I arrived in Brighton on Thursday afternoon. It was the first warm day I have experienced thus far this year (that is, the first day with sunshine and temperatures over 20C — the English call this a “heat wave”), and I had a very heavy rucksack so I was a bit sweaty after walking from the station to my hotel in Kemptown. I had just enough time to have a shower and change before having to go out for a dinner with Roz Kaveney and one of my fellow presenters from the Trans Studies Now conference, Emma Hutson. Roz was presenting as well, of course, but she was a Keynote Speaker, not a mere academic.

Kudos to Emma for finding a place to eat called The Troll’s Pantry. Actually it was just food being served in a pub called The Hobgoblin, but it was a cool name. I was somewhat disappointed that they didn’t serve spit-roasted dwarf, but I did get to eat a Minotaur. It is essentially an up-market burger joint, so the aforementioned bull-man was actually a beefburger-Cretan fusion thing. The important point is that the people running the place are serious foodies who are very particular about ingredients and it showed.

On the downside, there was no table service and getting served at the bar took a while. Also, it being a pub, there was a lot of background noise which made it hard for me to hear anything. I have old lady ears, and while I am by no means deaf I can’t hear nearly as well as I used to be able to. Yet another reason for avoiding pubs.

Having eaten, the three of us trotted down to the Jubilee Library for a Trans Special evening of Have A Word — Brighton’s LGBT spoken word event. This is run by Ellis Collins. Normally the event is held at his shop, but thanks to a contact at the Library he has been able to schedule two Pride-related events, of which this was the first.

The line-up for the evening was Alice Denny, Maeve Devine and Fox Fisher. I knew that Alice and Fox would be awesome, but I’d not heard Maeve read before. She was absolutely hilarious. Roz and I were in stitches.

Roz was, of course, added to the bill, and treated us to a few of her fine poems, including the one that she wrote to annoy people at the New Statesman when Neil and Amanda were guest-editing it.

And then there was me. Given the choice I would not have had my first ever public poetry reading be in front of Roz and Alice, both of whose work is so much better than mine. However, I did want to try out the 50 Voices piece in front of a friendly audience. While I hadn’t managed to memorise it, I did get through it OK, and people were very kind afterwards.

After the event we headed off to the Marlborough, where a lovely person with a mountain of electric blue hair was running a pub quiz. As I had been up since 6:00am I retired early after just one drink.

The hotel was had chosen is Legends, which is on Marine Parade just up the hill into Kemptown from the Sealife Centre. It is the place with the rainbow flags out front. The staff there were lovely. I couldn’t manage to get my email, either on the hotel wifi or tethered, which is potentially an issue. On the other hand, the croissants and pain-au-chocolat fresh out of the oven at breakfast were so good I’m going back there for Trans Pride.