Battlegroup Nerd

I got a letter the other day from the Job Centre, as you will no doubt know I have been having a few problems with them and their lack of professional abilities. This was the final reply of a letter of complaint I sent to them about a month ago. In it they admitted they didn't do enough for me, I was failed by their advisers in a correct job search for my profession and that they were reimburse me £25 for the inconvenience I suffered at their hands. I will scan and post it some time in the future but I don't have a scanner with me at the moment. Sometimes it pays to complain... Two other things happened which made me laugh this week. I was standing in the Co-Op buying milk the other day. Behind me stood this young woman with two kids. A young man entered the shop, obviously he knew her and the conversation, I shit you not, went like this:

Him: Alright Lindsay
Her: Alright Liam, you alright?
Him: I'm alright, how's Dave? He alright?
Her: Yeah alright.
Him: Alright

The other thing that happened occurred as I was walking into town to pay some cheques into the bank I was accosted by a Mormon. You can tell them a mile off, they are always well dressed youngsters carrying bibles and wearing name badges. This guy had already tried it on with the couple walking in front of me to no avail. I was listening to my MP3 player but I could see he was gearing up to get me on my knees for Jebus. He opened his mouth and was about to say something when I stopped him dead in his tracks: 'Sorry mate, I'm a Satanist.' I told him as I strode on. Actually if I hadn't been in a hurry I would have stopped and talked to him. I would have liked to ask him why I should believe in a God who would create something so useless as wasps (cue lecture length comment from Ashley about what good wasps actually do, besides just stinging people and being the shit bags of the insect world...)

Wasps = cunts

Anyway, I was in a hurry (ooh nice segue there) as I was due to pick Vin up and go to Elvington Air museum for their Battlegroup North militeria fair. Another day of dressing up was lined up for us. This time military re-enactment was the order of the day. Now, before you start, I don't really have much of a problem with military re-enactors,. Some of my best friends are re-enactors, but I wouldn't do it myself. But, you say, they only dress up like the much despised Goths. Well yes they do, but at least it has some basis in historical fact and by that token it has a sense of education to it. You feel they are not just indulging themselves but they are actually teaching you something about the past whilst learning themselves. Goths just indulge themselves dressing as vain vampires from a totally fictitious Victorian period. Anyway, I must stop thinking about Goths before the vein in my foreheads starts throbbing again. The problem I do have with re-enactors is their preference for the German Army of the Second World War. In particular the Waffen SS. Elvington was no different and the Germans out numbered the Allies by about three to one. It was like Unternehmen Seelöwe had been an outstanding success... It turned into a day of Swastika spotting, so here follows photos of the best we saw...

Note the tasteful arrangement of Nazi weapons and uniforms...

This was priced at twelve pounds,  all the Allied flag were ten pounds. Make of that what you will...

Special mention must be made of one of the traders, who quite literally set his stall out politically:

'Have you got any Allied stuff?'

'Nah mate, I wouldn't be interested in any of that...'

Ashtrays of the Third Reich...

Herr und Frau Himmler search out cheap bargains...

 Note the tasteful Smiley Hitler T-Shirt

And finally from Elvington, I can't even begin to tell you what is wrong with this picture:

Re-Enactors, always striving for historical accuracy...

For more pictures from Elvington see my Facebook photo album here. Saturday night saw me sitting in the balcony of the Hyde Park Picture House watching Until the Light Take Us, the new documentary about Norwegian Black Metal and the halcyonic days of church burnings and murder! It was excellent, if a little filled out with fluff. The soundtrack was great. 99% of the people reading this won't give two shits about it and that's the way it should stay, but the other 1% should try to see it wherever it's playing.

Oh My Goth!

It was a lovely sunny day on Saturday and as I was in York, I thought better of merging with the madding crowds in the city centre and decided to go over to Whitby instead. I had heard rumours that it was Goth weekend. The fangs were out in force. It was like Twiglet set on the North Yorkshire Coast. The bats had flown in for the weekend. Scores of vampires had descended to bite the exposed neck of the West Cliff. Ever since Bram Stoker set a large portion of Dracula in Whitby, vampire wannabes have made the pilgrimage to the fishing town. This has grown out of all sense of proportion to become the now-famous Goth festival. It allows people with unfulfilled lives and synapses that are not properly connected to parade the streets dressed as Victorian ladies and gentlemen of the night, in a alternative universe where latex and New Rocks had been invented a century previously. It's like the ultimate in Retro. Most of these people believe themselves to be vampires and probably sleep in coffins lined with sand from Whitby beach.

I just can't get comfortable in this Scarborough sand...

