Miracles Do Happen

Oh my giddy aunt. Where to start on that game last night? I suppose I should have a look at what I predicted Spurs would do before the season started. I predicted we would struggle, I had us finishing sixth in the league, out in the group stage in the Champions League, and out in the fourth round in both domestic cups.

To be fair, I wasn’t that far away from it, the only reason Spurs are still fourth after an abysmal run of form is that Arsenal and Manchester United have been just as bad, if they had put a couple of wins together in the last month we would be sixth. The FA Cup was spot on, out in the fourth round. And in the Champions League we were eleven minutes away from going out after losing the first two group games and drawing the third.

Being 1-0 down after the first leg at home meant I didn’t have high expectations for the second leg away at Ajax. Ajax have been playing some wonderful football this season and have beaten Real Madrid and Juventus so far this year. Spurs have been playing as if they were blind for the last two months and have lost seven away games on the bounce.

It was a big mountain to climb, but the game the previous night showed that pretty much anything can happen, as Liverpool overcame a 3-0 first leg deficit against Barcelona with a stunning 4-0 victory.

It didn’t start well, Spurs were a goal down within five minutes and it seemed nothing would go right when Son hit the post and the ball ran across the open goal area out of reach of any Spurs player. We were creating chances but doing nothing with them, and our defence was looking creaky as the Ajax players attacked with pace and poise, threatening to score almost any time they crossed the halfway line.

And then they did, Trippier at fault again. It’s difficult to say whether it is just the weariness from last summer’s world cup catching up with him (and numerous other players), that he’s phoning it in because he now believes the hype generated about him from the world cup and the start of the season, or he’s just actually shit, but he has been a liability in the last couple of months. Spurs were down 2-0 five minutes before half time and 3-0 on aggregate. It seemed we were dead and buried.

It looked like there was going to be another semi-final defeat, the second of the season, having gone out on penalties in the Carabao cup after the rules were changed this season to scrap the away goals rule, something that we would have won on if still in place, and something that allowed us to overcome Manchester City in the Champions League quarter finals (well, along with VAR). After all, semi-final defeats are becoming Spurs’ speciality.

Then as if by magic it all started to change. A goal appeared from nowhere. Deli Alli ran at the defence, but it seemed he had pushed the ball too far ahead of himself, but Lucas Moura put on the afterburners, ran on the the ball and slotted it into the corner.

Four minutes later and it looked as if the miracle could be on. Trippier finally did something useful and crossed a great ball to Llorente who must score, only for the Ajax keeper to pull off two stunning saves. But the ball bounced loose and Moura picked it up, danced around with quick feet, spun and shot through a gap in the Ajax defence that didn’t seem to be there and it was now 2-2 on the night with still half an hour to play.

Could we really do this?

Ajax looked nervy now in defence, and Spurs piled forward at every opportunity trying to get that third goal which would be enough to put them through to the final on the away goals rule. In doing so they were leaving themselves open to the counter attack and they nearly paid the price on several occasions, Lloris made a couple of decent saves, Ajax struck the post, and a chance was put wide when it seemed it was easier to hit the target. Nervous times all round.

Then we had a corner with less than five minutes of normal time left. Vertonghen rose and sent a powerful header against the bar. It rebounded to him and his follow up shot was cleared off the line. Was that the moment? Would we get another chance?

Five minutes of extra time was shown and three minutes into we get another corner, only for Llorente’s header to sail harmlessly over the bar. That was surely the last chance gone. Ajax’s keeper got booked for time wasting as he took 41 seconds to take the resulting goal kick.

As the ball went up the pitch and made its way to Lloris at the other end there was only 10 seconds of the extra time left. A pass out to a defender, and a hoof up towards Llorente who knocked it down into the path of Alli. He poked it through into a gap that was surely too close to the two Ajax defenders. But Moura put the afterburners on again and got his toe to the ball first and his shot left his boot with just two seconds left. Time seemed to stand still as the ball rolled under the despairing dive of the Ajax keeper and into the corner of the net.

