Whitby Review, April 2006: Back in Black

Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, this spring's Whitby event was to have been held a week later. Unfortunately, it turned out that this clashed with another festival, which would mean there wasn't enough accommodation available in the small seaside town for the attendees of either. On account of this, Whitby Jo moved the dates. "Eep!" said Erith and I, who had already booked our cottage; but fortunately the letting agency were very understanding and were willing to change our booking at no cost. However, the change of date made it impossible for Donald to attend. He was at EasterCon (here in Glasgow) the previous weekend. He handled himself very well there - sometimes a single evening of partying will exhaust him, never mind four solid days - but had quite a hangover afterwards, and also a lot of studying to get done for his OU course. Personally, I really needed my holiday, having gone through an exhausting few months with both work and medical matters, so we agreed that I would take the unprecedented step of leaving him behind with flatmates and his mum to help should an emergency occur. This made me nervous at the outset, but nevertheless I was determined to have a good time, for both our sakes.

The drive down to Whitby this time was about the best I've ever experienced. The weather was perfect, mild and not too windy, and we hardly got stuck in traffic at all. For a change, we stopped in the old market town of Appleby for lunch, finding a pub in which we could watch the news. I got a huge submarine sandwich containing two Cumberland sausages, two slices of bacon and two eggs, accompanied by a large and very tasty salad; Stuart (Potatojunkie) and Erith had similar sandwiches full of steak. Logan's Run then came on the television, and we were seriously tempted just to sit around and drink and watch it, but instead we got back in Horus and finished our journey. Along the way, playing our traditional game, we spotted twenty two dead birds, eleven dead mammals, seven unidentifiable meat smears, three shoes, a boot, and a yellow megaphone. Erith's CD player also seemed to be dead (or dying), and it took a lot of work to persuade him to let us sing; when this was permitted it consisted of him and Stuart chanting "Goth, goth, goth, goth..." as we assailed our destination.

Time and Tide, our new residence, is delightfully positioned in a little yard just off Flowergate. Even limping as I was, I could get between it and the pub in less than a minute. The cottage is small but functional; I searched it whilst the others unloaded and then shopped. Stuart and I had an attic room at the top which we both had to duck to get into; I took the far side of the bed to reduce the risk of head injuries, as the ceiling was even lower there. From our tiny window we could see right across the town, a maze of red rooftops, to the far cliff with its ruined abbey and St. Mary's Church. To our left (and northward) lay a flat expanse of blue sea.

As we long ago learned the importance of pre-festival fortification, the three of us ate a good meal before we went out - tasty lasagne prepared by Erith's mum. We then progressed to the Elsinore, which was filling up fast, and managed to secure the end of a table. The Emperor Penguin (henceforth to be referred to as TEP), Adsevin and Tig soon joined us, and also EdwardS, his new bat companion, and Siani, and assorted others. I happily reacquainted myself with the lovely smooth taste of Murphy's. Stuart was exhausted and had to go home early to sleep, but I stayed out for some hours, until the smoke finally made me feel too ill. All the Scots there - even the smokers - agreed that it's much more pleasant north of the border since the ban, and that we'd forgotten how icky such an atmosphere could be. Anyway, I made my way home to look out on the abbey by night and then curl up beside Stuart. Unfortunately he was too sleepy to help unlace my dress, and since the damage in my arms got worse I can't do it myself, so I slept in a tangle of lycra and lace, listening to the faint cries of the gulls.

Thursday is always shopping day, a race to get round the second hand shops before some other bastard nabs the good stuff. Stuart woke me early, full of energy, but afterwards became sleepy again, so I went downstairs on my own, curious at the state of the place. I cleaned vomit off the toilet seat and mended the toilet roll holder. The living room was feverishly hot. The window seemed to be painted shut, so I opened the door and listened to the sounds of local people coming and going in the yard beyond. Thus I ate breakfast and tried in vain to make the television work. Eventually Erith staggered downstairs, looking faintly grey. He remembered having gone back to Fury's flat; he remembered drinking vodka and vermouth; he remembered looking after somebody else who was vomiting there (it later emerged that Fury had spent the morning repairing her bathroom in much the same way I had). He didn't remember getting home. It sounded like an ominous start to the weekend.

