inulro | Belated Whitby post

Warning - I'm not up to putting people's LJ tags into this

Thursday As usual, it took longer than anticipated dropping the zoo off at the zoo hotel, so we were about an hour late getting on the road.

Interlude - We saw the most bizarre thing on the way up - an M&Ms lorry on which the back had a yellow panel and a red panel (with suitably coloured M&Ms). The left panel read "yellow lorry" and the right "red lorry". The side we passed it on had the red theme again with "red lorry" written on it. Jason saw it too, so I'm pretty sure I wasn't hallucinating.

We made really good time but still failed to get to Robin Hood's Bay in daylight so had limited fun looking around in the twilight for our cottage. This was only a minor problem and we soon located it.

Got settled in, dressed up and headed into Whitby. Fought my way into the Elsinore, saw nobody I knew so scrambled out, at which point we ran into Morph and Stevy. Headed to Java for food, and then back up to the pubs, where we ran into Gothpat and various others outide the Little Angel. Found the Metropole and went to Creamy. Got there early enough to get seats on the comfy sofas, which was a bonus. Had a fab time despite not knowing anybody there - the playlist was fantastic. Lasted till about 11 and toddled off to the cottage.

Despite being really tired, my insomnia decided to flare up so I got to sleep about 5:00 Friday morning. Thus I failed to get up early enough to get my stuff into the Bring & Buy sale. Not a huge disaster as work finally coughed up some back pay for my extra hours this month, and I figured there's a lot of people need the money worse than I do (I just want to get rid of the stuff).

The theme for Friday was shopping. As usual, bought lots of goodies from the Bat Conservation stall and nothing else from the Bazaar, though we might well contact the guy from Macabre Originals about getting one of those fireplaces. The scary thing is, we can afford it. Headed over to the other side of the river where we purchased fudge and I raided the second-hand bookshop. Ended up putting books back, not because I couldn't afford them but because I couldn't carry them (the fact that I will get around to reading them in approximately 2005 is only a secondary consideration). Jason got a bit carried away buying a large candelabra object. Although it was only mid-afternoon, I was starting to be in pain, and it was starting to rain, so we lugged our purchases up to the car on the West Cliff and went back to the cottage, where I slept all afternoon, woke up long enough to go to the village shop and get some food to cook for dinner, eat and go back to sleep.

Saturday we got up early (what with having slept about about 18 hours) and headed into Whitby with no particular plans. Were aiming in the general direction of Java when /mel/ rang, and we arranged to meet up and finally go see the ruined castle outside Whitby.

This was a most successful afternoon - the trek to the castle is not too arduous (I managed it) and the castle itself is rather impressive - in short, I've paid to see worse preserved castles in less impressive countryside. Roped in Tom from Bath at the Elsinore and hope we didn't get him in too much trouble with his girlfriend.

Not surprisingly this turned out to be more than enough exercise for me for one day, so went by Safeway to purchase pizza for dinner and headed back to Robin Hood's Bay for dinner and an evening of reading Death in Holy Orders.

ObReading: I purchased The Little Friend on Wednesday and packed it, but realized halfway up the motorway that it would be a bad idea to start it, or I'd end up spending the whole weekend barricaded in the cottage reading it.

Sunday I slept in and got to Whitby for the Pure meal. Popped into the Elsinore and ran into some people I knew in Manchester, which was a bonus. Found the Pure meal. Chatted to some people whose names I never discovered. Finally met David Gerard and Lady Lilith. Eventually we had to vacate the pub, but I didn't feel like standing, so migrated up to Java (probably needed a caffeine hit anyway), where Pat introduced me to The Evil Chemist and Dag. When we calculated there'd be seats available in the Elsinore we made our way up there, and spent Sunday evening in the pub (I didn't have tickets for Sexy Sunday and I had no desire to relive the parts of the 80s I'm repressing in Laughtons).

Overall, a fairly successful Whitby, though on Friday I felt so lousy I thought I'd made a big mistake in going at all. Met more people than I did at Convergence, mainly because I was with Pat and she knows everybody. Inevitably didn't get to spend as much time as I'd have liked with lots of people, but that's the hazard of having to go to bed in the middle of the afternoon.

Had an equally swift journey home. All animals were alive and well when I collected them.