It's pretty much just a bunch of Maffball photos. They're quite braw, but.

My goodness work has been terrible this week. Running on a skeleton crew and then some of those skeletons being off sick and on holiday meant that those remaining were under more pressure than is comfortable by a long way, still I was very cheered on friday night by some gorgeous chips from the fish and chip shop and a fabulous firework display choreographed by Mr bethnoir and enjoyed in the company of some good friends. I was tired, but conscious that enjoying the moment is very important and the green, pink, bright white and gold firework was particularly noteworthy.
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after a great gig at the Resolution last Saturday,
Psydoll onstage at 11pm

Ooh, sparkles! Well, I haven't really seen that many pretty twinklings in the sky this bonfire night but it was a Thursday I suppose and doubtless there will be more come the weekend which is now very nearly here. Just one more day at the shop before I can allow myself to crumple into a little heap and ignore the world for a while. Yay! Heh, well I suppose it has been a reasonably busy week even with the town relatively empty after the festivities of the week before. I shall be glad for a little time out anyways, it should allow my brain a moment off from pointlessly expending energy worrying about unnecessary things and, just maybe, try and turn my perspective and attentions to more productive matters.

Anyways, my appointment today with the lady from 'Intraining' turned out ok if largely uninspiring. A fair amount of form-filling was involved with the prospect of a further exciting assessment to come. Do you question the actual usefulness of all this tedious paperwork? Strongly Agree/Agree/Neither Agree nor Disagree... err, well anywho. Hopefully somewhere along the line something good will come out of it. The woman I saw seemed nice enough and I got through it only losing the power of human speech on a couple of occasions. I don't know if she'll have noticed. The sensations of it veritably scream in me when it happens but as to how much of it shows on the surface I really don't know. In this case I had the peculiar sense of the word I was trying to say (or the thought of the word) being almost physically lodged sideways in brain, I could get a hold of it but couldn't it drag it down the pipes. Odd. Still, I don't know whether the way I experience the world is in any way special compared to the way everyone else does. Still, whilst I have no wish for a perfectly trouble free existence, I would just like the sense that I was connected to the world and acting from my own will and choices. Well we'll see, maybe yet they'll teach me new confidence skills and I shall be able to make myself just a little more expressively myself.

For now though, I have a day at the shop to get through. Hopefully that will go reasonably smoothly with no unwanted scary things. Then I might be able to sit down, let my brain process stuffs and try and get it set for the prospect of all this new learnings. Oh, one other interesting thing of note though is apparently I seem to have made some kind of impression at the Coliseum with my swishy web programming skills. I'm told the trustees have been talking about me anyways, though whether that is anything to get particularly excited about it is really rather difficult to tell. Anyways, it just shows I'm not paranoid, people really are talking about me behind my back! Heh. Well, who knows, it would be nice one day to actually find someone who might be willing to actually pay me to do stuff. It would very much be an important step forward in what is ultimately my more important goal, becoming secure in my own value, space and skin.

Well, anywho, I hopes that everyone has themselves a nice weekend in prospect, I look forward to seeing you there...

Armed with my camera, a corset or two, made my way across the Yorkshire moors, to one of my favourite towns here in England for WGW. Arrived late Saturday which blew out all photography plans (thanks National Express trains for making me miss all my connections). A beautiful clear day, so joined up with DaveFish and Dot for engagement celebrations, then off to dinner with the rest of the gang, before I knew it I was being escorted home, after ending up on the Little A. (Thanks Mike) Sunday was truly awful weather. Tried to do a set in the old alleyway while waiting for Sherlocks to open, got a few shots but it was fooking freezing. Then Sherlocks opened up and with the permission of the owner and with Davefish fancy lens, was allowed to play for a bit in this stunning location. Wonderful to see everyone and hopefully Charles and I will be back for April.

Huge thanks to all who put up with me and the Yorkshire winter weather. A couple of my favourites so far.

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So how was your WGW this year?

How did you compare it to last years or previous ones?

