York Notes

 Normally when I go on holiday I take copious notes about being on holiday. This is mainly for my own benefit - this blog is for my own benefit, let's face it. But my memory is dark and murky water these days, and memories glimpsed like fast, silvery fish, are too quick for me. So I write stuff down, that I might have an accurate record of some of the events of my life. Much of my life already feels like it happened to someone else, and what a credulous idiot he was. On this occasion, I spent most of my down-time reading The North of England Home Service by Gordon Burn - which is a wonderful book - and writing a short story about some haunted beer.   

The only question you can reasonably ask at this point is "How has John never written about haunted beer before?" It's an oversight, I'll admit. The other reason I haven't written notes is that we never really sat down throughout our stay* - we walked almost all the time we were there: up and down the city walls (which are divided by "bars", and which lead to a disappointed misunderstanding) all around the streets, looking for the birthplace of Susan's granny "Gimmer" (it was in a police stables, confusingly). We discovered parks, ruins, art galleries, museums, second hand book shops and navigated the Shambles which, in the middle-ages, would have run slick and gory with the blood of slaughtered animals, and today is teeming with Japanese tourists queuing to buy "York Ghosts", which look like poached shuttlecocks, and represent the incredible business initiative of a man who bought a job lot of knackered pepper-pots, and wondered how he could monetise it. 

We also spent a long time in York Minster, which I'd been unable to get to the previous time we'd been to York, as we'd chosen to do it in a blizzard, and the forecourt was slicker than somebody selling you a York Ghost. I started crying in the Minster. Not sure why. There is something about the immensity of it, its coolness and stillness, that transcends its religious purpose. It's a human space, used by people for a millennium, echoing with past lives, the absence of silent prayers. The stone is softened and shaped through endless, quotidian use. Human weight pressed into it, the physical evidence of forgotten people. Weirdly, a past bishop, John Sharpe, is the dead spit of my Dad. To a quite ridiculous degree, it seems to me. Though he would never have worn that hat, nor slumped in that louche manner. My Dad, I mean. The Bishop is all over it. 

In the crypt lies the Doomstone, a beautiful carving of dead people being harassed by devils, while toads look on. The League of Gentlemen was rarely far from my mind during my stay in the North of England. The more time I spent there, the more Gatiss et al seemed to be dry-as-a-bone social realists. 

We saw the famous printer's devil carving. It's above a Tweed shop now. You're not supposed to look into its eyes, so I took a photo. I'm assuming I've cleverly tricked the devil by doing that - no one will ever have thought of that before. By the way, the sun was out the entire time we were there and so, with my vampiric skin skills, the only person redder than me in the north of England was this carving. 

For years Basingstoke Town Centre bore the legend "Surprisingly Good For Shopping", which shows you the level of confidence a New Town can muster. "Not As Shit As You Might Think" and "Sorry We're Not The Oracle Centre" would have been viable alternatives. But York is surprisingly good for shopping. So I bought myself some trinkets. Because I'm worth it. See, Basingstoke? CONFIDENCE. 

So, you can see there a Japanese Nest Beer, a book about the Brewing Industry (haunted beer research), a City of York Beer Bottle Opener, The North of England Home Service, an insanely strong Belgian Ale, a pack of horror film playing cards, and a copy of The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold by Evelyn Waugh, which he referred to as his "mad book". The beers were nice. 

We went out for dinner a couple of times. On the first trip here, we'd been trapped in a snowstorm and taken refuge in Cote Brasserie, so since then I had thought fondly of it - I didn't even know it was a chain at the time - HOW NAIVE. So when we came back, I thought it would be fun to go there again. But we're done with it now. I bought a thing called a "fillet noir": two fillet medallions (served pink), truffle potato dauphines, mushroom marmalade, black garlic jus and charred baby gem. Sounds nice, doesn't it? Full of umami goodness. I love black garlic, I love truffles. A blackened steak with a pink interior sounds fabulous - I'm currently drooling and typing, my version of multitasking. In reality what appeared on my plate was two small, apparently un-marinaded steaks, in a gloopy, sweet sauce that tasted vaguely of roses and oranges, but in the most saccharine way. It was a disappointment. I'm afraid I no longer feel I have a relationship with Cote Brasserie - which it turns out is a CHAIN! We shan't return. Unless there's another white squall. 

