venta

mejoff assured me on Monday that there is an Institution (similar to Freshers' Flu) called The Whitby Cold. I'm not convinced, because I've never had one before and - let's face it - owing to goth weekends, folk festivals, arbitrary daytrips and regattae, I've spent more time in Whitby than most non-residents.

However, I have a cold. It was a reasonably benign and snuffly cold until yesterday, when it decided to take up residence in my stomach. It has been extremely malign since, and frankly I'm unimpressed. Whitby may do good kippers and great fudge, but its colds are not to be trifled with.

I trundled myself up over the course of Wednesday and Thursday, stopping off in the Midlands. I've had a post about driving north brewing for, er, probably at least a year now. But I'll leave that for now - I may even get round to writing it before I next do the epic trip, which will probably be for Christmas.

Whitby goth weekends tend to fall into a very set pattern - unfortunately, by arriving a day late, and by this weekend being a confusingly three-day event, I'd got my pattern well and truly confused. Fortunately, some things remain the same. There were people, there were bands.

My customary content-free band reviews will be following shortly - except for the two I completely failed to see. One failure was due to the unprecendented step of

keris,

davefish and I taking an entire hour to get ready to go out (we're still not sure how that happened). One failure was just due to faffing, which is much more acceptable.

Other than that, I present my highlights:

Having declined the queueueue for the Magpie Café, we bought take away fish and chips on Thursday evening. Despite looks of faint horror from even the omnivorous Davefish, I cheerfully ordered (and got) scraps with my fish. Hurrah, back in civilsation. Owing to a slight confusion, Davefish also bought me a pickled egg - which, as everyone knows, is a thing you eat with a pint as a snack, and not a suitable accompaniment to fish and chips. I ate it post-Spa, while we indulged in a little hedonistic craziness and tea with

surje and

casilda. Sadly, despite being a room full of photography enthusiasts, I don't believe anyone managed to capture Casilda's expression as she stared in horror: "You're not eating a pickled egg, are you?"

On Friday I did, as advertised, meet my parents for dinner. In the circumstances, when ordering a steak as I usually do (very rare), I resisted the opportunity to claim that it was because I was a recovering vampire. The last twice I have ordered "very rare" steak, the waiter has enquired whether I'd like it blue; this seems to be simply in a spirit of friendly survey, and in no way affects the way the steak is cooked. Still, Anderson's did manage probably the rarest steak I've had in quite a while (excluding those I've cooked myself, which have a tendency to moo).

Davefish came up with a rather marvellous plan (which we now intend to institute as a tradition) of having a champagne breakfast on Saturday morning. He and Keris bought their own bodyweight in croissants and Danish pastries, strawberries and grapes - admittedly, they're neither of them heavy but it still made for a lot of breakfast. Surje and Casilda were prevailed upon to come up from the flat below ours, bringing coffee and exotic cereals. To keep decadence levels suitably high a strict injunction against getting dressed had been issued, so we lolled around in a dramatic variety of dressing gowns. And the champagne was pink. You don't get a better start to a day than that.

Saturday night saw us one again rising to excess, as we managed to lure

kneeshooter and Ant back post-Spa for not only tea, but cheese, biscuits, scones and jam. The sea-facing windows of our flat also provided a rather fine view of the Wasp Factory's fireworks - why freeze your arse off on the beach watching, when you can do so from the relative of comfort of a chair in a warm room ? With scones ?

Um, has anyone else noticed that my highlights seem to be universally food-related ? No ? Good, I'll carry on then.

The three of us sallied forth to meet

mrph for lunch on Sunday, and managed to collect Steve and

emarkienna on the way to Mills Café. I always forget about Mills, but if you're after x-with-chips-and-a-pot-of-strong tea they're a fine option. Since most of my conversation with Mrph over the weekend had been of the thumbs-up-thumbs-down variety near the bands, or limited to "eh, I can't hear you" and "can I steal a pair of earplugs", it was nice to be able to catch up properly.

The rest of Sunday pretty much went to the pub, and stayed there. Surje made us play picture-consequences (draw some feet, fold the paper to hide them, pass it on, next person draws legs, etc), and I have no doubt that the resultant creations will haunt nightmares for some time to come. I've not played consequences in ages (either the picture or the word kind), and it's something I rather enjoy now and again. Hmmm. I wonder if i can evolve an LJ-means of playing word-consequences. Possibbly involving polls or screen comments or something. I'll think about it.

And then all of a suddent it was time to go home again. I hoovered up a stray

deeteeuk to bring back to Oxford - to whom thanks is due for generously staying awake and proving intelligent conversation all the way back. And a special Whitby mix tape.

Designated Hero of the Week, however, remains DavefishandKeris for being jolly nice people to share a flat with.

The other thing to note is the new word invented:

bumular adj.

Of, or pertaining to, bums.

If you ask Davefish nicely, he may even demonstrate bumulations for you.

Oh, and Davefish: I spelt callipygian woefully badly. That's how it ought to look.