The blurbs I saw for each film can be found here. The shorter blurbs I’ve just copied here, but the longer ones I’ve summarised.

Al’s Beef - B

Director: Dennis Hauck
Country: American
Genre: Horror, Western, Short
Tagline: She’s got revenge written all over her.
Summary: Bloodied, barefoot, and branded like cattle, a mysterious stranger comes to town with an aim to kill the man that done her wrong.

A strong Western, with good plot and direction but some annoying discontinuities.

Back Alley Butcher - D+

Director: Joseph Guzman
Country: American
Genre: Horror, Short
Summary: A pregnant woman is stolen from her home and her unborn baby taken from her.

Well made vignette, but no plot, no characterisation and hence no impact.

I’ve actually copied the original blurb below. I’ve italicised the bits you wouldn’t know if you just saw the film.

Back Alley Butcher tells the story of Ruth, a down on her luck, unwed pregnant waitress, whose world is turned upside down when she is abducted in the middles of the night in a brutal kidnapping. Back Alley Butcher takes place in the late 1970’s where the lack of modern technology made the world a more vulnerable place. The movie explores the hush-hush world of black-market adoptions and will introduce the audience to the term, ‘Reverse Abortion’ a phrase people will be talking about long after the credits roll. This is an original story that has not been explored in recent horror movies. It’s uniqueness and chilling subject matter lends itself to horror audiences looking for something new.

The last italicised sentence is not so much “not obvious in the film” as “not obvious in real life”. There were other fetus abduction films at the festival!

Bitch Slap - B+

Director: Rick Jacobson
Country: America
Genre: Horror, Sexploitation
Summary: Though they claim to be working together, these three hot women have their own agendas as they fight to find the diamonds in the desert.

A lot of fun, with some cute flashbacks. Does what it says on the tin, but not as groundbreaking or feminist as it thinks. At all.

Blood On The Highway - B

Directors: Barak Epstein and Blair Rowan
Country: America
Genre: Comedy, Horror
Tagline: There’s a sucker born every minute!
Summary: Three twenty-somethings find themsleves in fate, Texas, a town populated by dimwitted vampires and oversexed hicks.

Not my sense of humour (our protagonists are two arseholes and a wimp) and Nicholas Brendon’s cameo is pretty gratuitous, but overall entertaining.

Brothers Keeper - C+

Director: Martijn Smits
Country: Holland
Genre: Horror, Short
Tagline: Ours is a strange history.
Summary: Two brothers, one gruesome to look at, work together to trap and kill prostitute in God’s name.

Overall enjoyable, but the plot was more straightforward (and a little cliche) than it seemed to think it was.

Caution Sign - C+

Director: Wade Carney
Country: American

Genre: Horror, ShortSummary: The sign said SLOW… or did it? A dark forest road. A heated argument. A caution sign.

Intense and unusual, but not very compelling.

Cheerbleeders - B

Director: Peter Podgursky
Country: American
Genre: Short | Horror
Summary: A pair of high school outcasts gain ultimate power over the cheerleaders, but it all turns sour in the end.

Ronseil (”It does what it say on the tin!”) revenge fantasy, well made.

Dead Bones - C

Director: Olivier Beguin
Country: Switzerland
Genre: Short, Horror, Western
Summary:  A bounty hunter tracking down a criminal catches up with him in a small half-abandoned village, where he soon discovers that the few remaining locals have unusual customs.

Starts well, but plot dissolves into a confusing series of disjointed scenes by the end.

Damned By Dawn - A-

Director: Brett Anstey
Country: Australia
Genre: Horror
Summary: During a violent thunderstorm, a family is awoken by piercing shrieks which summon the dead to rise again. Their lives explode in a blood soaked fury as they battle to save their souls from eternal torment with the Banshee.

An unusual baddie handled well, though the special effects are a little computer-gamish. Lots of background spooks and unseen scares.

Death In Charge - A-

Director: Devi Snively
Country: America
Genre: Short, Horror, Comedy
Tagline: Don’t tell mom the babysitter’s death.
Summary: An impatient single Mom carelessly mistakes the scythe-carrying cloaked one for her tardy babysitter and leaves Death to care for her precocious 9-year-old daughter.

Short, sweet, punchy.

Dying Breed - A-

Director: Jody Dwyer
Country: New Zealand
Genre: Horror
Tagline: Everybody has different tastes.
Summary: Zoologist Nina is convinced there are still tigers remaining in the Tasmanian wilderness, but that’s not all that’s lurking out there.

