Brighton’s Palace Pier caught fire tonight. It was quite spectacular but luckily nobody was injured.
I was in the Sussex Arts Club getting my laptop and the projector to talk to each other in preparation for my little presentation when someone informed me that I might want to nip outside because the pier was on fire.
I watched as glowing bits of the pier fell spark-like into the channel. I tried taking some pictures but my camera isn’t up to night time photography. A friend of mine from another Brighton new media company did have a good camera though, so I’m going to get some pictures from him that I’ll post up here tomorrow.
I felt really bad about the fire until somebody told me that it was basically the Palace Pier people who were responsible for the West Pier not getting renovated sooner. Apparently, they didn’t like the idea of having any competition so they took the West Pier Trust to court.
In which case, this fire has the ring of poetic justice to it, following the partial collapse of the West Pier.
So, basically, tonight I was upstaged by a blaze.
Once it was clear that the fire was under control, people wandered back into the Sussex Arts Club and listened to me waffle on about my websites and how I made them.
Strangely enough, some people actually seemed to get some pleasure out of hearing me speak. I think I should write some of that stuff down when I have the chance and publish it here.