The seagull standing on a nearby chimney pot bends its head up into the sky. It opens its beak and cries in a melody of two yelled tones. Scattered like tea leaves in a cup, against a wind and cloud strewn sky, the other gulls trill, or screech. Here comes one, gliding down diagonally in front of me, decelerating against a gust of wind, to a mid air halt. It pauses...tips its wings... just slightly, and slides off to the right in front of me, screaming over the roof tops below Tate Hill.The gulls can prevent you sleeping. A man who owned a boat told me so. It was an old RAF rescue launch, of a type originally designed by T.E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia, he said. Had it for many years, he said, and started taking tourists out on it every weekend. Never planned to develop a business but that boat and the pleasure cruises sort of took over his life. But he sold the boat. He got fed up. You'd have the gulls pacing up and down on the roof above you, or quarrelling noisily over a piece of fish, just over your head, while you were trying to sleep....
A workman in a dirty tee shirt carries a hod of red wrinkled slates to a roof he is mending, down to my right. Here is a nice place to write in my notebook, on a seat in a paved corner on Tate Hill, financed by some regeneration project or other, according to a plaque on the wall that I can't be bothered to read fully. Someone has carved a fine sculpture here, of a man half kneeling, in sandstone. From where I'm sitting, I can see the way his hair was carved, at the back of his head. There are tubs of geraniums, knocked about every now and then by gusts of blustery wind. And there are tourists like me, lots of tourists, starting to climb, or resting after their descent, of the 199 steps.
Grey clouds are creeping across, the plants in the tubs, the strap of my small rucksack, the legs of my trousers, the rose bushes, they all flap and blow around. It has grown colder and it's time to move on.
There are plenty of seats facing the harbour in St Mary's churchyard, at the top of the steps. All in memory of someone loved and lost. I sit on a seat in memory of Alice Campbell. The church and churchyard of St Mary's dominates the main views of the town. The black gravestones are all on view, over the heads of most of the town and its boats, a reminder, like the church and ruined Abbey, of times past, passing and to come.
What is the psychology of a town with its blackened gravestones, its past generations, buried over its head? Ask Bram Stoker why he chose Whitby to set Dracula in.
At the harbour mouth the Lifeboat museum lists the wrecks and the rescues, in faded newspaper cuttings and photographs. A sea community - its disasters are part of collective memory.
Or ask Frank Meadow Sutcliffe about this town. He's long gone, but you can still see what his eyes saw, sold in every bookshop and galleries in the town. You can see the sun, through the sail of the barquentine, 'Lively', on the New Quay Mooring. Suddenly you are standing in a dazzling summer day, sometime in the 19th century, looking at the sky.
So here's a town with the past and the present well fitted together. They are selling the past here in every bookshop, and since it's never going to be in short supply, that seems to be no problem at all. After the demise of the Abbey came the potash. After the potash, sea empire, whaling and fishing. After the fishing, tourists and folk festivals.
In St Mary's someone has carved the date into the back of a pew, presumably with his knife. 30th August 1694. He did that sitting on the pew, where I was sitting a few minutes ago, near the gate at the aisle. Because of the way the pew was constructed he was out of view of the vicar in his pulpit. Virtually everyone else was in the vicar's sight, as he looked on his parishioners in the box like pews.
The pews have little gates at the end. The good shepherd has his flock penned up here just like sheep at market for his agent to keep an eye on them. And above the vicar, looking down from on high, and from behind, was the pew of the Chomendley family, merchants and traders in dyes for wool trades.
And here, returning my mind from what I have seen, to what I am seeing, here on Alice Campbell's seat overlooking the harbour, it is 1.30pm. The church clock tolls behind me. In front of me, across the rooftops, and the mouth of the river Esk, I can see my guesthouse on Abbey Terrace. In the space between the gulls are soaring, dipping, wheeling, and shooting along the estuary and harbour mouth. The wind is very blustery, buffeting about the sound of plastic bags, children's voices, footsteps. The sea, rolls continually inwards.
A woman from a folk dancing group stopped to talk - it's their day off for good behaviour, she says. I tell her about my feelings about folk dancing from school - but also that I was judged to be dead good at musical semaphore, when I was in the Sea Cadets. I marked the rhythm of the Blue Danube Waltz so well that they put everyone else behind me, to keep in the rhythm....That's not quite the same as her dancing, of course. She'll be dancing by the whale bones tomorrow - which will be difficult if the wind is like this. It will blow the music away. How did she get into folk dancing? It's another excuse to get together with people and go out to the pub. Obvious really. I tell her of my plan for my next holiday here.
