"Gothic Britain", part3 - Spiders

My apologies for not having updated the blog for sooooo long. Well, I just hope there will still be any readers out there...

Well, I have a couple of very interesting pictures from Liverpool. Although they are very old pictures (from the summer) I thought that I should still show them.

As everyone knows, Liverpool is the city of culture, this year, so lots of different shows and attractions have been held over there, specially in the summer. Two of them were of a very arachnic nature!

My most prefered one is this beautiful massive! cobweb, as you can see on the first picture. It glows beautifully in the dark and the spider (which is on the center of it) changes its colours while glowing at the same time.

The second arachnic attraction was a very impressive yellow robot-spider that was as high as a hole building. This godzilla-like spider, was driven by a group of men on the top of the head. It walked down the main streets of Liverpool and then it dissappeared inside the Mersey tunnel. No-one has ever seen it again....

Summer is gone...let´s get in the mood, the usual "ennui" mood, I mean.

Summer is gone....(well, at least in North-West England). So we are more than ready to embrace and dress our pale skin with decadent black clothes.
It´s been raining for days, gone are the days when I was thinking of going to do camping in the middle of Yorkshire....I´m not going in this weather, If I wanted to get soaked, I can perfectly thow myself to the river Mersey. It would be cheaper....
This weather really takes you down, to the depth of boredom and "ennui" :)

However, for all those goth enthusiasts, we are all spoilt of choices for our wardrobe! I don´t know where to start....satins, laces, pvc accesories, black make-up or even a very disturbing dark plum (perfect alternative to black) and black, black, black! For all those who love to dress in a more aggresive, industrial or even old-fashioned punk way!, I´ve seen "wet" black leggins everywhere! (What the hell is that, you must be wondering?) Well, I mean those leggins that look like leather. They are gorgeous with an oversize jumper but only suitable for skinny legs, unfortunately.....:(
Agggggghhh!

"Gothic Britain", part2 - Cemeteries...

British cemeteries are SO different from spanish ones. I once read that british cemeteries were conceived as places to have a quiet walk....a place to relax not only for the dead but also for the undead...I don´t know if this is true but I totally agree with it. British cemeteries are relaxing, there are only tombstones lying around, with a huge margin of space between each other.

Very different are spanish cemeteries indeed. Cemeteries are little cities or "urbis" in the middle of a city populated by alive souls. When you get into a spanish cemetery, the first thing that claims your attention are the caotic scenography: tombs of any size lying everywhere, in front of you, behind you, both sides...simple ones and grandiose ones whose owners -now dead- seem to try to oustage the others from the Death just to let everyone know they WERE someone important in life.
I don´t know if this a catholic thing or is just one of my stupid theories, but the fact of believing so passionately in the after-life is what drives people to see the graveyard as the "second home". In fact, in some places of Spain it is tradition that the relatives go often to the graveyard to clean it and look after it.....
Another building which is quite particular in spanish or catholic graveyards is the panteon (that ashtonishing building, often of a gothic or neo-gothic style that helds the tomb inside) these panteon can be big enough to be a shoe-box/flat!
The next time I go home, I will take pics of the tombs, there are some stunning ones!

By the way, every time I think of cemeteries, this quote comes to my mind:

“The fence around a cemetery is foolish, for those inside can't get out and those outside don't want to get in.” (Arthur Brisbane, american editor and writer 1864-1880)

"Gothic Britain", part1 - Too many black birds

I should really start to do a blog-series called "Gothic Britain". I see so many scary things here that I don´t see in Spain, specially in the sunny, calm, "I-feel-like-I´m-always-on-holidays" Mediterranian. British humour (sarcastic as hell, pesimist, always expecting the disgrace to happen and then smile with the "I knew it" expression on the face, but that would be for another post.. ).

The thing that stunns me every day! is the huge amount of black birds in this country, specially ravens! ravens! Those little tiny black things are not just birds, there´s something deeply dark and disturbing about them (and I´m not talking about colour and how rounded they are). I feel that creepy feeling even more now, after what it happened to me once...Here´s the horror story....Ready?

One day, I was all bored in my livingroom that I decided to have a look what it was going on outside the window. Just in front of it, next to the roses there was a black tiny bird. That thing was viciously killing a little earthworm, hitting it against the mud all over and over again....That little black thing (the bird) realized I was being the witness of such a murder.

The black criature dropped the earthworm from his mouth. Start staring at me, without winking....I carried on watching (it was just a bird, for god´s sake!). But that little rounded black thing kept staring at me. The fear started to take control over me. Oh...god! That vicious thing might fly to the window to peck it down into pieces....like in that Hitchcock's film!

I close the curtains. For a couple of seconds, almost half a minute. I went back to the window, that thing was still staring at me. The earthwomb corpse was still lying on the mud, ignoring that its death really meant nothing for the black bird because he got a fixation for me. I never really shitted on myself that much (if we ignore the time a male swan run after me and my friend because we got too close to the female-she was expecting...Another vicious bird....I will tell that in another post). As I was saying, I never really shitted on myself so much in my life, even more than Tippy Hedren did on the film...(Well, she had so many thing to fear in that film: the birds, the chance of having a geeky daughter who she ended up having, Hitchcock -who was trying to date with her...)

I hope my story will prevent other people to feel threatened by a creepy black bird....

Don´t get confused, that little chubby thing could kill you. Behind all that black they must see you as another Tippy Hedren...