The Man of the Place and I have been working pretty hard this year. We never took a vacation this summer. Just about the time we were going to book the vacation, great chunks of the render (or stucco) on our lovely house needed to be replaced. In preparation for getting the place painted, it was noticed that there was a scary hollow sound being made when the side of the house was tapped . . .
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| Scary cracks that shouldn't be painted over |
The entire west wall of the house with the bad render wrapping around the south west corner and a small portion of the north side (a third of the exterior of the house) As the render was leaping away from the house in vast chunks, we waved good bye to our chance for some much needed sun.
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| North side of the house |
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| West wall of our house |
We did get a small break to Amsterdam just after my birthday and that was fun . . . so our life wasn't completely devoted to work.
In September we realised that it has been a bit full-on lately and we needed something to look forward to. We booked a couple nights at a hotel in Whitby, North Yorkshire.
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| Ruswarp Hall Hotel |
The Man of the Place and I stayed there over twenty years ago before we were married. It was a romantic gesture to stay there again now that . . . time has passed and we're still married.
Another reason to visit Whitby, in addition to reminding ourselves of when we were love's young dream was to have a bit of fun at the now famous
Whitby Goth Weekend.
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| Abbey as seen from St Mary's churchyard |
Whitby is a working port on the North Yorkshire coast. With the ruined abbey on the cliff overlooking the small town, it was the perfect setting for Bram Stoker when he needed a place for Count Dracula to arrive in England.
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| undead me |
Wow! We had fun!
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| Zombie Paul from Newcastle and his zombie girlfriend |
I loved our weekend there. What a wonderful concentration of creative people. There were the old school goths and vampire folk.
It was mixed in with the steampunk and other creative types.
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| Steampunk dudes |
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| Really charming bloke in a dress |
It was an accepting crowd and anything goes. Take bits from goth, bits from steampunk and make it your own.
Which is what we did
