My parents came! To visit me!
They brought me pain! And misery!

Oh, ok, they did no such thing. In truth, they brought me Fair Trade fudge and mini-eggs. But that wouldn't have rhymed.

On Saturday, they took Alex, Berna and myself to Whitby, since I'd never been there before, but had gathered it was Wonderously Gothic, thanks to "Dracula" and a v. good children's book called "The Whitby Witches" by Robin Jarvis. (Think Philip Pullman.) Of course, the fact that masses of goths go there regularly should be recommendation too, but they also go to Morecambe, a place that struck me as not gothic in the slightest on my multiple camping trips there as a child. Unless rain counts as gothic.

I was slightly disappointed, since touristiness diminished its spookiness, and I was hoping to see it misty and windswept: instead, we were alternately drenched and blasted with the cruel sun's rays. Nonetheless, the abbey looked suitably ruined and the accompanying museum was somewhat amusing. They had "touch and tell" machines, where you could ask the abbey's founder, Caedmon, "Brother William", Frank Meadow Sutcliffe (a famous photographer, portrayed as being incredibly pretentious) and some guy called Buzz Busby (or something equally improbable) various questions. This included a rather too graphic video clip of Brother William on the toilet.

We also went to St Mary's Church, if you can call it that, since inside it looked more like a cross between a castle, a manor house, a train, and a weird fantasy land. I liked it. Then we descended the 199 steps and meandered around the streets for a while. We were going to go on the replica of Captain Cook's ship, but it apparently cost £7 per person to do so, and most of it could be seen from the outside, so forget that for a game of . . . well, sailors. We were also going to go to the Dracula thing, but found it had just closed for the day. I did manage to buy two books, though: "The Witches Of North Yorkshire" and "13 Ghost Stories From Whitby", which are good, if very silly.

So we went on to Robin Hood's Bay (an oddly named place, as it's not exactly in Robin Hood county) and watched the waves crashing against . . . well, the end of a road. Then we went on to Ravenscar, which we thought would be mint and ghost-town-like, since it was intended to be a tourist resort, so a great deal of effort went into the creation of it, only for the beach to be washed away before it could "open", as t'were. But it was just an average village. We wanted to go to the tourist information office, but it had closed a minute earlier.

Back in York, we parted company. I went into my corridor's kitchen to make some dinner, and noticed the worktop had some strange splashes on it. But I put this down to my Chinese corridor mates cooking weird and wonderful dishes again. Then I started hearing strange noises. It wasn't the cooker, or the rice cooker, or the contraption whose purpose I'm not 100% sure about, so I was most puzzled, until I noticed a pair of pigeons scuttling about on top of a cupboard, behind four bottles of Baileys.

Eek! I opened the window, but they didn't move. I didn't dare frighten them, lest I took a bottle to the head, but was scared to leave for similar reasons. But there was no way I was going to take the bottles down. Eventually, I left, slamming the door behind me very quickly, in case they entered the corridor, and they flew to freedom, leaving the bottles intact.

English corridor mate and myself went to see if we could get the kitchen cleaned. A porter unlocked the cleaning cupboard for us, then watched as said corridor mate mopped up. Apparently, he wasn't to leave the cleaning cupboard unlocked, lest us manic depressive postgraduates decided to drink the bleach, presumably.

[Since this episode he has been deported to another college, apparently on the grounds that he was too fond of being surrounded by nubile young females. The reasoning behind this move is unclear, since the other college also has its fair share of nubile young females too, but perhaps the powers that be felt non-manic-depressive undergraduates were better equipped to deal with him.]

After that, I went to a goth night. It was ok, and the band that were on were all right too, but the night was really made by the lighting, which was absolutely amazing. I asked the owner if I could have it, but the reply was only if I gave him £10000, which, as it happens, I don't have. And I couldn't steal it either, because it's really heavy and I am weak. Oh well. Next lifetime I'll save.

On Sunday, the parents took me to the railway museum. It was free to get in and thoroughly spectacular, both in terms of its Many Huge Trains and the amount of random paraphernalia lying around, including a platform 9 3/4 sign. Since I am becoming increasingly fond of railways and history, I was deeply pleased. Olden times were wasted on the old.

Then we went to the Minster and the Jorvik Viking Centre. The latter wasn't quite what I was expecting: it featured a time machine, a ghost-train style thing that took you round York as it was in 975 (complete with smell and person relieving himself - why is toilet humour everywhere and so literal?) and a tiny bit of museum. It was pleasantly weird, but I'd have been disappointed by the shortness of the experience if I'd paid to get in myself. But the parents thought it was mint, so w00t!