Gothic Happenings Any vaguely Gothic things we've been up to, or noticed about the place, lately.

NB. This page is no longer being updated. I'm putting Gothic happenings on TheHearthofMopsus, if I can remember.

IGA Lancaster, July 2009

A few weeks ago I was delighted to attend the International Gothic Association biennial conference at Lancaster University, organised on this occasion by Catherine Spooner and Fred Botting (I know Catherine and not doing very much else at the moment I thought it was the ideal occasion to go, if only for a little while – the conference went on until Friday). Officially the conference banner was ‘Monstrous Media and Spectral Subjects’, but as usual the assorted academics somehow manage to discover that whatever they may have been researching lately fits into that description. I heard the great Marina Warner talk about William Beckford, attended a very strange theatrical performance for which I constituted one-third of the audience, and was treated to papers about attitudes to killers and victims in late-Victorian Britain, the dastardly Fu Manchu, Gothic architecture in the 1790s, and Classical mythology in Buffy, Xena and Charmed. I even got to speak to Paul Hodkinson who was DJing on Thursday night (‘I think I’ll stick to ‘80s’), and smiled as Catherine marshalled her handful of Gothed-up colleagues for the benefit of press photographs. But the most spectacular event was Professor Heard’s Magic Lantern Show on Wednesday night, hence the following photograph. Very Steampunk, I thought, whatever that means.

London Goth Meetup Group Goth Walk XII: 'Crypts and Clerics', 21st March 2009

I've achieved a small ambition. For a while I thought about a way of contributing to the London Goth Meetup Group, which has become such an important escape route from ordinary life for me over the last year, and eventually settled on leading one of our local history walks around the capital. It made sense to visit some of the City churches and talk about their history; and, at some stage, the idea of me marching ahead of them all in a cassock and biretta also tickled me. So I did it.     We spent a merry couple of hours exploring the nooks and crannies of the City. Before I went around to research the route myself, I knew nothing about the area at all, so it was a journey of discovery for me as well, and as most of our routes take us round the West End it provided a contrast. No more than ten days before I'd discovered the fairytale ruins of St Dunstan-in-the-East, bombed in World War Two and now open as a garden, so I tweaked the route to take that site in. We faced the problem that nowhere in the City is open on a Saturday, but found a pub that was (the Black Friar), and one church prepared to lend a key and allow us access (St Mary Woolnoth). There were about 40-50 of us wandering around in the lovely Spring sunshine.

Our route took in St Paul's Cathedral; the tower of St Mary Somerset; the site of St Michael Queenhithe; St Magnus the Martyr, London Bridge; the ruins of St Dunstan-in-the-East; St Olave, Hart Street; St Peter, Cornhill; and St Mary Woolnoth. We donated our customary collection to the Samaritans, because of their connection with St Stephen Walbrook where Fr Chad Varah, their founder, was Vicar.

More Splendid Accessories, March 2009 I bought these from Rose Paradise. Maria makes her jewellery from a clay that hardens like resin, and calls this line Gothic Dysrhythmia.

Staying in The Ruin, October 2008

Last year it was St Winifred's Well; this time round, I selected a thoroughly Gothic holiday location in the form of an 18th-century banqueting house perched on the edge of a precipice in windswept Yorkshire, part of the great garden landscape of Hackfall. Part of the fun of The Ruin is that of course it is only pretending to be ruined - from one side, a cavernous pseudo-Roman sham, and from the other a nice little Gothick pavilion.

Outside, on one side, is a field full of sheep. On the other is a little terrace overlooking the precipitous drop down to the follies and ruins of Hackfall itself. Sheep and sheer drops don't mix well, so you are warned to keep the gates shut on pain of death.