Eventually, when the others felt ready, we set out on our quest. Right away, Stuart found himself a zebra print briefcase. We thought he was going to have his usual jam, but I believe I inadvertently stole it, for that was the end of his luck. Meanwhile, as we made our way along the High Street, I found a useful long black tiered cotton skirt, a black feather boa with shiny dark green bits in it (a combination I've always liked), a black and green lace suspender belt and a black and red lacy basque with a subtle polka dot pattern. Misplacing Erith, Stuart and I then went to Somerfield to buy our first whole roast chicken of the weekend (as the previous day had obtained the title of Onionday, this was duly labelled Meatday). I wore the basque in the evening when we returned to the pub. There I found my dear old friend Paul and we spent a long time catching up; I learned that he's planning to attend BiCon, where I shall look forward to having more such conversations and to meeting his new boyfriend. He was off to the Metropole later, but I couldn't really be bothered with an overcrowded club night, and left a little early to get Stuart home, as he was coming down with a headache.

On Friday morning Stuart was still sore but a little more lively, so we breakfasted together whilst catching up with the news on Ceefax, then made arrangements to meet Richard and Siani. We took the wheelchair so as to save my strength and make better speed, and the five of us made our way to the Spa, there to ask for our tickets (once again) at the stall, since they'd been too disorganised to send them out to us. They claimed they only owed us four, but I insisted it was six, and things got sorted out without too much (more) trouble. Lucky for them, as this was Meanday, when everyone could enjoy being meaner to others than they would otherwise consider appropriate. I was then able to leave the chair there whilst looking around the bazaar, where there wouldn't be room to fall over even if I tried. It was in the bazaar that I first realised there was something odd about this weekend. Everywhere I looked, I saw people in black. If that sounds like what you'd expect from a goth weekend, you haven't been paying attention, but it pleased me a great deal. It seems that the cyber-techno fad for goth clubs is finally fading, giving our Whitby even back to those who really care about it. Of course, there were still a few cybers around, but only those who genuinely like goth stuff too, and they are most welcome. The wig stall in the bazaar had actual wigs on it again, not just string and plastic hair extensions. Also, there was at last some innovation and variation in the clothes on the more traditional goth stalls. Stallholders remarked that "More people seem to be actually buying things this year, instead of just looking", as if it were all a mystery rather than the natural consequence of supplying them with something they actually wanted to buy. I got a long tiered shiny turquoise skirt with black mesh overlay, which I'm very pleased with. I also enjoyed looking round a lot more than usual.

After the Spa, I got back in my chair and Stuart pushed me along to the Metropole. We both enjoyed the clear sea view and the excellent wheelchair-friendly pavements which Whitby has, making travel much faster and easier than it is in Glasgow - of course, this meant that Stuart was continually tempted to see how fast he could go and for how long he could let go of the bars. His record for the weekend was to clap his hands twelve times in succession before getting hold of the chair again. "Fuck you, Higgs' boson! Fuck you, laws of physics!" he cried, and we sang Breaking the Law in a Beavis and Butthead stylee. All this beside hundred foot high cliffs. Who said that the disabled have no excitement in their lives?