But why Victoriana? What is the appeal of the most repressive period of British history? If you're going to resurrect a period of history why not the 18th Century? All those powdered wigs, pantaloons and syphilis would be perfect for 'dressing up time'. Not to mention all the shagging, Marquis De Sade style. Anyway, all these folks seem to be stuck in the alternative timeline of pretend 19th Century Vampire bullshit. They all lead an alternative lifestyle by looking exactly the same as each other. A trusted uniform that allows you to express your individuality as part of the crowd. I remember the Goths of old, the ones in the frilly shirts and lacy gloves dancing like cunts to Sisters Of Mercy in Heavy Metal nightclubs, it was always early in the evening before the other punters came in and kicked the shit out of them. But things have moved on from then and have changed so much. To be fair, I wouldn't have such a problem with Goths, if they didn't take themselves SO FUCKING SERIOUSLY! The po-faced set of twats.

'I'm so romantic and wistful, I'm a poet of the undead, a dreamer of unknown places...'

'No you're not, you're a cunt.'

Anyway, I drove over to Whitby with Anna in tow as my official photographer (she was paid in chips) and by Christ, we were not disappointed! We immediately spotted a Goth family upon arrival (actually we spotted one on the outskirts of York as well but I think they were lost...) and the rest of the streets were awash with black. It was a boiling hot day and these pricks were parading around in full dress suits and massive black capes...

Wrap up warm, it's gonna be cold today...

The Goths had come from far and wide and in a variety of vehicles (not being real vampires, none of them had the ability to turn into bats and fly to the event). But, like the Model T Ford cars they only in came in one colour: Black:

I wondered how high this guy's garage was to be able to fit those plumes in...

Goths die in hot cars...

When the horn was pressed it played the theme to 'The Munsters'...

This big black truck shipped in the poorer Goths who couldn't afford a car...

OK, let's have a look at some of the more shameful aspects of humanity that we saw. Now, we couldn't work out what the Hell this first couple were supposed to be. She was dressed in period costume alright but he was in a quasi-18th Century Grenadier outfit. You're a century too early, mate...


Pop Quiz time, is this a really ugly woman, or an averagely ugly man in a dress? Answers on a postcard, please:

'Sometimes it's hard to be a woman...'

Just like Excalibur coming out of a lake, King Arthur got out of a taxi...

The once and future King, needed a bit of help getting around these days...

The graveyard was the obvious place to find some of the best dressed Goths in town, so we climbed the 199 steps to the Church, bumping into other freaks on the way:

This is a Goth Weekend, not the AGM of the Pirates of the Caribbean Appreciation Society

Ahhh, so you just like DRESSING UP as an evil Nazi, but you're not ACTUALLY an evil Nazi? Right...


'Why so sad?'
'The chippy has run out of cod...'



Steampunks? Steamtwats, more like...

What is missing in your lives?

It looks to me like the best part of you ran down the crack of your mamas ass and ended up as a brown stain on the mattress.

Oh, just Fuck Off!

Scattered amongst the gravestones we found plenty of wistful looking waifs waiting for night to fall. I shit you not, when I took this photo of this girl I said to her 'Don't smile!'

Cheer up Love, it might never happen...

Vain doesn't even begin to describe it...

To add insult to injury, even Dr David Kenyon was in town. I'd heard he was in Whitby for the weekend, dressed up in military re-enactment clobber. I texted him to meet up and he said he was 'wandering around town dressed like a twat' I answered 'It's Goth weekend so you're not alone...' I assumed he was there for some museum show. Nope, he was there for the fucking Goth weekend, the stupid shit:

I used to have respect for you Kenyon...

He and his Goth mates dragged us round the Goth shops in the Spa which were selling cauldron's, bat's wings, paintings of cats sitting under crescent moons, neon dreadlock extensions and goggles for all your Traditional Goth/Cyber Goth/Steam Punk needs. Speaking of Steam Punks, amongst the best we saw were these two. Definitely the fittest specimens of Goths we saw all day:

The fantasies just don't stop...

They were with some ugly bloke in a trenchcoat but I pushed him out of the way to get this photo. But, by a country mile the best costumes we saw all day were these two:

Literally: OH MY GOTH!!

There is not enough words in the English language to even begin describing this outfit. Where do you begin? What is it? Why the fuck does he have a cod-piece made out of an elephant's head? Why has he got a golden breastplate covered in pictures of Napoleon? Why has he got mirrors on his hat? What is the deal with the blunderbuss? Is he a hunter? What does he hunt? What basis in any kind of reality does this even have? Looking at this makes me feel like I've been taking crazy pills. Anna came up with the perfect name to describe it, she called him Hannibal. She wasn't sure what it meant but it seems to work...