Goths & cheese sandwiches

I’ve remembered something else I meant to tell you about my weekend in Whitby.

The fishing port of Whitby is famous in part due to its association with Dracula because Bram Stoker stayed there on holiday and used the town as an inspiration for his book. Every year there’s an annual goth festival in Whitby.

Now like lots of us, I’m a fan of a Claudia black eyeliner and I did also once have a purple fringe but I did that to annoy my teachers at school. None of them noticed or cared but that’s about as far as my goth career went. We didn’t have Instagram back then to show others who we were, we only had hair dye, clothes and tribalism. And in fact we had one mad goth at school called Pascale and she had loads of black dreadlocks and some black tie dyed clothes but she was also remarkably clever and so the teachers couldn’t bollock her because they didn’t want her to leave due to the fact she was predicted 7 grade A’s at A-level (I kid you not) and a place at Cambridge which she duly went and got. She’s still incredible now.

Anyway, my point is that with the exception perhaps of a teaching staff room near Stockport in August 1992. Whitby celebrates the goth more than anywhere else.

So I’m heading into Whitby Boots to buy the obligatory toothbrush the teenager has left back in Staffordshire and I see a mum. Similar age to me. As unremarkable as me to look at. Brown hair, mild Mounjaro dependency, jeans a bit knackered.. but alongside her was her daughter and she was the most spectacular goth I’d seen since Pascale in 1992.

She was literally a bat. Massive eye liner, face painted in something akin to whatever whiteness it was that finished off Elizabeth the First. Lead paint I think. Downturned mouth, the misery perfected. Purple and black shiny, floaty clothes. Ready to wear for her coffin. I loved it. Into Boots she went with her weary mum. But the bit I loved the most was despite her scowl and perfect goth acting she needed to be there with her mum. She was content. She loved her mum and although the whole of the pedestrianised bit outside Boots all turned to look at sulky Goth and her nonplussed mum it was the mum’s nonchalance that made me fall in love with both of them. The resignation of “THIS IS MY NORMAL”

I probably need to show you a photo of Whitby, or of Pascale or of a toothbrush in its packet but as I’ve sat here writing this, I made my daughter who has learning disability make her own cheese sandwich for college tomorrow. She needed supervision really, it’s a bloody mess but she’s finding her own way and it’ll do. I think the Whitby goth and her non goth mum have taught me well.

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