On 27th April I had a nice pre-birthday day out at Whitby with my family. The weather was nice and it was a bit cold but best of all after we had looked at our usual glacial weathering and the rocks in the glacial till and had walked down the beach into the centre Whitby when we noticed a lot of people wearing black and someone told us it was Whitby Goth Weekend .

So, all these people wearing black and some in a sort of military uniform carrying big brass guns were from the  Gotholithic period in the early 1980s. I loved the purple and blue hair that the very fine middle-aged ladies had and also some of them had daughters in tow who looked really stunning. My lads noticed them definitely! Unusually for us as a family we decided to have a cup of coffee in a very nice quaint picturesque Cafe which had quite a few Goths in there. At the coffee counter there were a couple of young ladies who looked like they would really like to talk to a couple of nice young man and my lads were with us so I invited them to go over and chat to them if they liked. They smiled but declined.

Upstairs there was a Goth mother and daughter pair and a guy and his wife, the guy being in a military uniform with a huge brass gun. Fiona ask them politely if she could take photos   and they were very obliging. In fact every one of the Goths we spoke to was super polite and didn't mind having photos  taken.  I'm  amazed at what can happen when you go out for a walk around Whitby to look at birds and rocks and then suddenly find this wonderful subculture laid out all around the streets. North Yorkshire is always surprising!

Nipping over to the East Pier I looked back at the cliffs and there had been a huge rockfall of a least 50 foot in width right from the top where all the detaic  rock sediments were from the period in the Jurassic where most of Yorkshire was just one huge delta with lots of sand and silt. It did me remind me rather uncomfortably that  walking at the bottom of those cliffs can involve a slight risk of thousands of tonnes of rock falling onto one's head. Believe you me it is worth it!

We had our usual fish and chips at Hadley's which was great and there were a couple Goths in there as well and looking out of the picture windows onto the street and all these amazing Goths around was quite something. What surprised me during this day is when we were at the cafe we all   hung out together for a change instead of moving on looking at stuff and that was really nice and something I want to do again. I feel the showing my children  something because it is interesting phase of my relationship with them  is coming to an end. Nobody was bored we were enjoying each other's company having a good laugh and talking about the Goth weekend and how amazing the people looked. A really nice day out and the best way I like to celebrate my birthday, because I don't like my birthday day, is  to do it before hand and have a nice time. Thank you family!