Here's a contemporary reminisce about Whitby, something that happened on the first day of this year's festival in fact.

I was in the Tourist Office trying to sort out bus timetables when a woman arrived at the counter. She'd obviously arrived on speck and wnated to know where it all happened.

The assistant told her where the festival office was and then claimed that, although there are some fixed events (663 of them in case he hadn't counted), a lot of it happens spontaneously.

"They mostly just Goth about from pub to pub", he said.

Goths? Goths? I'd have that man know that some of us consider ourselves Grots, not Goths!