Today we have pottered around Whitby, looking in the shops and avoiding all mentions of Dracula. Apparently someone threatened to sue St Mary’s Church (the one on the cliff) because they wouldn’t show her where Dracula’s grave is. The concept of fiction obviously evades her. We have also had an extra event when we couldn’t find the front door key. The owner of the house drove over and, just before she arrived, the key was found in someone’s pocket. Not mine. Yesterday we had the maintenance man to sort out two lights that had blown and two smoke alarms demanding new batteries. It’s all go.

One of my memories of my Whitby grandma is going upstairs to tea with her in a tearoom. There are two branches of Bothams, the same bakers / tearooms in Whitby that opened in 1865. One of them still has an upstairs tearoom but it is being updated. In the other one, there was a picture of it. This looks like what I remember.

I had an interesting conversation with a young man serving in the shop. He wasn’t sure about the tearooms but said that his great grandma and an elderly friend of his mother’s both used to work at a drapers in Baxtergate that closed down when the owner died. This could well be my grandpa’s shop. I think I need to get more information.