I recently read an article that 'the EU Court of Human Rights had ruled against the use of crucifixes in Italian classrooms'. Seems like a sensible ruling to me. I mean, I know schoolchildren can be a bit unruly at times but that does seem to be taking things a little too far! The cane was was one thing... err... *ahem*

Anyways, from that bit of nonsense and onto other equally sensible things! Today at the shop was reasonably busy after the exceptional quiet of yesterday. We have new Christmas giftware in though which is a little bit scary. Christmas already?! And gifts?! I've really no idea what to be getting people this Christmas. I'm afraid all my good ideas have been used up and whilst the things in the shop are perhaps not quite so hideously tasteless as previous year's supplies have been I doubt that a miniature snow globe or photo frame surrounded meerkats is really going to appeal to my target audience. Oh well, there's more than a month to go yet and my brains have other things to obsessively worrying about at the moment.

Among those things are tomorrow's appointment with, what I imagine will be, a very nice and friendly from the 'Intraining' company. These are the people who are going to be taking over efforts from the people at the jobcentre in helping me find gainful employments. Whether anything will come out of it, well, I can but wait and see. In the meantime though my brain seems to be eagerly taking this opportunity of meeting new people as the perfect excuse for a little extra pointless anxiety. These are strange sensations, particularly since I know perfectly well there's nothing to worry about, but they remain unpleasant. It really is nonsense on stilts though. I mean the interview itself will be in a room directly above the place where this morning I've been teaching (if in a little uncertain and haphazard manner) other people how to use computers. Why doesn't my exceptionally dense brain learn not to be so nervous about these things? Stupid personality.

Oh well, after my interview I will then have to scamper off for a thrillingly tedious appointment to sign on at the jobcentre. I still have to go through that bit despite my support being given over to the other company. One of the fun idea my brain seems to be trying to invent for me to be frightened about is that either my first appointment will be of a such a duration (it's at 10, I sign on at 11:50) that I'll be late at the jobcentre or some general confusion between the two will lead me to being, err, eaten by a passing hydra or something maybe? Heh, well it's about as much sense as my fears usually make but it doesn't seem to stop me feeling them. To be fair though the jobcentre has once already managed to cancel claim for no reason, which made for a fun couple of weeks.

Hm, anyways, the purpose of this little entry, besides making that terrible joke at the beginning which I'm secretly quite pleased with, was to try in some way to point out just what nonsense on stilts these nerves of mine are. I doubt it will change much but still hopefully I'll pile up enough evidence one of these days that maybe I shall learn just a little confidence. Just enough to get by and be myself. Just enough that the little bunny rabbit that be operating the controls might actually press the buttons to which I direct it.

Were you at Whitby in October 2006? Did you have a close encounter with some military types? Are you the sort of Goth who loses things on beaches? Gothwatch UK needs your help...

I noticed this story in the Whitby gazette where a camera was found on the beach which contained a memory card. The paper are hoping someone will claim the card and published this picture to help you:



Do you know who these recruits are? I have my theories ;@)

This Whitby the stall made £506.74 for the Charity, with an extra £61.41 in the charity collection box.
That is phenomenal, so a HUGE thank you to all who brought clothes to sell and who bought clothes.
We HOPE to be in the Resolution again in April, but as yet this is not confirmed, so keep an eye out on our webpage and here for further information.
We hope to see you all in April!

P.S. If someone bought some lace up size 6 boots and finds themself with 2 boots for the same foot please contact us as the stall would love to swap you for the correct boot!

My photos from the weekend - rather less than usual, perhaps - can be found by clicking on the picture to the left. No football, this time, obviously, thanks to the atrocious weather on Sunday washing it out. Real Gothic will be back in April for another attempt at winning back the trophy.

After pawing ineffectually at the buttons on my alarm clock several times and wondering why it wasn't turning off, I eventually woke up this morning and was decidedly confused having thought that I already had. Hm, dreaming of waking up and getting out of bed to turn off the alarm seems rather an unfair trick of my subconscious play just before I do actually wake up. I spent several minutes glaring at the clock after I woke, demanding to know why it was still playing after I had turned it off. It wasn't it's fault though, poor thing. Really though, having to wake up is effort enough without my brain trying to foolme with such games. Methinks it was rather unwilling to be woken early and so intended to have me dream my way through the day whilst it got up to whatever misceivous activities the brain does whilst we're sleeping.

