Seats, Eats, and Laines

It was another very warm day with temperatures into the top half of the 20s. Hay fever, which clobbered the Gorse Fox yesterday, seemed better today.

The morning was filled with bits and pieces. The one that took the longest was a comment that there seemed to be an error on the spreadsheet that the Gorse Fox had developed to manage Ellie's childcare responsibilities. Sone of the algorithms were, apparently, not making the automatic assignments that were expected. Needless to say this need fixing. Unfortunately, the formulae in question were quite complex "if" statements containing nest ANDs and ORs which had to be picked apart bit by bit. In the end the Gorse Fox concluded that the spreadsheet was right and something else was wrong. Indeed that turned out to be the case. The problem lay in the change over between child minders, and the fact that the new child minder does not take over fully until September - her unavailability hadn''t been recorded - as soon as it was, the spreadsheet did exactly what was expected. The Gorse Fox was vindicated.

Next came a discussion with the travel agent... a new airline reference, and the Gorse Fox went online and booked our seats for next May's trip. He chose the same seats that they travelled back in a few weeks ago. They had proven to be excellent.

We headed out to Brighton. We were meeting with Sue and Trevor and Auntie Jean.  We had an incredibly quick drive across, considering it was a lovely warm sunny summer's day. The expected traffic was nowhere to be seen. We settled down with a cup of tea and had a chinwag, catching up on the family news from both sides... Eleanor's health, Jon's & Caroline's pregnancy, new house, and work arrangements, and Alan's new girlfriend, agency, and gigs.

We had an early table booked at Danny's. We have eaten there before several times and the Chinese buffet is always excellent. As Trevor guided the Gorse Fox through the maze that is the back streets of Brighton and Hove, he had a bit of a wobble... and suddenly realised that he wasn't quite sure where we were going. Sue Googled the address and we homed in on the venue. As usual the food was superb. We started with a shared platter of various Chinese favourites, then a course of crispy duck and crispy lamb, then the ladies chickened out and went to dessert and coffee while Trevor and the Gorse Fox both had a main course - in the case of the Gorse Fox it was Szechuan Chicken and Chow Mein. A super feast all round.

Leaving the restaurant we headed into Brighton and parked up. Jean had her disabled stickers which allowed us to park in a disabled bay. We wandered through the North Laines awards the sea. In the regeneration that has been going on, a new section of Laines has been discovered and they have been refurbished and opened up. It's so new that the various shops are still awaiting tenants, but it really adds to the Brighton experience - and was very impressive. There are some really nice new restaurants there, which have opened and seemed to be doing a roaring trade.

We didn't spend too long exploring, but it was nice to see the new areas that had been hidden for so long. Apparently there are still further Lines that are yet to be opened up.

We headed back to the house for more chat and some coffee. As usual the Gorse Fox and Sue ended up chatting about genealogy and exploring some old maps of Brighton. It was a lovely evening and it was gone half ten before we left. Agin we had a fabulous run through to get home and we were in bed  well before eleven thirty.