Short story

Real Brighton

by Chris Ellis

With no job I would wake each morning and find a purpose, today was to find THE MAN IN BLACK. That one person in Brighton whose clothes are their way of life. It was one of those rain washed days, the streets dreary. As if they'd been sent to a launderette that turns all your whites grey.

Out onto the streets, I moved into the throng of colour; the spectacle of costume that makes Brighton the town it is. Amongst the twin sets and pearls, the business suits, there is a plethora of style, some of which worked. Into this morass I strode, down past the law courts, Here a crowd of black bedecked figures. These I instantly dismissed, barristers are paid to look like that.

Onwards, driven by the need to find my grail, there are punks, but their black looks a  little grubby. The day had reached that point where the sun had risen above the yardarm, so off to the pub. Maybe in the surrounds of beer and bonhomie I would find success.

Amidst the nicotine stains, over a pint of cheap beer my eyes cast around the smoke shrouded room. Realization struck, he would not be seen dead in a place like this.

Out again onto the streets, down towards the seafront, not to the picture postcard haunts of the tourists, but onto those areas that cater for the bright young things. Or mostly for the not so bright, and the not so young, but who still try.. There I saw those faded thesps, still living on tales of past glories. Dropping names much as a drunk droops his peanuts of a lunch time.

Yet amid this place of bright aspirations populated by the faded, there stood my quarry. Dressed all in black, save for only the knot of his tie, and the shoes, the former black with a white knot, the latter that style Gene Kelly would have been proud of. There he stood confident, calm. Knowing that his look, that must have taken hours to achieve looked so full of charm and style. My quest over for this day, my step buoyed with joy, I went in search of another cheap pint. Until tomorrow then, when a new task awaits.