Cue absolute fucking scenes. Gutted Ajax players dropped to the turf all over the pitch. A huge pile of Spurs players, substitutes, management and anyone else connected with the club that could make to the corner flag appeared.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt that way about any goal I’ve seen in my life. A sense of amazement, joy, disbelief, happiness, triumph, ecstasy and “did that really happen” all mixed together. I’m still not sure it’s fully sunk in just how immense that was.

It took two minutes for the restart to happen, and there would be at least another thirty seconds to play due to the time added on for time wasting in extra time when Ajax did kick off. Enough time to have kittens, and for those kittens to have kittens of their own as Ajax got the ball into the Spurs box twice, but then the ball broke to Sissoko and off he went running with the ball all the way up the pitch (as he had done several times in this Champions League run – thought I’m still not convinced he was worth £30 million) only to be fouled near the Ajax box. Instead of a free kick the ref blew the full time whistle and it was all over.

If I had been sat there watching it by myself I would have been of the opinion that I’d dreamt the whole thing. But there were other witnesses. It really did happen. Spurs have made it to the Champions League final for the first time. Something I never thought I would see in my lifetime.

We may well have the worst record of any club to have reached a Champions League Final. We may have rode our luck, we have been outplayed by Barcelona, Manchester City and Ajax. But, somehow, we have managed to pull out performances and results when it has mattered most and now we are going to be playing Liverpool in Madrid on the 1st June.

Where in my realistic mode, there is more than a good chance that we will live up to the tag of underdogs, and the one of perennial bottlers and lose without a whimper.

But damn, what a ride.

Drinking Underground and The Palladium

It has been reported recently that there is a ban on drinking on any transport run by Transport For London, which covers the Underground, Buses, Overground, Suburban trains, Clippers and the cable cars. It was in the news because the shadow Home Secretary – Diane Abbott – was pictured on a tube drinking a can of pre-mixed cocktail.

However on Monday, Helen and I were drinking on the Underground, in a totally legal way. We had a slot at Cahoots booked. A cocktail bar hidden away underground in Kingly Court just off Carnaby Street. It had used to be an emergency shelter during the Second World War, but contrary to whatever the bar may tell you, it was never actually a tube station.

If you didn’t know it was there you could quite easily pass it by, with only a little “this way to the trains” sign pointing the way to a gate in one of the passages leading into Kingly Court. The entrance has been made to look like it was a tube station, the maroon tiles are the same as can be seen on a great number of other central London stations.

You go down the stairs and are met with a layout of what could have been a station platform, with signs and route maps, the tiling of old etc. And the far side of the bar is laid out with seating that appears to be laid out in a disused tube carriage.

It is low lit and quite atmospheric, and the staff are dressed to fit in with the theme that the year is 1946. The drinks menu is in the style of an “of the age” newspaper, and it is all very well done.

You have to book slots, so that there is actually a seat for you, and we only used an hour of our allocated two. Which is probably a good job. The cocktails are strong, and very well presented, but there isn’t actually a lot of volume there, mainly due to there being Titanic worrying lumps of ice in each glass. And with prices started at twelve quid a pop for a cocktail, it doesn’t take very long at all to work up to an ear-wateringly high bill.

It’s a great experience, and would be good fun for special occasions, but not the best for casual drinking.

After staggering back into the daylight we went for food and up to the first floor in Kingly Court to the Stax café. Adorned with posters from musical icons over the years, and a menu full of Stax related food names, it claims to be a soul food café. Somewhat unusually it was run and staffed entirely by Spanish people, one of whom explained that their beef bacon and chorizo was off the menu as their delivery was stuck somewhere behind a blockade in France.

With it being a Stax café, you might expect the accompanying music to be a treat from the label’s wonderful sixties and seventies soul output, but in seemingly oblivious style, I don’t think I heard a single Stax song whilst I was in there, not even in any of the samples on the variety of hip hop that was played. Nothing from their associated Atlantic or Volt labels either, but they did manage to put on some tracks from their biggest rival at the time – Motown.

