it was supposed to be so easy…
And I can’t lie as for me it was, the first time anyway. My Streets ticket for Brixton in April was booked, paid for – including the obligatory almost-20% mark up for ‘service charges’, a ‘facility fee’ and delivery (How would you like your tickets delivered? You can have E-tickets for £2.75 or posted tickets for £2.75. We cannot guarantee delivery of your tickets. Would you like to insure your tickets for £3.75?) and has already made its way to me from our favourite online touts at Ticketmaster without fuss or incident barely two weeks later. Gosh.
Upon trying again immediately in order to get a couple more for Leeds earlier in the week however, meltdown. As experienced by an awful lot of other people who didn’t quite managed to get sorted before they sold out in under a minute – we’ve all been there (Prodigy, Led Zeppelin) but for them to mysteriously turn up five minutes later for resale on – guess where – Ticketmasters’ sister sites at quadruple the face value is deeply, deeply shitty. Sort it out, Ticketmaster.
Time continues to fly by, with the clocks going back later tonight and the corresponding Big Lie In (which admittedly takes place every Sunday, but this week is smugly legitimised by the bonus sixty minutes available to curl up in the warm with Cerys Matthews and a pre-breakfast pikelet or two) that will be followed by this years’ Stir Up Sunday -yay! The requisite kilo of Cake Fruit is soaking in Captain Morgan’s and Pedro Ximénez – as will I be if I don’t leave it alone – the tins are lined, everything is weighed out and I’m crossing my fingers that my vastly improved exercise regime will help with the mixing process which last year left me with two numb arms and in dire need of a nap on the settee, although that was more to do with starting on the sherry in my pyjamas at 11am.
The Black Friday weekend and accompanying bargain grab is also fast approaching which has brought on a fit of military-style trip planning for the next six months or so – cast iron commitment number one is (as always) April’s Dead By Dawn in Edinburgh for which I’ve just bought an Early Bird pass, and in a change to previous years I’m bowing to popular demand (if that’s the right expression) and wandering up a couple of days early to catch up with some of the folks who email me regularly to ask when I’m coming back; they won’t actually book, but somebody hopefully will and if not I’ll hardly go short of things to do for as long as haggis exists.
Second of the nailed-on 2018 events will be the London Winter Run in February, on which I and a few thousand others get to run 10K through some of the cities landmarks on the promise of a medal and a hug from a polar bear. It’ll do for me, and naturally any money raised for Cancer Research in the process is by the by – a JustGiving page is provided if I ever get round to looking at it and the route can be seen above (complete with penguin party and snow zone – yay!) It will go without saying that a breakfast so huge it may knock me out cold for the rest of the day is being sourced for immediately afterwards, and possibly more than one.
Being a Northerner a few hundred miles south of home, outdoors in February is possibly my optimum running climate so a fine time will definitely be had, and the joy of an organised course and a bit of space will be a very welcome change from being blocked off the path and forced into the road by pig-ignorant fuckers shuffling along the foreshore four abreast, caring not a jot that not only might other people want to use the pavement too but that not all of those people will be moving at the same glacial pace. Such is running along Scarborough seafront at weekends for anybody who doesn’t want to get up at 6am; I know I digress but have they never wondered why cars are encouraged to move in single file rather than side by side? And the treadmills at the gym are not the answer – have you ever ached to jog on the spot at a constant, monotonous pace indoors with half a dozen large screen TVs each showing something different flickering in your face and no possibility of happening across anywhere that sells chips or donuts? Nor have I. Spinning, on the other hand…
Anyway, before all the above-mentioned excitement, I will be returning to my newest London stomping ground for a while in ten days or so (not to mention the German Gym, which fed me so well on my way home the other week I forgot to catch my booked train home and had to get the next one) for a quick livener before the lousy weather and dark nights really kick in and the suet recipes start putting in regular appearances. There will be one more trip before Christmas, but this is it for six weeks – I had a lot of fun on my trial day in Whitechapel and am planning to have a lot more, company permitting! An outing to the Prince Charles Cinema is planned which is nothing out of the ordinary, but mentioning it does give me the chance to get a plug in for their Christmas programme – I will be crowbarring a few of these in on my December trip and I never mind anybody wanting to come with.
Back to the top of the page for Song Of The Week and where it all began, for me at least some fifteen years ago when I bought Original Pirate Material, listened to it constantly for weeks and have still never tired of it (or A Grand Don’t Come For Free, for that matter) in all the time since then where many an album has been bought and been played to death for a few days and that’s it. I’m still not entirely sure what UK garage is, but at my age I’m not going to lose any sleep over it. I may not be getting any sleep at all on April the 27th, and I won’t mind that either.
More soon! Scarborough this week and with a few things on at home, a bit of notice please – an hour or so should be fine but more would be better. Time to feed the fishes, dig some sausages and black pudding out of the freezer and go and change the wall clocks…
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