Deliverance vs Dog Soliders. Solid horror fare.

Excision - A +

Director: Richard Bates Jr.
Country: America
Genre: Short, Horror
Summary: Pauline struggles to handle her sister’s cystic fibrosis and becomes obsessed with surgery, knowing her sister will one day need a lung
transplant.

Disturbing and compelling; really powerful.

The Facts In The Case Of Mister Hollow - A-

Directors: Rodrigo Gudiño, Vincent Marcone
Country: Canada
Genre: Animation, Short, Horror
Tagline: Look Closely…
Summary:  An investigation of an unusual photograph reveals a tapestry of secrets hidden in the details, and a tale of kidnapping and murder captured in a haunting moment.

Strange and haunting, requiring hard use of brain!

Georges Intervention - A

Director: JT Seaton
Country: America
Genre: Horror | Comedy
Tagline: 9 out of 10 interventions are successful… this is the 1
Summary: George’s friend stage an intervention; they’re worried he’s eating people. But then, he is a zombie.

Smart and fun, an original take on the zombie genre.

Hair Extensions (Exte) - B

Director: Sion Sono
Country: Japan
Genre: Horror
Tagline: What lovely hair you have…
Summary: Hair extensions and the women they kill.

Fairytale-esuqe. Some unfortunate characterisation cliches, but overall the plot is original. Rapunzel’s Revenge!

How My Dad Killed Dracula - A

Director: Sky Soleil
Country: America
Genre: Short, Comedy, Horror
Tagline: One of the greatest Halloween stories of all time.
Summary: A Halloween practical joke turns a family tradition into a night of comic terror when two young teens don’t believe their cousin’s dad killed Dracula. Insisting on proving it, Dad picks up a shovel and starts to dig.

Funny and deft, perfectly done.

Inside (À l’intérieur) - B+

Director: Alexandre Bustillo
Country: France
Genre: Horror
Summary: A pregnant widow awaits a a ride to the hospital, but another woman breaks in and a battle for both their lives begins.

Intense and Explicit - I couldn’t watch the final scenes. Some characters are TSTL (Too Stupid Too Live) and it requires strong suspension of disbelief.

It Came From Another World! - D-

Director: Christopher R. Mihm
Country: America
Genre: Sci-Fi, Comedy
Summary: When Professor Jackson’s colleague and best friend Dr. Frasier  doesn’t return from a scientific expedition in the deep woods, the Professor is sent to find and retrieve him and stumbles across a mysterious “Rock From Outer Space”.

Affectionate pastiche very badly executed. Running gags mostly unfunny, though there’s some good one-liners.

Kirksdale - B-

Director: Ryan R. Spindell
Country: American
Genre: Horror, Short
Tagline: Sanity is a state of mind.
Summary: In the Deep South in the 60s a quiet mental hospital is not all it seems.

Unorignal, but well done.

The Machine Girl - B+

Director: Noboru Iguchi
Country: Japan
Genre: Horror
Summary: The life of a young, Japanese schoolgirl is destroyed when her family is killed by a Ninja-Yakuza family. Her hand cut off, she replaces it with various machines-of-death, and seeks revenge.

Very silly; if Rodriguez had found a female Jet Li… Modern Kung Fu, complete with hookey dialogue and cheesy effect. Cartoon Violence at its best.

Nightlife - A

Director: Timothy Sanderson
Country: America
Genre: Comedy, Horror
Tagline: 300 years, and they’re still living paycheck to paycheck…
Summary: Mockumentary about Vampires and the geeks who hunt them.

Perfect example of the genre. Very good characterisation, though felt longer than it was.

Orlok - 3D - A\B-

Directors: Keith Carter/F.W. Murnau
Country: Germany/America
Genre: Horror
Tagline: From the Bottomless Pit He Came!
Summary: 3D re-imagining of Nosferatu, the Silent classic based on the story “Dracula.”

Original film is still very good, and stands up against modern interpretations. The 3D is quite fun, and the scenes where it’s applied are well chosen. The soundtrack was alright, but random gibberish and moans to represent dialogue and some mistimed music make it an irritant.

Schrik - B

Director: Martijn Hullegie
Country: Holland
Genre: Horror, Short
Summary: Barbara and Olivier like to play games and scare each other!

Good and well made. Slightly cliche, but deftly explored.

Smile - B?

