World Goth Day 2016: First Annual World Goth Day Picnic!

This year Inverness had its first annual World Goth Day Picnic, and I organised it! 

The assembled World Goth Day picnic contingent!
I'm hiding at the back under my hat and parasol, trying to pretend I'm short.
Photo credits are to Suzy_Bugs, who isn't shown in the photo as she's taking it!

It wasn't a big public event, I just invited every Goth I personally knew in the Inverness area to come have a picnic with me - especially as the date was after the end of my last exams and after my birthday (which was in the middle of exams!) so there were plenty of excuses to celebrate. 26 out of just about 60 people invited turned up, which considering most of those who didn't come were not doing so because of either work of family commitments, is pretty good. I didn't want to organise an official public event because that is a lot of work for something where I didn't know whether people would even want to come or not. 

I was actually surprised that 26 people turned up; I was expecting about half that. I have organised Goth events before, and in the past no more than a dozen people have turned up because it is a very small community in the Highlands, and most of the Highland Goths have at least 1 job, plus are quite spread out over a broad geographic area. 

One of my friends drove me over to the city. I have moved house, and I can't drive due to neurological issues, and it wasn't practical to take all the picnic stuff on public transport, as I had all the cups, napkins, paper plates, etc. and quite a few big bottles of soft drinks that were rather heavy. She also brought her adult-size hoops with her, and I brought my ribbons. I used to do rhythmic gymnastics as a kid, but quit due to then-undiagnosed dyspraxia making me pretty useless at it, and she does hooping, and as it was a park we were heading to we thought we'd trade skills and let some of the others have a play. We had a lot of fun, and it must have been quite surreal for the non-Goth people in the park to see Goths hooping and ribbon dancing with brightly coloured hoops and ribbons.

The picnic was held at the Bellfield Park. Initially, we were going to have the picnic at Ness Islands, but I found out less than a week before the picnic that the Inverness Race for Life 10k run was scheduled to be routed through there at the same time as our picnic (this is what happens when I am busy with university and out of touch with what is going in Inverness!), so I picked the park as a back-up location as it has picnic tables and a sheltered area. 

I ended up half an hour late to my own picnic because of a few last minute delays and traffic and suchlike, and when we got there, there were a handful of Goths, and I thought that the picnic would only be 10 people at most. As the afternoon progressed, it turned out to be 26 in total. 

We sat, chatted, ate picnic food - I baked shortbread 'bone' biscuits, and specially decorate black and purple fairy-cakes, and other people brought their own home-made food - all very delicious - and some packets of crisps, sweets, etc. If I organise a bigger, better picnic, I will definitely bake more and bring more savoury food. I wish I had photographs of all the food - the bat cupcakes, my Goth-decorated fairy-cakes (some had ankhs on them, others were black with edible silver pearls making a studded effect!) and the bone biscuits especially. 

The best thing about the picnic was it being an opportunity for Goths of all ages from the area - from 15 year old younglings to elder-Goths who remember the scene in the '80s - to enjoy being Goth, make new friends, take pride in being ourselves, and generally have fun and socialise. I had so many positive and thankful messages after the event; there has to be another picnic next year, and I will have to organise an official venue. I am not sure how to go about running a proper public event - there's things like insurance, permission from the council, making posters, etc. - but I will look into these things and hopefully next year there will be a proper public World Goth Day event, rather than a personal picnic that got rather larger than anticipated! 

Before the picnic, I had made a FaceBook group for the event, and made sure that there were basic rules on behaving in the park - no scaring the children or going to the play-park area, no dropping litter, no alcohol, and no getting in the way of other people's enjoyment of the park. Everyone kept to those rules pretty well, except for a bit of litter, and I made sure to pack everything away and throw all litter I could find in the bins there and not leave a mess for the park warden/person working at the refreshment stand. Despite the numbers, we only really used 3 of the available benches, and kept to our own little group. It didn't seem like we were interfering with the use of the nearby tennis courts or causing any sort of bother. The weather included two thunderstorms, so the park wasn't very busy that day anyway. 

World Goth Day 2015

Official World Goth Day Logo,
used hoepfully within their permitted uses.

May 22nd of each year is World Goth Day, as the ::official website:: describes it: "a day where the goth scene gets to celebrate its own being, and an opportunity to make its presence known to the rest of the world". Considering what happened to ::Sophie Lancaster:: and that Goths worldwide continue to get harrassment and violence simply for having different tastes to the norm, I feel that a day to celebrate the subculture's existence is both necessary and positive. We ought to be proud of what the subculture is, what it has achieved (and not just creatively) and of the the sorts of people we are - eccentrics, artists, musicians, romantics of a modern sort, creative folk. Goth is a haven for the morbidly curious and weirdly interesting, it is a subculture in which we can find likeminded individuals and talk about our interests without scorn or derision, and we should be proud of Goth.

Work outfit. Selfies by HouseCat

I always try and 'get my Goth on' on World Goth Day, but this year, it fell on a work day. I almost always wear all black at work these days anyway - today's outfit of black turtleneck and black trousers is pretty standard for my work attire. I obviosuly can't bedeck myself in spikes and studs at work although I did wear this belt with my jumper pulled over it because my trousers kept falling down. It was lumpy, but less obvious and I was searching before work for my one belt that isn't studded fruitlessly (I had left it attached to my archery quiver, as I found out that evening...) and this was slightly more appropriate than the belts with bullets, skulls and othersuch on them! 

After-work outfit. Selfies by HouseCat, glasses removed to show makeup

I added a spiked bangle, a studded cuff, a spiked collar, and the belt, and let my hair down literally. Accessories such as these are an easy way to make an outfit instantly visibly Goth without having to wear specifically-Goth items, so meant I could just stash my accessories into my bag, and put these on when I went into town after work, without much bother; a very simple transition between 'work' and 'casual' modes. This is actually, as far as outfits go, a very casual one for me to be wearing in my spare time as I prefer less contemporary, more anachronistic fashion of a Romantic Goth, Gothic Aristocrat, Visual Kei and Lolita sort - as my readers will know!

In the evening I went out in Inverness with friends, and while I was standing outside the pub we were supposed to meet at, texting my friends about where they were at as I was the first to arrive (ah, the joys of public transport), two drunken men of a chavvy attitude loudly made a wretching noise behind me, and shouted some comment about "puke green hair" and "fucking freak". It disquietened me enough to decide it was a bad idea to be standing around, looking that different, on a main street with several pubs on a Friday night, so I went to go sit in the nearby graveyard, which was deserted at that point - I guess thereby doing something most stereotypically Goth. We get harrassed on the streets by strangers, but we are not in the wrong - drunken jerks who yell insults at people they disapprove of are in the wrong. Never let people's prejudices change who you are; being Goth is neither immoral nor illegal (in most places), but insulting strangers in public is immoral, and I think it might actually be illegal in some places, especially if you are drunk (but I'm not a lawyer).