A Whitby, a monkey, and a can of soup.
It couldn't happen, could it? But it could! In : The Twilight Zone, otherwise known as my subconscious while asleep. So, then.
So it's suddenly November, except it's April, and elise and giolla and robinbloke have last-minute arranged for me to go to Whitby, just because they think I should and would like me there, which is nice, so I agree to go with. We all go up in robinbloke's car, and make quite good time, except for the detour we take through Eastbourne [sorry, Robin ~s~] and the bit where we get stuck on the road because a small car with a twelve-foot canoe on its roof is blocking things everywhere.
We get to Whitby (as usual in my dreams, nothing like the real thing), robinbloke parks and disappears and elise, giolla, bootpunk and myself, who are for some reason all sharing a flat, head into the huge concrete corporate hotel that all the goths are staying in this year, and indeed always have and do. When I say 'corporate' I mean it - a hotel with hundreds of suites and, in between, big presentation rooms with projectors and rostra everywhere, and now lots of tables for the goths to sit and picnic at. Anyway, we find our flat, put our stuff away, and go off to queue to get 'in' to Whitby. (It's much in the style of a theme park.) We wait, pay our £8 entrance fee and get hand-stamped, and then they go off to, well, somewhere, and I get swept into a little antique shop by a bunch of awful young teenaged boys who frankly don't belong there.
I look around the shop, smiling as I notice things of particular interest, when I realise the boys have picked up a first edition of a book by someone with the name 'Indiana Jones' and have decided it would be funny to sign 'Harrison H Ford' in the front. Since it's a book from about 1830 this outrages me and I go to tell the storekeeper what's happening, at which point the boys start to threaten me. The storekeeper, a man who could be Giles from Buffy if he grew his hair, gives a long-suffering sigh and confides in me, "This happens all the time, and there's only ever one way to solve it - call in the Gorgons. They've never moved out of Whitby, you see, although I'm grateful they live on the other side of the town." I nod and murmur that you wouldn't want to get turned to stone by accident while you were doing your morning shopping, but he's already on the phone to Medusa, asking if she can come over and teach the boys a lesson. He puts the phone down with a satisfied clunk, saying, "Her sisters are busy, but she's on her way."
I'm not sure what to expect, but my sense of unease is rising, and when he ushers us all out into the sunlight and I see elise and giolla across the square (standing rather picturesquely under a wicker arch of some kind, next to a maypole - a maypole, I ask you) I start to go towards them, stopped in my tracks by the arrival of Medusa, who I've at least got the sense to look away from.
I'm not sure what goes wrong, but suddenly I'm terrified, and I break out and run away, hearing elise shouting behind me, back out through the crowds of goths queuing to get in and into the hotel, where everyone - everyone - is singing "The Whitby Goth Song" (which goes something like "In Whitby...every day is a holiday...you can buy lots of shiny things...la la la, la la la, in Whitby!", round and round and round.) I try to find my way back to our room but I get confused among the corridors and then a small Asian goth girl lassoes me with a long peach silk scarf and starts to dance with me, singing "In Whitby...I get to dance with my monkey, dance with my monkey..." Bewildered and near to tears from that feeling you get in dreams when you're lost in a building and can't find your way out, I stop her and point out that I'm not actually a monkey, and then I spy a large chimpanzee outside the window behind her and point it out, saying "Ma'am, I think your monkey is over there." She is so grateful that she shows me the way out.
So I'm back threading through the queue at the entrance, which is really just a small trickle of goths now, when I run into faerierhona, so I stop to chat with her for a bit. She, too, has already been through once and is coming back in, so we wait to get our handstamps checked - when we get to the window we are passed round to the next face of the octagonal booth, where our hands are checked by a gorgeous woman with blonde-and-brown hair and a faded white T-shirt, who grins at me and says "Emily? You made it to Whitby then, eh?" I look at her nametag, which reads 'A-J', and get a faint memory but nothing to hold on to - nevertheless I reply with "God, it's you! Hello! Yes, I did!" And then back through the doors into Whitby proper.
I have to find elise and giolla - I have to make sure they're ok and they're the only people who can calm me down at this point. As I reach for my phone, which I discover has while in my pocket called sneerpout and juju_babe, I notice that I'm wearing a particular silver ring on my left hand. Vaguely horrified, I take it off and throw it over my right shoulder into the mud, then try calling elise's phone. Nothing. (It is Whitby, after all.) Try calling giolla's. Nothing. Decide to use my phone to connect to the internet on the huge screen helpfully provided for just that use, straight ahead of me, but LiveJournal keeps asking me for other people's passwords and in the end the whole screen just becomes a Super Furry Animals video. Not helpful.
