Many a London/Brighton commuter will tell you how lovely the view is from the Ouse Valley Viaduct, and how they will look up from their newspapers, text messages, iPads and coffees to take in a glimpse of an exquisite English landscape. Few consider the bridge below.

It dominates the valley and towers over farmland and trees with delightful Victorian arrogance. It could never be built today. Look at the furore over HS2. But with 170 years of hindsight, it now feels like part of the countryside it defaces. The designers John Urpeth Rastrick and David Mocatta were clever fellows.

The viaduct is 1475 metres long and 29 metres high. 11 million bricks make 37 arches which still carry more than 100 trains a day over a structure completed in 1841. Significant restoration was undertaken in 1996, and doubtless maintenance occurs all the time, but it is remarkable that those engineers, architects and builders way back then built a structure of such resilience.

And yet their forward thinking vision is hardly unusual. It's such a useful reminder of what we owe those 19th century visionaries. Brunel, Bazelgette, Paxton, and Nash, to name too few, are all men we all much to. When you take a leak, a train or a walk in a public park, we salute those great people. Britain still rests on the tremendous foundations that 19th century industry and entrepreneurship made possible. People died too to make it happen, of course.

Whilst the Coalition cut every budget, and financiers refuse to fund any project that won't see a return within the year, we should think ahead. Are we building anything in 2011 that people in 2181 will appreciate and rely on? Not in my backyard.

(I'm sorry my photos aren't better. Go there and take better ones.)

Cremation strangely felt less gruesome. I felt discomfort at the idea of my own decaying body, not least because I have imagined the putrifying bodies of my own dead, buried friends, and have found that horrific. I have since learnt a bit more about cremation and can't say I care for that much any more.

To me, graveyards have beauty and sometimes beguiling, architechtural chaos, but they are often little more than derelict. I dislike the ego and disorder, frankly, of crooked headstones and crumbling tombs unless they are seriously old. Most municipal cemeteries are ugly, even if the individual memorials have charm and dignity. Few modern memorials are pleasing.

And so I visited Clayton Woods at the weekend, mostly out of curiosity. It has a serene setting and is delightfully unmawkish. In time, it will simply become woodland. They only allow wooden memorials.

Dust to dust. Put me in a cardboard box when I die and plant a tree, if you fancy. That would be nice. Natural burial is the way to go, quite literally. All of a sudden it made sense that the worms should eat me in a due course and that idea feels like a good one.

Clayton Wood is a wonderful model. Informal but organised on a piece of land that is picturesque but not really of much use for anything else. The barn like shelter where you can hold a ceremony is non-religious. You can have any send-off you want.

But it's the simplicity that delights me. A beautiful setting. A hole. A body. A biodegradable coffin. A tree. The passage of time and the work of nature. As good as death gets, surely?

The service travels between Eridge and Tunbridge Wells West and both are on the rail network. It takes around an hour to get there from London. And the the journey time is a bit more from Brighton. A jaunt on the Spa valley line isn't a long trip, and the scenery isn't the the most picturesque but it has genuine charm.

And then there’s the other benefit of not taking the car. How jolly it was to sup a pint of Hepworth’s Pullman from the bar car as you pootle through the countryside! And for a bit more of the same, we retired to the Huntsman pub for lunch and that certainly didn’t disappoint. Rah.

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(A little guest post I did for someone else as a favour. Shameless recycling)

The prize for the worst Royal Wedding ever could easily go to the man who would become George IV. He was Prince of Wales at the time and later Regent. George married his first cousin, Caroline of Brunswick, in 1795. It was not a love match. George expected his massive debts to be cleared by Parliament in return for a legitimate marriage and heir. The whole thing was doomed from the start.

George was a flirt and a philanderer. He’d previously ‘married’ an older widow called Maria Fitzherbert in a bizarre ceremony without his father’s permission. Mrs Fitzherbert was a Catholic, so the marriage could never have been legally recognised.

George and Caroline’s first meeting set the inauspicious tone for a union that ended with separation within months. Unlike Prince William admiring Kate Middleton’s beauty on the catwalk at St Andrew’s University, George was appalled by his future bride when he first saw her in the flesh.

Introduced at St James’s Palace on April 5th 1795, he managed to embrace her briefly and then, saying not a word, retreated to his private apartments. He asked a courtier in despair: “I am not well; pray get me a glass of brandy.” Caroline was equally unimpressed by her fiancé. She thought him very fat and not at all like his portrait.