The food was good, and there was a fair amount of it. The cocktails may not have been as exotic, or as wonderfully presented as the ones in Cahoots, but they were still good and a damn site cheaper.

Then it was time for the main event. Imelda May at the London Palladium. An evening of Celtic soul, with Leo Green’s Orchestra for backing, and recording for BBC Radio 2, for their Friday night concert show programmes. Which when introduced as such on a Monday night does seem a bit odd.

When we had been to see Imelda May at the Royal Albert Hall some eighteen months ago, she had said about wanting to do a project relating to the great Irish songbook. And so this concert was taking a trip through those acts that she felt represented Irish music that influenced her. Apart from the finale of “Danny Boy”, there weren’t any of traditional Irish songs I had been half expecting (“Black Velvet Band”, “Molly Malone”, “Wild Rover”, “Irish Rover” etc.). Instead there were songs from a more contemporary selection of Irish bands, such as The Cranberries, Hothouse Flowers, U2, Sinead O’Connor, Rory Gallagher, Van Morrison, Damien Rice and Thin Lizzy.

Her first special guest was Damien Dempsey, someone who she has recorded songs with, then came Bronagh Gallagher, who Imelda May lived with in the past, and who was in The Commitments, and so they did two songs from that soundtrack. Finally she was joined by a very excitable Ronnie Wood as they romped through a couple of full on rock ‘n’ roll songs.

The two plus hours went so quickly it was difficult to believe it was nearing eleven as we came out of the Palladium. It was a great show (again), just a shame we don’t have the Tuesday off as well now.

How Hot?

Now, it’s well known that I like spicy food, normally the spicier the better. There is very little I have had where I would turn around and say “stop porridge pot stop” (or stop chilli pot stop even.)

My local is The Downsman, and they do good food there, one of, if not the best, curries in Crawley. We go there on a regular basis, and I normally have their hottest dish whenever I go – the Chicken Nepali Kalio. You can see the blended chillies and the seeds in the sauce. It is very hot, but it has never caused me any issues before.

Then came Sunday afternoon and a number of us have gone out to celebrate Nathan’s 21st birthday. I’ve ordered the chicken nepali kalio as usual, and it’s turned up looking the same. Yet within a couple of mouthfuls I was struggling. My lips were way beyond tingling phase. My face had colour for the first time in decades, and there was sweat coming out of every pore in my head like a battery of mini Niagara Falls.

The naan bread wasn’t helping, the Cobra wasn’t cooling me down, in fact it was probably coming straight back out in the Niagara Falls from my head. It was a battle to eat it. I managed to just about get through the potato and chicken in the dish, but still had a fair bit of sauce there. I would have battled on, but I chose that moment to look up.

To look up at the purple patterned wallpaper across the room from me. Which now appeared to be swaying and dancing across the wall in a multi-coloured kaleidoscopic, hallucinogenic way that reminded me of the Simpson’s episode where Homer wins the chilli eating competition but ends up wandering the desert in an acid trip style connection to the wolf god.

I looked back to my bowl and tried to focus. The chilli seeds weren’t moving in the same way as the wallpaper, but it was probably a sign that I shouldn’t eat any more of the sauce, and so I retired from the dish, defeated. Others around the table tried microscopic bits of the sauce with all kinds of colourful language to describe it. It was just so much hotter than it had ever been before.

Once it was taken away everything returned to usual, and there was no exit burns, which leaves only one question. Do I have the dish again next time I am back?

Bank Holiday Football

At a bit of a loose end for what to do on an Easter Bank Holiday Monday? Well I’ve got an idea, let’s go and watch some football. Crawley Town are at home, and so off we all go to sit in the glorious sunshine / horrendous heat (*delete as applicable), to watch their match against Notts County.

The battle of two clubs who both have Harry Kewell as an ex-manager this season. (Hence the chant during the first half of “we hate Harry more than you”). With only three games left this season, Notts County are rooted to the foot of the League 2 table, and their status of being the oldest league club is in serious jeopardy.