Inside we find a very well-appointed sitting room-cum-kitchen (the kitchen equipment is hidden in the two teak chest units) which, if not exactly cozy like St Winifred's Well, is definitely on the elegant side. There was very little of it left when the Landmark Trust began rebuilding - a bit of the ogee arch cornice remained to suggest what the room had originally looked like. You don't just get this, of course. The sitting room comes with a bedroom and bathroom to either side. You will notice in these photos that the doors all seem to lead to the exterior. The rooms never did

communicate with one another, and so they still don't: to go to bed or have a wee you have to go outside, and brave the howling winds. However, there is underfloor heating (broken in the bedroom when I was there, admittedly), so it's not too much of a hardship. I had to share this with someone who might appreciate it. Happily Professor PurplePen was able to come to dinner with a friend. They got lost on the way out of Leeds and I haven't heard from her since, so they may still be driving around Meanwood for all I know.

'Between the Devil & the Deep Blue Sea', Northwall Arts Centre, Oxford, 20th September 2008

They call themselves '1927', and that is where they come from, a theatrical troupe whose visual sensibility is rooted in the uncanny aesthetics of silent film. What you get in "Between the Devil & the Deep Blue Sea" is that sensibility mixed with mime and surreal animation. You get a lady playing the pianoforte and two ashen-faced performer-narrators who act against projected graphics with quartz-precise timing and exquisitely-judged delicacy that never quite allows them to lick their lips at the ten macabre vignettes that make up this neat little hour-long show. We begin with 'The 9 Deaths of Choo-Choo le Chat' and proceed through stories of cross-dressing devils, marauding gingerbread men, and 'the chief of the goat-men who looked like Tony Hart and was sketching a vision of Hell, in charcoal'. The two Sinister Sisters get the best lines: 'Grandmama was as old as the hills, and twice as green', or 'My sister and I invited The Lodger to accompany us to the family cemetery, in the back bedroom'. Cut-glass accents and jaunty piano tunes etch in little narratives of death and mayhem, and while the visuals evoke an era of innocence and fairytale, there are horrible, horrible things going on - or just wierd ones. It is hugely funny. It is, perhaps, the best hour I've spent in ages. It could even

be the case that I enjoyed it more than Shockheaded Peter, which is saying something.      I can't recommend enough you, and everyone with the taste for it, seeing this show. And there's plenty of opportunity, as 1927's website reveals. You can even get a preview on Youtube. Not that that shows you much.

Touring Chislehurst Caves, 26th July 2008 On one of the hottest days of the year so far, the ideal way of cooling down was to disappear underground with the London Goth Meetup and explore the astonishing Chislehurst Caves - which I never knew existed. This huge network of flint mineworkings whose origins stretch back eight millennia open out of an unassuming suburban cul-de-sac and the charmingly oldfashioned gift shop and café give no hint of what is to come. In fact, at first the fact that the caves are artificial is deceptive: the sheer scale of the place (15,000 people were sheltered down here in World War Two and formed a sort of town with canteens, hairdressers, a medical station and so on) and the twists and turns - as well as the ghost stories, convincing and dubious - win you over. Silence and dark down here are really silent and dark. Plus in one bit you can dress up as an Orc and beat up somebody else dressed up as an Orc with a foam rubber club. Who'd want more?

Goth Walk 7 - Duelling in Hyde Park, 9th July 2008 I know this is a dreadful photograph, but it's very descriptive. We gathered in the pouring rain at Hyde Park to be regaled by the estimable Dex on the history of duelling before repairing to the rather Gothically-inclined Marlborough Head in North Audley Street for a swift half or two. My favourite story was the reception one Lord Hamilton got from his wife on his body being brought home from a sadly fatal duel in the Park: that it was bound to happen at some point, and that he was as great a nuisance dead as alive, in consequence of the servants laying him on Her Ladyship's best bed, and him insisting on bleeding all over it.

The Goth's Dining Table - July 2008 I've long been seeking suitable salt and pepper pots for the table, and I'm glad to have found these little silver-plate examples (both for pepper, strictly, but we can live with that). They so resemble 18th-century funerary urns that one might expect ash to come dribbling out of the holes rather than salt. The milk jug I couldn't resist either - it has a lovely ruined abbey design.

