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lprovenIn 1998, I had another of those agonising choices. A good mate, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
geoffcampbell, was holding his annual party again. This time, though, it wasn't in relatively-handy Surrey, it was in West Wales, at his new gaff in Carmarthen. I really fancied going, but not on my elderly and sluggish BMW Boxer outfit. However, at the last minute, it emerged that a friend was going, by car, and was happy to offer me a lift.
So, we went, arrived fashionably late – about 10:30pm, I think, to be greeted bylandsmand grinning Satanically through the flames of an enormous barbecue - we drank – lots – and lo, it was good. Very good.
Since that year, I've been back every time, and it's always been an absolute hoot. I've ridden tiny trailies around rutted fields, I've larked about on the trike, I've borrowedkhaylock's street-legal trailie and hooned around the back lanes of Carmarthenshire, and generally had a really good time.
This year was to be different.
For more than a month,childeric had been trying to persuade me that what I really wanted to do was go to Infest - the UK's biggest dark electronic music festival. Essentially, about 400 goths in Bradford University Student Union for the weekend.
I wanted to go. I really really wanted to go. But it was going to be damned expensive – especially since I'd left it too late for the cheap bus ride up and the digs in halls of residence.
I also really wanted to go to Geoff's, but I was put off by several things – for one, the weather, as it's been a really crap summer this year. For another, the fact that I have no working motorbike capable of taking me to Wales and back. And then, finally, discovered from a post inflickgc's LJ at the last minute, the news that Kirsty and Mathias would be there.
Now, yes, I'm talking to them again, but it's still extraordinarily difficult and painful to be around her, and whereas at the Slimelight or B Movie, in a crowd of hundreds, it's easy enough to not let it bother me, at a small gathering of 30-40 people, that's not possible – as I discovered atdrpete's birthday drinkie, for instance.
So I thought sod it, let's go to Infest. A large amount of phoning around, starting with the Bradford tourist board, revealed that I could get a ticket on the door and a cheap-ish hotel room, at least for Friday and Saturday nights. A train ticket would be an only moderately agonizing £75 – probably less than Carmarthen, anyway.
So off I set on Friday afternoon. Taxi from station to hotel, dump stuff, straight to the Uni – where he dropped me at the main entrance, at ten at night, very far from home and very... unaccompanied. I have seldom felt more lost and alone in years. However, we'd passed Goths on the way, so I knew I was near. Some quiet interrogation of passersby and I found the "Communal Building" and the Union. In I walked, past a large picture window, revealing a bar full of... goths. Dozens of them. Looking at me, they were. With their eyes. (Well, some of them.)
One of them wasmiss_soap. I felt reassured. I knew someone, at least. So I went in, bought an agreeably cheap pint of Taylors' Landlord, and joined her. Shortly thereafter bluekieran appeared and suddenly an hour had flown by and the last band of the night, Lights of Euphoria, was about to come on.
Expecting a recapitulation of the considerable hassle of on-the-door registration at DWCon, I was pleasantly surprised – I bought a wristband with no hassle and even saved the booking fee. The basement venue, a large but fairly typical grubby SU, was in stark contrast to the surprisingly rather plush bar upstairs, but the band were cool and I quickly foundchilderic, miss_wonderly, steer, nils and various other familiar faces.
I also made the acquaintance of my long-lost twin brother, the illustriousvin_petrol. Born on the same day, we share a height, build, hairstyle, spectacles prescription and fondness for obscure computers. Quite terrifying, really. Thankfully, there are differences. He's drawn to generously proportioned ladies in stripy tights and Formula One, for example, in more or less directly opposite degree to my antipathy for these things. Still worryingly close, though.
Alas, down here, there was no real ale, but despite discouraging reports on the website about normal bar hours, it was open 'til 2. You can guess what happened.
Friday night at DiscworldCon, Mark II.
Lots of beer, a certain degree of tipsiness and a head that was not a pleasant place to be in come Saturday morning. Dr Simon, bless his little leopardskin spandex socks, called me at 10:30am to invite me to breakfast, but happily, I had had the foresight to turn my phone off. I will not venture to describe further the state of my head, but suffice it to say that I found an episode of something called "Dawson's Creek" to be absorbing and fascinating entertainment.
