A Bridge's Tale

Let me tell you a story.

Like many people who write, I keep a note book. I use it both to note down ideas, and to develop them.


(^my notebook^)

Yes, this story has pictures. That’s the kind of story it is. (They were taken on my camera phone, though, so the quality isn't great. Sorry about that...)

Angeline of the Woods started off as a doodle I made at the Asylum while waiting for other people to show up for the creative writing workshop. A couple weeks after getting back, I put the few ideas I’d had into my notebook and began to poke them to see how they’d grow. After a couple of pages of thought-association, I hit a wall. So, I doodled a picture of the town the story is set in:



I drew the river. Then the town and the woods the titular Angeline would be Of. Towards the top of the woods, I marked an area ‘fuel allotments’ because I grew up within walking distance of a fair few acres of fuel allotments, and they were very special to me when I was young. I drew in some trees, some houses, some roads, a little picture of Angeline…

And you see that bridge? I put that in last, because I figured that the people in town would need a way to get to the fuel allotments. Then I noticed that the river flowed from north to south, and the bridge was north of the town. That meant that the ships would have to be able to fit under the bridge. As the town was just above sea level, that meant the bridge would have to be pretty large, and significantly raised above the level of the town. People would still have to be able to get over the bridge--how else would they get their fuel from the allotments?--so that meant there would have to be ramps of some sort leading up to it.

Hey… I was beginning to think, this bridge is going to pretty much dominate the town. The town was built around the docks so the bridge couldn’t be an expansion of an older bridge (otherwise the ships wouldn’t be able to get in). Huge projects like that are prestige projects, built to make a statement more than anything else. Who would do that, I wondered?

I got distracted before I could figure that out. Would a bridge--with two huge arches like in my doodle--even be able to support itself or would physics be against it? Well, three hours of Google and Wikipedia later, I was satisfied physics would be kind to the bridge.

So, back to the question of who built it, and why. The ships coming into the town are the lost and deserted ships of all time and space. Those ships which disappear without a trace, those who end up in Davey Jones’ locker, those who sail into the mist and reappear years later… those are the ships which come through. Maybe one of these ships was carrying a Brunel-esque engineer, someone with the knowledge, vision and determination to see through a project of such magnitude.

He must, I decided, have done it to free the people of the town. To free them from whom? Well… before the bridge was built, the townspeople must have moved from one side to the other. The County Road is on the other side of the river, and that sounds like an important road. So, whoever controls travel across the river controls who gets fuel and when, and who gets through to the County Road and when. Our Brunelian engineer was enraged by this evil cartel of ferry operators and the absolute power they wielded, so he decided to free the town! Yay!

Obviously, he couldn’t rely on the ferry operators ferrying his stone from the County Road to his building site and he couldn’t just wait around and hope a ship would come in with the vast amount of stone he would need. So the stone would have to be local. From my previous time with Wikipedia and Google, I had discovered that a bridge of such magnitude would probably have to be built from granite if it was going to last.

But what the hell kind of forest would grow on a bedrock of granite, especially where there was enough at hand to blast out the ground and built a bridge of? Wikipedia failed me. I dropped all other quests, and focused. Search term after search term found themselves in my search bar to be sent scurrying across the web. Eventually, I gained enough XP to level up my Google-fu and found an answer.

(The Granite-Forest quest lead to another one about the sort of undergrowth which would grow in such a forest, but that’s another story.)

Armed with my notes

I started writing.

The bridge was only built two generations ago, so as well as dominating the town physically it’s also going to be pretty dominate psychologically. Everyone living in the town would have had a part to play in its story.

Nigel, the kind-hearted local lad Feathers recruits to help him, tells Feathers of his grandfather’s part:
“Grandfather helped to build the bridge,” Nigel said. “Happiest damned day of his life was when he took his family and walked across to t'other side…pushed his wife off the side, see. They hanged him from the scaffolding over the second arch. Told my girl he's ghost stays there, guards the county road as penance. Makes her proud, that. Great-grandfather guarding the whole town an' all.”

He’s proud of his grandfather, in an odd sort of way.