Director: Yuval Markovich and Noam Abta
Country: Isreal
Genre: Horror, Short, Animation
Summary: A very sinister and unsettling student film from Israel.

Very, very strange. Paranoic, and very hard to rate!

The Fox Family (Gumiho Gajok) - A

Country: Korea
Genre: Comedy, Horror
Summary: Disguised as humans, a family of fox spirits run a circus, waiting for the day they can consume human lives and make their transformation permanent.

Hilarious. Well made, very entertaining, and a musical!

Thicker Than Water: The Vampire Diaries Part 1 - F+

Director: Phil Messerer
Country: America
Genre: Comedy, Horror
Tagline: The family that prays together… slays together
Summary:  An ordinary suburban family have their world turned upside down when their youngest becomes a vampire.

Out of focus, bad editting, cliche, bad audio… Acting was pretty good, though.

Wasting Away - A+

Director: Matthew Kohnen
Country: Germany and America
Genre: Horror, Comedy
Summary: An oddball comedy from the perspective of the brain munching monsters themselves.

Brilliant! A great execution of a wonderful idea.

So, overall?

Zombie Comedy is my new favourite sub-genre, I think. I still love the big supernatural creature features Australia and New Zealand do so well. South East Asia does fun and kooky, with new takes on myths we take for granted in the west. France proves again it can do compelling and disturbing, but it’s so hard to watch. America manages to tick each box, but then, it is a very big country…

The films started on Friday morning, before the opening night party. A little confusing, and a shame because I booked my tickets and time off before I knew that. Trains to Whitby are a nightmare, so I didn’t even get there until 8. The website never actually started the time the opening night party started, but it was obviously some time before I got there because I mised all the talks from the special guests!

It was less a ball and more a cabaret, which was more enjoyable from my perspective, since I was there alone. The acts were good; Chris Cross, The Gorefest Girls, a zombie bellydance troup and the Mocky Horror Show.

Overall the acts were professional and impressive. The burlesque dancers  and the bellydancing troup looked amazing, and the Mocky Horror Show had brilliant voices (though they did not completely look the part, and they struggled with the stage set up). Chris Cross was enthusiastic and really good with the crowd; I was surprised he wasn’t the compere for the evening, since the actual compere was just dull in comparison, and read the burlesque intros off bits of paper.  My only real criticism is that the show had clearly not been rehearsed as a whole; set-changes were delayed and rushed, people weren’t where they needed to be and microphones weren’t set up well. I understand most of the artists probably came a long way, and to rehearse while films were being shown in the next room would be awkward, but it would have been nice to leave with the impression they’d at least had a run through.

Ingrid Pitt didn’t make it, due to severe pnuemonia. Mention of the Secret Special Guest disappeared from the website a few weeks beforehand, so who knows who that was. I couldn’t identify Dacre Stoker or anyone else from where I sat and if the booklaunch happened I either wasn’t there or it was a little too low-key.

I didn’t see all the films shown (obviously, since I missed most of Friday!) but I did manage to see a good selection. It was a great showcase for up-and-coming directors (many of whom attended) and foreign horror. I’ll do a full set of film reviews tomorrow, but overall I’ll say the vast majority were very entertaining - there were a couple of amazing films, and a couple of real stinkers, but I don’t feel I wasted my time or money. What was a little disappointing was that they were all run from a laptop - the traditionalist in me insists a film festival should really use more film stock, rather than DVDs! However, the nature of the films shown, especially the shorts, meant that many of them will never have been available on anything else.

Suggestions for next year would include leaving spaces for lunch and dinner (maybe showing shorts at meal times, so people disappear for two hours because they don’t want to come into a movie half way through) and making more use of the directors and producers present. Only Devi Snively gave a short talk while I was there. She’s now working on a feature film, which I’m looking forward to. I had to leave before the final film (by car, this time, but Whitby’s still hard to get home from!) so I don’t know if there was any kind of closing ceremony, but nothing was advertised. I know they struggled to find much indepedent British horror to show - America, Australia, France and Japan were probably the best represented countries, though there were films from countries like Isreal as well - and I think once it’s established they’ll find it easier to make broader selections. A few more non-film activities would be good, but with the size of the theatre they’re limited to 350 tickets (a few ideas were batted around to get around the fact there’s only 350 seats, but I don’t think anything will come of that next year at least) which means some of the distributors they invited turned them down; one guy said he needed to sell at least 200 DVDs to break even, which would be improbable under those circumstances. More could be made of the fact that the youth hostel is only £20 a night (and stunning!) with breakfast included… I may be going back to Whitby next year just to stay there again! Plus, it makes it a pretty cheap holiday overall.