I surfaced at about half two and headed in what I dimly recalled from the previous night's taxi ride was the direction of the city centre.
An hour later, this was beginning to seem less likely. Worse, I'd yet to spy a single curry shop. More chippies than you could shake a really quite large stick at, but no curry – even though many of said emporia were signposted in Hindi, Gujerati, Punjabi, Sinthi, Minthi and less readily-identifiable scripts. Eventually, I found a post office, whose proprietrix informed me that I was, predictably, going completely the wrong way - but also, critically, which bus to catch to get to the city centre.
Where I found a splendid international market in full and ebullient swing. This was the most I saw of Bradford, really, but it was great fun, from the authentically calorific Dutch waffle stall (ten miniature pancakes for £2) to the London-Borough-Market-in-exile village and a very fine gameless game pie from a Morecambe deli, where last I spent a not-really-very-dirty but highly enjoyable weekend withaeia about nine years ago. I wonder if they shipped it from Morecambe to London and back up to West Yorkshire specially?
Random roaming, dimly prompted by a signpost toward the Uni, eventually led me out of the market and to a "you are here" map which led me to believe I was nearly there.
I wasn't. And Bradford is very, very lumpy.
Half an hour later I crawled into a petrol station, where the proprietor refused to sell me a map but gave me directions to the campus. Down that street there and past the Roxy nightclub, apparently. Simon tells me this was the 80s metal hangout in Bradford a decade ago; now, all I know is that it's damned disconcerting when your taxi driver slows down specially to whistle his approbation at the hookers on the street corner.
We were meeting for a curry at 6. I staggered into the Union at 5:30. Andrea told me that they were off to Omar's on Great Horton Road, nicely in accordance with Bradford Uni alumnusdrpete's texted recommendation.
Then it was up to Simon to coordinate a group. The plans ganged agley, as is so oft do. Trying to coordinate not-goths-honest is a thankless task.
steer and suebeedoo wanted to go back and get changed first, miss_wonderly didn't fancy food – I think she eats roughly once per season – and vin_petrol and gothgrr weren't sure. Something like that. Anyway, Simon and I found a mate of his, Melanie, and off we trolled.
Omar's was mighty fine. Naans the size of a small duvet – I kid you not, they were approaching a yard long – and damned fine baltis for a fiver.
Then back to the Union, while Dr T went off to dolly himself up, for Plastic and Proyecto Mirage, who were both a bit too intense for me. Dr T reappeared in tiny tartan minikilt (the horrible evidence is here) - and even more worryingly, Vincent reappeared with a piece of clothing for me.
Now, what we have here is a failure to communicate, as an old Guns'n'Roses intro went. You see, Vin had said to me that he was going to wear a skirt or a kilt one night and he was happy to lend it to me if I wished. I was by this point feeling very unCyber and generally underdressed and underpierced, you understand.
I thought he was going to lend me the kilt.
Oh no.
No, he was offering a skirt. Not a kilt. Kilts are more than 18" from hem to waistband and are generally not made of black PVC.
Peer pressure is a terrible thing. Especially from one's own brother.
Suicide Commando rocked, despite yet more fire alarms. Still, they did give me time to natter to_whitenoise and aeia and meltie and nils and an utterly unexpected Caitriona McGrath, WINOLJ. Not my Caitriona that was but an entirely different Caitriona (there are hordes of them, you know) and just as Irish.
I had to check out on Sunday, so I was up sickeningly early. Lo, there was a goth checking out of my hotel. "I thought I was the only one," she said, "but there are two blokes sharing a room on my floor, and I suspect they're not the only ones." She was on first-name terms with the staff. Bradford isn't that small; I take this as a very positive sign.
Trendy Bradford cafe-bars do not open in the morning of bank holiday Sundays. Wetherspoons do, but these are a bit too declassé for some. I commend Bradford's National Museum of Photography, Film and Television, though. It has cool bits. I'm amazed a bunch of sleep deprived NotGoths ever escaped from the entrance archway wherewethey could watch themselves on entertainingly-distorted CCTV, mind.