They are level on points with Yeovil, and two behind Macclesfield Town, now managed by Sol Campbell, who had an infamous spell with Notts County in 2009, They had got a new owner with big plans and they had, quite frankly gone a bit mental. They’d managed to persuade former England manager Sven-Göran Eriksson to become their manager, and had unveiled Campbell as their marquee signing. He played one game for them, and Sven disappeared not much later, and the plans of Premiership football hit the dust. Both lasting even less time than Harry Kewell in his unsuccessful spell there earlier in the season after he had left Crawley Town for “bigger and better” things. Such as the sack!

Crawley Town had only made themselves safe from relegation with wins in their last two games, Notts County need to pick up points and a lot of goals if they are to escape relegation. If they were to fall through the trap door to non-league football, then they wouldn’t be the oldest league club anymore that honour would move to Stoke City. They wouldn’t be the oldest non-league club either, as Sheffield FC hold that moniker as the oldest club in the world.

Notts County were one of the founder members of the Football League in 1888, and they only missed out on being one of the founder members of the Premier League, being relegated in the last Division One season in 1991-92, their last top flight season, so it would be a shame if they were to disappear into non-league football.

Despite there being no danger of a clash of strips, Notts County came out in their plain blue away kit, and not their black and white vertical stripes that have been made so famous by Juventus, who changed to Notts County colours in 1903 due to problems with their original pink kit fading in the wash.

There was a bitty start to the game, and it was easy to see why both teams have been struggling at the wrong end of the table. Crawley Town were struggling to get out of their own half, or string any passes together early on, whereas Notts County were doing a lot of pressing, with Craig Mackail-Smith being full of running, chasing everything down and rushing around like a lunatic, with his long flowing bleached blonde hair trailing behind him like some kind of Frank McAvennie throwback, only one who couldn’t trap a bag of cement.

But he could head a ball and did so to open the scoring in the eighth minute with a looping header that just floated in slow motion into the goal to give Notts County the lead with their first (and only) attempt on target. Crawley Town equalised eleven minutes later with their first attempt on target (of a massive two) as Ashley Nathaniel-George slowly meandered in from the far touchline, almost walking past three defenders across the edge of the area before curling a trickling shot into the corner of the goal.

Robert Milson had gone to Notts County during the transfer window, following his old boss Harry Kewell, and with Kewell now no longer at Notts County; the Crawley Town fans targeted Milson from the outset. His every touch was booed, and there were cheers whenever he lost the ball or made a mistake.

Notts County probably shaded the first half, and but for some woeful finishing could have been two up at the break. Their bad misses were met with chants of “That’s why you’re going down” and “That’s why you’re Conference bound”.

By half time we could all have done with some shade. The two blokes who had been sat next to us during the first half, went off to get refreshments, and never came back. It’s unknown whether they just left due to the “shocking level of football” – their words, or if they just migrated into another area of the ground that offered some protection from the bright sunshine.

The second half started much as the first half had gone, scrappy play and mistakes. A loose ball in midfield was contested and brought about a straight red card for Notts County’s Ben Barclay. A bit of a surprise from where I was sitting, but the referee didn’t hesitate, and the reaction of the players and some of the fans suggested it was the correct decision.

Despite the man advantage, there could have been another three halves of football without Crawley Town seriously looking like scoring. The contest became a feisty affair. At the centre of it was a running battle between the wire cleaner constructed Panutche Camara who looked as if he was moving like Bambi, and Notts County’s Matt Tootle (wearing number two), who overtook Robert Milson as the Crawley Town fans’ hate figure as the game went on.

After Tootle had gone down in instalments to win a free kick, the Crawley Town fans were chanting “cheat” in his direction, and after the referee had squirted a dollop of his disappearing foam to mark where the free kick should be taken from, Tootle scooped it up and threw it five yards further up the pitch. Cue uproar from the fans. The referee and nearside linesman hadn’t seen the moving of the foam, but the fourth official must have done, as the referee returned to make him move the ball back again. Then as he went to take to free kick a lone voice shouted out “Number two – that’s shit!”