The Prince’s love of drink was also evident three days later at the Royal Wedding. He told his brother William (the Duke of Clarence and later William IV), that Mrs Fitzherbert “is the only woman I shall ever love” as he went to the ceremony. Witnesses say he was clearly drunk at the wedding and, quite literally, supported by the Dukes of Bedford and Roxburghe as he took his vows. At one point, George rose confused during prayers to leave.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Reverend John Moore, presided and he made his own concerns about the marriage implicitly clear as he conducted proceedings. He paused purposefully and laid down his book and looked, directly at George III and his eldest son, when he asked whether there was any just cause or impediment why the marriage shouldn’t proceed. His Grace was concerned about the canonical implications of the Prince’s previous ‘sham marriage’ which had been conducted by an Anglican priest.

Observers commented that the Prince and his new bride barely spoke as they walked up the aisle as man and wife. Caroline apparently asked her new husband more than once as they left the Chapel Royal: “What is the matter, my Prince? You have such a sad face on.”

The wedding night was a further disappointment. She said that he “passed the greatest part of his bridal night under the grate, where he fell, and where I left him.” Yes. George collapsed drunk in the fireplace on the day he was married. It’s something close to a miracle that Caroline gave birth to Princess Charlotte in January the following year, little more than 9 months later. Even so, the marriage was a total disaster and when George ascended to the throne in 1820, Queen Caroline was barred from their Coronation.
photo credit: Leonski

I’m an eight quid at the local barber kinda guy. You sit down and flick through GQ for a few minutes, take the first chair that comes up and make a few half-arsed suggestions about what you would like and emerge fifteen minutes later, inevitably, with a short back and sides. Needless to say I was apprehensive about going to what I believe they call a ‘salon’. But what fun! I see the attraction now.

Shine’s Brighton ‘salon’ in Gloucester Road is lovely: homely, roomy and, well, shiny and stylish. Most surprising were the comfy chairs and big kitchen table with piles of mags and women having a cuppa as bits of foil did whatever mysterious work bits of foil do to hair. It was just like they were just at home. How relaxing.

Charles, an Isle of Wight native, was my stylist and spent (get this) fully five minutes talking about what I’d like doing. He seemed even more excited about the whole thing than me. Once we’d decided, Miriam the polymath receptionist turned masseuse gave me a superb and very relaxing head and shoulder massage before I had my hair washed and shampooed. And then to the chair, a fairtrade coffee and the main event.

Who knew that a haircut could be a pleasant experience? I had a very enjoyable conversation with charming Charles and he never once mentioned holidays or football as he deftly clipped and trimmed my barnet. And what was particularly nice was the privacy. It’s once thing having an indulgent time but quite another to do it with people peering in through the window as if you’re a goldfish. Shine’s Salon is set back from the pavement, so I relaxed knowing noone was peering in and extracting the michael.

From a business perspective, Shine is cocking a snoop at the recession. Established in 2007 by Jonathan Harries, it was an independent enterprise formed to take his two decades experience as a hairdresser in a new direction. In particular, he wanted to reflect his environmental concerns and also provide a stylish and comfortable salon experience. And it must be going well: this year the salon moved to premises and expanded the services it provides. The bigger salon means that Shine now offer spa treatments too.

And best of all, my newly coiffed hair passed the test. Normally, an eight quid cut goes unnoticed. But my gleaming new shiny Shine do prompted a girl down the boozer that I’ve fancied for ages to comment that it looked “really nice”. That makes it officially the best raffle prize and the best hair cut I’ve ever had. Next time, I’ll just have to pay.

The idea sprang from the Brighton Future of News group. Spearheaded by the pioneering Online Editor of the Brighton Argus Jo Wadsworth, with Sarah Marshall and Steve Bustin, the map is a collaborative experiment to share the political conversations candidates have with voters in the relative privacy of the doorstep and away from the prying eyes of the media.

It’s a good idea and I wouldn’t be surprised if the aim was to expose possible discrepancies between what candidates say publicly and ‘privately’: that’s a good thing. We’re not yet 24 hours into the experiment and what do we see?

