An architectural photographer, he deliberately had his back to the ruins of the pier, the second corniest subject for anyone with a camera in the city after the Royal Pavilion. We gossiped like men comparing sheds and exchanged contact details for future referrals. Weddings terrify him; buildings mystify me.

It was fun to discover just how glamorous this town manages to look early on a bright Autumn Sunday when most of its residents are recovering from some kind of fireworks party, but I’m a bit knackered right now to reply coherently to your kind and helpful comments about blog advertising. Thank you all though.