If, like me, you prefer to eschew the traditional notion of bins, in favour of chucking your rubbish straight out of the window, this is definitely the hotel for you...


We've got the first floor room on the corner with the Juliet balcony. Romeo's standing in the skip.

The view below our window might be rubbish, but so far, everything else is very nice. Admittedly the sea breeze is a little more biting than bracing, which is slightly putting me off my ice cream, but that aside, it's going well. We ended up at Zizzi's for dinner last night, where we were served by a man who looked so like David Walliams that he really should give up the restaurant trade and go straight into showbusiness. If I looked any more like Matt Lucas, we'd have had it made.

Our hotel room is very pleasant too, and features a bed so wide that it's verging on the criminal not to invite a third person into it. I'll see how things go later in the honeymoon, and maybe suggest it to Lisa. But at the moment it's just nice to be able to move three feet away from her snoring without hitting the floor.

We both slept well, and awoke refreshed and fighting fit to face the perils of the bathroom...

I decided to drip-dry on the bath mat in an effort to avoid death, but having survived our showers, we made our way downstairs for breakfast. I've yet to encounter a single member of staff here who would consider English their first language, and as a result, we've had first-class service from the moment we arrived. Breakfast was particularly good, and we left the restaurant feeling like we'd never be able to eat again.

That lasted about two hours. Frankly it's a miracle it wasn't less, as we're staying a hundred yards from this place...


Which is around the corner from here...


We were thinking of going in, but I was worried they wouldn't let Lisa leave.

Anyhoo, we've spent today exploring Eastbourne town centre. Obviously I'm not a judgemental person, and I hate sweeping generalisations, but I think it's safe to say that the entire population of Eastbourne is made up of the old and the unemployable. If you're not over eighty, you're under twenty and smoking a fag while you push your two children along in a buggy.

But the town has one redeeming feature: its thirty charity shops. I've visited most of them today, and bought up half their stock. Frankly I deserve an MBE for all my charity work. At one point I thought I'd bought so much stuff I could no longer move, at which point the woman in the PDSA shop told me there are 29 others, and gave me directions to find them.

Having shopped til we dropped, we then recharged our batteries at Costa Coffee, where we found ourselves sitting at a table next to Gwyneth Strong, who played Cassandra in 'Only Fools & Horses'. She's the exception that proves the rule about Eastbourne. Although she's probably not as young as she looks. And she might not have worked in a while.

Next door to Costa is a Thorntons ice cream shop, so we spent some time on a sunny Monday munching a couple of sundaes, and admiring the Eastbourne obelisk. It seemed appropriate with Italian ice cream. We then headed off for some afternoon entertainment. The Royal Hippodrome Theatre was advertising a show called 'Strictly Comedy & Dancing', featuring "Brilliant TV Comedian", Tank Sherman...


So we went to the cinema instead. We actually ended up at the Curzon, an old-fashioned flea-pit where they still tear your paper ticket in half at the door, and for whom 'surround-sound' means having a speaker on both walls. We saw 'The King's Speech', so the traditional surroundings were in keeping with the film. And the way the picture wobbled on the screen fitted nicely with Colin Firth's stutter.

All in all, it's been a lovely day. We're off to Prezzo now for a slap up dinner. And having sampled that sea air, we're definitely driving.