In the Metropole, Stuart finally had some luck, finding himself a pair of stretchy purple and black trousers with holes cut out all the way down the sides. I was pleased to find a red and black feather boa for just five pounds. I also got a wee black polka dot top on the second hand stall, plus a beautiful long dark blue and black satin skirt which used to belong to Rose; Chewy said she'd paid a fortune for it and would be relieved it had gone to a good home. I shall always feel extra responsible for taking care of it now. Afterwards we travelled to the Leisure Centre where we didn't find anything we wanted but did see some good quality stuff at surprisingly low prices. The floor there was flat and smooth, with more free space, so I practiced moving the wheelchair myself; whilst I'm not strong enough to handle it outside or take it very far, it's useful to be able to do at least a bit. I also have a feeling that having learned to navigate difficult corners crammed with distracted drunk people will be useful when I start my driving lessons. Going home under a mound of bulging carrier bags, Stuart and I were stopped by some guy from the Whitby Gazette who wanted to take our photograph - a token disabled person for the goth spread. He got Stuart to lean against the back of the chair, hiding his outfit. Stuart protested that they always photograph us at our least dressed up. I don't mind so much - at least they made some effort to represent the event as a whole this time around, instead of just printing three pages of day-glo string and cleavage. Erith had their latest edition back at the cottage, including an article on the forthcoming memorial service for our dear friend Tal.

After a big dinner of bacon and cheese pasta that evening, Stuart rushed off to the Spa, devoted to his duties as a reviewer. Erith and I watched the news and got changed, then took the chair and followed suit. He wore a black suit with slicked back hair and a Blade Runner badge on his arm, plus a red scrolling LED badge featuring a Voigt-Kampff test; however, he didn't managed to find any replicants, and instead found EdwardS, who was wearing a blue scrolling LED badge reading 'do not feed'. I wore a diaphonous white tutu from San Fransisco, which glowed impressively under UV; Fury said I looked "like a little goth fairy". She was rather the worse for an awful lot of vodka, but clearly having fun, and she introduced me to Tal's sister Urve, ostensibly there for the memorial service but fitting in rather well in the same shoes she'd worn to goth clubs in the 'eighties - I hadn't previously been aware that there was a family connection. All in all, my people were rather thinner on the ground than usual, many of them having been put off by the rising cost of tickets and increasingly poor organisation of the Spa events, but I still had a good time. It was roundly agreed that there will always be a goth event in Whitby, with or without what is presently its official core, simply because people want to see each other.

When I found Stuart (resplendent in his cheongsam, though unfortunately he hadn't been able to find anyone who could fix up his hair) he said that the first band had been okay but the middle two bands had been shite, and showed me a picture of a woman in awful pointy-bra'd gaffa tape Madonna costume. I guess it was supposed to be a joke, but it really didn't work. I was later told that the band in question were Misty Woods and GDM, including Dave Ball (whom I've seen before with Soft Cell) - I had meant to catch them, but had thought they were on the following day. Ach well. Stuart advised me that Ms Woods' main thing had been flouncing around the stage, which was never going to work when she was competing with Mike from Manuskript. Nobody can flounce quite like him, as I was reminded when I took my place beside the photographers' pit for he night's closing performance. They played a lot of new material, gradually becoming more fun as they warmed up, then a couple of old favourites and an entertaining cover of It's a Sin, in which they demonstrated to the full their unmatched capacity for overstatement. I always feel sorry for them having been born ten years too late - they should have been 'eighties pop heart-throbs. Still, it was a great show, and afterwards there was more drinking and socialising before we went home to eat cheese and go to bed.

Erith left early on Saturday morning (or the morning of Medianday, as it was named, being right in the middle of our week) to visit his sister in York. Stuart went out to get a whole roast chicken for breakfast, in the course of which a checkout assistant accidentally covered himself in chicken juices, doubtless tempting passing cannibals. We ate heartily whilst watching the snooker. Stuart became angry that Steve Davis wasn't doing as well as his intelligent play merited, so that we were delayed a little longer than we'd intended, and by the time we got to the Metropole the second hand stall was closing down. Just in time, Stuart grabbed himself a pair of leather trousers. Whilst I scoured other stalls, he talked to Siani, who was somewhat green in colour after some unwise drinking choices at Giolla's the previous night. Apparently EdwardS had found her in the bath that morning, refusing to move, renaming it 'the vomitorium'.