A German warship shelled St Hilda's Abbey in World War One. Why did they do that? I'm reminded of that because a young German couple have arrived at the top of the 199 steps.
Perhaps because of that experience the people of Whitby have left an artillery piece at battery point, to the left of the west pier.
But my mind is wondering off what I was going to write about. Which was? I remember - the Germans....Yes, my plan for my next holiday. That is what I was telling the folk dancing women... I have just spent 2 weeks looking after friends from Berlin, in Nottingham. It would have been better to entertain them here, in Whitby. I might be able to do that next time. Hire a cottage overlooking the harbour, and stay a whole week, sharing the costs. They would love it. Of that I am sure. They would love the food too - but I wonder if it would be good for them.
Something swells bellies and thighs in Whitby. There are some seriously big bottoms. It's not the fish, I think, but what goes with it - chips, butter and beer. When I asked for a veggie burger I was told, with a friendly warning, "It's cooked in beef dripping, love, do you still want it?"
Everywhere you go in Whitby the signs of saturated fat overload shout at you. When I first arrived here, there was Al in backyard of the Plough, just as he said he would be, and I asked him where I might get vegetarian food. Holly, with sunburn on her chest, who was part of the group with him, wearing an overcoat coat that matched the colour of her hair, and a red hat, told me the bad news. The Shepherd's Purse does vegetarian meals....and a Chinese restaurant. "Otherwise", she said expressively, " you're fucked."
Holly was nearly right. But I did find a Tandoori near the railway station which did a vegetable curry. Give me some ghee, chop up some veg and add some spices, then turn up the heat under the pan....But there's a lot of saturated fat in ghee too, if you didn't know.
..........
Breakfasts in Whitby. Alan and Julie Briers offer a full English vegetarian breakfast with Quorn sausage and I've had it - with a grilled tomato, in two pieces; with scrambled eggs; white and brown toast, marmalade, strawberry jam and a cup of black tea. A traditional (and vegetarian) breakfast like this - I've not had one for years.
A rainy day in Whitby. The town might as well be sepia coloured - like the wet sand on the beach. The sky is grey, the sea is grey. I love it. Here in the Pavilion cafe I sit at a table by the glass wall window, high above the rocks on the land side of the beach, writing. There's a red metal barrier along the side of the window, to stop people falling through the glass, I suppose, and I have to duck my head slightly, at my seat, to look under it, out over the beach towards the west pier.
The muddy wet sand is rippled with flat puddles, the same wet colour of the sky. Several lines of surfy white breakers are marching along the sea edge up to the pier. The light in the sky towards the horizon is marginally brighter - but not enough to think that blue skies are coming.
Cafe sounds - voices, including those of children; scraping chairs, crockery being moved around, the dull hum of air conditioning, trays being clattered on top of each other; the sound of a child, putting on a plastic raincoat; cups being put back in saucers.
I am remembering last night in the Plough into my note book. I have never before seen such a large collection of middle aged people having fun and drinking so much together. The average age was about 50, but there were some younger people, like Holly. There were a lot of grizzled beards. I mean lots.
Anoraks, shorts, hands full of pint glasses and lots of beer bellies. In every bar of the Plough, as well as in the long back yard, there were guitars, banjos, violins, castanets, home made percussion instruments made out of tea chests, sticks and string....
More and more people arrived with guitar cases, whistles and flutes. In the front bar a group played a reel. From the edge of the bar you could hear it, but barely see across the crush. It was difficult, in fact, to get into any of the bars at all. Only the passage way between the bars had any real comfortable standing room.
I was going to go cycling today but look at the weather. Tiredness overtakes me, sitting in the Pavilion cafe after breakfast. My mind clouds, and becomes heavy, as a full English vegetarian breakfast slips deeper into my stomach - the Quorn sausage is soaking up the energy that my mind needs to keep concentrated on writing anything...I pause for a morning yawn, and another cup of tea.
Eventually the wattage in my brain circuitry picks up again sufficiently for more writing, memory and pompous reflections. Memories surface into my mind about last night - about beards, for example. There are some whiskers in Whitby, not neatly clipped moustaches, like mine (sometimes) but well sprouted wiry facial hair, corkscrewing into the surrounding countryside, around bespectacled faces, carried slightly back from battle jacketed bellies. I remember a scene of a jolly faced man, with jazzy jungle shirt and guitar strapped to his stomach, accompanying a crew cutted Grand Dad type, belting out about Botany Bay and stabbing the air with his index finger, his lower jaw opening and closing tunefully under what seem to be a very fine set of teeth.
