venta

Saturday

Following a late morning rising, the day seemed to be largely food dominated. I met the parents for a rather pleasant lunch (mmm... steamed ginger pudding and custard), and pottered gently round Whitby with them looking at the visiting weirdos.

Remarkably soon after that,

davefish,

keris,

chron_job and I took ourselves off for dinner. The cafe-bar opposite the Elsinore (Finley's) provides a great range of nibbly things and platters-to-share, so... er, so we critically over-ordered, and ended up with enough for all six of the four of us. Good food, generous portions, and, er, we pretty much ate ourselves silly. I can also report that Keris can, when she tries, pull the most terrifying faces.

Getting ready to go out, I remembered my Dad's rather odd question earlier about whether my tailcoat had pockets in the tails. I checked. It did! I had pockets in my tails! I got very excited about this. Pockets in my tails! (

mr_flay tells me they're called Derringer pockets).

Libitina

The last time Keris, Davefish and I saw Libitina we lasted only a few songs into the set before we gave up and went out to the chipshop until they went away. As a result, I was pretty ambivalent about seeing them. Then someone told me that their new album was very good, so I reluctantly decided to give them a chance.

In the end, on account of our rather large meal, I only caught the latter half of their set. And it's nice to have one's prejudices confirmed. They're still a bit crap live.

They didn't actively scare me out of the room, but that was probably more to do with me having found a good spot to have a nice sit down. Libitina sound to me very much like a student band; they've heard lots of other music and are trying to be a bit like it, and have ended up sounding very generic, and as if they've slightly missed their own niche. They're too rough be a trad goth band, too downbeat to be a pop band, too mopey to be a rock band and not even in the right ball park to be a metal band.

They closed their set with Gothic People. It's still kind of fun. It's still nowhere near enough to justify their continued existence.

Dream Disciples

Sitting in the Spa cafe in the afternoon while the Dream Disciples were soundchecking,

diffrentcolours and I observed that, fundamentally, the opening of every one of their songs sounds a bit like it might be Room 57. Despite that, I really enjoy seeing this band live.

Being a little thirsty at the start of the set I bought a bottle of water, and hid it away in the pocket in my tail. How great is that ? Pockets in tails. Wow.

Anyway. The Dream Disciples are a four-piece (singer, two guitars, bass - get a bloody drummer, guys, will you? Quit with this drum machine nonsense), and watching them all it's noticeable that, well, you watch them all. There are four people on stage. Not three vague blobs and a front man. I'm not sure why this is, beyond them all standing well forwards and all responding to the heckling of the crowd. Somehow they're all fully involved with the audience, and they give the impression of being just a really nice bunch of blokes.

Their music is good, solid poppy rock with big fat choruses. When the list of great groundbreaking bands is written, they won't be on it. But fundamentally, good, solid poppy rock with big fat choruses is enjoyable, is danceable-to, and very entertaining. They whip out the occasional mild bit of guitar wank, and have basslines you could build houses on. They do what they do very well, and it's a real shame they've decided to pack in :(

Sadly, these seem to be the only band prepared to uphold last November's tradition of silly covers, as they came back to do their version of Atomic as an encore. Which, secretly, I'm not that fond of, but I do seem to be the only one of that opinion. In my world, covers should be one-off, unexpected affairs. If you're going to keep doing the same cover, you should be doing something pretty special with it to make it your own.

Rumours that I left the Spa immediately after the Dreamies' set and went to bed are, sadly, true. I'm aware that leaving the building, grim-faced, at around ten-thirty is equivalent to carrying a placard saying "fight with boyfriend" or somesuch, but actually I just wasn't feeling very well.

The Mission

Dunno. See above.

Quotes of the day:
"...and they have splits across the lenses, which I think makes me look terribly post-industrial, darling." (Diffrentcolours explaining his shades)

Sunday

Sunday actually got off to a reasonably civilised start: fried breakfast, nice constitutional stroll, some taking photos of shipping. Then

olethros happened by and made me go to the arcades to play on the DDR machine. That's one of those things with arrowy foot plates that you're supposed to stamp on in time to music.

It turns out I'm not desperately competent at it, though Olethros reckoned I was coping well for a novice. Most fun, however, was watching some of Whitby's teenage girls look on in horror as both DDR machines were taken over by terrifyingly competent blokes. Both wearing skirts.

I ambled further off round Whitby, over on to the East side, and up to the Haggerlythe. I took lots of photos, mostly aiming for black and white studies of the cliffs and sea. Sadly, I then discovered that the film in my camera had somehow managed to wind itself round the wrong way (I really can't work out how this was possible), and jammed, so I don't hold out much hope for most of them :(

Later on, after much teadrinking, Davefish and I wandered out to take photos of the setting sun, which meant I got to nab the use of some of his funky peripherals. The sun set, and we took terribly gothic photos of gravestones in the dusk (though if the shot he made me pose for near a tomb comes out, I shall be hiding myself away for ever). Then, about nineish, we started to look for food.

We discovered that although lots of places say they serve food til 9:30, once you ask them they look completely blank and say "but not on Sundays!" in tones of horror. We ended up back at the cafe-bar of the previous day, and carefully ordered one sharing thing between us.

Then we considered pudding. Eventually, we opted for one of us ordering pudding, and one of us ordering cheese, with the intention of sharing those too. The pudding arrived, was lovely, was eaten. Then the cheese hove into view.

The plate was around the size of Mexico, heaped with crackers, butter, cheese and cheese. Oh, and celery. We ate solidly for about 90 minutes, then tried to draft in help in the form of

wechsler, who was walking past. He claimed it was too close to bedtime to eat cheese. I derided the idea that cheese affects your sleep. He remained unmoved.

We ate and we ate and we ate, and eventually we plastered some cheese onto the remaining biscuits, and distributed it to rather startled people outside the Elsinore. We just squeaked there in time for last orders. So, contrary to our cusomary tradition of failing to go to Laughtons/Sexy Sunday because we can't be arsed to get out the pub, this year we didn't even manage to be arsed to get to the pub. Which I think just goes to show that Keris, who'd left by then, is the dipsomaniac who keeps making us head to the Elsinore. Stands to reason :)

We ambled home, full of cheese. I went to bed, and slept really badly with slightly odd dreams. Humph.

Quotes of the day:
"That's not a lense, it's a ballistic missile" (

surje on seeing Davefish's 70-300mm lense)
"Wechsler, nice bloke, but bog all use when you've got too much cheese." (Davefish)