After the Metropole, Stuart and I went back to the Spa, where I picked up the pale pink and black polka dot lace mini skirt I'd had my eye on earlier and bought Stuart a layered red and white (with black) tartan skirt. This latter was attractively decorated with zips, but also had really stupid girly patches. When we got home, to find Erith proudly arranging the beers he'd purchased, I spent an hour unpicking the patches to fix the skirt. This left little time for me to pull on my skirts and my Funhouse corset and get my hair braided as I felt was appropriate for the service down on the beach. Erith went ahead to help out and Stuart and I followed, me taking my time crossing the cobbles with my stick.

Since Tal had been ill for some time before his sudden death last November, he'd had the opportunity to discuss how he wanted to go out, and Fury did her utmost to make it happen. Though she wasn't allowed to send his body out on a longboat, no such regulations governed the disposal of his ashes. Chewy, a carpenter by trade, had built a very fine dragon-prowed boat which sat in the water as a crowd gathered and it was noted "Of course, as it's Tal's thing, the bloody tide is late." EdwardS, handing out programmes, protested that he'd had no idea so many would be needed, but it wasn't until Tal's brother Lembit's speech that I really took in what was going on. "I'm a Member of Parliament" he said "and still I see my brother draws a bigger crowd." At which I looked up, and what I saw left me with a deeper sense of awe that any other part of what occurred. Not only was the beach full, but the guest houses up above it were full of open windows with people looking out; up above them, the clifftop graveyard held many more. There were people lined up all the way out along the stone pier which lines the beach we were using. The far shore of the harbour was likewise packed; and up above it, along the clifftop road to the Spa, further watchers stood. Those of us with experience in crowd counting estimated the total at about eight hundred. I though most must be there purely for the spectacle, but later, when I talked to them, many locals assured me that they remembered Tal and had grown fond of him over the course of his many visits to their town. The Vikings themselves believed that the greatest thing a man could achieve in life was to leave behind a great reputation, and Tal did their legend proud. My poem for him, still unfinished thanks to my own feelings of inadequacy, ended - appropriately, I think - with the words 'Thor's head shall be in the mouth of the wolf before that red fire is forgotten'.

I don't know how much that huge crowd could follow of the ceremony itself. Music was played - Immigrant Song, Starman, and Guiding Star, a song of Tal's own, in which he sounded much more impressive than anything I'd previously heard - and people spoke of what he had meant to them. Fury talked of the man she'd loved, Joe of a good friend, Lembit of a beloved brother who still owed him money.

Preacher gave the final speech, declaring "There's one thing remaining that we can do for Tal. Start a fire." Then the burning arrows were fired into the ship. The Whitby Gazette later described it as having been 'liberally doused with an accelerant'. As a matter of fact, it had been very carefully doused with more than one accelerant, and there were explosive charges in there too in case the arrows missed. We don't take chances with our dead. The boat burned spectacularly, rich orange flames with a tiny violet flame at their centre, and from this a plume of black smoke drifted skyward, hesitated, and turned south against the wind. We stood watching until the prow collapsed; it was considered then that Tal had done what he had to do, though I doubt that there shall ever be a time when we gather without raising a glass to his memory.

After the burning of the boat, we went up to the Spa. Stuart still had a job to do, and I wanted to sit for a while and drink vodka and think. The crowd was even thinner than before, but in some ways this made it easier to socialise, and I talked to a few new people as well as the mandatory ones who'd read my work and nervously came up to say hello (something which, provided I'm not already busy talking, I don't mind in the least, so they should try being less nervous about it). I caught up with my friend Hirez and ended up offering to read some of his work, which offer I stand by, so I hope we can arrange it. I also talked for a while with James, who is hoping to arrange a memorial bench of Tal in Whitby.

Just before midnight, Fury and Lembit arrived. I advised the latter that, as one of very few people who'd known his brother and come out of it financially better off (thanks to numerous donations of mead at beach parties), I really had to buy him a drink. "I don't drink on Sundays." he explained. "So you've got four minutes." Fortunately, Stuart has a way with bar queues (big eyes and lace-up dresses seem to help), so the request was fulfilled, and the drink duly downed. Whilst I was a little concerned at meeting yet another person who started our conversation with "I've heard of you", I enjoyed talking to Lembit, hearing about various things which Tal had never told me. It was odd how comfortable we all felt, in the circumstances, I think because we all had a sense of Tal's presence in that place, as if at any time he might walk around a corner looking for his friends. Though he's gone, he's still part of us. Goth was never just about the music.