The game petered out into a draw, with Crawley Town conspiring to miss a game winning chance in the last minute when it would have been easier to score. The draw didn’t do Notts County any favours, especially when the scores from the other games came through and both Yeovil and Macclesfield Town had drawn as well.

With the final whistle came the end of the burning sun as clouds congregated to cover the sky, as if its work of cooking us all to a crisp was done.

Rate or Slate

I’ve been reading a lot recently, even more than I normally do. I’ve been reading a lot of books in genres I don’t read a lot of. Expand my horizon a bit from the factual/crime/sci-fi/thriller/horror/fantasy staples I usually read.

I’ve been tracking them on Goodreads, I spent a while a couple of years ago adding everything I could remember reading on there. The last couple of years I’ve signed up to the yearly reading challenge. I set myself a target of 150 books for the year, and I’m already past half way through that.

I have my Goodreads account sync’d to my Twitter account, so when I do updates on Goodreads, or finish a book and give it a rating it automatically goes out on my Twitter feed.

I finished reading Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness yesterday, and I gave it a two out of five rating. Only for someone to get irate on Twitter about my rating. “Excuse me? The greatest book ever written.” was part of their response. Someone, who isn’t one of my 1200+ followers, took time out to complain about my personal view of a book.

Then I thought that is one of the great things about books, and it’s the same for music, films or TV, that everyone has different tastes. Someone’s five star rating could only get a one star from someone else. It’s totally subjective. I’ve mellowed with age, I don’t get so preachy about what I think is great, I’ve come to realise that it’s down to individual choice.

But for the books I went back and had a look at the ratings on Goodreads. They put a description next to each of the stars.

1 – Did not like it.

2 – It was OK.

3 – Liked it

4 – Really liked it

5 – It was amazing

I’ve rated getting on for 3000 books, of which less than one percent get the top “It was amazing” rating, my overall average is at 2.82 and I think that is perfectly normal based on the wording of the ratings.

Then I look at other people’s rating. And it makes me wonder if I’m doing something wrong. The majority of the people on my friends list, or come up on my feed have average ratings of over 4. Only one other person had an average of less than 3.5. At least fifty percent of those I looked at had ratings over 4.5. Which means that they rated more than half the books they have read as being “It was amazing.”

Now, I know that people go for the kind of books they feel they are going to like, but it’s not natural for the majority of what someone reads (and some of them have got well in to the hundreds on the numbers of books read) to be that highly rated. As some of them are going to be absolute clunkers. It happens. I recently gave a book 1 star, and that was only because you can’t leave zero. The thing was I was really looking forward to reading it before I started, but it was so bad it was one of only three books ever that I’ve considered just giving up on.

If I ever get published myself, then I would be fine getting a two star Goodreads rating for any book I’d written. Three would be great, four is dreamland, and five would be special to me. But for others it would be happenstance.

But if I saw a stranger’s bad / poor review of a book I loved, I don’t think I’d take to Twitter to tell them they are wrong. I might momentarily think it is a shame that they don’t like it, but then let it go as they aren’t me, and they are allowed to think whatever they like.

Leicestershire La La La Vs Strange Sussex

In an unplanned addition to the weekend activities, I was off to watch cricket. For the first time in god knows how long, I was off to watch Leicestershire in the county championship. I know it must be a long time, because the last time I went to a Leicestershire county championship game there was only one division. And Leicestershire were good.

Now there are two divisions and for three of the last four seasons Leicestershire have come rock bottom of division two. There was a brief period at the start of last season where they won four out of six games, which coming close to a period of two and a half years and thirty nine games without a single win was a vast improvement. However it was a false dawn and there were no more wins after that point.

Going in to the first game of the new season, and the pre-season punditry has Leicestershire as the favourites to be the strongest team in the league again. Yep, that’s right, sitting at the bottom holding all the other teams up.

Living in Crawley, it is fortunate that this first game of the season is against Sussex at Hove as it cuts down on the journey time. But not by much considering it’s a Sunday and there’s a rail replacement on the go. The go slow that is.