Ah well, despite that somewhat faltering start I did eventually reconnect myself with the real world (at least insofar as I ever do) and made my bleary way down to the Coliseum. Fortunately as it turned out I did actualy manage to rustle up some useful things for me to do there. I thinks I might have been a bit grumpy had I got myself up for the day only to find I could have reamined in my pretend world a little longer. As it was though I was able to do quite a bit of good works updating Whitby Network's website with details of several new forthcoming events. Do go scamper over and have a look at my efforts, it almost borders on the exciting! Anyways, it was pleasing to be able to do someproductive things, and as the litttle webstats thing seems to suggest people have been viewing my posts, hopefully worthwhile and useful to someone.

So that, and a brief chance encounter with a friend made for a nicely quiet and modestly, yet pleasingly, productive day. My brain even made up somewhat for its tricks of the early morning by actually managing sustain a conversation for a little while too! Heh. It was a little strange though, after the fantastic crowds of the weekend, to see Whitby go back to the quiet state of small seaside town in winter. I suppose that will be the last of the big crowds for the year and it will all start wind down towards Christmas. The weather seems to have picked up on tha, the weekend rains having finally ushered in the cold air after an unseasonable period of mildness. Thus far though I have managed to avoid the expense of turning the heating on and just made use of an extra jumper! Still, the cold doesn't really bother me as much as the heat can. Heh, I wouldn't mind if it could hold off on the wind a bit though, it's not really the weather for long hair. Ah well, I shall just have to be careful in my wanderings along the cliff tops!

Now though the week is off and running and I shall be at the shop tomorrow. Somehow I doubt takings will quite match up to the week gone by! Still, that's probably a good thing since I remain something of a tired puppy at the moment. At least the week has begun in a reasonably quiet and cooperative way. Hopefully the rest of it will run along ovaguely similar lines. Well we shall see if my subconscious has any more games it wishes to play with me. Either way I shall continue to hope for more good things and fewer bad things, along with a decent amount of obedience from my brain. I shall find out how close I get to that soon enough and hope, in the meantime, that the week be niceand kind to all my lovely friend peoples too!

No, not the venues, the town.
The sheer weight of numbers on the swingbridge on Saturday afternoon stopped traffic. It also stopped me from going over to the old town because I really didn't fancy being crushed.

Is this a phenomenon of the number of goths comming to town for 'unofficial Whitby' - i.e. not attending the main ticketed events; a result of the photo frenzy or just a coincidence of local school holidays and fair weather (on Saturday at least)?

Is there a point where someone declares the town 'full'? Will we have to have wristbands to enter Whitby?

I'm interested in other people's experience of the crowds this weekend, and whether they affected your plans for this or future Whitby Weekends.

Well my weekend has gone by in what might be described as a reasonably reasonable fashion. On Friday at the shop I was fortunate enough to have someone else take over my usual duties on the till for a change so I got to play at arranging the books which is always fun! It has been an exceptionally busy week at the shop really and not just because of Goth Weekend either. Whilst the sale of what gothy stock we had collected did help boost takings much of the sales seemed to come from other things, parents buying things for children over half-term and other sales of the various tasteless, umm, I mean delightful and very reasonably priced gifts we have on offer. Ironically of course, on the day when I didn't happen to be spending all my time on the shop floor I ended up having three different sets of visitors coming to see me. Strange how these things seem to work sometimes. Heh, still I don't suppose that my cosmic timing has ever really been the greatest!