Later that night, Stuart and I went to a party in Giolla's flat, next door to Fury's. Erith was there already, tarting at Arachne, who was sitting on Giolla's lap looking distinctly like a woman who already had plans for the night. Preacher gave me his seat, which was very kind of him and meant I was able to stay, but it was difficult to socialise from one corner; for quite a while I was trapped next to a group of teenagers making proclamations about sexuality which, considering what I expect to be lecturing on later this year, made it all feel too much like work; I determined not to be drawn in. Instead, I drank, and before too long Adsevin came over, pretty much sober as always, so that real conversation was possible. I enjoyed hanging around there for a couple of hours, but then Stuart fell asleep on the arm of the chair and needed to be taken home. We made our way precariously down steel grid steps which could support neither my stick nor his stilettos; then he tried to wander in the wrong direction, but he wasn't being too stubborn about it, so we got back in one piece.

On the morning of Sunday (or, as it was otherwise known, Depechemodeday), there was nothing urgent to do, and poor Stuart felt awful, his hangover combining with his headache, so I got him painkillers and water (trickier than it sounds when one has to climb the stairs on all fours) and then sat in the living room to read my book, a collection of non-fiction articles by Ramsey Campbell. I did feel sorry for Stuart, especially with him being nine years my junior and me having put away at least a half bottle of vodka (plus a pint of guinness) to no ill effect - this after five months of scarcely drinking at all, too. When he had recovered sufficiently, he came downstairs and we tried on our new clothes. He looked spectacular in his purple trousers, which, dare I say it, are still dodgier than the ones which he previously made famous. He wore them to the chocolate shop where I purchased supplies whilst he took photographs (an activity which the owner later described to Adsevin, identifying him as 'the really good looking one'). Afterwards, we walked across the harbour into the old town to seek nourishment in the Whitby Tea Rooms. A pot of tea accompanied by roast chicken and stuffing sandwiches did the trick. He was still hungry, so we went to get scampi, and I sat talking to a toddler who was fascinated by my stick, determining that its most interesting quality was its ability to be turned round. It was then time for a visit to the second hand bookshop on Grape Lane. I got Honoré de Balzac's Cousine Bette, Nigel Kneale's Quatermass and a book about the Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins. This latter kept me busy later in the day as Stuart prepared for 'Eighties Night at Laughtons, though a bit more time to prepare might have been handy, given the way that his tight little silver dress kept slipping down at the front. Meanwhile, Erith was getting into his suit and trilby for a ska night which he and Hirez had heard about, though he was a little confused by the reluctance with which the woman at its venue had sold him a ticket.

Tig came by to keep me company that evening, getting along pretty well at Whitby for her first time but disinclined to attend a club when she didn't feel like dancing. Instead we ate the cold sausages which Erith had been saving to make sandwiches and then went to the pub. It was pretty quiet, but we caught up on one another's gossip and chatted to a couple of local goths also attending for the first time. At some point during this time I got a nervous text message from Erith about skinheads and suspicious tattoos. "Keep your head down and don't get into conversation." I advised, realising immediately thereafter that I really ought to have told him in no uncertain terms not to speak at all - if he was in the situation I suspected he was in, his middle class Scottish accent would not go down well. I was relieved when he turned up safe and well in the pub an hour later, with Hirez having been delayed there all along by a friend buying beer. It had not been the kind of ska night he'd hoped for after all, but the other kind, very much a night for certain locals - perhaps we should have been tipped off by the fact it was St. George's Day. At least he'd had the sense to sit near the door when he entered an unfamiliar but almost empty bar. Gradually he'd watched people come in, realised that almost all of them had shaven heads, started to see what were clearly prison tattoos, then spiderweb tattos on elbows and on someone's Adam's apple, then 'UK skins' on the back of people's necks. The large number of England tops could have been related to St. George, but the large number of England tattoos made him increasingly nervous. Then he went to the toilets. I could have slapped him when he told me that, as it would be close to number one on my list of really stupid things to do in such a situation. What's more, he washed his hands in there, equivalent to shouting through a megaphone that he was upper middle class. The men at the urinal started discussing how somebody in there looked to them like an Orthodox Jew, and he listened with some curiosity before realising they meant him. Even then, though he got out of the toilets sharpish, he waited until the band took a break before leaving the venue.

