England is a very strange place

Two weeks into ticking things off my Summer FOMO list and I’ve broken the Long Suffering Husband. He is currently missing his Wednesday OAP golf session, gingerly getting up from the sofa occasionally to get a hot water bottle. Back pain is a bitch. We had completed our first week of travelling around the north east coast and had settled nicely into a pattern of walking and sorting out cupboards, interspersed with some reading and writing for me and golf for him, when cleaning the garage felled him.

It’s a shame because he was riding high on his knowledge of all things weird.

I’ve decided that despite my college friends bemusement when the whole ‘Essex Girl’ thing started in the Eighties,  (You’re the only Essex Girl we know and you don’t even own a handbag or pair of white stilettos.) I am one.

We started our trip by visiting my daughter in the midlands. It was lovely. We saw nice houses next to the canal and had a great pub meal and we talked about living there but I knew I’d miss the edge of the world. How could I live in a place where you can’t get to the edge quickly?

Next stop: York. I’ve been to York before. My Dad organised a beano for the brass band when I was about twelve. I remember, we went from Billericay station on a special diesel train that puffed smoke direct to York. Yes, I know that shouldn’t have been possible but somehow it veered off at Stratford. I remember looking at all the criss-crossing tracks and thinking, “You could go anywhere from here. You could probably get to France.” When we got there we had a few hours walking around the wall, looking at the Minster and the castle from the outside and drinking in the pubs. It was one of the more
 successful trips that he organised, with no language barriers he was able to ask for a dishcloth when he spilled his beer without getting an omelette. Both my sister and I have a fond memory of him standing on the wall, twinkle-eyed and happy.

Our trip to York was similar, without the confusing train journey. I still haven’t seen York Minster properly from the inside because who knew you could get claustrophobic inside a huge church? When we were there it was the Yorkshire Fringe. I assume Edinburgh is a long way up for most London comedians and their agents think that if they are going to have to book them an overnight stop they may as well work for their money. We saw Henning Wehn, who bills himself as ‘The German Comedian’, crashing into our stereotypes of Germans as humourless. He was trying out his new Brexit set. It was interesting to hear comedy about Brexit from someone who is as ambivalent about the whole thing as I am.

Then we went to Durham, where the cathedral has the most amazing Lego model of itself. The cloud got closer to the ground the higher up the country we got and the people got louder. 

Durham on a Saturday in early August is a party town.  Boats arrive from Newcastle and Sunderland full of loud, drunk people wearing small clothes.  It's a town that parties hard and parties early.  By 8pm the club bars were heaving and by 10pm people were being sick in the street and having punch ups.
The weather didn't stop us trying to tick things off our list.  We saw several National Trust properties in the rain.

My FOMO list included having chips at Whitby and by the time we got there the cloud had reached the ground.  Boats on the sea looked like pirate ships and the people were dressed very strangely.
"I think I want to go home," I whispered at the LSH, "It feels like we've gone back in time to a very strange place."

"It's Steampunk," he said.
"Steampunk?"  I was confused.
He wasn't sure but we looked it up and he was right.
He is a genius on all things weird.