It is a hard thing to go into a darkened basement and listen to pounding pounding techno music at 3pm on a Sunday. I bottled and went to the bar. I am hardly to be blamed if their nice safe innocuous milkshakes have vodka in.
I just wanted to sit and natter, but when I entered, there was not a soul I knew. By the time I'd bought my vanilla Mudshake, there was a Paul and a Lyssa. We found a table. Others found us. For the first hour I tried to keep track of names – I knewpurplestuart and flavius_m already, but many were new to me - _abby_ and bubblegum_fairy to name but two, and after that I quickly lose track. It was that kind of weekend. You wander up to someone you know, however vaguely, and within minutes you've met loads of new people. You could hardly ask for more.
Missed most of the bands. More curry. Assemblage 23 were awesome. I was persuaded into the skirt. And, on the principle of "in for a penny", into multiple fake ear piercings and some UV-reactive purple facepaint, carefully applied to the infamous imperial by Dr Trafford.
And almost no-one laughed at me, except certain bloody Norwegian DJs. [Grrrr] Many complements on legs, despite hairiness and a certain lack of symmetry. Left at some point and retired to afterparty, where I was pleasantly astonished to meet Mark Anthony – AKA Humanoid from various cons. It was a good little do – I've never been to a Sam Smith's nightclub before – but I was flagging fast by this point. By 6:30am I was pathetically grateful for 6'2" of Dr Simon's floor.
Infest rocks. It may not be very metal but it rocks anyway, and I love bleep regardless. A thousand thanks tochilderic for continually urging me to come to it and for company while there, and felicitations to all I blithered at or met for the duration.
If you're not a tardy muppet like myself, it needn't be that expensive, either – there's a communal coach up and the rooms in Halls are fairly cheap, I'm told. It was a blinding weekend and whilst I'm really sorry I missed Geoff's do, I had a terrific time. It's like Whitby without the posing and the attitude. And about 20 degrees warmer. I shall return.
Now for a couple of relatively quiet weekends in, I think...
geoffcampbell, was holding his annual party again. This time, though, it wasn't in relatively-handy Surrey, it was in West Wales, at his new gaff in Carmarthen. I really fancied going, but not on my elderly and sluggish BMW Boxer outfit. However, at the last minute, it emerged that a friend was going, by car, and was happy to offer me a lift.So, we went, arrived fashionably late – about 10:30pm, I think, to be greeted by
landsmand grinning Satanically through the flames of an enormous barbecue - we drank – lots – and lo, it was good. Very good.Since that year, I've been back every time, and it's always been an absolute hoot. I've ridden tiny trailies around rutted fields, I've larked about on the trike, I've borrowed
khaylock's street-legal trailie and hooned around the back lanes of Carmarthenshire, and generally had a really good time.This year was to be different.
For more than a month,
childeric had been trying to persuade me that what I really wanted to do was go to Infest - the UK's biggest dark electronic music festival. Essentially, about 400 goths in Bradford University Student Union for the weekend.I wanted to go. I really really wanted to go. But it was going to be damned expensive – especially since I'd left it too late for the cheap bus ride up and the digs in halls of residence.
I also really wanted to go to Geoff's, but I was put off by several things – for one, the weather, as it's been a really crap summer this year. For another, the fact that I have no working motorbike capable of taking me to Wales and back. And then, finally, discovered from a post in
flickgc's LJ at the last minute, the news that Kirsty and Mathias would be there. Now, yes, I'm talking to them again, but it's still extraordinarily difficult and painful to be around her, and whereas at the Slimelight or B Movie, in a crowd of hundreds, it's easy enough to not let it bother me, at a small gathering of 30-40 people, that's not possible – as I discovered at
drpete's birthday drinkie, for instance.So I thought sod it, let's go to Infest. A large amount of phoning around, starting with the Bradford tourist board, revealed that I could get a ticket on the door and a cheap-ish hotel room, at least for Friday and Saturday nights. A train ticket would be an only moderately agonizing £75 – probably less than Carmarthen, anyway.