Hearing all this, I was quite surprised to see him in one piece; it also made me concerned that something might happen at the end of 'Eighties Night, which would seem like an obvious target to a group of Nazis looking for a fight, and this made me all the more anxious to get down there before Stuart emerged. I may not be able to walk well these days, but I can still fight if I have to, especially armed with my stick, and I can organise; and any fucker who wants to mess with my man is going to have to go through me first. As it turned out, though, the streets were swarming with police, so I guess any potential trouble had already been headed off. We set up chairs outside Laughton's as usual and Erith offered tea from his flask to the exhausted goths emerging.

Siani, close to collapsing (until the thought of a kebab restored her strength) was given a chair, and she sat down and showed me her wound, a subcutaneous tear on her underarm which was apparently Stuart's fault for swinging her about during The Irish Rover. When he emerged he was surprisingly bruise free but was really struggling to walk - I had warned him not to go there in stilettos. Adsevin told me that his top had been falling down all night and she'd had to keep fixing it, but still we received complaints that he'd been wearing to much this year. He promised to do better next time.

Since he was so broken, we didn't hang around for long, but headed off along the High Street. There we were joined by Faith, who was talking about the earlier football match between the goth team and the Whitby Gazette's. "What was the score?" I asked. "I've been trying to find out all evening." She told me it was seven two to Whitby. Ach, that's better than usual. Her man had scored a goal. "You must be proud." I said. "For Whitby!" she spat, and assured me he'd be sleeping on the floor. "You two look really good." she told us, and tried to assimilate us into the uphill flow of goths going to Odi's party, but we slipped away behind some vans (wary of a hundred goths following us back to our place, where we'd been asked not to make too much noise at night) and escaped. We were both too tired for that sort of thing. We read our books for a little while, then went to bed.

For some reason, Monday was known as Brain Day, despite the fact that nobody seemed to have a functional brain to use for it; we assumed they must all be somewhere else, working toward some higher purpose. The morning passed slowly with food and books; in the afternoon there was an abortive trip to get sushi, as the place which had been serving it last year had stopped. Siani related gossip from Odi's party, which had been overcrowded as one might expect, and showed us her bruise again; it was now a really lurid purple, though it did complement her dress and hair. EdwardS finally got a picture of me with his fish-eye camera lens; he was collecting a series of close-up portraits. Stuart and I then went for milkshakes in Java whilst he checked his mail. I was scrupulously staying away from computers for the week, having enough trouble avoiding getting sucked back into work as it was.

Erith headed out early on Monday evening, having, as usual, a commitment to helping build the fire. This included following the Harbour Master's request to dispose of the trestle which had been used for Tal's longboat. Stuart and I remained in the cottage. Stuart's headache got worse and worse. Eventually he said that he simply wouldn't be able to accompany me down to the fire. Of course, it would have been dangerous for me to go on my own, with too many steep slopes and too much uneven ground for me to cross in places where nobody else might pass by to find me if I fell; besides, I didn't want to leave him alone in that state. We're worried about the cause of these headaches and it was all rather difficult to deal with. So I sat forlornly in the living room, reading about HP Lovecraft, until he called down to me "Come up here and listen to the walls." A strange request, I thought, feeling rather as if I'd been asked to go and see some puppies, but my enquiries could solicit no further information, so up I went. I was immediately aware of the reason for his request. From the wall beside our bed came a loud scrabbling. "It's rat." I told him, discerning the individual movements of nimble fingers on each hand. Nothing else that size has fingers like that. A male rat, but by no means as big as they get. Rats in the walls! We were very proud. It struggled to recover the beam from which it had evidently fallen, then scampered off happily around the room.