The best food I had was at a cafe called Mannion and Co. I had soy glazed portobello mushrooms, Thai basil peas, a duck egg and and sriracha. It was perhaps the best breakfast I've ever had, and I am none the wiser as to what sriracha is. I could look it up, sure. But keep the mystery alive, yeah? Could be Persian for magic dust - you don't know. 

Here's the hotel. This is what it looked like at night. Hence all the night filling out the background. 

Here's a bad photo of the room. It had two giant, golden feathers in bronze affixed to the wall which, sadly, you can't see here. 

We found a bar called Stone Roses Bar. NO WE DIDN'T GO IN. I peeked through the window and there were three grey haired old men, none of them sitting together or talking, while the video for Kinky Afro played on a plasma screen. Bye Bye Bad Men. 

Here's a bit of York looking nice. 

That last one is a Medieval stocks I saw in a churchyard because, while God loves you, he does insist on your honouring the letter as well the spirit of the law, and you can expect to have dead rats thrown at your face if you going fishing on a Sunday or any Feast Day. 

I loved York and I think I would move there in a heartbeat (if I suddenly had a lot of money). Northern people really are friendly. I know they always go on about it but, unfortunately, it is true. Southerners have our charms: our awkwardness, our separateness, the sigh of relief when we're behind closed doors, our splendid isolation. But Northerners are friendly, and often kind. And York is a beautiful place, a real city, with a proper history, and it owns that history, it works for the people. They're also obsessed with ghosts, which is a positive. Every pub has a ghost, The Punchbowl has three (all horrible) the Golden Fleece - my favourite - a greedy six. I didn't see any. I didn't even get a "The Ciccerones" moment

 in the Minster's crypt. 

Shame. 

Body positivity appears to be in full force in York. And a lot of people are getting married. I saw one bride dressed head to toe in an inflatable penis costume and carrying a three foot dildo through the crowds on a Saturday lunch time. I think I can still remember a time when that sort of thing wasn't considered normal. Leopard print appears to still be a thing too. The spirit of Bet Lynch might be the only real ghost I experienced in the North. I spent much of the time humming Ernie K Doe's "Here Come The Girls". 

Sexual dimorphism seems exaggerated and extreme around town. While there is a singular strain of masculine dandy in the North - the dapper little Frank Turnbull from Bennett's "A Chip in the Sugar" springs to mind - all caps and creases and canary yellow Pringles, but generally the women make A LOT of effort and the men...well, make none at all. It's perfectly normal to see a girl dressed as though she were attending the baby shower of a minor royal, but being squired about town by a bearded youth with his arse hanging out of his tracky bottoms. I know this is the case everywhere, but it definitely seemed more marked here. Or maybe I'm just seeing more young people than usual. I live quite a middle-aged life - I was quite surprised by the sheer volume of throat tattoos in evidence as well. And I thought I was still down with the kids. The tattooed kids. 

All the boys have that Black Adder hairdo. First series. Not a Regency wig.  

I loved my stay in York. It was getting a bit hairy at the weekend - it's a different city when the tourists descend on it.** We didn't get to go back to Mannion and Co for another breakfast, as there were queues out the door and not just there, but everywhere. But we found an incredible patisserie and filled up on cruffin and focaccia - it was Oleria in Bootham, if you're headed there. 

The journey home via the Leeds Bradford Airport was probably the worst airport experience of my life, and I was once stuck at Manchester Airport for 8 hours because the plane I was travelling on was redirected there, after it was struck by lightning and the cabin filling up with the smell of burnt plastic. After the 8 hours, where I ate an all day breakfast pizza and drank six pints, I got back onto what was palpably the same plane as it still stank of burnt plastic. But this airport experience was worse. While we were traveling there on the train, a youth threw a massive stone at the window. But that seemed like the sort of thing that might happen in "Kes", so I was quite happy about it. Like I say, I'd move to York in a heartbeat. 

If I could afford to. Which I can't. Maybe one day. 

*We sat down to eat, watch a play and, you know, use the hotel's excellent facilities. 

** I am a traveler. A traveler who acts in almost every way like a tourist, doing all the tourist things, and standing around on the pavement pointing at things while people struggle to get past.