And why is it always the case that people have to sit next to you on the bus when there are lots of available seats where they could sit by themselves. Having a strange European woman sat next to you muttering to herself for the whole journey is a bit off putting. Then the driver gets to the outskirts of Brighton and a bus lane appears, but, despite the fact the bus is a Brighton and Hove liveried bus, the driver sat queuing in the normal traffic lane. Right up until the point where a loud voice shouted from upstairs, “there’s a fucking bus lane mate”, and the driver drifted over into it.

It’s after lunch when I do get to the ground, and Leicestershire had managed to bowl Sussex out just before lunch, getting their last eight wickets for under a hundred runs. So Leicestershire had 230 to chase and five sessions to get the runs in. a fairly easy task for most teams, but this is the Leicestershire of now we are talking about. Not the one of the mid-seventies, where the city council got carried away after they won the championship and named all the streets in a new estate after the players. Or the one from the late nineties where they won two championships in three years. This is the team that has only won five games in four years.

In true jinx style, no sooner do I take a seat than Leicestershire lose their first wicket. The early morning sun had now been replaced by a covering of dark grey cloud. So much dark cloud that they had turned the floodlights on to try and make it seem like normal daylight out on the pitch.

There is a sparse population of spectators scattered around the ground. Lots of spare deckchair and folding chairs at the Cromwell Road end where we are, and the stands have odd people dotted around. There is some polite applause for the bowling, and a small smattering of cheering for boundaries from a group sat not far from me who are supporting Leicestershire.

As Leicestershire start scoring at a steady rate without losing any wickets, the chants of Leicestershire La La La are started, but with only six Leicestershire fans it does sound a bit muted. Then they were up on their feet to celebrate a half century from Paul Horton.

It was approaching the tea break when the first spots of rain arrived. When tea was taken Leicestershire had managed to get through to 99 for 1, leaving 130 to win with nine wickets remaining. Alas that was the end of the cricket for the day, as the rain became heavier and play was called off.

We decamped to the Palmeira pub to watch the second FA Cup semi-final. It was dry and the game was good, Wolves looking likely to go through as they went into a two goal lead with chances to extend that lead with little more than ten minutes left. Watford got one back, and then there was a nerve shredding injury time penalty to even the scores. And they did. Watford took the lead in the first half of extra time, but I missed the end of the game, as food was calling, and there was a short time window to get it before it was off to the evening’s entertainment.

I’d picked Mezal randomly as it was on the way and looked like something different. It is housed in a nice old Victorian building on the corner of Western Road. It has a very comfortable feel about it. The food was very good, and there was friendly and quick service. Unfortunately we were in too much of a rush to savour the experience properly. A return trip would be good at some point in the future.

The evening was taken up with a Dark Days talk – this one on Strange Sussex. It was held at the Southern Belle, a lovely old pub close to the sea front. It also doubles as a guest house, and is supposed to be the oldest of its kind in Brighton. Out towards the back is a small theatre. It was here that the talk was taking place.

The talk wasn’t quite as expected. It was more a case of slightly weird and eccentric than the dark strangeness it had been built up to be. The person doing the talk was very engaging and entertaining thought, and the two hours flew by, and it was quite interesting. We thought that going on one of the many guided walks he does would be a better idea. Listening to a talk in a darkened, warm room after a few pints is quite soporific, so being outside and moving might help.

PS Leicestershire went on to win the championship game the following day by seven wickets and proudly sit atop of the second division. Cancel the rest of the season and promote us now.

I Want Breakfast NOW!!

With breakfast items being the only food I really like from McDonalds, Saturday morning breakfast before writing group is one of life’s little pleasures.

But some people who go into McDonalds are never happy. This seems to be the case more often since they rolled out the collection number / ticket system across all their franchises, you order via the self-service machines or at a till and you’re given a number to wait for the food to appear at the service area. It does seem a bit like Argos nowadays and it can mean that people might have to wait a bit longer for their food and drink.

