“WAS THAT A PARROT?!” is not really something I was expecting to hear while driving around London.

But for the record, yes, yes it was.

Every once in a while, you have to stop and remind yourself where you are, and brightly coloured birds in a park in London is one of the most disorienting things imaginable.  Never mind the herd of deer crossing the road in front of your car—it’s the birds that are confusing.

I have never been so perplexed by a parakeet.

Which I apparently don’t have any photos of, so here’s one with Ellie and Emma with Tobias (we decided he needed a name).

And here’s one with Tom and a bumble bee.

Richmond Park is less than a mile’s walk from uni, and it’s quite easy to forget where you are once you get there.  It’s ridiculous.  While London is all concrete and cobblestones, Richmond Park is all grass, trees, and deer.  Lots of deer.

Don’t think I’m kidding.

“Er…. Where are we again?” –Everyone

Richmond Park was originally a commons for the locals to use as field and pasture, but in 1625 one of many plagues hit London, and Charles I escaped to Richmond Palace, rather than stick around and die like everyone else.

It was Charles I that decided the commons needed to be put to better use as a hunting park, and so in 1637, he walled it in and brought in 2000 deer.  This did not make anyone happy.  The people around the park didn’t just use it for farming purposes—they needed the timber from the trees for firewood, etc.  Obviously, you can’t take down a wall and expect 2000 deer to stay put, so a ladder was erected instead, allowing people to cross the wall and gather timber (and people continued to gather firewood from Richmond Park all the way up through the 1800s, when the practice was finally prohibited).  When Charles II was king, he had ponds added to the park for the deer, including the Pen Ponds near the centre of the park.

Jubilee Pond

Okay, history lesson’s over.  Now it’s ambiguous story time:

There’s a telescope on King Henry’s Mound (a high point in the park named for Henry VIII) through which you can see Saint Paul’s Cathedral (well, you can see it without the telescope, but the telescope just makes it easier).  Well, at one point my flat decided that it would be a good idea to go on a night walk to Richmond Park and walk all the way across the park to King Henry’s Mound to the telescope—at night.  And if you think that a group of people living in the famously haunted dorm would be perfectly okay taking an extremely long walk through a forest at night, you couldn’t be more wrong.  We were all quite glad to get back to our ghost.

And get a Chinese.

This is a bit of a combination post because there are two separate incidents that more or less rely on each other for discussion.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that I love goth music, and the awesome thing about England is that this is where the goth subculture got started.  Out of the mess that was punk rock grew goth, led by Siouxie and the Banshees, Peter Murphy, and many others.

In the US (especially over here in the west) goth isn’t nearly what it is in Europe.  I mentioned to a German professor that I use German music to practice my listening skills, and when the exchange of

“What kind of music do you like to listen to?”

“Eh…  Goth rock.”

happened, the prof’s response was “Well, you won’t have any problem finding music then!”

While the comment was specific to Germany, it’s true throughout Europe, and London is no different—as anyone who has set foot in Camden would know.  (Camden is well known for it’s alternative subcultures, especially goth and punk.)

Throughout my time in London, there were several bands that I listen to regularly who were playing in or around London, and while I missed quite a few of them, I did manage to hit two.  Back in week four, a couple of us from the flat went into Camden to the Underworld nightclub to catch Voltaire’s London gig, and then almost a month later, I took a trip out to Bristol with my friend Maggie to catch VNV Nation at the Fleece, a popular club for alternative rock gigs.

If you had told my fifteen-year-old self that I would be seeing Voltaire live, I wouldn’t have believed you.  First of all, I lived in Idaho, where there is no goth scene to any degree, and I’ve never been one for concerts.  And VNV Nation doesn’t tend to tour America very often, which is really the case for most goth musicians—when they do, they stick to the east coast where the scene is quite a bit bigger (ironically enough, it’s pretty big in Florida…).

So, there was that…

The real reason I want to bring it up, though, is because between the two concerts, the variety within the goth subculture itself was amazing.  A lot of people don’t realise that there is more than one type of goth, and between the two concerts, I saw almost every single one of them (I can’t imagine what I would have seen if I’d made it to either Diary of Dreams or Combichrist!).

Background:  Voltaire is certainly goth, but he’s also filk.  That is, quite a bit of his music would appeal to science fiction/fantasy fans, and he uses a lot of folk music techniques.  He’s not gloomy, he’s not aggressive, but he is hilarious.  He monologues, and it’s great.  He makes snide comments in the middle of a song.  He also drinks a bottle of Captain Morgan while onstage, and he can be a bit offensive (if you’re the type to be offended).

Exhibit A.

The eye-patch makes it.

VNV Nation is on the opposite side of the scale.  They’re serious.  They’re more than a man on a stage with only a guitar and his voice.  They’re big.  But you’d never guess they were goth by listening to them, or by looking at them.  But they are.  Ronan formed the group in the early ‘90s, so they’re part of the original movement.  They are, for lack of a better word, inspiring.

Exhibit B.

Ronan has a lot more energy than people expect him to (so he says).

So, two different types of goth music: acoustic, dark, and funny; electronic, light, and energetic.

With that, you would think that you would get two completely different groups of goths attending the concerts, but the funny thing is, you really don’t.  It’s true that VNV didn’t draw much, if any, from the Renaissance/vampire crowd, and Voltaire didn’t pull too many cybergoths, but otherwise, there was quite a bit of cross-pollination between the two.

I find that to be a lovely thing.  I love how the culture thrives in London, and I love how you can go to two completely different concerts and see quite a few of the same types of people, but the diversity of the crowd is anything but small.  If anything, I just liked to see what kinds of people listened to the same music I do, and the variety was surprising.  Both gigs ranged from “I just got off work” to “You don’t know this, but I sleep in a coffin every night,” and that’s amazing.  If nothing else, I’m glad I got to go to London if only to see and experience this subculture in its natural habitat.

My fifteen-year-old self would have died.

For the last song of the night, Voltaire invited everyone up on stage to sing with him.

Ronan is so much fun.

My friend Maggie went with me to Bristol to see VNV Nation, which was awesome.