ell, I dare say I’ve built up enough quite enough suspense around my trip to the Royal Albion Hotel and the Colour out of Space festival weekend in Brighton.

The verdict? Well, I was happy enough with what we got for the money on the hotel front. I would have been less than happy if we’d paid the listed price for the rooms, some £200 over what we did pay. However for £30 a night you could put up with the stained carpet, damaged furniture and the hole in the wall ‘repaired’ by someone stuffing toilet paper in it – not that successful a substitute for Polyfilla it transpires. To be fair the breakfast there was good, the bar much as I remembered, I think it was even the same mostly absentee mute barman there and it was well placed for the Sallis Benney Theatre / University of Brighton where the fourth Colour out of Space was being held…

This was my first Colour out of Space, described as ‘three days of unstructured, experimental sound and art drawn from an international subculture of musicians, artists and filmmakers’ I suppose I should have noticed that there was no ‘music’ as such included in the description and adjusted my expectations appropriately.

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was just looking to book two tickets for the Alexandra Theatre Birmingham, ticket price is fine, then on booking I get a Service Charge of £5.75 x 2 and then a charge of £3.25 for ticket postage or the same amount to collect them at the door. So I’m looking at £15 in charges just to book the two tickets. This is even worse than the Wolverhampton Civic Box Office charges of a couple of years ago, actually as this is split between two people its only about the same, either way its way OTT. I guess I could always get a taxi to into Brum and book them on the door, as it stands at the moment thats probably going to cost about the same.