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...

Whtiby Goth Weekend--Abridged

I’ll find the time to write a longer post about Whitby at some point in the near future.  (Maybe tonight... maybe tomorrow.  I’m going to be installing Jaunty Jackalope tonight, so it all kind of depends on how that goes.)

In the meantime, here’s a few quick lessons I learned over my three days:

1. Although the sight of streets awash with goths is scary, few sights warm the cockles of my heart as so many of them walking down the streets, enjoying 99 Flakes with strawberry sauce;
2. Cameras should be banned from concerts.  What the hell is the matter with you people?  The band is right there.  Why do you need all your experiences sanitised by a screen?
3. I need to learn how to sew so I can make myself a new costume.  It’s going to be the best costume ever;
4. Socialising is fun!  You would not believe how much that one screws with my head.  It’s like being kicked out an air lock and discovering you can breathe in a vacuum.  I’m a bit terrified and wondering where the real me has gone;
5. Whitby has more fish and chip shops then there is actual retail space.  I swear, the sheer density of fish and chip shops in the town has created sympathetic shifts in the wave function of the town’s quanta to produce quantum fish and chip shops which shift in and out of existence, merge and split apart on a microscopic level;
6. Abney Park are an amazing live band.  Especially for all their reliance on sequences and effects, I’ve not seen such a good show since Colour of Fire;
7. Steampunk should be fun!

Anyway, hopefully more later...

The Sordid Topic of Time

Well, one of the terrible things with life is that when you have something to talk about, you have little time to talk about it in.

Since pay day (believe me, I haven't been so relieved since I was getting paid weekly at KFC, and smoking 20 a day), I've been doing many mundane things.

Most of my online time has been spent looking at the Espresso Book Machine. The essence of it is that you can order a book, wait ten minutes and then walk out the shop with your freshly printed volume. I'm very excited by the idea; when I have the time, I'm going to talk about it in depth. My nature of living somewhere other than the here and now gives me occasional glimpses of the future. I suppose that's why I write sci-fi instead of fantasy. The EBM gave me a (naïve and misty-eyed) glimpse of a soon-to-come time. Believe me, it is a beautiful place.

Most of my writing time was going into Bambi's second story, Space to Breathe. I've been feeling it's something of a weak link, and I put the third draft to bed with a little flutter of excitement: It has some teeth. Now, with the deadline approaching, I'm now turning my focus to Of Mice and Journeymen, my magpie attempt at pre-industrial steampunk. A story I left with bad feelings on the second draft, and came back to a different story to the one I remembered. It had some teeth, some dirt and some grit.

And my remaining time has been spent on Whitby. I've been sewing myself a sash to go with my magpie uniform. I'm very bad at sewing and haven't done any since I entered double figures. Still, it only has to last three days. I have an advantage through my persona: Mister Elijah Quinn. He's a cavalier, a rogue, a Victorian Gentleman Explorer through time and space. No matter what the truth, he'll have a truly fantastic tale to tell about any subject. That includes bad sewing.

After the weekend, maybe he'll have a story or two to tell about his adventures among the 'Goths' of the early twenty-first century (“far more make-up than my last encounter, far less beer and less sacking of Rome... but at least you could dance to the music this time”).

Sunday Evening and a Fire

My t-shirt arrived on Thursday. As a denizen of Netland, I'm sure you appreciate how import a t-shirt is. It's like a tattoo you can change every day. It's the billboard you use to advertise yourself to the world. You love a band? You know php and think it makes you better than everyone else? You an anarchist? There's a t-shirt out there with your brand on it, and it's imcumbant on you to wear it with pride. How else are we going to know who you are today?

I have one t-shirt from Theardless (community orientated, intelligent and silly, net-based), one Ngaio brought me from London (it has a fox on it), two plain ones (hey, there's days when I want to keep myself to myself), and now this one:


The house is made up of words from stories I've written. Specifically, from Mind Games, Regeneration, and other Myths, Rose Among the Thorns, and One More for the Road (which the last story in Bambi's arc, and is going to need a title change). The t-shirt is light grey.

In other news, we realised on Friday that we hadn't paid this month's rent yet and so are now very poor. Excersions to Tesco when we don't fancy what's in the cupboard are well off the menu. In its place, over-time. Lots and lots of over-time. Whitby (which we're attending in Steampunk finery) is coming out of April's paycheck, so that's done and dusted. May's payslip needs to cover a trip to London--to see the ballet and the sights--and a trip to my brother's engagement party. And June's needs to fund a holiday to the Scottish neverlands. If money is the root of all evil, the next few months are going to mining Satan's arsehole. Still, the pay off is going to be worth it. More than worth it.

And, with my new watch, I can know exactly how many hours of over-time I've done. It's an analogue skeleton watch with gold casing. It's beautiful. I brought a similiar one a few months ago and tortured the department with it. After two days, it taught me that a watch which cost three quid from Hong-Kong probably isn't a good investment. Lesson learned. For now.

So, a lean couple of weeks coming up but plenty to get me throught it. Next week is going to be spent thinking about editing Bambi's stories over the weekend. If I didn't love doing the editing, I'd find a vanity site to publish on. Editing is the difference between a lump of clay and something beautiful.

I'm going to try and remember that. When I can't drink any more coffee because my fingers are already twitching and I've been staring at an unaltered page for two hours, it'll keep me going. Or porn. Porn is good.