3show

I met up with Gerry on a cold Thursday evening at a boozer just off Bond Street. It’d been exactly 5 years to the day that we’d seen Rammstein at Brixton, this time we were headed for Wembley. We popped a couple away and got on the tube to arrive in time for the end of the Combichrist set, who were a lot better than expected.

Just after Gerry received a text from a friend who was already jammed up the front, she invited us to pop down and say hello. This was easier said than done. Die-hard Rammstein fans (most of them in their early 20’s) had already staked a claim for space and weren’t best pleased at Gerry and I barging to the front. The initial ‘excuse me’s’ soon became ‘get out of my fucking way’s’ and the little bastards locked up to prevent our passage resulting in Gerry and I aggressively barging our way through to audible protests from fans, one or two comments were a little less than savoury forcing sarcastic responses, such as ‘how old are you rockstar?’ and ‘what’s wrong, lost the sandwiches mummy made you?’ It was a harrowfying 10 minutes but we made it back in time to grab another beer and conveniently locate ourselves in time for the start of the show.

They were jolly good, good sound with some genuinely awe-inspiring pyro, though the set list didn’t really get going until mid-way through Gerry and I had a killer time. This was helped by our moving to the back near the rear bar to allow us to freely purchase beer without queuing or missing any of the set. Marvellous. We had a thoroughly drunken tube journey to our respective stops and I winged it back in beer-time.

I was up by lunchtime Friday feeling a little rough round the edges and thanking my common sense for taking a day off. The weather was extraordinarily clement, spring-like no less and at 1pm I took the overground, to underground to DLR for the Excel centre, which is located in Docklands. It’s a very weird location, almost futuristic yet strangely calming, almost as if one is featuring in a 1970’s artists impression of a low rise sci-fi city yet to be realised.

It’s been an age since I went to a big bike show in London (the international bike show re-located from Earls’ Court to the NEC in the 80’s) so it was particularly nice having something virtually on my doorstep. I met Dave at The Triumph stand and we set off round the venue jumping on as much two-wheeled metal as our little legs would allow, all the while commenting on various bike-related aspects of design, engineering and ride. We paused for a beer by the stage that featured an Asda version of Jeremy Clarkson barking about some such. He had the charisma of a sacked porn actor and set the dim tone for the humiliating display of the regressive letching which followed.

Thirty tears ago nearly all bike mags featured young ladies (some not so young, actually) flopped over the latest exotica with all tits out. We’ve moved on from this, now motorcyclists aren’t all perceived, as they once were, as headbangers with low IQ’s, a casual approach to hygiene and medieval attitudes to the fairer sex. Worryingly the organisers of the event took it on themselves to have ‘babes’ on the stage which were painfully and lasciviously interviewed by the sub-Jeremy gitprong dribbling all over the mic. No one came out of this well; the ‘babes’ were the sort of ladies one finds assisting part-time in downmarket clothing retailers and the audience weren’t too keen on being subject to this pre-Greer meatfest and being treated, essentially, as fucking morons. This was the only disappointing element of what turned out to be a long and entertaining afternoon. I was home by 6 with my ass still glowing from all the beautiful machines I mentally blew all my lottery winnings on.

I didn’t want to go anywhere on Friday evening. IC was away and I was already due a sizable Saturday so it was Piqued Sensational Spudz on the menu, a bottle of wine and after Mastermind (which featured a chap being questioned on British bikes (I got over half right)) I did The Godfather on the box. I had completely forgotten what a triumph Coppala’s masterpiece is. A beautiful Friday was consigned to history at 1-ish

Saturday, my bro came over for lunch; I had prepared an enormous quantity of Spaghetti Bolognaise that we consumed in front of Iron Man. What a marvellous film that was too, it had completely slipped under my radar. Following this my bro did the awkward bit at the beginning of Resident Evil 5 leaving me late pm to wrestle with it, early evening Pat and Red joined me and we soon had some wine on the go with the game, this wasn’t a particularly sensible course of action.

Pat wasn’t feeling up for coming out by Red and I were. We met up with Nicky at Hackney Central and took the bus to Kings Cross at around 9.30. The Venue we were destined for was, for want of a better word, a ‘goth club.’ Oscar was in charge of making tunes happen downstairs and when we arrived, apart from a disinterested barlord and a couple of Misfit lookylikes, we were his audience. Mercifully the venue filled up fast. It was a good-sized room with low ceilings and lots of skull-based graffiti and as we’d secured a perfect spot at the bar we happily imbibed as the dark crowd milled about us. A couple more friends arrived at 11. By the time Oscar resumed duties on the decks at 12 the place was comfortably packed and I was horrendously pissed. Testament to this was the fact I danced without the safety net of IC, fuck knows what I must’ve looked like.

At 2-ish Oliver ordered us all a 6 seater cab that arrived just before I contracted frost-bite. In the cab the severity of my inebriation made itself known in the form of a full-on whitey that almost resulted in me hurling my evenings indulgences all over the transport and its occupants. I’d not drunk an enormous amount but the earlier wine had upset the equilibrium, somehow I managed to survive the trip back largely by gulping fresh air from the passenger window. I’ve no doubt if I were in the middle of the machine I’d be writing letters of apology instead of this.

We stopped by Oliver’s for a final snifter and then Red and I took ourselves off home at 4am via a fast-ish food eatery. Things are a bit hazy from here, but I recall we got back and I was unable to eat my food. I shoved it in the fridge and went to sleep immediately.

It was 2am before I finally got up, Red was long gone and I was starving. I rescued the kofti and some salad from the previous evenings take out and shoved the lot into fresh bread; the resulting meal was surprisingly delicious. I undertook a spot of shopping and returned home with some provisions and bloody hangover, which had kicked off in earnest.

What remained of the afternoon was sat slumped in front of Come Dine With Me, Top Gear and Godfather 2, I’m not sure if I prefer the sequel to the original. At 7 I rammed my face with roast chicken, mashed potato, Brussels sprouts and made-from-scratch Onion Gravy which blew my socks off, and everything else. I spent an hour from 9 mainly visiting the loo. Jesus.

I was feeling much better by 11, so I took myself off by bus to meet IC off the Stanstead Express at Liverpool Street. It was a shame the weekend had to end on such a high note, but that’s life isn’t it. Right mum?