I’m interested in going back next year, and I know they’re planning to run it from Thursday to Sunday rather than Friday to Monday then. I think it will take a few years to really get established, but from what I overheard they ought to be able to survive financially long enough for that to happen. As it stands, it’s a great networking opportunity for genre film directors and producers, and it’s a good excuse to sit in a theatre until your eyes go square!

It’s out today!

Fellow contibutors include:

Clancy Nacht

Mercy Loomis

JL Merrow

Lenore Black

Jay Di Meo

SJFrost

Jason Rubis

Michael M Jones

Elizabeth Black

Kilt Kilpatrick

and it’s edited by EM Lynley!

So what I have been doing? Mostly working. Since I got back from holiday things have gone a little insane, thanks to Christmas being less than 12 weeks away. In my infrequent spare time I’ve submitted Firebird to EM Lynley’s f/f fairy tale anthology (Rumpledsilksheets); I’ve been to see UP, which is the saddest Pixar film ever made,  I swear; I’ve attended a good but disjointed burlesque show; and I’ve introduced more people to GhostWatch.

Later today I’m heading to Whitby for the Bram Stoker Film Festival, which is in equal parts an exciting and a terrifying prosect because I’ve only been to Whitby once, I don’t know anyone at the festival, and I’m going to be late thanks to the trains (which are taking me all the way up to Middlesbrough and then back down to Whitby, and only run four times a day). The Youth hostel is tucked behind the Abbey, with its hundreds of steps -  the climbing of which will be far scarier than any of the films, I’m sure you’ll agree! Again, I’ll report when I get back!

Anyway, further radio silence until Monday evening, when I’ll tell you more about the anthology. And everything else!

We were actually out of the hostel by 9, because we’d booked a whale watching trip. Chained the bikes outside the quay, left our bags in the Sealife Survey visitor centre (not because they’d get nicked, but because they’d get wet in the inevitable rain!) and proceded to sit on a boat for six hours.

We saw no whales, alas. The Minke whales and the basking sharks started heading off about a week before we got there (having said that, the website announces that the day after we went they saw the minke 25 minutes out from Tobermory!). The Orcan pod could be anywhere along the Scottish coast, and of the three kinds of dolphins two (common and bottlenose) have already finished it’s season and the other (Risso) haven’t been seen at all this year, and only once last year. We also didn’t see any leatherback turtles or sunfish, which have started to turn up in the last few years as the dolphins leave. Global warming is pretty obvious in an ecosystem as carefully balanced as this.

The orcas make for a particularly sad story: there’s only nine of them, and they haven’t produced offspring in fifteen years. That’s sad in itself, but new research is suggesting that they might actually be a unique subspecies of orca; they’ve found certain populations don’t mix, even though their territories do, like the Norwegian orcas and the Finnish orcas, and there are some distinct physical differences in the position of the white patches near their eyes and the shape of their fins. So the Scottish pod might be the last nine of their subspecies, and they’re not breeding.

What we did see, and quite quickly too, were harbour porpoises. We saw several distinct individuals, at varying distances from the boat, including a juvenile. Brilliant! We found an area high in fish and plankton, so we hung around there a couple of hours, but nothing apart from more porpoises. The water was too rough to see much, so we could have been positively surrounded by sharks and whales, but there wasn’t a lot we could do about it. If the weather had been better we’d have gone further out, to Muck and Eigg, but we were pretty much trapped in the Sound of Mull.

We also missed seeing any otters, though there were a few shapes that might have been otters, might have been seals, but we did see several sea eagles. Huge! Beautiful. On the way back in we nipped into a cove to see common and grey seals. I’ve always loved seals, hence the Selkie story, and there were some with a little bit of grey-white still in their coats; juvenlies. Oh, and we saw lots of phytoplankton and zooplankton!

We pulled back into Tobermory, collected our bikes, and hopped on another bus (though at this point my knees had actually recovered - my friend’s hadn’t). Back on the ferry, and into Oban. Arrived at the hotel to find a discrete notice announcing they were under administration, but we had no problems with it. The staff were lovely, and even gave me a free upgrade from single to double for being cheeky enoughto ask for one! Well, to ask for a larger single - my friend had a bigger room with a bath, while I had a tiny one with a shower, but it turned out he had the largest single in the hotel. I got boosted to a double with a bath, but no shower.

