What should have been a hop, skip, and a jump up the M1 was a prolonged slog out of Nottingham. Bless you, you are a beautiful city, but fuck me, there are too many roadworks at the moment. And I nearly left a bag of books in one of your artisan cafés.
Your petrol stations are accommodating and reasonable. A good range of windscreen wiper fluids at a two for a £13 bargain. I’m good though. Stocked up. These roads are salty and my car already looks like it’s driven through the Somme. On a rainy day.
The M1 was a traumatic experience, begging for the Leeds exit. How can a one-and-a-half-hour journey encounter so many 50 limits and closed lanes, middle lane hoggers and lane jumpers?!!
Who will rid me of these turbulent pricks?
As an irritating Leodensian tit once said “Oh, my God – I can’t believe it” I wondered how it could be so difficult to drive to a Leeds City Centre car park. But we arrived. Picked up another evangelist comrade on the way that made me the only one without a luminous colour in my hair. We were two-fifths on our way to a McFly song.
Tonight’s venue was the Belgrave Music Hall and Canteen, downstairs it is heaving with long tables and piles of pizza. Upstairs it is a cavernous room. It’ll sound different when it’s being drowned ‘Underwater’. Then they don’t play it.
The delight of five LPs worth of crackers to choose from and an extensively rehearsed repertoire is you can mix it up and entertain yourself as much as the crowd. Out a few bangers went, but in came ‘Lacking In Your Love” and ‘Cristina‘. Another beautifully sonically engineered show, hats off to all involved, more proof of the brilliant venues and people who work in them up and down this broken land. Some beautiful cities and special places and people making it worthwhile. They’re doing the hard stuff. We’re here for the beer and bands. It’s a tough job.
Three down, one to go. Talking to Simon, it is an alternative life. Reality pauses and you are in another dimension where everything looks the same but you only stay in one place for a moment and have a blast, then it’s on to the next one. Manchester tomorrow. The end is near. Crying emoji.