It’s been a bit of a double whammy as the rise of Deliveroo, Just Eat and Uber Eats had meant that there are normally a gaggle of delivery drivers waiting for fairly hefty food orders.

People don’t like waiting, and so you get the passive aggressive ones, like the bloke this morning who was timing how long it took from ordering his food until his number was called out. He then said to no one in particular “Eleven minutes and thirty-seven seconds, not exactly fast food is it?”

Then there was the woman this morning who was waiting for an order, whilst angrily shouting down the phone to someone, “they’re so fucking slow, the service is shit in here.” And then carried on moaning her coach trip was about to leave and shouting at the person on the other end of the phone to hold the coach up until she got there. Then when her food did turn up she spent an age faffing with getting bottles in to her handbag, and then returning to the counter to ask for sauces.

These people may have been used to the old days, when the food and drink would all have been lined up in the shiny metal slots just waiting to be picked up.

It took me a while to get used to the new system, and it doesn’t take that much longer than it did before, but when thinking about it, it makes so much more sense from two perspectives.

First is the fact that the food you are getting is going to be fresher. It’s being cooked and wrapped pretty much to order. It won’t have been sat on a metal shelf, slowly cooling and congealing for anything up to twenty minutes before it finally reaches the front and it’s ready to be bought. The extra couple of minutes wait has to be worth that.

Secondly there is the obvious reduction in waste. If they are cooking to order then they aren’t going to have leftovers sat on metal racks at the end of the breakfast time or the end of the day.

Not that people recognise those facts, they are too concerned about themselves only to realise. In too much of a rush. As is life nowadays.

Lounging With The Kittens

And for once I don’t mean that I’m sat in the lounge on the sofa with my feet up on the pouffe with Willow purring on the back of the sofa behind me, licking the back of my head whilst Sniffles sits heavily on my lap looking stoned and confused because the little pink blanket he usually lies on isn’t there.

It’s the last Friday night before the clocks go forward and the sun is doing its best to last as long as possible into the evening in the cloudless blue skies. We’re off to a gig, yes people; it is actually going to be a rock ‘n’ roll Friday night. (There has been a lack of them this year.)

We’re headed for Bush Hall (stop sniggering at the back) to see The Lounge Kittens. For those of you heathens, who haven’t heard of them, do yourself a favour and look them up on YouTube, or buy their albums and EP’s. In short they dress in the style of lounge singers, posh sparkling frocks, and there is a piano (or keyboard) as their only musical accompaniment, and they sing, and do they sing. The hook for them is what they sing. Great covers versions of Metal, Hip Hop and Dance anthems.

The one that really kicked things off would have been the cover of Limp Bizkit’s Rollin’. Check out the video of them doing it live at a festival, where Fred Durst watches them and then invites them to open Limp Bizkit’s set on the main stage later in the festival.

I found their videos by accident a number of years ago, and was gutted to find that I’d missed them doing a gig at what was the Black Dog the night before. Four years or so down the line I’m finally getting off my arse to go and see them live.

Helen and I were temporarily split up a Clapham Junction on the way up to London by an over enthusiastic Overground train door nearly slicing through me and keeping me off the train (see aside at the end of this piece). Reunited at Shepherd’s Bush it was time for food.

It is Friday and so it is pizza night. I had actually checked the menu of the Italian we are heading for ahead of time to ensure they do pizza. As we don’t want to make the same mistake as in Vienna a couple of weeks before. They definitely do pizza, and even if they hadn’t, with a name like Al Forno, they would surely do Lasagne and Cannelloni too.

The food at Al Forno was great, the service was great, and the prices were amazing, especially for London. All the table had little buzzers so you can let the waiters know when you have finally made your minds up on what you want to order instead of leaving them hovering whilst you um and ah your way through it. There is also a button on it to let them know when you want the bill. If you are ever in or around Shepherd’s Bush and you like Italian food then go here. For an added bonus bottles of Peroni were less than three quid, so you can’t go wrong for pre gig food and drinks.

