T'was the Sunday before christmas,or two! and all was still, especially on the motorway network, or what laughingly passes for it on the way from the 'grotty norf' to the' sunny sarf', and our beloved capital of London,what with all this travelling and possibly...No,without doubt the worst couple of cups of coffee i've ever tasted in my whole adventurous life. I used to be a connoussieur of fine n' awful coffee's n' teas in paper n' plastic cups from service stations, greasy spoons and station platforms from my days of travelling when i was on the caricaturing circuit(ahh those were the days, i can tell you!). But the stuff i was slurping at ,not for refreshment, but just to postpone going back out to the car again for a few more hours of the dark frosty journey, was without doubt on a level of disgustednous that cannot be imagined. In my time away and off 'the road',the whole driving experience, the roads, the driving ,the whole sheebang ,now including the coffee has turned to complete and utter shite!..I always used to stop for a jam dougnut at Keele services, i can only hope that the jam doughnuts haven't been swept down in this general shitedness that has swept the land. But it's a long time since i've travelled those highways n'byeways, so, maybe i'll never know, maybe it'll be a good thing living in jam doughnut ignorance. Keeping my jam doughnut dreams alive...
You may well be wondering as to why we went on this voyage of discovery and bad coffee.....And don't get me staeted on the Watford Gap Kentucky fried chicken!......Somebodies lost Colonel Saunders secret recipe, believe me!....But the reason we put ourselves through all this was because we were on a pilgramage. THE WHO! ..were back in town! My two favourite pensioners in the whole world were back home. Namely, a certain Mr Roger Daltrey and a Mr Peter Townshend, of the parish. I remember years ago working at what was laughingly Tony Blair's ,(whatever happened to him?) crowning achievment ,tthat bloody tent that made us the laughing stock of the world, The Millenium dome. Famous because JAMES BOND(Pierce Brosnan,really!) dropped out of a balloon onto it in the 'World is not enough.' And of course the bridge that was fine as long as people didn't walk on it together in step,they had to stop marching as pedestrians in the city do all the time.They had to break step or the bridge'd start swinging. Doctor Who should think on that next time the Cybermen are chasing him through the big city. But what was the dome is now something called the indigO2 arena, or something. Do you remember the days when places were given names and not named after advertising logo's?...Proper names like ,Empire,Lycium,Palace ,etc,etc....Liverpool , for instance has the Echo Arena, i wonder where they got that name from!
But the IndigO2 is to be fair quite impressive and on the night i didn't realise until the end that next door to us a little band called COLDPLAY had been banging out a few tunes to a few fans. Theres not much chance of coldplay being heard over theWHO, but i'd like to think that the Cold play crowd were banging on the walls trying to get their noisey neighbours in THE WHO to hold it down a bit. The 'ORRIBLE 'OO' were wonderful, Townshend was wild and even at his advanced state of immortality full of adrenaline,power,aggression and just immpossible not to watch. Daltrey was still able to keep up and the screams ,etc, were all there and his power is still there. They enjoyed themselves and the banter from the stage was genuinley funny. The only problem was, we were up on a balconey quite a way back and some fuckin' prick, apparently from Leeds as he started singing about it, as if he was at the match.This, in between shouting witty Yorkshire reposts to a distant Townshend on the stage. I lost it and went for him, the 'Leatherbarrow finger' was pointing at him as i made my feelings known. I mean to say we'd travelled all bloody day ,spent a packet on tickets, suffered the motorway coffee n' Kentucky's just to listen to this knob'ead yelling down my 'lug'oles'?...No, i think not!
Afterwards my adrenaline was up and i was hyper n' tinglig all over looking for a quite corner where i could go and practise my Pete Townshend air guitar moves. The following day coming down from the high of the previous night into the morass of mundanities of an everyday Monday, i did a 'Pete' leap and windmill to 5.15, off QUADRAPHENIA (a little technical info, for the fans!), and pulled my bloody shoulder, the damn things still not right. And the pain wasn't helped by haven't to freeze my knackers off at a carol concert in the little 'un's school playground that night. Ah, the rock n' roll lifestyle, eh ?
1 comment:
Yes they are Tim....If your portrait of me is any good then I might look after you at the next gig !.....But it has to be bloody fantastic ! ! !
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