So off I set on Friday afternoon. Taxi from station to hotel, dump stuff, straight to the Uni – where he dropped me at the main entrance, at ten at night, very far from home and very... unaccompanied. I have seldom felt more lost and alone in years. However, we'd passed Goths on the way, so I knew I was near. Some quiet interrogation of passersby and I found the "Communal Building" and the Union. In I walked, past a large picture window, revealing a bar full of... goths. Dozens of them. Looking at me, they were. With their eyes. (Well, some of them.)
One of them was
miss_soap. I felt reassured. I knew someone, at least. So I went in, bought an agreeably cheap pint of Taylors' Landlord, and joined her. Shortly thereafter bluekieran appeared and suddenly an hour had flown by and the last band of the night, Lights of Euphoria, was about to come on.Expecting a recapitulation of the considerable hassle of on-the-door registration at DWCon, I was pleasantly surprised – I bought a wristband with no hassle and even saved the booking fee. The basement venue, a large but fairly typical grubby SU, was in stark contrast to the surprisingly rather plush bar upstairs, but the band were cool and I quickly found
childeric, miss_wonderly, steer, nils and various other familiar faces. I also made the acquaintance of my long-lost twin brother, the illustrious
vin_petrol. Born on the same day, we share a height, build, hairstyle, spectacles prescription and fondness for obscure computers. Quite terrifying, really. Thankfully, there are differences. He's drawn to generously proportioned ladies in stripy tights and Formula One, for example, in more or less directly opposite degree to my antipathy for these things. Still worryingly close, though.Alas, down here, there was no real ale, but despite discouraging reports on the website about normal bar hours, it was open 'til 2. You can guess what happened.
Friday night at DiscworldCon, Mark II.
Lots of beer, a certain degree of tipsiness and a head that was not a pleasant place to be in come Saturday morning. Dr Simon, bless his little leopardskin spandex socks, called me at 10:30am to invite me to breakfast, but happily, I had had the foresight to turn my phone off. I will not venture to describe further the state of my head, but suffice it to say that I found an episode of something called "Dawson's Creek" to be absorbing and fascinating entertainment.
I surfaced at about half two and headed in what I dimly recalled from the previous night's taxi ride was the direction of the city centre.
An hour later, this was beginning to seem less likely. Worse, I'd yet to spy a single curry shop. More chippies than you could shake a really quite large stick at, but no curry – even though many of said emporia were signposted in Hindi, Gujerati, Punjabi, Sinthi, Minthi and less readily-identifiable scripts. Eventually, I found a post office, whose proprietrix informed me that I was, predictably, going completely the wrong way - but also, critically, which bus to catch to get to the city centre.
Where I found a splendid international market in full and ebullient swing. This was the most I saw of Bradford, really, but it was great fun, from the authentically calorific Dutch waffle stall (ten miniature pancakes for £2) to the London-Borough-Market-in-exile village and a very fine gameless game pie from a Morecambe deli, where last I spent a not-really-very-dirty but highly enjoyable weekend with
aeia about nine years ago. I wonder if they shipped it from Morecambe to London and back up to West Yorkshire specially?Random roaming, dimly prompted by a signpost toward the Uni, eventually led me out of the market and to a "you are here" map which led me to believe I was nearly there.
I wasn't. And Bradford is very, very lumpy.
Half an hour later I crawled into a petrol station, where the proprietor refused to sell me a map but gave me directions to the campus. Down that street there and past the Roxy nightclub, apparently. Simon tells me this was the 80s metal hangout in Bradford a decade ago; now, all I know is that it's damned disconcerting when your taxi driver slows down specially to whistle his approbation at the hookers on the street corner.