The bar staff looked flustered and in a state of suspended desperation. The flowery hat of the younger bar maid had been put on, I imagine, in a mood of gaiety, earlier in the evening, but as I remember, with one and a half hours to go to closing time, she looked as if she was hanging on, one order at a time. The human contents of the bar room moved, around, shifting like shingle.. People came and went into to the bar, others made a gangway for them. The passage shifted backwards and forwards as individuals and groups, like atoms and molecules. All the while their attention held by the song about another group of sailors drowned at sea...until their attention is grabbed again, having make space for another passing tray of beer glasses...
Some of the beer got spilled on my trousers. Oh, my trousers in Whitby. What has not been spilled on them? Not only the beer from an apologetic woman, but vegetable lasagne. What is it about vegetable lasagne? Perhaps it is that vegetable bits adhere underneath the layers of pasta, the pasta sauce has sufficient stickiness to hold them, for a few seconds, but then, en route to your mouth, they drop from their unseen location, through the prongs in the fork, a split second before the safety of your open and hopeful mouth, into your lap. So remember to wear a well spread out serviette, in your lap, in Whitby. Because, trying to use the same serviette, to clear up vegetable pieces, and the tomato sauce, after the event, is not so efficient. And, what is more, it has already left its stain on your trousers.
The first time this happened, I was scurrying out of the restaurant on my way back to the hotel. And I saw Holly in the street, by the town market place, braiding hair - a good way of earning some street pennies. She told me of an obnoxious passer-by, suggesting she braid the hair in his armpit. In return, I told her about the vegetable lasagne stain on my trousers. One is always tempted to tell people oneself, as soon as possible, any embarrassing facts, in order to manage the process. A sort of pre-emptive process I suppose.
I doubt now whether she would have noticed it anyway. These are new trousers - and they are that kind of colour - you don't easily notice stains on them. But this didn't occur to me straight away. I walked off, thinking of Holly and lasagne stains. I have to admit that when I first saw Holly, in the Plough, I felt, instantly biological. I gave her a look which said so, and she picked it up. I'm not talking flora here, but fauna. I even walked around later with a condom in my pocket, but as it turned out she's 20, and I'm 53, so my better judgement kicked in. Especially when I sat down at the bar table in the Plough and was introduced to her dad, who was the same age as me. Holly's dad bought a hat from Jacqui while I sat there thinking, if I was not such a miserable bugger, I would buy one of Jacquis hats too. Holly's dad preferred one with a hole in it - I think Al had had burned the hole in it, absent mindedly, with one of his roll ups, at some earlier time.
Much later I thought this would make a good short story. A sort of 'Death in Whitby'. Older man, high blood pressure, getting worried about how much salt and saturated fat there is in his vegetarian breakfasts, and how much cholesterol there is in the scrambled eggs at breakfast, wondering if his blood pressure is going up relentlessly under the assault of the Whitby diet. Attractive young woman. Has a stroke after a huge plate of chips with his vegetarian lasagne.
(That's actually totally unfair to my guesthouse hosts by the way, as I would recommend their vegetarian breakfast to anyone - and it was a very pleasant surprise for it to be on the menu, I might add...)
It took a quarter of an hour for the stain to dry. By the time I had arrived back at the Guesthouse the stains were barely visible. However, on the way back I had evolved an elaborate plan of what I would do about them and immediately put it into effect. Of course, I had review the macro solutions - like changing into my lighter trousers, and taking them to the launderette. But what a fuss for a few small stains. Why wait for 40 minutes, a whole washing cycle? No, the obvious solution, thinking rationally, about the matter, seemed to be to wash out just the stains. And, for that, all I needed would be to use a tiny bit of shampoo, as supplied by the guesthouse. By simply dabbing a small amount on the offending areas, I could then wash the stains out.
Well, that was the plan. Nothing's simple is it? Nothing goes according to plan, does it? (If you're finding this boring, by the way, skip the next paragraph or two.) This dabbing off business was supposed to be done with precision, only on the lasagne stained patches. But in the light of my room, I couldn't hardly see the lasagne stained patches anyway. ( I mean the room is perfectly adequately lit for most holiday purposes, I'm not trying to do Julie and Alan's guesthouse down here, but it's not well enough lit for seeing brown stains on brown trousers). And what kind of precision instrument is it that can be used to rub shampoo into a pair of trousers at a number of precise points? I can write about it with precision. I can plan this with precision, but I could only do it, or so I thought, with some tissue paper, carefully folded into a pointy kind of paper 'rubber'.