Later that evening, standing at the window, I watched a ball of fire come flying upwards from the direction of the beach, curve back down again, then repeat the arc in the other direction; it was followed by what looked like a burning stave. I began to think that I might, after all, be happier not to be there. Then Stuart began to recover, and determined that we would go to the beach, damn it, even if we were late. As he said this, the church bells chimed for midnight. I felt nervous about making the journey when I was so tired, so I drank some vodka and went anyway. The cool air helped to revive us both. Down on the sand, we found a small but resilient group of friends who directed us to our seats and then asked if we wanted something from the free bar. Apparently we'd missed the buffet table, but there was still food if we wanted it. Bloody Hell, we're getting civilised in our old age! The other thing we'd missed, which I'd witnessed from our window, was maffball, a game which Giolla described as being a bit like shinty but with fire. At intervals, those who had not yet tired of it batted a burning ball around the beach. There were still a couple of people practicing fire poi, which is always beautiful to watch. Various people walked across the fire, sometimes carrying other people, occasionally setting light to their clothes. Giolla and Preacher performed the duelling scene from The Princess Bride across it. I sat and drank and caught up with my friends. Arachne revealed that she had been inspired to become a goth as a result of seeing me in the University of Glasgow's computing labs. I swear it's a conspiracy to make me take responsibility for something. Meanwhile, assorted people removed bits of their clothing and a man drank wine from his own belly button after failing to find another volunteer.

As more drink was put away, Fury announced that we were all going to play a game in which we took it in turns to sing a song, each one to begin with (or be by a band beginning with) the next letter of the alphabet. Of course, most people were too shy to take turns, so it quickly became clear that it would have to be a group thing. Then they became stuck on the letter 'A'. "Alien Sex Fiend? Attrition? Adrenaline?" I suggested in my smoke-damaged voice, but inspiration struck the group in the form of Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley. Um. It went downhill from there. Nevertheless, we had tremendous fun, and I stuck around until Z, when the sputtering sparks (a real burning risk to my lupus-damaged skin) and would-be acrobats crashing into the sand beside me became too much to deal with, and Stuart took me home. I learned that later, using up the last of the paraffin, Preacher tried filling up the big carpet tubes which we'd used as pillars (Erith had used some to help him structure the original fire, then looked at it with a shudder and determined "I should really stop making elder signs on the bottom of bonfires."), but they didn't burn because, of course, there was no oxygen getting in at the bottom. When he lifted one up, it belched fire in great streaks from either end. He proceeded to try and twirl it like a baton, and set himself alight again.

Waking up on Tuesday morning, I found the house smelling faintly of smoke, but nothing there was damaged. On the arm of the couch lay a neatly drawn map indicating that the potatoes which Stuart and I had requested be buried by the fire for us were to be found underneath a three stone cairn. After dressing and frying some breakfast (including the delicious eggs Siani had given us from the chickens she keeps at home), Stuart and I borrowed Erith's entrenching tool and walked back down to the beach to dig up our six silver nuggest of treasure. Alas, we discovered that they had been buried too far from the fire, and were not cooked at all. Ach well; better luck next time. Whilst Stuart dug, I stood looking out to see, watching low cloud shift against the horizon. At my feet, the lapping waves revealed a single burned ship's timber, a last souvenir of Tal. There was seaweed tangled round it. A small girl, whose goth parents were picnicking further along the shore, diligently collected this and placed it in her bucket. A jewel from the crown of Aeigr shed as he reached out and missed what flew so surely into the sky. A decoration, perhaps, for a sandcastle.

