Anyway, our tour of North Yorkshire has brought us to the outer limits, the extremis to Leeds’s centralness, Whitby. I like Whitby a lot, it has a relaxed air of a town that does its own thing regardless. An example of this would be the seagull nest I found. In the middle of the station car park, the day after a motorcycle rally had met there. After all of those noisy motorbikes it squawked at me.
Whitby is at the end of the heritage railway line from Pickering and has a lot of attractions. One might be of the opinion that the Dracula aspect is played up an awful lot, though to be fair what is a lot more annoying about the place is the endless stag and hen parties. Yes, you’re wearing an L-plate, did you know that this is the town that a young Sherlock Holmes was sent to for holidays?, no, I didn't know that shot was £1.
There are a number of secondhand bookshops in Whitby (Endeavour Books being the one we shopped in, my wife picking up some detectives), a fair few charity shops, and at least one record shop. I don’t know what it was called, I found it in the Shambles Market, tucked way behind sweets and charm bracelets. I didn’t know what to expect, there was some very nice looking records (as in, if money was no object they would be coming home with me) though the pricing seemed a little hit and miss. For example, there was an Elton John lp that I’ve been umming and ahhing over for a while which was easily double the most expensive I had seen it previously.
In the end I found a Bread record. Again, I am not sure what to expect, my mother-in-law said that she rather liked it way back when, so for £2 I thought I’d give it a go (even if I would be fixing the sleeve myself).
Of the charity shops they proved yet again the random nature of the books you might find. In Mind, up near Sherlock’s Café (home of the best scones I’ve ever had), I found Vampirates. It’s a children’s book and book two in a series, so I put it to the back of my mind for another day. I mean, who can pass up the first book in a series called Vampirates? What I couldn't pass up any longer was the first book of Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin. I remember the TV programme on C4 (well, the publicity for it) and have always wanted to read some of it so this was the perfect opportunity. The book itself is okay, for my liking it probably works better serialised, though there is something about the characters that have stuck around in my mind (except for Mary Ann Singleton, she better make a better impression in book two). The other charity shop I noted was the Oxfam overlooking the quay. It’s snook away behind pubs and fast food outlets, so it is worth remembering that it is there and worth a look.
Armistead Maupin, Tales of the City, Bread, The Sound of Bread,
Whitby
Note: Aside from the scones, which are lovely, we had fish and chips in Hadley's, which is equally lovely even when there is a group of stags from London who are quite proud to announce that they are from London loudly every minute or so. Oddly, the people of Whitby have encountered Londoners before, and commenting about how cheap beer prices are up north only really highlights how overpriced they are in London.
No comments:
Post a Comment