Still interested in the outcome of this exercise? It didn't work - because tissue paper cannot be turned into a precision cleaning instrument. It disintegrates when it gets wet. If you stubbornly press ahead with a plan like - because it is an idea that ought to work - then what you do is leave an area of white paper fibres rubbed into a pair of brown trousers. It makes a problem that was barely visible as such, into something a lot more noticeable.
What the hell, I'm wearing them now anyway. No one's noticed anyway. Do people go around looking intently at other people's trousers? I don't think so, except perhaps at pop concerts....
Anyway, this account of Whitby has got totally out of balance. A vegetable lasagne stain could occur absolutely anywhere, and tells us nothing at all about the specificity of the town, its history, geography or climatic features.
So, back to where I am. This stream of consciousness memory has been written down in the Westcliffe Pavilion, rebirthed by Leon Brittan and the European Union. There's another plaque on the wall that says so. Whitby is full of plaques on the wall. Some of them I find interesting. But Sir Leon Brittan? Well, in my view, no. That's because, as you probably know he's a promoter of unbridled free trade for the multis at the World Trade Organisation and, putting it succinctly, he's a oily shit.
Not that I've got anything against this Pavilion. I'll have fond memories of it. As you get to know a town, you get to collect a sense of where there's going to be a good cup of tea and decent toilets. Where the ambience is good, because there's a nice view through the window and/or a nice interior design. That's this Pavilion. At the bar during an event they even provide jugs of water to help yourself to. Now, that's civilised. So there's everything to recommend the Whitby Pavilion - except the disreputable name on the wall. It was probably the sacrifice they had to make to get the money.
Anyway, sitting here in this Pavilion, my attention you will have noticed, has been pulled out of my memories, back to here and now. And my next focus of attention is again the weather outside the window. The next big question to consider this morning is whether it is still raining or not. 2 cups of tea have been collected from the counter, brought back to this table and drunk. The clouds outside are every bit as grey and the light every bit as dull, but someone outside has taken down their umbrella. I cannot see any blue sky, but I cannot see any rain either. Even more surprisingly a man has come in wearing sunglasses. Either he has an affectation he is unaware of, or, alternatively, they are prescription sunglasses, and he has mislaid his main spectacles. If it is the latter, he is probably in an agony of self consciousness about what everyone is thinking about him, wearing sunglasses on a day like this. I would be. I feel sorry for him.
Nothing for it, time to go out and reconnoitre. Outside it is misty rain. The drops are too small to be seen through a salt stained window and too fine to be stopped by an umbrella - the rain drops aren't really falling, they are sort of hanging around, waiting for you to walk into them. It turns out that a brolly's not much use anyway. Mystery solved.
I love this weather. It's 100% authentic sea weather - and I'm a seaside boy. It makes me feel a bit less like an interloper, a townie and a tourist. I grew up in Folkestone, by the harbour, and then down the beach by Hythe. So, although not 100%, I belong in a place like this, by the sea. Wet beach days bring back feelings. I feel at home.
I walk back down to the Quay, via the Captain Cook monument and the Whale bones. A lovely grey estuary that I would photograph from the same spot as Meadows Sutcliffe but I've forgotten my camera. I still feel exhilaration, call me silly if you like, at the wet quay, the smell of fish and mud, the swing bridge, the boats.
At the Plough I spent time with Al and Jackie in the yard as the rain gets heavier. As we're sitting under a parasol, we are sort of sheltered, but the rain runs down the table towards us. A drip comes from somewhere, falling down my visual field into what remains of a pint glass of lager, drawing lines of bubbles up, with each plop. Jacqui sweeps the accumulated puddle off the table with her hand and I sweep it off with tissue paper out of my bag. After a time I notice that my bottom is wet, because, it turns out, the water is running down the bench as well. So I blot that off, as best I can, and regularly dry off the seat on the weather side, while the conversation continues.
I am learning more about Jacqui from Lincolnshire, who has a bag of hats to sell. She was beaten regularly by her dad. But in the end she nursed him as he was dying. Only then really got to know him as a person. She felt sorry for him at the end. She has photos of Al and others from previous years. One shows Al visiting her at Christmas. We all know only fragments about each other - here's a life of Al Clarke that I never knew. You can relax in Whitby, and tell your life story, and its OK here. Jacqui tells me what it was like to work in a fish and chip shop for many years - of the old skinflint who ran the chain, of the day a swarm of black flying ants flew in, and kamikazed in the chip fat.
