Talk: Vampires and the Undead

Last Wednesday, well, Clare from London Museums A-Z flagged a different storytelling group to me - so I hosted a trip to see the Bloomsbury Folklore Club talk about vampires and the undead, downstairs at Waterstone's Bloomsbury. Tickets from Eventbrite. And there's a bar down there too! So I arranged to meet people there.

Not much by way of eateries up there, so I ate where the bus left me off, at All Bar One. Delicious food, friendly service, as always. Walked up to Waterstone's - found the stairs down and flagged to the group on WhatsApp that the talk was in the Art Room. And then tried to find a table in the bar - only to find that a group called the Lonely Girls Book Club had taken over the whole thing! I eventually planted myself at the end of a table they hadn't got a sign on, where most of the others duly joined me - by the time someone came to tell us it was booked, it was time to go for the talk anyway. I met another of the group in there, and a couple of us took seats at the front:

It was an eclectic mix - we got a couple of stories about revenants, and quite the folklore lecture! The lecture covered theories about vampires, ways to deal with vampires, the history of vampires.. and hey, at the end, even a (long) list of different names for vampires! In a lovely touch, one of them played, on the ukelele, Cry Little Sister, from The Lost Boys, which I was due to see for the first time the following day.

Afterwards, we checked out the bar again - but gee, the Lonely Girls Book Club was in full swing! and had indeed taken over the whole place. So I consulted Google Maps, which told me the nearest place was the Fitzrovia Belle, and we headed off there for a nightcap. It turned out not actually to be the nearest place, but one of the group, Rachel, had got separated from us and I'd told her we were headed there - and anyway, it was quite a decent place!

Even if they were advertising Christmas too early:

More in the next post..