I decided to eat in: the food was horrible. Don’t get me wrong, I got what I paid for: £15 for mor food than I could really stomach, but it had been microwaved, and the peas were shrivelled and the black pudding dry. But the waiter was lovely! I get the impression the cook had just stopped trying, which when your workplace in under administration isn’t entirely surprising.

Very early night, in the end, because I had nothing else to do! Except I remembered that I did, and after an hour’s doze woke up and wrote some postcards. Had to check out at 10 the next day (still no lie-ins!), after a breakfast left on the hotplates too long, and got to wander about Oban for a couple of hours. We had a tour of the whisky distillery, which was really interesting (plus free whisky tasting and free glasses to take home!), and walked up to the colloseum-esque structure on the hill (got to love those mad, wealthy Victorians), but we ran out of things to do about an hour before our train and ended up looking at the tourist tat.

It was a seven hour train journey back, Oban to Glasgow, Glasgow to Edinburgh, Edinburgh to York. Quite tight changes. We had a bottle of wine and some random food (including biscuits stolen from the hotel) so we ate lunch on the Oban-Glasgow. I was right: the mountains were improved by wine!

We got back to York about 8ish, at which point I cycled home, changed, and ran out again for Tom Scott’s leaving do, since he’s heading to London to seek fame and fortune there. And then the day after I went to London for the Child of the Hive book launch, which shall get its own post tomorrow.

The train journey from Glasgow to Oban was one of the most beautiful I’ve ever taken. We had to be on the train for 8:10 am, not my favourite time to start travelling (considering we had to leave the hostel at 7:30 - this was a lie-in free holiday!), but once we were settled in the only thing I could have wished for was to be in the restaurant car of a stream train. It’s the kind of landscape best accompanied by a nice glass of wine and hot dinner. Mountains, waterfalls, lochs, the Atlantic, forests, moorland… It’s like someone took the Lake District and said “it’s nice, but don’t you think it could be a bit… bigger?”

I’m a great lover of boats, too, so I enjoyed the ferry ride from Oban to Mull. My main experience with islands has so far been the Isle of Wight, which sits on its own off the South Coast, so skirting our way through the Hebrides was an interesting experience for me; you saw nothing even approaching open sea. Shame, but it still had the same spectacular views we’d seen from the train, so I wasn’t heartbroken!

I’d found out the day before that it was 20 miles from the ferry port to Tobermory, where we were staying (thanks, oh friend who neglected to mention that til then!). Since I was struggling to climb the stairs on the ferry without swearing (not the best knees in the world) I went on strike again, and took the bus. They’re mostly big coach style buses on Tobermory, so they’ll take bikes in the under-seat compartments. We pulled halfway out the port and stopped, because the driver had spotted an otter nad pulled over so we could all have a look!

The driver was great, like a tour guide, and regailed us for an hour with facts about Mull, his life history, and the prices of some of the houses we were passing. Mull is an expensive place to live! It really did take an hour to do those twenty miles - a lot of hills, very heavy rain, and naturally we had to stop to pick peopl up a few times! - and it took another two and a half for me cycling friend to join me in Tobemory, at which point he swore off cycling any more too. In the intervening time I had a poke around Tobermory, including the Mull Museum. It’s a tiny place, free, apparently run by one  man. The usual hodge-podge of country social history and world war two, but with geology and ship wrecks thrown in.

Thanks to neither of us being up to cycling any further (still wasn’t doing well with stairs), and the nearest attraction we wanted to see being thirty miles each way we hired a car. We saw Duart Castle (where they filmed Entrapment) and we visited Iona, where we saw the sun for the first time since arriving on Mull! Did I mentioned west coast of Britain? And North Atlantic? There’s a reason it’s so lush and verdant. Rain! Apparently the rest of the UK was in glorious sunshine, but to be honest I can’t say I minded. Well, not as long as I wasn’t cycling!

The thing that inspired this whole trip was the reopening of the Forth&Clyde canal and the Union Canal, which join near Falkirk. I said it would be interesting; my housemate said we were going, tickets booked, bikes bought, off we went. The full distance is 69 miles; we did just under half that. I wasn’t exactly fit enough!