Whitby, I think, must be good therapy. There in the Plough was a man from Barnsley who'd been coming for 4 years. He hadn't the confidence to sing, except outside on the street, the first year, but has now had managed to sing for the group inside. His next steps - to sell his CDs here...He tells me of all the people he's known who have killed themselves. When he tells me about his life it's not surprising he struggles to survive emotionally, but here in this yard there's no one judging, there's no one thinking they're better.
I wanted to have a walk and wandered off, in the direction of the west pier. For a seaside boy, its taken me quite a while to orientate myself in Whitby. What seemed strange, on my first evening here, was a fantastic red and orange sunset in the northern sky, as I walked along the pier. Of course, it wasn't the northern sky at all, it was the western sky, because I hadn't fully taken in that the coast here runs virtually north west - south east. It's on the east coast of England, to be sure, but the coastline bends towards the west from Scarborough up to Cleveland and then into Teesside.
However orientated the coast, my walk takes on a purpose - I'm on the lookout for some vegetarian food. And there at the Sands restaurant, overlooking Battery Point, is a restaurant with a vegetarian menu. As I don't want broccoli baked in cream cheese I order another vegetarian lasagne with side salad. When it arrives I struggle to eat off a moon shaped salad dish that doesn't fit on the platter it has been placed on and wobbles, out of control, every time I try to gather some lettuce leaves on my fork. Someone, I think, got this lasagne from a supermarket fridge. As the years have gone by I have gone backwards and forwards between two points of view - on the one hand, the way food is piled on plates, in such a way as to make it virtually impossible to eat, without it dropping all over the table, is a plot by waiters and catering staff to entertain themselves, by laying odds on how much each customer will let fall over the table and floor. This is particularly done to pretensious people are so affected as to eat weird things like salad. The food and plates are so constructed so as to scatter grated carrot all over the place, as you try to get to the lettuce. Etc. Alternatively, that's too paranoid an explanation and what's really happening is that the staff are undertrained and no one gave much thought to the choice and size of plates - stuff like that.
This time I did well, in the circumstances. And I didn't drop any lasagne on my trousers.
A little anecdote about Battery Point. There's another Battery Point near to where I grew up. It's on the road between Hythe and Folkestone, just after Seabrook, and on the first ever day, of my first ever paid job, I pulled out dead flowers and weeds for Folkestone Corporation Parks Department there. At lunch time we went swimming in the sea. When I see the flower beds and lawns of a place like Whitby, say between the Royal Crescent and West Cliff, I'm reminded of working on sunny days at Folkestone, planting out wallflowers. I realise that someone as to plant the flowers out, hoe them, and mow the grass. Watch where you let your dogs poo, please, otherwise a happy summer day, has its down side for council garden workers..
I go back to my guest room to watch the television news, from my bed, on the wall over me, and to have a snooze. Al has told me that I should definitely go to the final Ceilidh, but that's not really my thing, and I decide to go to a folk concert at the Metropole instead.
As I went out, one gloomy evening early, the rain was coming down and it was very very dark. The turn out at the Metropole is very small, at first, but picks up later. The theatre at the Metropole is, well frankly, poor quality baroque. The songs are very much of the "As I walked out one fine summer morning, I spied a fair maid" type, with lots of "a courting" and "nonny nonnies". Either that, or about merchant seaman drowned because of U boat attacks. The singing is very good - and it's about things worth remembering, but, I'm sorry, it leaves me cold. Maybe I'm not in the right mood.
Al was there, doing some work as a steward, and he persuaded me to go to the last night big event after all, the Ceilidh at the Pavilion. I changed my mind, went back into the black weather, over to the cliff and down the steps and got in for £8, because it was a bit late.
But I wasn't really in Ceilidh mood either. Everyone, young and old is dancing, complicated patterns, but me, I'm on me own mate, and I've not mastered the art of breaking into family groups to ask someone to join me in one of those fiendishly complicated dances. So I went back to my little room and watched the tele.
...........
