I’ve been giving some lectures on genre cinema up in York recently, and spent Monday night there – aka Halloween.
Amazing. York is a city full of beauty; and also full of ghosts. Every pub has its own ghost trail. I was walking down one street and came across a gang of tourists who were being told about a ghost that haunts the Punch Bowl pub. Apparently when you light the fire, smoke emerges, and forms into a face – the face of the previous pub landlord who burned to death in a fire..
Add to this people dressed as zombies or with horns on their head and you have a truly spooky ambience.
I met Lee Harris of Angry Robot fame – he’s a resident there, despite being alive. And we stumbled into a superb pub called the Yorkshire Terrier, with fine local beer and cobwebs sprayed on the handpumps. The first person I saw on arrival was a man dressed as a nun. When Lee turned up the nun sat at the piano and began to play – beautifully.
It was one of those surreal, wonderful evenings; fine conversation, good booze, and a pianistical nun belting out, among other things, Space Oddity. I shall treasure my memories of that evening for some time to come.
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