Pottering around the shops in the old part of town, Stuart and I obtained presents for the people back home and picked up a copy of the latest Whitby Gazette, ordering the next one for delivery to Glasgow. We sat reading it in the Whitby Tea Rooms whilst we waited for EdwardS and Siani, who were only just out of bed, to join us. They were damp and tired, having stayed by the fire until dawn, but tea and scones restored us all. Stuart left the cafe early to hurry to the arcades and defend his Star Wars Trilogy Arcade high scores; as it turned out he only managed to take thirteenth place, but the top nine scores remained his from previous visits. Siani and I wandered round the shops on the promenade, where I found a jewelled bee napkin ring for Stuart, who is a great fan of all the hymenoptera. He was excited to receive it, and we sat together on a wall there until the sun started to affect me too badly, then enjoyed a shady walk home, his poor feet still hurting too much from the previous night to permit further adventures. In the cottage I finished my book and cooked us all some pasta. We went out to the pub at about nine to find Adsevin and TEP sitting alone wondering where everyone had gone. It's hard to do Whitby without access to text messaging these days. I explained that they were at dinner, and in due course they returned, a big heap of them, but by then Stuart was exhausted and had to return to the cottage to sleep. I sat in a corner talking to Siani, who showed off her new pinstripe skirt but lamented that it was a little too tight and was starting to tear at the seams. "I'll have it!" said Arachne, but Siani told her that her bum wasn't big enough and made her bend over to demonstrate. Various other people popped by, and Fury assured me that she intends to visit Glasgow within the next few months; along with Siani and Malcolm, who is planning some sort of tour, this will keep us quite busy.

I didn't stay all night in the pub as I would have liked to; the smoke was too bad and started to give me breathing difficulties again. Returning home, I found Stuart in a really bad way with his neck, did what I could for him, then went downstairs to organise what I could of my packing. Erith gave me tea (with honey) and sympathy. I was tired, and got to bed by one, hugging Stuart until he managed to sleep. He had entitled that day Painday.

Fortunately, when Wednesday morning arrived, Stuart was quite a bit livelier, though I felt awful, having had very little sleep. Just to make it worse, Erith gave us pepper spray for breakfast, frying chilli seeds in a pan and then realising he'd failed to add sufficient oil. We sat around the room coughing and choking, not realising what had afflicted us, me trying not to be sick. Stuart helped me with my packing, shouting "In your face, Euclid!" as he triumphantly closed my borrowed rucksack. In the circumstances, I think we did well to have our stuff out of the cottage by eleven. Erith took Horus across the harbour to collect a folding chair from Adsevin whilst Stuart and I returned the keys to the agency and picked up further supplies from the chocolate shop. We walked right out along the promenade to find a shop which could supplies us with fishcakes as a gift for Donald. "Take a trip on the lifeboat, leaving right now!" an old sailor repeated ad absurdum. We sat on the bandstand singing Residents songs as holidaymakers bustled around us. Then Horus arrived, and it was time to go.

The journey back home was in many ways less pleasant than the journey there. Wedged into the back, I had no way of sitting which didn't put pressure on one or other of my wounds, and the pain made me feel more and more nauseous. Stuart offered to swap places, but I knew it would fuck up his neck and saw no point in exchanging my pain for his. I was much better once we got to Appleby and I got to walk around in the fresh air. A cheese jacket potato in the pub restored me sufficiently that I became ravenously hungry and, since the chef had just left, had to visit a nearby cafe to obtain a second such meal. Later, when we were almost back in Glasgow, Erith revealed something which he had apparently considered to be of no interest - that the CD player was working again. A bit of Nick Cave did wonders for morale, especially as we spent half an hour in traffic travelling the last three miles. A strange journey, on which the death count was one shoe, one wheelbarrow, eight unidentifiable meat smears, nine mammals, and seventy birds, over three times what we usually see. I am wondering if I ought to inform the Ministry of Agriculture, especially as a good number of those corpses looked intact. Perhaps a plague is coming. Strange days before they end.

We'll be back in October, of course, the ravages of time notwithstanding. If that's all there is, then let's keep on dancing.

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