The bridge does restrict the traffic which can get to the town docks. Anything taller than a clipper would have trouble, for example. Luckily, Nigel knew the town’s ingenious solution:
“The bridgemen used to run this town,” Nigel said. “Grandfather used to say about these big platforms what used to float from one side of the river to t'other. Four bridgeman to move it, two to steer. Only way to get to the county road over the water was on the platform, so if you wanted anything--food, horses, wood, anything--you'd have to take a platform and pay the bridgemen. Then a man came along. On a big iron ship that moved God only knows how. Took one look at the bridgemen, and stood in the town square and told everyone he was going to build us a bridge. So he did. Everyone watched as he built up them banks on each side and as this thing slowly came to be. When it was finished, bridgemen went broke in a month. He was walking along the riverside, passed by a gang of bridgemen, fell in the water and drowned.”

Nigel shrugged as if that was all there was to the story. Feathers took his hands off the windowsill and linked them behind his back.

“What happened to the bridgemen?” he asked.

“One of the workers from the boat who'd built the bridge, he brought all the platforms and made them into the Grossanlegen. Everyone winds up happy.”

That’s all from the first draft. (Grossanlegen is a crude German translation for ‘Big Docks’.)

When editing, I strive to remove any ounce of fat I can find. You know how much of the bridge’s story has survived to the third draft?

Yep. None.

I mean, it was great fun to explore the bridge’s history, to literally build it up and watch as it grew and the history of the town grew with it. It was gratifying to listen as Nigel made the bridge a real, tangible thing with its own past, memories and legends. But it didn’t add anything to the story of Angeline of the Woods. So it had to go.

There are no scared cows in the editing room. Editor Foxie is a cruel, cruel man.

The First Annual Steampunk Convivial

Before leaving on Friday, I said something to Jo along the lines of, ‘I’ll write up the weekend in my blog. I don’t take pictures, you see, I write. That’s my way of understanding and remembering.’ Perhaps appropriately, I think I used actual film in my psychological camera and have had to send it away, and wait for it to be developed.

Without a doubt, that’s the most significant experience I had over the weekend. I’ve been back almost a week, and I’ve not put fingers to keyboard for anything other than emails and forums. Stormy Weather is still languishing and I need to find the time to work on it. I get twitchy if I don’t write for too long, and it’s been far too long; for weeks before the Asylum, I was working on my jacket instead of writing.

The long weekend itself was inspirational. It was like an alcoholic being given a free bar, and I’m still spinning.

Whitby was a lovely weekend, but people were very much, well, people. They stayed in their cliques, and talking to anyone else was awkward. The costumes were amazing, but it was sort of like shopping. Lincoln was more like...

It was so easy to talk to people. We arrived on the Friday, booked into our B&B which was some lovely old couple’s house, and made our way up a very unforgiving hill to register. We then sat in the beer garden of a near-by pub and recuperated. As the pub was near-by, other attendees came by. They sat down with us, introductions were swapped, and conversations happened. Just like that. People came and went and circulated and went off to get changed for the evening. I had a conversation with a wonderful man who turned out to be Robert Rankin.

Friday evening saw Trousseaux, comedian Andrew O’Neil and Sunday Driver play for us in said beer garden. The acoustics weren’t great, but the performers were. Andrew O’Neil told us that this was probably the last time he would be performing his ‘Absolutely Spot On History of British Industry’, and we were the weirdest hecklers he’d ever performed for. Allegra, Cal and myself danced to Sunday Driver, right up by the band. We were the only ones dancing, which I thought was strange at the time but now realise was prophetic.

We were up early Saturday to set up the stall and sell SteamPunk Magazine. Sales were slow but steady throughout the day. Again, the highlight was the people. They’d come over, and we’d talk. People would hang around the table and talk about costuming and music with us. Good friend Fozz also hung around a lot, chatting and talking up the magazine. I had a look around the other stalls, but decided the waistcoats looked too... well, neat and finished and by the time I decided to buy an opium pipe from Major Tinker, he’d sold them all. I was very impressed by his range of vegan ‘leather’ products and made sure to tell him. Terry Martin had a stall selling Murky Depths opposite us, as did a charming gentleman and his wife, selling watch parts and other sundries. I told them they were cruel because I didn’t have the time to put the pieces to good use, and they turned out to be Rachel and Robert Rankin. Terry and I talked and pawed each other’s merchandise.