Saturday. The Folk festival is over and the weather has taken a turn for the better. The sun is shining and, after my regular Quorn sausage, I head down to Dr Cranks Bike Hire Shop, get my photo taken as a security against running off with the bike and never coming back, and head off, looking for the old railway track that goes over to Robin Hoods Bay. No problem finding it, except the bike seat has soaked up a lot of water and it has transferred some of the wet onto my bum. The bike gears are work exactly the opposite way to the bike gears on my own bike at home.
The road outwards is slightly uphill, but I didn't notice that until I was coming back. I was just wondering why cycling seemed such an effort. Was I out of shape? At Hawkser, I was confused by the old railway station in the way, also hiring out bikes. From road signs at this point it was clear I was half way there. After that the cycle track goes past a caravan site and down with a view emerging over the sea and the cliff edge and Cleveland way in the distance, then it goes down towards Robin Hoods Bay. On this stretch I passed many other walkers, some in family groups, and a few cyclists coming the other way. At last, Robin Hoods Bay.
The security chain for the bike looks pretty flimsy to me, the wheels are of the easily removable kind. I come from Nottingham, where things get nicked. I'm a bit nervous about leaving it in the car park at the top of the steep hill down into the village. I'm also not really keen to cycle down and up a hill as steep as that either. So I take the bike down the rough track that leads to the edge of the sea wall and lock it up at the top of the steps.
The tide is out. The scars are fully visible and dozens of people are spread across the rock pools looking for whatever they are looking for. A scout group are led down to scars and then, I suppose, for want of knowing what else to do, are led back up the hill by their troop leaders again. At the point where the road meets the beach an ice cream van has been parked and there is a short queue in front of it. I have a 99, point the camera in two directions, click, and think about going back myself. I'd stay longer, but I'm nervous about the bike.
The track back is not so difficult as I thought it would be. Half way back I notice a sign, pointing down a road to a shop and teas. Only 5 minutes walk is promised, so on a bike it would be no problem. I recognise the camp site. I stayed here with Janet, about 15 years ago. My aim, a cup of tea. But I notice that they have vegetarian quiche on the menu. So I sit down for a meal.
"Sorry, we're out of quiche, but we can do you a vegetarian lasagne."
Now there you go. OK, I had it. And yes, spilled some in my lap again. But I know by now that no one will notice vegetarian lasagne stains on these trousers. And of all the vegetarian lasagnes that I had in Whitby this was the best. It really was home made and the side salad was good too - the tomatoes delicious.
I asked the site manager(?) About Whitby in winter. They close the site up and goes to work in the grocery shop in the main town. Goes away in November to Spain. The local young people sign on. Seasonal, that's seaside employment. Tourism brings the money in, but not in Winter. I ask, because I grew up by the sea. I like seaside towns in the winter.
I belt back along the track at great speed and was back at the bike shop at 1.30pm - but rather than take the bike back so early went along the west cliff, cycling north west - on a beautiful day the view from the cliffs is a vast expanse of blue sea and blue sky, with small white yachts with triangular sails. Here I am sitting on a park bench again, taking notes. Memorising. A summer collection of people walk by - gandparents pushing a pram, a woman with three dogs....in the sea the replica Endeavour motors out of the harbour, circles around and returns. And then so do I, taking the bike back.
I look in the backyard of the Plough, out of curiosity, to see who will be there. Al is still here, and so is Holly, talking to people in the yard. He has not yet returned yet and we agree to meet later in the Endeavour, across the river.
I went for a walk along the pier, and further along its extension, paved in huge wooden planks, watching mackerel fishers, and boats coming and going.
A late afternoon snooze and back down into the town when it was getting dark. The Endeavour was packed out, the singers barely audible over the chattering crush. There was a great gang of lads, not listening at all. So I went back to the Plough and persuaded Al not to go over there. Another band set up and played, they were good, very good.
At last I really got to talk to Holly, who thinks she's not sleeping enough, because she's in one of those transitions in life where one gets tired. She has ideas about saving the world and I gave her my web site address. Grew up in Whitby but she is now down south, a teachers daughter, a reader of the Guardian and Independent, just waiting to start her first real job with school refusers.
And finally its over, the bar is closed, the songs and music are over, and Al is wondering where he is going to sleep tonight. Holly is wanting me and Al to go off for a late night cup of tea where she's camping with her mum and dad. I thought about it. Perhaps I should stay longer - but I find it difficult to bend already made plans. Like a supertanker that can't quickly turn at sea, I had already mentally prepared myself to go back to do my packing, to go to bed and get up early for tomorrow. I've decided to go back to Nottingham. I need to wash my trousers.
August 2002
© BRIAN DAVEY