A couple of recent outings...

August has been a pretty funny month so far. I taught my last classes to ESL students, roughly 15 years on from my first ones. I turned 40, with the joy of a surprise party thrown in to the mix. I started a new job today, at the same company that I worked for before but in a different part of it (and now as IT Trainer rather than IT Teacher). Things are going to rapidly run away with themselves before I have a chance to catch up with them.

With that in mind, I'm hoping to be able to get a few short bursts of blog post in over the remainder of month. Next month it's going to get even busier again - I'll be starting an MA at Sussex University too (part time) - so I'll hopefully be able to fit a few of the things I've been meaning to blog about in that time.

Had a visit from my mother too. What do you do when your Mum comes to town, and that town is Brighton? Why take her along to Pride, of course! We did the same thing when my wife's Mum was over a couple of years ago, and that seemed to be a hit.

Once all that was over and there was a day of sunshine to contend with too, we took a short walk over the South Downs. Beautiful weather and great for clearing the head.

Proud to be on parade...

My wife and I took her mother along to Pride this weekend, Brighton's annual parade of gay abandon and probably one of Britain's biggest LGBT events. The slideshow above showcases some of the delightful outfits and colourful characters taking part in the the parade.

According to Brighton Pride's official website, the event goes back to 1992 - the year that I first returned to the city. The funny thing about coming back here to live again is that all these moments and crossovers from my past (in this case, just the date of 1992!) keep reappearing.

The event has grown to quite some scale these days and is probably much more of a family-oriented thing than it started out as. It was also the first one I'd been to, and in keeping with this year's spirit of checking out plenty of the things going on in the city to make up for lost time.

There was stacks of joy and exuberance on display, along with some outrageous costumes and curious characters that went past on the parade. We tagged on to the end of it as it passed us and trooped towards the park. However, it started to rain once we arrived and there wasn't a great deal else to keep a Japanese mother-in-law hanging around for, so we headed back home again.

All-in-all though, quite a day...