Early start at the Youth Hostel. For those who haven’t stayed in one before, they’re a great, cheap way of spending a night, provided you’re undemanding! Pretty popular with schools and clubs. Men and Women sleep separately in most hostels, though some will reserve a whole room for a family. Dorms normally sleep five or six - Edinburgh and Glasgow were en-suite, Mull was not - with bunkbeds and lockers. You’re sleeping in a room with strangers, which tends to result in everyone being somewhat over-polite. I was in bed by 10 most nights, just to make sure I didn’t keep anyone up! If you’re up before 8 you find yourself sneaking around in the dark, desperately hoping nothing’s rolled under a bed because you’ll never see it again. Breakfast is available on request, usually quite cheap, and most hostels have a couple of lounges and a kitchen to cook your own food in (making them even better for the thrifty traveller). I never saw the communal areas in Edinburgh, but we cooked and ate at Glasgow and listening to Just a Minute in the TV lounge.

Anyway, at Edinburgh we were up by about 7:30 (another side effect of sleeping in a roomful of  strangers) so set off bright and early to tackle the canal. We took a train to Falkirk High, and scooted off from there. The Falkirk Wheel, feat of engineering, wasn’t in use when we passed. In the course of the whole day I think we only saw three or four narrow boats in use, and only a handful of other people in general.

For the first half of the journey the weather was nice, and the views pretty. We were next to the trainline most of the time (two things that like flat routes: trains and boats!) but pretty clear of the roads. The lowlands of Scotland are very pretty. As we approached lunch the weather got a bit more western: wet and windy. Drizzley, at first, and a breeze in the face.

After lunch (which was very nice) the weather got far worse. Proper rain, unfriendly to four-eyes like me, and a strong wind in the fact the whole time. We were averaging about 6 miles an hour. I may be unfit, but on a well-maintained flat surface even I can normally cruise at a comfortable 10 mph. Glasgow city council decided to compound this by paving the towpath with sticky mud and fine gravel, a combination popular with no user that I can imagine.

We reached Glasgow at about 4:30, and promptly got lost! We followed a split in the canal, when we wanted a join with a river. Glasgow itself was alright for cycling around, though not a particularly bike friendly city (nor wa Edinburgh, but you have to be a certain kind of masochist to choose to cycle there in the first place). The youth hostel was right at the top of a hill, by which point I’d pretty much gone on strike, and was pushing my bike even on the easy bits.

It’s a shame we got there so late, because I’d really wanted to see the Hunterian (most especially their Zoology branch, which has many interesting things in it), which was practically visible from where we were staying. The view across Glasgow was amazing, especially at dusk.

The glasgow youth hostel was a pair of massive Georgian buildings, with a chandelier in the lounge and wood panelling. Oh, and no lift, which my knees did not appreciate!

We saw very little of Glasgow, but it made a better impression on me than Edinburgh. Not because it’s necessarily a nicer city, but because no one had attempted to persuade me so. It’s an industrial city and unabashedly so, and I have to admit a Blade Runner-esque love of big, hulking, industiral cities. The centre appears to have been regenerated, which means it looks like Rotherham and Sheffield and Hull and Newcastle and every Regenerated city in the North of England (you may have already gathered, but I’m not a fan!), but not, alas, like a Time Lord.

So, Glasgow. I barely saw thee.

We saw Berwick-upon-Tweed from the train - it may be Scottish, it may be English, I’m not sure right now. Wikipedia informs me it’s currently English, and has been for some time but Scotland would like it back now. There was a rumour Berwick was still at war with Russia (Crimean war), and 1966 a Soviet official signed a formal peace declaration with them, but the official didn’t have that right, and Berwick wasn’t specifically mentioned in the declaration of war. Apocryphal. Anyway, it looked lovely in the sunshine.

Edinburgh was nice, but after all the fuss that’s been made about it as a beautiful and historic city I found myself disappointed. That’s the problem with living in York! It doesn’t help the city is submerged by roadworks at the moment. The youth hostel was near the centre of town, but on the new side (rather than the old city). The old city is beautiful, but has the most tourist tat in any one place I’ve ever seen, and did I mention I live in York? It’s just a street of tartan mugs and synthesised bagpipe music. But, it’s also where all the city tours kick off. We were going to take a ghost walk, but we got there just in time for a Underground City tour.

For a long period Edinburgh was confined to a very small space. It was penned in by its own defenses against the English for several centuries. As a result, it was the first city to have tower blocks, some as high as 13 floors, but they tended to collapse under their own weight. So instead they built down.  The remains of this underground city have long been lost, the last rumoured tunnel found beneath the Royal Mile some centuries ago. A drummer boy was sent into it, the royal family following above ground, listening to his beats to establish how far it went. They had just reached a crossroad when the drumming stopped. No one dared to go down and find out what had happened to the poor child.

