Brighton - Pebbled beach, thieving Gulls and family fun

 Heey people wagwan with y’all.

Like I said earlier, it’s been a blazing end-of-summer period. We’ve had another good summer full of its ups and downs (Stupid Spanish Embassy pricks!!) and in all things, we thank God for life, health and provision.

Before this time, from the end of Spring/beginning of Summer, we had been trying to make plans with my Aunty Ngozi for any sort of family reunion slash party/get together/ any reason to enjoy ourselves, but we weren’t able to put anything together as yet. So in that vein, seeing as Chioma and I missed out on Nadine’s graduation soiree (They threw a mega bash for her in London on her graduation), we put heads together with Aunty Ngo and decided that we’d all do a beach outing somewhere in the UK where all the London fam could be re-united and have at least one annual get together.

Brighton beach was the choice, and everyone (our family circle in London) decided to show up and ball out that day! Awesome.

We had initial concerns regarding the weather for the day, seeing as the rains had been a bit more frequent this period; however, the weather gods were pleased with our choice and gave us lovely weather all through.

Chioma and I decked ourselves up in our beach finery

and booked the morning train on Chiltern Railways via Moor Street Station. It was a beautiful, uneventful journey, and we arrived in Brighton well ahead of the rest of the party, who were driving in from London.

To be honest, there are actually a lot of beautiful cities in the UK and no doubt Brighton is one of them. We didn’t have time to explore too much sha. We headed straight to the beach venue. Seeing as Blackpool beach, which we had gone to earlier (posted here) was such a massive disappointment, our expectations were a bit tempered about Brighton Beach. However, any reservation turned out to be unwarranted. 

Brighton has a beautiful beach front with amazing views and a proper, proper beach vibe going on about it!. There were lots of folks around with tons of stands, pubs, seafront stores, and all the paraphernalia of beachfront settings.

Another curious thing was that this wasn’t a sandy beach as we have always been used to. Brighton Beach was fully pebbled with small, smooth, beautiful stones lining up the whole coast and giving a very different beach vibe

. There were lots of brazen seagulls as well, making a nuisance of themselves and terrorizing vulnerable people who had to abandon their snacks to these aerial bandits. It was comical at some point.

We hung around by ourselves for a bit and eventually went to meet up with the family when they arrived, and my goodness, it was so good to see them all. As usual, Aunty had gone all out with the food. There was so much to eat and nibble on. The drinks were overflowing as well(too much in fact cos a lot of the men were either driving or not drinking)... There was gist flowing as everyone tried to catch up with each other and provide updates on what had been going on in our lives.

The kids were running everywhere and enjoying the whole atmosphere and it was a really good vibe overall.

We didn’t have the luxury of an overnight stay, so when evening set in, Chioma and I said our goodbyes, gave hugs all round, and headed back to the train station. No shenanigans from the train this time, and we got home thoroughly exhausted but very satisfied with a great day!!!

Surrey - Meet the Fam

 Sometime earlier in the year, we got another invite from Chioma’s uncle and aunt who have been here in the UK for a long time now.

Uncle Arthur and Aunty Uche have been…well… let me just say they’ve been a bit reclusive ever since we came over to the UK and even though they’ve reached out once or twice and we indeed went to visit them in 2023 when we came here, it’s been that kind of distant relationship where everyone just kind of keeps to themselves and checks up on each other once every blue moon.

The difference this time around was that they had invited all family members (Spouses and children included) who were in the UK, from Chioma’s maternal side and i think it was intended as a sort of reunion for the family here and to reconnect with their own kids who, suffice to say, have long drifted away from this side of the family. Hmmm..

Everybody accepted the invitation and one fine August weekend, we found ourselves making a trip back to Surrey to visit the family. 

It was a lovely trip as we took a train ride first to Coventry and linked up with Ify and Gbenga who were driving to their house. It was a good, fun road trip.

You know, it’s just so weird to see the effects of what Japa does to families firsthand. We arrived last at the house and met everyone else who had shown up earlier. Now the thing is that Uncle and Aunty’s children have no active bond with their cousins, so it was a bit awkward with everyone just sitting in different spots, scrolling on their phones, and trying to make small talk with each other.

Overall, though, the atmosphere lightened up eventually. Gbenga brought a game of Monopoly and that was used to pass most of the time there with the cousins. They’re lovely people but i guess for Chioma and the rest of the Naija crew, it’s difficult forming any sort of meaningful relationship with people you’ve only known from a distance all your life. I engaged in conversations with them as best as i could and had a lot of gist and banter with the parents.

All in all, it was a lovely time, the food was amazing! Aunty Uche always goes all out to put up an awesome spread. They had also booked us all into a Premier Inn close by so we didn’t have to drive back that same day.

We came back the next morning and had a lovely breakfast before setting back off in every direction whence we came.

The journey back was not as smooth, though. After a lovely trip to London Euston, where we strolled around the capital and even had time to visit a beautiful museum of Human history (I’ve missed being in London, honestly) our train to Birmingham got delayed at one koro location like that and everyone had to get off and wait for the tracks ahead to be cleared. It was a long delay which put everyone off but we eventually got back safely. (The Train company eventually refunded the fare sha, so no wam).

Autumn

 And thats how September just went by without any post on here. Na wa o.

Heey guys… it’s been quite the autumn.

Yeah, it’s that time of the year when people realize that the weather’s getting a bit crispier and the skimpy skimpies have to be retired. The leaves have started taking on their orange hue and it's obvious that winter is warming up (see what i did there?) on the touchline.

This is actually one of my fav times of the year because, it’s not too hot and not too cold. Just right in the middle is how I like it.

Like I said it’s been a busy time for us and I’ll certainly update all doings and going-ons here as appropriate.

There have been trips, events, life updates and the like.

Its just been laziness and this accursed procrastination that’s been keeping me from regularly putting up stuff here.

All good sha. Shebi we have accepted it like that.