2013 predictions

Let’s not mince words; 2012 was bloody terrible. But will 2013 prove any better? We at Bare Cheek have been consulting our oracles like crazy to find out. And that’s not a euphamism for self abuse, thank you very much.

JANUARY
The council get the year off to a cracking start by closing down the whole of North Street for roadworks. Rents go up by 15 per cent. Three more fish-and-chip shops, eight more “greasy spoons” and 14 more pubs close down.

FEBRUARY
Nostalgists get a boost as more and more homeless return to the streets of Brighton, thanks to government policy. “It’s just like the old days – of the early 1990s” people say to each other as they dodge Big Issue-sellers, drug addicts, and other local colour.

MARCH
Having surprised everyone last year with their hike on allotment rental and reduction of bus services, the council decide to ban bicycles, charge for recycling and sell rights to explore fracking directly beneath the Royal Pavilion.

APRIL
Changes to Working Tax Credits come into operation. The whole of Brighton’s economy teeters on the brink of collapse.
Dukes @ Komedia open up a new theatre space inside the cinema space at the theatre, known as “Komedia @ Dukes @ Komedia”.

MAY
The Fringe’s registration fees this year prove so expensive that only one man, the Sultan of Brunei, can afford to stage a show (a production of Hobson’s Choice starring all of his wives.)

JUNE
A party atmosphere breaks out when everyone suddenly realises there is no Royal occasion to celebrate this summer. Thousands throng the beaches and hold imromptu street parties to enjoy the few weeks of freedom allowed them.

JULY
A local council by-election brings Brighton’s first UKIP councillor, Simon Hillary-Jones. He is immediately disowned by Nigel Farage upon telling an ill-advised joke about a female jockey and a Massai warrior in his returning speech.

AUGUST
Hopes this year for a “proper Summer” are once again dashed by ceaseless torrents of rain, charcoal-grey skies, mudslides, flooding, icy winds, sea-squalls, and intermittant and worrying thunder. Seven more pubs close down.

SEPTEMBER
There is a glorious Indian summer – a heat wave that seems to be genetically cloned from the DNA of the golden memories of the summer of 1976 – timed to coincide precisely with when all the kids go back to school and everyone else goes back to work. Nine hotels close down.

OCTOBER
Universal Credit comes into operation. The whole of Brighton’s economy collapses immediately. Although “White Nights” is called off thousands of Brightonians fail to notice and force entry to shops and businesses at midnight and hold impromptu soirees. The event is deemed a great success.

NOVEMBER
Brighton is isolated from the rest of the country as the whole of the weald is flooded. Travel to London
is restricted to package steamers leaving from the pier. For the first time since the 19th century, the Lewes bonfire societies have a fight upon realising that they have each seperately chosen to burn Nick Clegg in effigy.

DECEMBER
Like the Alien in the film of the same name, the Norovirus preys on Brighton and Hove, decimating school nativity plays and winter fayres and making people throw up even more than they would usually at this time of year. After five years of careful undercover surveillance, those wooden huts selling German produce in front of the Churchill Centre reveal themselves, late one Christmas Eve, to be latter day Trojan horses, disgorging an army of Hun warriors, who quickly bring the city to its knees. Bus fares go up again.