The second underground city came about as a result of the end of the first. After the Jacobite rebellion was crushed Edinburgh could expand outwards again. Edinburgh was built on one hill, but surrounded by another six; inconvenient for a fashionable, up and coming city in those days. So, with that famous Scottish talent for engineering, Edinburgh made the problem go away (though I still decided against actually riding my bicycle on its slopes!). They built bridges. And bridges. And bridges. And then they buitl next to the bridges. The Southgate bridge, for example, has 19 arches, only one of which is visible today. The engineers raised the entire street level, giving buildings layers upon layers of basements and cellars. The vaults in the bridges were meant to provide yet more stoarge space, but there was a problem: they leaked. And not just rain - this was back in the days of “gardez l’eau”, or street sewers. Unsurprisingly, hte vaults were unpopular with businesses.

However, they did find favour with the swarms of immigrants entering the expanding city. Edinburgh couldn’t expand fast enough, so the vaults filled with families and travellers. There was no natural light whatsoever, and the people who lived there were unlikely to afford candles - if they did, they were tallow candles, smokey and smelly. They slept 10+ to a room, with a bucket in the corner for a toilet. And with the world above emptying their champer pots into the streets over their heads, there was no obvious place to empty theirs. The average life expectancy was 7 months after arrival, the only way back out was through organised crime. Burke and Hare, famous body-snatchers, were rumoured to seek victims amongst the Vaults’ inhabitants. The great fire of Edinburgh in 1824 didn’t kill the inhabitants directly - they were safe from the flames underground - but between 200 and 300 people were killed.

The date the Vaults were closed is unknown - there’s very little recorded about them in general - but our guide said the fire was probably the catalyst for emptying them and bricking them up. Immigration wasn’t quite so pressurised, and there was space for people above ground (and fewer people to move above ground, thanks to the fire). And having bricked them up, the Vaults were promptly forgotten about for over a century. They were redisocvered by a pub-owning rugby player in the 70s, knocking a hole through the wall in the gents loos.

There’s a lot of reported hauntings down there, figures in corners, voices, cold patches (you’re underground!), and lights going out. Many can be accounted for by the surrounding businesses, the dampness of the vaults and traffic on the bridge above. However, several people have encountered what our guide described as The Entity. It doesn’t like lights, and it claws at people. Many tourists have reported emerging into the light to find themsevles covered in deep scratches that they never felt happening. Some have even repoted being followed home by it; when they turn off their hotel light, they hear a ragged breath and feel the cold, and wake the next day with their skin scratched the shreds. The only way to put it off is to leave the lights on all night;  after a few days it returns home.

It didn’t follow us to the Youth Hostel. Well, not unless it’s added bruises to its ouvre, but I’m content to blame most of those on my bicycle. If you ever go to Edinburgh, you have to see the underground city. Just take heed of the warning on the sign - it really is psychologically disturbing!

This week’s Foody Friday is World War Two jams. Cheap and thrifty.

Marrow and Ginger Jam

Ingredients

450g marrow (weight when peeled and seeds removed)
3 tablespoons preserved ginger
450g sugar
2 tablespoons lemon juice

Equipment

Sharp Knife
Preserving pan
Wooden Spoon
Cold plate
Hot jamjars

Instructions

Dice the marrow - about 1.5 cm, or half an inch cubes. Cut the ginger very finely, to ensure even flavour

Bung it all in the pan with the sugar. Leave in a cool place overnight.

The next day, give it a good stir. It should be a bit mushy now. Stir over a low heat until the sugar is completely dissolved.

Add the lemon juice and boil until you reach the settling point.

The marrow remains in cubes (albiet slightly mushy). Allow it to cool in the pan and stir to make sure everything’s even before adding to the jars. Mrs Beeton (who se recipe was adapted for the WW2 books) suggests leaving it for 3 days for the flavour to distribute nicely.

Orange Peel and Apple Marmalade

Ingredients

Peel from 450g sweet oranges
1.2 litres  water
450g cooking apples when peeled and cored
1.35 kg sugar

Equipment

Sharp knife
Peeler, corer, or the same knife
Preserving pan
Muslin bag
Grater/zester

Instructions

Eat your oranges. Lots of lovely vitamin C! In WW2 oranges were heavily rationed, so only children could eat them. Hence,the lack of orange marmalade, and hence why concerned parents would save the orange peel to make this instead.