At this point bastard turns up, shouting "RANNIDRAK!" over the noise of the crowd (and the Super Furry Animals), and says "Have you tried the Bazaar? I bet Elise is in there." I reply that I hadn't thought of that, but I don't know where it is, so he takes it upon himself to show me, and once we're inside (and I've said "Oh, of course they'll be in here") he wanders off to find some candyfloss.
Surrounded by shiny things, a bit dazzled, I look up to the second level of the barn in which the Bazaar is being held and catch sight of giolla, so, being the sensible person I am, I go in search of some stairs, which I don't find, so I start climbing over the stalls. (It's ok, everyone else was doing this as well.) The top level of the Bazaar is reserved for poorly made Country Plates and unconvincing ceramic figures and people selling herbs, and it's full of posh Sussex children, between whom I wend my slightly anxious way, finally catching up with giolla and elise in the tea area. We sit ourselves down at the picnic table provided and elise glances once at my hand and breaks into smiles. "I was getting so tired of hating you yesterday! The ring, you know." I reply that I've no idea where it had come from - which was true - and that I've no idea where it's gone. She seems much appeased, and then starts to check that I'm all right, after the events of the morning.
"I saw that Medusa's arrival was bothering you and giolla, and when you ran off I decided to deal with it myself," she says, smiling as giolla takes my hand and I take hers. "What did you do?" I ask, riveted. "Well, I took the nearest book and melted it into a virgin candle, obviously -"
"Well, you're a poet, you can get away with that sort of thing," giolla interjects, looking amused.
"Anyway," she continues, "so I banished her. But then I couldn't find you."
"I've spent all day looking for you. I'm so glad you're here."
At that moment sneerpout arrives, checking I'm ok because my phone called hers, and I explain that it was just a mistake. Then I think "Hang on, sneerpout at Whitby?", realise it's unlikely and wake up.
I like remembering my dreams. Really not sure whether this one constitutes a nicemare, a nightmare, or just pure 'What on earth?', so I shall leave it with my ickle fluffy Morpheus icon.
So it's suddenly November, except it's April, and elise and giolla and robinbloke have last-minute arranged for me to go to Whitby, just because they think I should and would like me there, which is nice, so I agree to go with. We all go up in robinbloke's car, and make quite good time, except for the detour we take through Eastbourne [sorry, Robin ~s~] and the bit where we get stuck on the road because a small car with a twelve-foot canoe on its roof is blocking things everywhere.
We get to Whitby (as usual in my dreams, nothing like the real thing), robinbloke parks and disappears and elise, giolla, bootpunk and myself, who are for some reason all sharing a flat, head into the huge concrete corporate hotel that all the goths are staying in this year, and indeed always have and do. When I say 'corporate' I mean it - a hotel with hundreds of suites and, in between, big presentation rooms with projectors and rostra everywhere, and now lots of tables for the goths to sit and picnic at. Anyway, we find our flat, put our stuff away, and go off to queue to get 'in' to Whitby. (It's much in the style of a theme park.) We wait, pay our £8 entrance fee and get hand-stamped, and then they go off to, well, somewhere, and I get swept into a little antique shop by a bunch of awful young teenaged boys who frankly don't belong there.
I look around the shop, smiling as I notice things of particular interest, when I realise the boys have picked up a first edition of a book by someone with the name 'Indiana Jones' and have decided it would be funny to sign 'Harrison H Ford' in the front. Since it's a book from about 1830 this outrages me and I go to tell the storekeeper what's happening, at which point the boys start to threaten me. The storekeeper, a man who could be Giles from Buffy if he grew his hair, gives a long-suffering sigh and confides in me, "This happens all the time, and there's only ever one way to solve it - call in the Gorgons. They've never moved out of Whitby, you see, although I'm grateful they live on the other side of the town." I nod and murmur that you wouldn't want to get turned to stone by accident while you were doing your morning shopping, but he's already on the phone to Medusa, asking if she can come over and teach the boys a lesson. He puts the phone down with a satisfied clunk, saying, "Her sisters are busy, but she's on her way."
