Jason wasn’t Britpopping this weekend. He’d met some rich woman: a dentist, and he was helping her spend her money. So Dazzer, Vanilla and I grabbed the kitty and took a coach to Brighton – cheap as chips.

We used to have to take Polaroids – clunky bloody things. Then digital arrived and we could create art with photo-imaging phones. Jason had won the last contest, but that was before the dentist. He’d still put his fifty quid in the kitty though, so there was £200 up for grabs.

Vanilla hadn’t won for ages – that’s why we’d started calling her Vanilla – she’d lost her edge, talking about how we were getting too old for it. Vanessa was her real name. Daz could easily beat me to the money if he tried.

It’s not just winning the kitty that makes it important though. Getting out from under, that’s the point of it. Shaping the world for just long enough to take a picture and make it concrete – pushing reality into a shape that says something, means something.

We started with gin on the coach. By Brighton, we were stoked. Dazzer left us straight away; he must have had something in mind. Vanilla headed for the beach where some Armenian guys were offering henna tattoos for a fiver. She opted for a hieroglyph on her upper arm. I ran to the taxi rank. I wanted to get my entry out of the way early, before my brain was too fogged with booze. The driver dropped me at the statue of Queen Victoria and I slapped on my gloves and climbed. When I was level with Vicky’s face, I pulled out my phone and held it at arm’s length – giving her a good tongue smooch at the same time. It was a good picture, especially Victoria’s verdigris glare into my own dreamily closed eyes. The Union Jack tongue stud showed up nicely too. Understated but effective, I thought. A real contender.

I jogged back to Vanilla. She was in the public toilets, applying some weird gunk around the tattoo with an eye-shadow brush. She’s a pharmacist so she knows about chemicals. By the time we got back to the Armenians her arm was as pink and swollen as a bitten lip.

“Hey look,” said one of them. “The pretty girls are back.” I stuck my tongue out at him. He seemed to enjoy it.

Vanilla showed her arm and they jabbered at each other.

“Fifty quid or I report you,” she said calmly. I snapped their pictures quickly, so it looked as if we planned an official complaint. They tried to pick up their sheets of designs but she stood on the laid-out transfers. “Gonna risk an assault charge too?”

We split the take. Vanilla kept thirty – it was her arm. She went back to the bogs to clean off the inflammatory gunk and I sent my “Violating Victoria” image to Daz who called me straight back. He must have been close by.

“Yeah ... pretty cool Shelb. But I’m going to beat your arse like a drum with my entry – it’s the ultimate in alienation imagery. It’ll be an icon of disenfranchised cool, and I’ll be the poster boy of the Camus-reading public, you wait and see.”

Sometimes I thought Daz took it all too seriously. He’d trained as an artist, and working as a traffic warden was flaying him alive, but the whole thing was meant to be a bit of a laugh. A trip away every month to remind us of our youthful dreams: Vanilla the research chemist who never was; Shelby the wannabe psychiatrist, currently unemployed without a degree; and Dazzer - conceptual parking enforcement officer. And Jason of course. Jason had dreamed of a career in politics and ended up as an amateur gigolo for bored professional women – Portillo Pornstar.

“So, do you want to give us some clues then?” I was trying to keep it light; Daz had an intensity that could strip paint.

“Nah ... you suffer on it Shelb. All I’ll tell you is it involves a boy.”

That didn’t sound like Dazzer’s usual style. But boys were a part of the Brighton scene – a pretty substantial part of it from what I could see around me. Maybe he was mellowing after all. It had to be better than the ‘Immolated Mazda’ he’d created last time in Lyme Regis, although Immolated Boy didn’t sound good either.

Vanilla reappeared and we headed for the bars. We tanked down half the Armenian beer money before she decided to stage a fight. She has a talent for it. Culture Clash VII she called it: a bunch of grungy students getting kicked senseless by some yachting types from Brighton Marina. She got a couple of good shots, nice composition, but really - VII! She’d done it to death.

The boating mob weren’t too bright though. As she snapped her pictures, I dipped their abandoned coats. Okay, it’s not stylish, but dosh is dosh. Then we skipped. We abused our synapses with tequila and scored down near the Peter Pan playground. Vanilla danced all the way back to the coach station. We were almost out of money and I felt bad about hiding the yacht cash, but I needed it for the rent.

We were on the coach, heading for the Smoke again when Daz called. A video clip. There was a big orange sphere and the harsh laughter of gulls, waves sounding like a wet heartbeat. On one edge of the buoy I could just make out a hand, bloodless with strain. Slowly the fingers lost their grip and then there was just the buoy, the gulls, the slapping sea.

Bloody good, I thought. Bloody good entry. Buoy. Should I tell someone he was out there? No, I decided. Conceptualism should push the boundaries. Good art was always dangerous.