‘A day at the beach’ – meaning: ‘A non-stressful, relaxing day – an easy day. When someone uses the idiom “a day at the beach”, it means the project, task or event will be easy or non-challenging.’

I’ll say. When I first moved from London to Brighton in 1995, it was partly for nefarious motives (chasing my girlfriend’s younger brother), but partly because, at 35, I was finding London, the city I’d fetishised ever since I was a little girl in the West Country, boring. Yes, I know they say that he who is tired of London is tired of life, but I was tired of sitting in taxi cabs for around an hour trying to get from my Holborn home to the newspaper offices of Canary Wharf in order to lunch with my various bosses. I wanted to live somewhere where I would never be more than 10 minutes on foot from the nearest drug dealer – and Brighton fitted the bill beautifully.