I'm not sure what to expect, but my sense of unease is rising, and when he ushers us all out into the sunlight and I see elise and giolla across the square (standing rather picturesquely under a wicker arch of some kind, next to a maypole - a maypole, I ask you) I start to go towards them, stopped in my tracks by the arrival of Medusa, who I've at least got the sense to look away from.
I'm not sure what goes wrong, but suddenly I'm terrified, and I break out and run away, hearing elise shouting behind me, back out through the crowds of goths queuing to get in and into the hotel, where everyone - everyone - is singing "The Whitby Goth Song" (which goes something like "In Whitby...every day is a holiday...you can buy lots of shiny things...la la la, la la la, in Whitby!", round and round and round.) I try to find my way back to our room but I get confused among the corridors and then a small Asian goth girl lassoes me with a long peach silk scarf and starts to dance with me, singing "In Whitby...I get to dance with my monkey, dance with my monkey..." Bewildered and near to tears from that feeling you get in dreams when you're lost in a building and can't find your way out, I stop her and point out that I'm not actually a monkey, and then I spy a large chimpanzee outside the window behind her and point it out, saying "Ma'am, I think your monkey is over there." She is so grateful that she shows me the way out.
So I'm back threading through the queue at the entrance, which is really just a small trickle of goths now, when I run into faerierhona, so I stop to chat with her for a bit. She, too, has already been through once and is coming back in, so we wait to get our handstamps checked - when we get to the window we are passed round to the next face of the octagonal booth, where our hands are checked by a gorgeous woman with blonde-and-brown hair and a faded white T-shirt, who grins at me and says "Emily? You made it to Whitby then, eh?" I look at her nametag, which reads 'A-J', and get a faint memory but nothing to hold on to - nevertheless I reply with "God, it's you! Hello! Yes, I did!" And then back through the doors into Whitby proper.
I have to find elise and giolla - I have to make sure they're ok and they're the only people who can calm me down at this point. As I reach for my phone, which I discover has while in my pocket called sneerpout and juju_babe, I notice that I'm wearing a particular silver ring on my left hand. Vaguely horrified, I take it off and throw it over my right shoulder into the mud, then try calling elise's phone. Nothing. (It is Whitby, after all.) Try calling giolla's. Nothing. Decide to use my phone to connect to the internet on the huge screen helpfully provided for just that use, straight ahead of me, but LiveJournal keeps asking me for other people's passwords and in the end the whole screen just becomes a Super Furry Animals video. Not helpful.
At this point bastard turns up, shouting "RANNIDRAK!" over the noise of the crowd (and the Super Furry Animals), and says "Have you tried the Bazaar? I bet Elise is in there." I reply that I hadn't thought of that, but I don't know where it is, so he takes it upon himself to show me, and once we're inside (and I've said "Oh, of course they'll be in here") he wanders off to find some candyfloss.
Surrounded by shiny things, a bit dazzled, I look up to the second level of the barn in which the Bazaar is being held and catch sight of giolla, so, being the sensible person I am, I go in search of some stairs, which I don't find, so I start climbing over the stalls. (It's ok, everyone else was doing this as well.) The top level of the Bazaar is reserved for poorly made Country Plates and unconvincing ceramic figures and people selling herbs, and it's full of posh Sussex children, between whom I wend my slightly anxious way, finally catching up with giolla and elise in the tea area. We sit ourselves down at the picnic table provided and elise glances once at my hand and breaks into smiles. "I was getting so tired of hating you yesterday! The ring, you know." I reply that I've no idea where it had come from - which was true - and that I've no idea where it's gone. She seems much appeased, and then starts to check that I'm all right, after the events of the morning.
"I saw that Medusa's arrival was bothering you and giolla, and when you ran off I decided to deal with it myself," she says, smiling as giolla takes my hand and I take hers. "What did you do?" I ask, riveted. "Well, I took the nearest book and melted it into a virgin candle, obviously -"
"Well, you're a poet, you can get away with that sort of thing," giolla interjects, looking amused.
"Anyway," she continues, "so I banished her. But then I couldn't find you."
"I've spent all day looking for you. I'm so glad you're here."
At that moment sneerpout arrives, checking I'm ok because my phone called hers, and I explain that it was just a mistake. Then I think "Hang on, sneerpout at Whitby?", realise it's unlikely and wake up.
I like remembering my dreams. Really not sure whether this one constitutes a nicemare, a nightmare, or just pure 'What on earth?', so I shall leave it with my ickle fluffy Morpheus icon.