When the map was first published the Greens had a tiny handful of flags (3?) and a party apparatchik has spent some time in the past day adding those little green flags. Tory candidate Charlotte Vere told me on Twitter that her ‘flag count’ grew because she was “just including the points from my own map.” Labour candidate Nancy Platts has only used Twitter to add her red flags.

Can the best efforts of a local newspaper experimenting with social media, keen to report one of the most fascinating electoral races in the country, usefully shape a tight run race? I do hope so. If 2010 is the first ‘social media’ General Election, a map such as this with genuine input from voters represents a fine way for people to raise issues and offer perspectives on the campaigns. Politics isn’t just about broadcasting, I venture. It’s a conversation.

So far, from what I’ve seen, nobody unrelated to the three local campaigns has contributed to the Argus map. That’s a real shame.

As I have often said to businesses large and small over the years, the social media secret is letting go. Give up control and let other people chart the course of your journey. Even to someone like me involved in politics, this map shouldn’t be yet another channel we use to skew the discussion by showing how omnipresent and marvellous the parties are. It must be an opportunity to listen. Let’s follow the roadmap rather than draw it. Just for once.

This map will be all the more informative and intriguing if the party people leave it alone and ensure it’s a forum and outlet for the people that matter to express a view. I think we should let democracy breathe. I’m looking forward to day two… and three… and beyond…

Disclosure: I am a rank and file member of the Labour Party in Brighton Pavilion. These ain't nobody’s views but my own.

I'm not sure Dr Lucas has seen her very own Brighton & Hove Bus around our City's streets and it seems likely she missed this conversation I overheard only hours ago on the number 25. Here are both. It's a public service.

"Yeah. Hi. It’s Caroline. Wassup? You know what it’s like, right? You’re like running around Brussels and Strasbourg doing your job and then a journalist starts dissing you, right? You totally want this shiny new job in London (it’s a promotion) and annoyingly right you have to go to Brighton every now and again to meet the people who are going to hire you. It’s, like, a nightmare! And then the local newspaper in Brighton slags you off for being out of touch ‘cos you don’t know how much a bus ticket costs. I know! Quelle bore!

Ok. So it’s a mistake. A little typo. My staff make typos like all the time. And what’s twenny pee right when you earn €84,000? If you say a daily bus ticket is £3.80 and they say it’s only £3.60: you’re all saving already right! They should get that. Everyone can take a chill pill. It’s all on expenses anyway! £28k a year in travel expenses is like totally normal for people like me. You don’t claim expenses? You should!

Someone should ask those hacks on the Argus. Yeah, they should. Yeah. The hacks that live in Brighton and Hove. Yeah. AND the bloggers. What are the bus fares in Brussels? I bet they don’t know! KILLER QUESTION! You mean it doesn’t matter? Yeah it matters! I live in Brussels!"

I have taken part in so many demos and protests that I can hardly keep count. The highlight was opposing the Iraq war in London on that February day in 2003 with a million others. But that was vanilla. I’ve faced up to police as they’ve beaten their shields with their batons with the sole intent to intimidate. I’ve been filmed and snapped by the rozzers before anti-terror legislation was enacted. I’ve mass-trespassed. I’ve squatted. I’ve been questioned, jostled and jibed by coppers. I’ve seen the underside of a police horse closer than I ever want to see one again.

The demos have been for causes various. I was against apartheid and shutting Brighton’s St Luke’s Pool (aged 9) in the 80s. I passionately opposed the CJB/CJA and French nuclear tests and other things in the 90s. More recently I’ve opposed student tuition fees and the Iraq war. I could mention direct action against fox hunting and car rallies on the South Downs. I even joined my mum to protest about midwife pay once.

But I never hid my face.

Protest is about standing up, being open, speaking out, hopefully raising the profile of the cause or issue, and being counted. For me, a protest doesn’t have to be legal but it must have peaceful intentions. I know how demos turn out. With opposing forces of protester and police, sometimes it gets edgy and ugly. As a protester, sometimes you get arrested. Usually you don’t. But passion doesn’t mean aggression. Violence should never be an aim.

That’s why I can’t support the Smash EDO action and protesters. Not only is the case unproven but they seek to make it anonymously. Any group that goes out and protests behind scarves and balaclavas is hiding something. That’s not how we should do it here. Protest must be proud to be credible. Ask Gandhi, Pankhurst, Mandela and King.