Alternative Centre

Several years ago now the young Lord Declan and Lady Minster moved from cramped and unsatisfactory Morden to Leighton Buzzard, but I'd never been to see them there until last week. Their new(ish) house is still part of a terrace but of modern properties rather than 1930s ones and faces a park, and there is more room to breathe, they find.

What they also find is that at a greater distance from London there is more sense of community in the pubs and bars around the town. Most notably there is Ollie Vee's Tiki Bar, which sounds horrendous but as one of the founders has a background in stage design the decor is actually rather impressing in a cheesy and tongue-in-cheek kind of way. There are lots of skulls and threatening-looking faux-Polynesian art around, and, upstairs, a gaping shark's mouth, so there is plenty for the odd Goth to enjoy provided they have a broadminded enough attitude. 'That's so hipster', my god-daughter said when I described it to her but in fact it's anything but. Every Thursday Ollie Vee's has a Vinyl Night when patrons can bring in their own discs to spin on the turntables, and Declan and Minster have been doing this for some time, building up quite a rota with a group of other customers. They tend not to inflict anything that challenging on the bar (no Diamanda Galás) but find it amusing to construct short sets from a bit of 80s cheese and glam interspersed with pop-Goth which others might just about have heard of. 

This odd little place does seem to have become the focus of Leighton Buzzard's alternative scene in so far as there is one. My joke that Tiki Goth is the Next Thing is old enough to be wearing thin now, but here it is almost a reality: I wouldn't have believed it had I not seen it myself.