Halloween itself ended up being fairly quiet really, which I was actually quite pleased about. I did venture out for a little while into town but it was so utterly full of people it was virtually impossible to walk anywhere! Besides the goths there seemed to be an equal number of people standing around taking pictures of the goths. There were plenty of families too visiting during the school holidays and quite a number in Halloween-based fancy dress (i.e. trying and generally failing to pass themselves off as goths, snobbishly elitist as it may sound, there's a clear difference between between being gothic and just dressing up). Anyways, whilst the outdoors was rather uncomfortably crowded I was still able to spend a little time gothwatching. The Victorian look seems to be proving quite popular, as were brightly coloured hair extensions. Heartening to still see a few big hairy blokes in dresses about too, it is a pleasing thing when this little town shows it's open-minded, welcoming side. It doesn't always of course, but it's nice to see when it does! Personally though, I can't really count the Captain Jack Sparrows, Gandalfs, Highlanders, Monks, Romans and so forth as gothic, although some of those costumes were still quite impressive. It was, I suppose also Halloween as well as Goth Weekend though. As to what the large group of Father Christmases were doing roaming the streets though I remain somewhat puzzled.

Another equally impressive sight, as the dusk began to settle over the town, was a quite enormous flock of starlings all gathering together to roost for the night. It was almost as if the birds had also decided to get together for their own Whitby Goth Bird Weekend. It was a very pretty sight and took my off watching the people for a while. It was also interesting keeping a watch on the various impulses my nerves were sending to my brain with all the excitements going on. The troubling and unpleasant sensations of anxiety that always come from being around people were peculiarly off-set by the pleasure of seeing so many varied and interesting people about. It's a strange thing indeed feeling too diametrically opposed sensations at the same time, but I suppose I ought to be used to it by now really. I've still remained feeling largely outside of all the frivoloties though all through the weekend. I watched and felt it all flowing round me, something like a rock in the middle of a fast flowing stream. Still, such disconnection has ever been my personally preferred defence mechansim against overwhelming sensations. Hopefully someday soon my brain will learn that such responses are unnecessary. Anyways, I spent me a quiet night in with my newspaper and books, hiding from any annoying children that might happen to come to the door.

Sunday began in a decidedly rainy and windswept fashion. Suddenly I was able to walk through quiet streets again, or at struggle my way through quiet, storm-lashed streets anyways. This was as I shambled to go see mother and step-father, later joined by big brother and his girlfriend for tea. So it has been a rather pleasant evening really, a good portion of which was spent with a cat sprawled across my lap. It was nice to see big brother though, if even for a short period of time. I suspect that it will be Christmas in Sheffield when we see each other next but that isn't really that far off now I suppose. Still, a good evening was had, once the rains had died down and the electricity had been turned back on! Heh. Now though a regular week shambles ominously into view with all the grim inevitability of a remorseless zombie army. Presently I'm not feeling particularly eager for the week ahead, now it seems that the weather has remembered that it's supposed to be getting into winter. I suppose it doesn't help either that the tiny amount of wine I've had today has given me a somewhat squished brain. I really don't drink at all most of the time so my reaction to alcohol can be strangely unpredictable. Oh well hopefully sleep will cure that. Anyways, since the boss is away it may well be that I find myself without anything to actually do at the Coliseum tomorrow. Hm, I'll still have to wake up though and I've never really been much enamoured with that particular part of the day.

Oh well, we shall see what marvels the week ahead may yet hold I suppose. Mayhap good things and significant changes are happening in me yet and I am just not quite aware of them? Either way, hopefully the future will bring more good things and fewer bad things. Yes, that seems like a fairly reasonable thing to wish for! In the meanwhile I hopes that everyone else be well and the world be treating you kindly. My brains be just about running out of energy for any more particularly coherent writings (even by my usual rambling standards!) so for now I shall bid you all good night. Sweet dreams.

I can't understand why the entry in the (very useful and nicely precented) Whitby weekend Almanack listing the Darklands night upstairs at the Resolution of Friday 30th had www.darkdaisypromotions.co.uk written beneath. To my knowledge this well-established night/event has no connection whatsoever with darkdaisy and I am concerned that people are, unless anyone is able to correct me on this, being misinformed. In these latest times of rumour and cut-throat competition I would like the record set straight please, if there is anyone who is able and qualified to comment on this printed attribution.

I've just read that the vocalist with Elusive, Jan Kenneth Barkved died on the 27th October. I know no details, but I liked the band. Very sad. May he rest in peace.