lproven | Part 4

Since Monday is a work day, Kjersti & Mat head off at 7am the next day. I'm in no such hurry and enjoy a lie-in and a leisurely lunch on the quayside on a balmy November afternoon. As the sun sets behind me, the Norwegian-barn-red warehouses and higgledpiggly old dwellings shoulder for space at the docks on the other side of the river. The ruined abbey glares dourly down from the clifftops above. Elderly couples stroll slowly around in the winter sunshine, trying not to stare too blatantly at the diminshing numbers of black-clad figures with "interesting" hair stalking (or waddling) along the narrow streets.

People I've never met nod familiarly at me, simply because I'm all in black. Well, all right, I probably look rather the worse for wear, as well. There are dark heavy-printed flyers everywhere for art exhibitions, film shows, club and gigs; I'll warrant they will quickly disappear for the next six months.

Whitby is a lovely little place, redolent of the past. It's a resort of last resort, the kind of place built when cheap flights to the sun were an impossibility. I'm sure that's why it's the venue it is: quite aside from the Dracula connection, there's something pleasing about the survival of this quaint Victorian "Spa", inaccessible and remote on the edge of the bleak high moors, in the age of the airliner. It's certainly not because it's cheap: a profusion of guest houses lives on and they're more than with it enough to cash in on the influx of trashed goths. I'm a little sad to see that next year there'll be a "Morecambe Goth Festival" as well, with bigger-name bands: it's not the same promoters and it looks like a transparent attempt to cash in.

Plus, I was born not too far from Morecambe, and I not only spent a recent not-very-dirty-really weekend there with Aeia [link] a few years back, I even stopped there for breakfast on my way to the Isle of Man boat last year. It's easier to get to but it's a lot less appealing.

Long live Whitby! I don't want to doom the Morecambe Goth Festival, but I'd rather see the Whitby Gothic Weekend survive. Everyone with even a passing connection with goth should do it at least once...