We were meeting for a curry at 6. I staggered into the Union at 5:30. Andrea told me that they were off to Omar's on Great Horton Road, nicely in accordance with Bradford Uni alumnus
drpete's texted recommendation.Then it was up to Simon to coordinate a group. The plans ganged agley, as is so oft do. Trying to coordinate not-goths-honest is a thankless task.
steer and suebeedoo wanted to go back and get changed first, miss_wonderly didn't fancy food – I think she eats roughly once per season – and vin_petrol and gothgrr weren't sure. Something like that. Anyway, Simon and I found a mate of his, Melanie, and off we trolled.Omar's was mighty fine. Naans the size of a small duvet – I kid you not, they were approaching a yard long – and damned fine baltis for a fiver.
Then back to the Union, while Dr T went off to dolly himself up, for Plastic and Proyecto Mirage, who were both a bit too intense for me. Dr T reappeared in tiny tartan minikilt (the horrible evidence is here) - and even more worryingly, Vincent reappeared with a piece of clothing for me.
Now, what we have here is a failure to communicate, as an old Guns'n'Roses intro went. You see, Vin had said to me that he was going to wear a skirt or a kilt one night and he was happy to lend it to me if I wished. I was by this point feeling very unCyber and generally underdressed and underpierced, you understand.
I thought he was going to lend me the kilt.
Oh no.
No, he was offering a skirt. Not a kilt. Kilts are more than 18" from hem to waistband and are generally not made of black PVC.
Peer pressure is a terrible thing. Especially from one's own brother.
Suicide Commando rocked, despite yet more fire alarms. Still, they did give me time to natter to
_whitenoise and aeia and meltie and nils and an utterly unexpected Caitriona McGrath, WINOLJ. Not my Caitriona that was but an entirely different Caitriona (there are hordes of them, you know) and just as Irish.I had to check out on Sunday, so I was up sickeningly early. Lo, there was a goth checking out of my hotel. "I thought I was the only one," she said, "but there are two blokes sharing a room on my floor, and I suspect they're not the only ones." She was on first-name terms with the staff. Bradford isn't that small; I take this as a very positive sign.
Trendy Bradford cafe-bars do not open in the morning of bank holiday Sundays. Wetherspoons do, but these are a bit too declassé for some. I commend Bradford's National Museum of Photography, Film and Television, though. It has cool bits. I'm amazed a bunch of sleep deprived NotGoths ever escaped from the entrance archway where
It is a hard thing to go into a darkened basement and listen to pounding pounding techno music at 3pm on a Sunday. I bottled and went to the bar. I am hardly to be blamed if their nice safe innocuous milkshakes have vodka in.
I just wanted to sit and natter, but when I entered, there was not a soul I knew. By the time I'd bought my vanilla Mudshake, there was a Paul and a Lyssa. We found a table. Others found us. For the first hour I tried to keep track of names – I knew
purplestuart and flavius_m already, but many were new to me - _abby_ and bubblegum_fairy to name but two, and after that I quickly lose track. It was that kind of weekend. You wander up to someone you know, however vaguely, and within minutes you've met loads of new people. You could hardly ask for more. Missed most of the bands. More curry. Assemblage 23 were awesome. I was persuaded into the skirt. And, on the principle of "in for a penny", into multiple fake ear piercings and some UV-reactive purple facepaint, carefully applied to the infamous imperial by Dr Trafford.
And almost no-one laughed at me, except certain bloody Norwegian DJs. [Grrrr] Many complements on legs, despite hairiness and a certain lack of symmetry. Left at some point and retired to afterparty, where I was pleasantly astonished to meet Mark Anthony – AKA Humanoid from various cons. It was a good little do – I've never been to a Sam Smith's nightclub before – but I was flagging fast by this point. By 6:30am I was pathetically grateful for 6'2" of Dr Simon's floor.
Infest rocks. It may not be very metal but it rocks anyway, and I love bleep regardless. A thousand thanks to
childeric for continually urging me to come to it and for company while there, and felicitations to all I blithered at or met for the duration.If you're not a tardy muppet like myself, it needn't be that expensive, either – there's a communal coach up and the rooms in Halls are fairly cheap, I'm told. It was a blinding weekend and whilst I'm really sorry I missed Geoff's do, I had a terrific time. It's like Whitby without the posing and the attitude. And about 20 degrees warmer. I shall return.
Now for a couple of relatively quiet weekends in, I think...
