Ghost of a flea: It is all fun and games until someone loses a top hat

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March 24, 2008

It is all fun and games until someone loses a top hat

Generally speaking, I am not one for cutesy alternative church services - pet blessings and the like - but I am four-square in favour of Reverend Marcus Ramshaw's gothic eucharist at Cambridge and Whitby. Most public spirited of him.

Cambridge goths are routinely victimised by local youths, he says, with abuse ranging from knocking off their top hats and running off with their capes to more serious beatings. And while they preach non-violence to others, that doesn't stop goths harming themselves, which some of them do.

"They don't have that positive expectation from life. They expect others to treat them with disdain and suspicion," he says. "Romance lies very much at the heart of the goth ascetic but it's a romance in which tragedy is only a sigh away."

Yes, that plus lots of latex and corsets so let us keep things in perspective tragedy-wise.

Related: Follow these simple steps. First, go to Google. Second, type the words "Google gothic". Third, press "I'm feeling lucky" et voila! (hat tip to Captain H)

Also related: Absinthe Lollipops. Also, One Hairstyle, Three Memoirs: Alma Rubens, Colleen Moore, Louise Brooks.

Posted by Ghost of a flea at March 24, 2008 05:47 AM

Comments

Thoughts on losing a trilby hat?

Posted by: agent bedhead at March 24, 2008 11:02 AM

Potentially devastating.

Posted by: Ghost of a flea at March 24, 2008 11:24 AM

Really, the English are seriously beginning to squick me out. They don't like "gingers" (and they call red-heads "gingers"), they don't like Goths, they freak out when Doctor Who kisses a girl (I don't recall any upsets when No. 9 kissed Jack, though)... what the hell do they like?

Posted by: Andrea Harris at March 24, 2008 12:50 PM

Top Gear and Corrie St. Plus beating the French. And occasionally the Scots and Irish.

Posted by: Chris Taylor at March 24, 2008 04:44 PM