So last night, a bunch of the Bell Ringers went out for a social. We met outside the Spurriergate Centre, which is where most of the tower ringers practice on Sundays. I may have to go at some point, as every time I look into it, it looks more and more interesting. Dinner was at a lovely restaurant called Tuscany - good Italian food, not too expensive as far as British restaurants go, slightly snotty waiter, but good company all around. Met some new people (and at 23 was the oldest in the group! Eep!), had a good time. We then wandered the streets of York for a bit, since it was only about 7:30 and our ghost walk started at 8. If you Google "ghost walk york" you'll come up with a few sites that sort of give you the idea of what I'm talking about, although I wasn't able to find the particular tour we went on.

Our guide was everything a good tour guide should be (says Kate, speaking from personal experience - I realized about halfway through that I was analyzing his tour-giving technique and had to shake myself and just enjoy the bloody thing). Dressed in a waistcoat, tails and tophat, he looked very Victorian and creepy, but he catered to his audience, for sure. I think he realized fairly soon in (and perhaps shortly after my comment that I studied infanticide for fun) that he wasn't going to be able to creep out a group of people that spend a lot of their time in centuries-old churches, and he switched to a slightly more comedic mode. It was great! There was definitely a lot about ghosts, but I learned some of York's history as well, and laughed a lot.

It was then that I decided that if all else fails, I'll learn to do a British accent and lead ghost walks around. Yup. That's the plan. Not that the British government would ever give me a visa to do that, but, hey, they do ghost tours in Edmonton, too! Where else do I get to talk to all sorts of people about the joys of hanging, drawing and quartering? The fun of beheadings? The cheeriness of infanticides? The excitement of the plague? The thrill of murder? And have them enjoy every minute of it rather than boring them senseless or disgusting them to no end? Yup. When all the time and money I'm investing in this whole degree thing comes to nothing, then I'll become a ghost walk leader. Dress up in Victorian costume every night and scare the crap out of people. My life will be made. Come to think of it, that could be a fun part time job... wonder if any of the companies are hiring? Tee hee! Now I'm definitely going to have to look at that. Screw the temporary secretarial pool. I'm going scaring!

All right. So after our extremely entertaining ghost walk, we nipped off to the Golden Fleece for drinks. A friend from university back home actually told me I should pop in, given the chance, and I'm glad we did. Very nice little place, in fact. It was quite crowded, so we ended up on the patio, but with a glass of mulled wine it wasn't at all bad.

And on a completely random note, if I had $1000 extra kicking around, HERE is what I'd buy. Scroll down to A Mon Seul Desire. There are six tapestries in the series, as the website says - five of them depict the five senses, all of them have that distinctive look with the unicorn and the other animals. My favorite has been for a few years now, the one that depicts the sense of hearing, with its nifty portative organ and such... This one right here:

There's just something about them that I find so beautiful. Of course, this will all happen when I marry rich and find myself a manor house somewhere that I can have my dark-wood-panelled library in. Yup. That's right.