Shred the orange peel as finely as you can, but make sure you don’t get any of the pith (too bitter). Soak the orange peel in the water for several hours or overnight - if your peel is quite chunky, use more water.

Once the orange peel is soft, simmer it in the water until it’s even more tender.

Slice and dice the apples. Put the skins and cores in the muslin bag; this is where the most pectin is, which causes the marmalade to set. Weigh the apple flesh.

Add the apple to the orange water, and rest the muslin bag of peelings in there too. Continue simmering until the apple flesh has turned to puree.

Remove the muslin bag, add the sugar, and stir over a low heat until it dissolved.

Boil rapidly until setting point is reached. Allow to cool a little and stir to make sure the orange peel is evenyl distributed. Add to jars.

There’s been a lot of cycling recently - I’ve even worked up the nerve to cycle to and from work now - because tomorrow I’m heading off on a cycling holiday. Well, cycling and railway. York-Edinburgh, train. Edinburgh-Falkirk, train. Falkirk-Glasgow, bike. Glasgow-Oban, train. Oban-Mull, ferry. Round mull, bike. Mull-Oban, ferry. Oban-York, train. I get back next Friday! I’m really not ready for a 30 something mile ride from Falkirk to Glasgow, but I’ve not really got a choice, and it’s along a canal so it should be fairly flat.  If we get to Glasgow in time, we’ll be going to the Hunterian.Going to play it by ear in Mull, I think - I’m not sure I’l be up to much more cycling!

Anywa, that’s what I’ll be doing. I’ve never been to Soctland before, so it’s quite exciting. Unfortunately, I’m missing the bulk of the York Food Festival, which ranks as probably my favourite York festival (even beating the Roman festival, but that’s partly because the Roman festival gets much less funding!). Which leads me quite nicely into Foody Friday, I think!

I offer you a couple of good, appley jams this week. Apple is good for jam, because the skin and core contain plenty of pectin so it makes it easier to set.

Apple Ginger Jam

Ingredients

550g cooking apples
2 tbs water
450g or 2 cups of sugar
4 tablespoons chopped preserved ginger with 3 teaspoons of syrup from the jar (or 1 1/2ox fresh ginger bruised in muslin and ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper)

Equipment

Sharp knife
Preserving Pan
Sieve
Wooden Spoon
Cold plate
Hot jam jars
(muslin bag and rolling pin, if you’re using fresh ginger)

Instructions

Wash and chop the apples. Leave the skin on, the pips in, and the core where it is. We need these bits for the pectin.

Chop your preserving ginger. The finer you chop it the more even the flavour. Prepare to get sticky with the syrup! If you’re using fresh ginger, cut it into rough chunks and put it in the muslin bag. Bash it with a rolling pin.

Put in the pan with the water. Simmer until you have a puree.

Scoop out of the pan and rub it through the sieve. It’ll puree down further and hopefully get the skin and pips and so on out. It’s worth doing a couple of times, emptying the sieve of stuff that won’t go through between tries.

Put it back on to simmer again, adding the sugar and stirring until it dissolves.

Add the chopped ginger and the syrup. Stir to distribute evenly. If you’re using fresh, keep it in the bag, and add the cayenne pepper straight into the jam. Make sure the ginger bag is thoroughly doused in the apple paste.

Boil like mad until it starts setting. Do the cold plate test when you think you’re done, and put in the hot jars.

This jam is great if you like something a little less sweet for breakfast, but also goes very well with pork instead of the usual apple sauce!

Apple Damson Jam

Ingredients

500g cooking apples
675g damsons
150 to 225 ml water
1 kg sugar

Equipment

Sharp Knife
Muslin Bag
Preserving Pan
Cold plate
Hot jam jars
Slotted spoon

Instructions

Peel, core, and cut the apples into small pieces. Put the skin and core into the muslin bag.

Put the apples and damsons into the pan with the water and simmer. If the damsons are particularly hard, add a bit more water.

When the fruit has turned to pulp, and the damson skins soft, use the slotted spoon to fish out the damson stones. This is a long and awkward process, but trust me, trying to stone the damsons uncooked is longer and more awkward!

Add the sugar and keep simmering until it’s dissolved. Then whack up the heat and boil.

Cold plate test, hot jam jars, and use on thick slabs of toast or in sponge cakes. This recipe also works well with plums, which are slightly easier to identify if you’re not used to harvesting from hedgerows. Or buy in shops.