February is in my opinion, the crappest month of the year. It is usually the coldest, drizzliest (will you believe that spell check accepted that as a word?) and most miserable, and I also find that it is the time of year when me and my squad are the most likely to have no cash either. I have been finding it increasingly difficult to get out of my pit of recent weeks, and some days I genuinely feel as if I have died and been eaten by the bed.
I tend to hermit it up at this time of year, cuddled up on the sofa with the fire on, a cat flumped out on me and surrounded by sweetie wrappers, which means that I also spend most of my time on the interwebs looking for news, views and gossip to brighten me up for a bit. Or you know, just browsing Lolcat pictures.
Fortunately, not everyone gets a case of the “I can’t doooo itttt”’s in January and February, and so I have scoured the web for the latest views and content from some of the most readable Gothy bloggers out there, as well as a final paragraph about my world. Here are my top picks.
Whitby dates for your diary
The first Whitby Goth Weekend of the year is taking place over the weekend of the 21st-23rd April, and you can get your tickets here. The line-up for April includes Toyah, Bad PollyAnna, Abney Park and Magic Eight Ball, with the full band listings available on the site itself.
Accom is always hard to come by, but now that the Whitby website has started including AirB’n’B offerings, there are more options than ever before. Still, book early to secure your place, rather than leaving it until the last minute!
Probably don’t hire a room from him, though.
Tattooed Mummy interviews a teen book author
Tattooed Mummy’s blog is one that I have only discovered recently, and in her latest post she interviews Non Pratt, writer of books aimed at teens, including Trouble and Remix, and coming later this year, Truth or Dare.
There is also a Most Excellent cat picture, which I encourage you to admire.
The Blogging Goth talks anti-Goth discrimination
Tim (The Blogging Goth) is pretty much my go-to resource for what’s going on in the Goth world, and I was pretty perturbed to read in his latest blog post that You Tube Goth Vlogger Black Friday was refused admission to Paris’s Musee du Louvre for, er, being a Goth.
The museum told Black Friday and her partner that “their clothes and hair would cause too much attention to be drawn to them, and people would want to cluster around and take photographs with them.” Jesus wept folks, this is the Louvre! World famous artsy shit! If you think your museum’s attractions can’t compete with the people visiting it, you might want to rethink your marketing strategy…
Black Friday (having a pretty shit day, name notwithstanding it seems!) also got the boot from a Paris cemetery, and narrowly avoided arrest by the Gendarmes for being “disrespectful,” which in this instance, basically involved walking in a cemetery while Goth.
However, it came right in the end-in no small part, I am sure, due to Black Friday’s large internet following-as the Louvre later offered her two free VIP passes if she ever goes back to Paris.
Anyway, check out Black Friday’s YouTube channel here.
I’m getting into corvids
Corvids-the bird family that includes rooks, crows and magpies are a source of some fascination for me, pretty much since I first met Shithouse the Crow of previous blogging fame. Corvids apparently have the same intelligence levels as the great apes, and also, recognise human faces, to the point that they will actually hold a grudge if you’ve fucked them off prior.
For someone who recognises neither the old gods nor the new, I don’t tend to be particularly superstitious-but I always salute magpies and anxiously look for the second one if I spot one on its own.
Anyway, there are a pair of magpies (which I have named Maggie and Graham, for reasons I cannot fully explain) that live in the trees next to my home-from-home café, and I have borne my background knowledge of the Corvid family in mind whenever I spot them. At least, I don’t want to piss them off based on the above grudge-holding propensity, anyway.
I get my shopping delivered by Tesco to the café, where I then load it into a wheelbarrow to trundle it back to the boat. I just glanced out of the window and spotted Maggie and Graham standing on my shopping picking at something, and fuck me if they hadn’t found a bag of mince, dragged it to the top of the pile, pecked through the bag and started snacking.
Keen to save my dinner but not anger the magpies, I took the bag inside and left them some mince on the table next to the barrow. They totally ate it; are we bros now? Because if I have my own tame Corvids, I think that makes me Queen of the fucking Night, no?
I’ll let you know how our relationship is going next month… In the meantime, don’t piss off any crows.