There were also classes in folk dancing, a creative writing discussion, a costume competition (MC’d by Mister Rankin, in flamboyant style) and other activities I couldn’t go to because I was at the stall and not caring about not going because I was in the middle of people who wanted to talk and engage and have conversations.

The evening had Fearless Vampire Killers, The Men Who Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing and Ghostfire playing. (I should point out that Ghostfire’s myspace is no longer hideous and waits to be asked before playing music at you. Also, I had a chance to meet them on the Friday and they scared me. Poor social skills + OMG Ghostfire! + extrovert musicians who’d just driven up from London and were probably still tired from the journey + professional musicians pissed off at the sound and acoustics = Foxie trying to be a wallflower but having no way of escaping...) The sound system was terrible, only the drums and bass being audible.

I was quite happy to treat this as a normal gig. I hung around the edges and talked to people, and got up by the stage and moshed. There were a few others, but no ‘pit’. Only when Ghostfire announced they had written a song for us, and it was a waltz did the floor fill up.

Afterwards, people complained about the music being too loud and not being able to talk to each other. In their pub gig days, Dire Straights used to ask for the volume to be turned down on their equipment so people could still talk to each other if they wanted. When they came back for an encore, Ghostfire asked the audience if they wanted Vaudevillian or the waltz again, and people wanted the waltz.

This wasn’t an ordinary gig. People wanted the socialising and engagement to continue. They wanted to talk and dance and engage through the music, not just stand in front of the band and jump up and down. They wanted the chance to use the folk dances they’d learned during the day and they wanted to dance with people, not just in the same space as them. This was the point Steampunk music became something separate from anything else out there at the moment. Other gigs, you have the band, and you have the audience, and never the twain shall meet. There’s a barrier between performer and consumer, where the former produces music and the latter absorbs it. At the Asylum, there was almost tangible resentment at that barrier. People didn’t want to just dumbly consume from the mosh pit. They wanted some sort of symbiotic level ground where musician and audience were part of the same entity, creating something more than the sum of its parts.

It’s hugely exciting, and something I personally am going to work towards making happen. Mostly by supporting Allegra as she does all the hard work. More on that later.

So, since coming back I’ve been on Brass Goggles talking to people, trying to keep that engagement alive. I’ve been looking at their photos from the weekend, reading their blogs... And trying to bring some order to the bjallon new projects I now have to do.

Now, here’s a photo of me in my jacket, along with Allegra and Cal:



There’s nothing actually wrong with me, cameras just make me go rigid. It’s something to do with they way the photons from the flash interact with my hind-brain...

Whitby--The Director's Cut

Okay, I'm going to go on a little so you should grab yourself a panad and a biscuit first.


The Hostel

We stayed at the Whitby Youth Hostel, and it was amazing. Swipe cards to get in and out. Bunk beds. A ‘help yourself to any seven items’ complimentary breakfast with scrambled eggs, beans, toast, pain au chocolat among other things... En suite shower that never ran out of hot water. I’d pick it over a Travel, Premier or Holiday Inn any day. And it’s set in the grounds of an old Benedictine Abbey, the courtyard of which you have to drive through to get to the car park. Even the Guardian says it’s bloody fantastic.

Carolyn

The first social encounter was with a friend of my SO’s, Carolyn. An acquaintance of hers through Steampunk Magazine, we met up on the Friday evening and she left us on the Saturday afternoon. There were five of us and one of her. I admire her for taking us on single-handed. She was wonderfully tolerant of our inside talk and jokes, intelligent and relaxed, and a pleasure to spend the majority of the weekend with. I’m looking forwards to seeing her again in September.

The Friday Night Set

Zeitgeist Zero, Last Dance and Abney Park were playing the night set. Zeitgeist Zero were okay. I haven’t hear live music in so long that I loved just listening to them. Last Dance were a great live band who played a very short set. Jeff Diehm made a great front man and shared a touching story about Abney Park’s early days.