A Reprehensible Sartorial Expedition, 26th June 2008 After long intending to do so, I finally made it to the premises of Messrs Jeffery-West in Piccadilly, to buy a new pair of shoes. I discovered Mr Jeffery and Mr West via The Chap in an interesting feature on bespoke shoemakers. They have managed to combine a commitment to traditional English shoemaking - and in fact hail from two Northampton cobbling families of long standing - with a disturbing fondness for Decadent and Gothic paraphernalia; sadly they've removed the two zombie figures from their shopfront, but selling a good portion of shoes to Marks & Spencer does not

seem otherwise to have dulled their edge. The store has a slight midlife-crisis feel to it with its louche décor of black and red - how irritating that once you have the money to pay for this kind of thing you're rather too old for it - but the shoes are nevertheless splendid.

I wanted a pair of Dashwoods, because of the High Wycombe connection, but they had such exaggeratedly pointed toes I felt I could not carry them off at my advanced age nor was I prepared to let my feet suffer quite so much even for the sake of art. So I went for these, which are appropriately titled Oldman. And they were in the sale, too. I haven't worn them yet, and fully expect them to punish me to within an inch of my life.

Further down the Piccadilly Arcade can be found the more orthodox gentleman's

outfitters New & Lingwood. N&L have also apparently decided to cater to the fool with too much money, and market a range of skull-related gear including this rather splendid dressing gown.

I decided to pay a visit to Bunhill Fields Cemetery north of the City, resting place of the famous madman, sorry, visionary William Blake, John Bunyan, and an unfortunate lady who died after being drained of some 1100 litres of excess fluid over a few months. It gives an idea of what the old cemeteries of London must have been like, fantastically crowded and convoluted. The ranked stones have the worrying air, contemplated en masse, of waiting for something - of course they're waiting for the Resurrection, but one feels they have something more imminent in mind.

Czech Decadence - 16th June 2008 I have lately moved to a new appointment and my proclivities became known to a member of my current flock who happens to be an academic fluent in Czech. He wondered what I thought of this piece, a remarkably sulphurous extract of vampiric poetry by Karel Hlavacek, who he described as 'the best of the Czech Decadent poets'. To be honest, I didn't know there were any. It's deliciously over-the-top, and the poet's self-portrait looks entirely appropriate. Somehow the information that he died of consumption in 1898 comes as no great surprise. Thank you, Geoff, very generous of you.

It was in some dark realm with the moon’s golden stain above somewhere behind the clouds, in a realm unknown, fearful, indefinite, without shadow, without light, where I had never before walked, that I saw him... He loomed low and silent above me in the pallid colours of a delicate and old engraving. Weary his face, comely and pale, on his forehead the luminescence of green eyes under meeting eyebrows, he poisoned my timid black eyes forever into numbness... He flew silently on his pair of vampire wings, metallic black and velvet, stretched out in a gigantic frame, that cast the whole sky in shadow, and under their sweep, the stars came down without turmoil, like a blazing swarm of savage, metallic bees, disturbed by a tempest out of a primeval forest... The last descendant of princely lines, once powerful, he flew through the unknown realm returning from his passionate, unconscious lovers, on his tightly clenched lips their warm, future mother’s milk and the blood of their breasts. It was in some dark realm, fearful, with the moon’s golden stain, where I had never before lurked, that I saw him... Him, the last sovereign of a once powerful line, before whom had trembled in awe townspeople, magnates and kings, whose small daughters, in silence and sickness, had secretly pined for him months, days... They pined for a tryst with him on silent moonlight nights, when they waited until his pinions concealed from view their hot beds,

until his presence passed through their white flesh, and until his sticky, rough tongue, sensed painfully in their bosoms, sweetly licked off the sick lids of their enraptured eyes. O demon of mysterious nights, of nights with the moon’s golden stain, of fearful, indefinite nights, of nights without shadow, without light, with faint gleams on the horizon of primal, lascivious urges: Thou proud, white barbarian, lover of all that is sick and pale, without feeling and yet fearful, thou sublime madman, who art nourished with the remnant of the vital strength of virginal fluids, with the inheritance of received atrophies, thou symbol of decadence! Is there a lair where you creep away before me, perhaps somewhere in the black realms of my Princedom? I do not know – but it seems to me, in lonely, strange nights, that my spirit is separated from my body, and all at once it gains vampire’s pinions, under whose sweep the stars come down without turmoil, and in a fearful, indefinite realm, without shadow, without light, with the moon’s golden stain somewhere behind the clouds, in silence it takes flight. ... And then late, towards morning, when it returns, intoxicated with mystic orgies – in the everyday it awakens its parasite, which again drags out a day in misery, in the profane noise of the street, as it was in its accursed yesterday and will be in its nauseating tomorrow...

