damerell

We went for DV8, the UK's goth festival that isn't Whitby; I wrote to someone else "it was... very good in parts. Because of the venue problems, they announced late; because of the late announcement, numbers were down; because numbers were down, they had to get in more cheap local bands; because of the venue problems, there wasn't so much choice. Some of the bands were good, but the mean quality was lower and some of them were bloody awful - for the first time, Clare and I found ourselves reading books at gigs at DV8. By pure chance the last band on Sunday pulled out and Berlin Black stepped in - they're jolly good when you don't get hideous vomiting disease ten minutes in - and without them the weekend could have gone a bit limp."

But I was going to York anyway for the Great Gathering, the six surviving Gresley A4s together, which is unlikely to recur as two of them had to be shipped from North America at enormous expense. I've now had my sticky fingers on the regulator and reverser of all six (and I do wish explainers would not say "the regulator is like the throttle in a car", because that is really not how it is used and also not quite what it does...)

Oh, and it's the Dunwich Dynamo on Saturday. *nervous*