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Lady Venom favours a brand of gothdom that belongs to a period decades before her birth

 

Dj Taylor
Thursday 21 May 2015 17:04 BST
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The Atwood family, found eating Sunday lunch in their local Indian restaurant, are a deeply incongruous sight.

The incongruity, it must straightaway be said, has nothing to do with Mr and Mrs Atwood, a highly unobtrusive couple in early middle age, nor their twin 14-year-olds Rob and Simon. It is entirely the fault of the twins' elder sibling, Angie, who, while everyone else is wearing jeans and sports shirts, is quite likely to have turned out in a black cloak, six-inch high platform boots (also black), white make-up, purple lipstick and a bandana with the words "Lady Venom" stencilled on the front.

It took some time for the Atwoods to establish that "Lady Venom" was, in fact, the alias by which their daughter masqueraded on the regular Goth nights held at a club on the town's high street. And what stimulus prompted her to plunge into a milieu which her parents had previously observed only with a faint degree of trepidation from their car window on Saturday afternoons when passing the local library – for some reason a great goth hang-out? Nobody knows. She assumed the gear and the attitude almost overnight, came down to breakfast one morning togged up like Siouxsie Sioux's younger sister, and went from there.

As for the brand of gothdom which Angie favours, this, too, is highly incongruous, for it belongs to a period of musical history decades before her own birth. Angie likes such curiously named 1980s goth ensembles as the Sisters of Mercy and Fields of the Nephilim, and was supposed to have practically fainted with delight on the evening when a former member of Alien Sex Fiend arrived at the club.

Naturally, there are one or two minor difficulties associated with her style of dress, but the sixth-form college she attends prides itself on a spirit of tolerant inclusivity and, apart from foreign tourists, few people stare.

Perhaps the most inexplicable element of this metamorphosis has been the absence of any temperamental transformation. Braced for a bout of serious teenage rebellion, the Atwoods were puzzled to find that Angie has remained as docile and ingenuous as ever. She is a thoroughly home-loving and affectionate girl, thought to be planning a career as an occupational therapist, whose few foibles – the weird music rumbling in her room, the Sex Gang Children T-shirt worn while doing the washing-up – can easily be forgiven.

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