The Lightbox's Funereal Displays, June 2008 We recently made it to The Lightbox, Woking's award-winning new art gallery and museum, and were generally delighted by the beauty of the building (at least inside) and the imagination of the displays. Now, one of the key items in Woking's history, as well is its present, is the great necropolis of Brookwood Cemetery, and the museum acknowledges this by a lovely display of Victorian mourning paraphernalia, jewellery, clothes and paperwork. 'City of Corpses', indeed! Marvellous stuff.

Nunhead Cemetery Open Day, 17th May 2008 Nunhead, one of the seven great Victorian burying-grounds ringing the City of London, is open every Sunday for tours, but has only one Open Day a year. I tagged on to the trip organised by the London Goth Meetup group, under the splendid guidance of Minerva and Dex, forming a collection of some 30 or so generally quite mature taphophiles and nigrovestarians. Our tour guide was nice enough to say that we added an extra attraction to the day. It was, in actual fact, a thoroughly grim and drizzly occasion, appropriate to the mood, perhaps, but not to taking dramatic cemetery photographs. Nunhead is also spectacularly overgrown - you can disappear off the main paths in pursuit of a tomb or other, but you won't get very far. I've put some piccies here, but they're not especially remarkable. More information on Nunhead here.

Gothic Gardens 2 - Busbridge Lakes, 5th May 2008. Click here.

An Update on the murder of Sophie Lancaster, April 2008 As everyone will be aware, the trial of the boys who killed Sophie Lancaster in Bacup last year recently concluded with their conviction and sentencing. It got reported absolutely everywhere, but the least sensational account was in the local paper, the Rossendale Free Press. The killing of Sophie was only one of a series of attacks on conspicuously different and vulnerable people in various Northern towns around the same time, and it seems clear now that the fact that she and her boyfriend Robert Maltby were Goths was not really the point of their victimisation. The lads who assaulted them so viciously were part of a gang which is still active in Bacup, and still dealing out

beatings as though nothing of any significance has happened. But when you reach that level of degredation, perhaps the stamping to death of a young woman does precisely have no significance. Sophie's killing links into so many of our hopes and anxieties that it's no surprise it has provoked such sorrow and sense of wastage - and, cynically speaking, an attractive young girl makes a better victim than the middle-aged men with learning difficulties also killed around then. Her face and memory will have great resonance in the Goth community for a long while, and I will continue to offer her up when I celebrate a Requiem in the hope that God may be able to do something positive and useful through her death. And that, probably, is all there is to say.

Gothic Sightseeing, 24th March 2008 We stumbled across Burton Dassett church in Warwickshire today, a bare, stark building whose floor rises a good twenty feet from tower to High Altar - a beautifully dramatic church, and a graveyard full of gloomy monuments, for some of which see here.      Not content with that, we took luncheon at the Castle Inn, Edgehill, a folly built by the mad and overmoneyed Sanderson Miller in 1747 where Good King Charles had raised his standard before the Battle of Edgehill just over a century before. A delightful and bizarre place to sample the local fare. If you look carefully on the outside photo you can see the Eastertide snow!

Gothic Purchases, March 2008 On the Gothic Galleries pages you can find pictures of some mysterious ruins I visited last year. I lately acquired a wonderful print from 1841 showing various Victorian ladies and gentlemen enjoying the same place, which shows that some of the pillars and arches have vanished in the intervening hundred and sixty years. It also shows that the artist carried on the great tradition of exaggerating the scale - the arch under the road is not as gargantuan as that!       The figure I purchased from Church Antiques in Walton on Thames - Our Lady Queen of Sorrows, complete with seven swords jabbing into the heart, black and gold livery (which of course was simply de rigueur in first-century Palestine) and spiky halo. Brilliant!

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