Who were, of course, the main draw. I’ll be honest, before going I could sort of take or leave them, really. Boy, did their show change that. I would never believe that a band which relies on sequences could put on such an engaging show. Cpt. Robert was constantly on his toes, stealing the stage back from Nathaniel and Finn. There was no producers/consumers line, we were just altogether sharing an experience. We wouldn’t let them off the stage. They got through all their regular songs, and then their new ones. Then the old ones. Then the really, really old ones. Then any bloody song they could still play. It reminds me of the stories you hear about Zeppelin’s first American tour, when the audience wouldn’t let them leave the stage and they just played old Elvis songs until they could escape.

Photography

I’ve already aired my feelings about photographs at concerts, but they extend to all walks of life. You can’t photograph the feel of the wind, the intangible atmosphere of a moment or the small slips in reality which happen when you’re not looking, and you can’t experience them if you’re sticking a camera lens in-front of your face the whole time. This girl converted me a few years ago.

The streets were filled with goths and steampunks. They were also filled with people with cameras. I was in costume and walking through town on Friday and Saturday, and I couldn’t go more than five steps without someone asking if they could take my photo. It wasn’t just me--it was all the goths and steampunks who’d made an effort. Some of the photographers were tourists and locals (one adolescent child took great pleasure in snapping me on her ‘phone.) As Ngaio said at the time, it’s kind of weird to think I’m now part of someone’s holiday experience. A lot of the photographers were professionals, though, with many thousands of pounds (£s) worth of equipment. I suppose they’ll be appearing for sale or as promotional material in an internet near you in the next few weeks.

The Steam Bus

It’s an old steam-powered flatbed wagon that some guy rescued from the knacker’s yard, and turned into a bus. It runs on coal and when you go down hill, the cab fills with flames as the driver lets off the heat. Vernon Smith, the owner and builder, has been working with steam engines since he was eight-years-old and pretty much has steam instead of blood. Yes, it’s as cool as it sounds. If you go anywhere near Whitby and don’t take a ride on it, that’s a certifiable medical condition.

The Steam Meet

This is the part which really fried my brain.

When I was eighteen months old, I had an accident on a train and didn’t speak again I was sent to a speech therapist at the age of four. I’ve always had trouble with my words; when I speak, all the sounds fall out of my mouth in some sort of confused jumble and my tongue feels huge. It makes me hard to understand, and that makes people want to not talk to me. The fine art of conversation is never something I was introduced to, and even the crass art of conversation passed me by. Groups of people I’m expected to interact with lead to panic, withdrawal and wallflower manifestations.

The stream meet was in a cafe. It was full of strangers who were all part of a scene that I’m not part of (I’m never part of a scene, no matter what it may look like). I was there to engage them in conversation, and hand out business cards for Steampunk Magazine.

I finished my cappuccino and someone came over to talk to us...

When we left, I wanted more. I wanted more people, more socialising, more interacting. I wasn’t good at it I’m sure, but I enjoyed it.

It’s left me looking forwards to the first UK steam meet in September. I feel a bit like I’ve been dumped out a plane, at night, and landed in a foreign country where even the laws of gravity are different.

I should be talking about the wonderful and interesting people I met, I know, but this is a tectonic-plate sized shift in my head. Almost two years of CBT has done amazing things.

Saturday Night

A good proportion of the night was spent wading through quantum fish and chip shops trying to find somewhere to eat. We finally found a crepe place, and had crepes. They were nice, but I wouldn’t call them a meal.

We were all knackered by this point, having been on our feet pretty much constantly since Friday afternoon and only catching a few hours' sleep. The rest of the party had crashed during the day, but were still suffering. The music was okay but not worth enduring the pain for, so we got an early night.

Fountains Abbey

It was only an hour or so away and my SO has wanted to see it for over five years, so we took the time to do a grand tour. The abbey itself is absolutely amazing and the gardens spectacular. Well worth going to see, if you’re ever in the area. All the walking was hard work on my tired legs, though.

And back home again

We got pizza from a Hutt on the way home, and the best bit was seeing the cats alive and well and happy to see us when we got in. The second best bit was being back in my own bed. But bloody hell the pizza was good. Cheese, extra cheese, goat’s cheese, mushrooms and onions. Goat’s cheese is amazing on pizza.

…

So, those are my memories of Whitby Goth Weekend. I hope you enjoyed your panad.

Now I just need to finish--by which I mean start--my costume for The Asylum...