Royal Pavilion, Brighton

Royal Pavilion, Brighton

27.01.19 Just before Christmas, April and I decided to take a UK holiday for a while, and stay with my family in Surrey. It would be her first time to visit the UK and she was keen to see how things looked, and maybe check some of the landmarks about which she had dreamed so extensively over the years. We travelled to London, Oxford, Petersfield and Guildford, leaving ourselves only a little time to recuperate. We tried to see Harcourt House near Oxford, home to one of her other contacts, Lou-Lou Harcourt, but the building was now in private hands and there was no chance to visit. Another location we didn't get to see turned out to be the Royal Pavilion in Brighton, only we didn't know this at the time.

One cold morning, I asked April if she might get a travel tip for a place to visit that week, recalling how this tactic had worked earlier in the year for Doi Inthanon. In response, over several evenings, April was shown an immense historic building by her grandmother. As usual, each separate clear dream was not so long - a couple of minutes at the most. At first, she could only tell me in the morning of the fantastic structure she had seen, unable to recall the name. The following evening, she dreamed of some more of the external features but did not go inside. On the third and final evening, she got the name and had enough confidence to sketch out everything she could remember.

Having now identified the place as the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, we earmarked a day before Christmas to visit. Our body clocks, however, were still disrupted from the long flight from Singapore, and we ended up rising too late and missing our train departure. We abandoned the idea and I felt embarrassed by my lack of organisation. Nevermind, you can try again next time was her grandmother's forgiving reply, relayed later. I promised April that we would try again on our next vacation, when the weather would be warmer and we would be under less pressure for time.