Bush Hall lies on Uxbridge road at the south end of Loftus Road, the opposite end from QPR’s ground, where you can’t go more than a few yards from some place or other selling chicken. Most of it fried, sod Kentucky, most of the fifty states are there. It isn’t a massive venue, the main hall is probably smaller than most school gymnasiums, but it is another wonderful example of Victorian architecture. There is a little balcony upstairs which had some nice comfy seats overlooking the hall, but they were off limits as reserved for filming. The hall was warm and the heating was pumping out. Quite unnecessary on a balmy March night in a packed music venue.

I had time to get to the merch stand, picking up a t-shirt and their two EP’s that covered their stuff either side of the album I already have, before the warm up act was Grant Sharkey, no relation to Feargal and his songs certainly weren’t as sickly sweet as Feargal’s solo career. They were a lot more political and satirical that The Undertones ever were too.

He could have done a passable stand up set with the commentary between songs. Songs that were accompanied only by his double bass playing and some clapping. Being up on the stage did kind of overstate how tall he was. When he walked back through the room, we were surprised to see he was only actually hobbit sized. Which begged the question, was his double bass really only a cello?

Then it was time for The Lounge Kittens themselves, resplendent in green and blue sequins all round, and pink, red, orange, green and blue hair colours as well.

With a single keyboard and three voices they soared through a set as if they had a full backing group of musicians. They sang together, and apart, and jumped between the three of them so quickly and smoothly it was difficult to keep up with exactly who was singing any line at any time.

They joked around with each other and the crowd, and also spoke from the heart about some serious issues – covering songs of three artists who have committed suicide in the last couple of years. Even so, everyone involved seemed like they were having the time of their lives.

As well as the covers I had already seen or heard on YouTube or album, there was an array of medleys I hadn’t. A pop-punk one, an Avicii one, their Prodigy one of old, one full of classic rock tracks, and a lovely surprising ride through eighties and nineties cartoon themes. Near the end was the one that had started this all off for me, and probably a whole army of other fans as well, the one that got them really noticed – Rollin’.

And then, all too soon, an hour and a half had rattled by and it was all over, so we headed off out into the night to begin the journey back to Crawley, and our own little medley of three trains to do so.

It was Saturday when we got home, something that doesn’t happen very often nowadays, but probably should.

We just need to find some more Friday night gigs.

Deadly Doors

The doors on the Overground trains don’t fuck about. None of this stopping if they hit something. They just keep going on through that, whether bag or body part. If they had blades on them instead of rubber, the trains would be strewn with bloody body parts of those who didn’t know how harsh the doors were, and couldn’t get out of the way in time.

Will there be a point in the future where such blades will be seen as a method to keep the population down to a manageable level, whilst increasing the need for manufacturing and consumerism, by forcing the survivors to buy new bags and luggage so savagely destroyed in the doors, and for clothes which are no longer fashionably torn, but proper shredded rags.

Or maybe I should just stop giving them ideas.

Capital Punishment Part 3 – Vienna

Another city, another curry

The train was only fifteen minutes late this time. At least the taxi driver was willing to take us. Granted, he was looking somewhat confused when we asked for the Holiday Inn. He didn’t look overly confident when I showed him the address written down either. He then appeared to give himself a hernia trying to lug the cases into the boot of his car. But he got to the hotel, by what seemed a direct route and not as if he was auditioning for Taxi 6 – Vienna Calling (sorry Falco). As he was slowing down to drop us off outside the hotel what do we spy less than thirty years away? The Spice of India. Well that’s the tiresome try and find somewhere to eat on the first night palaver over with before it begins.

The receptionist is nice and smiley and proudly announces we have a good room for you, we’ve upgraded you to a junior suite. Always good, though I do wonder when these little junior suites will grow up and become a senior suite. It isn’t the size of our Prague suite, they’d only have three rooms a floor if it was, but it’s definitely not your bog standard hotel room.

A quick change and we’re back out and long the road to have Indian food for the second night on the trot. We are the only people in the restaurant again, only his time no one else arrives. To be fair it did look like they were thinking about closing for the night, and a miserable looking man is sweeping and then mopping up.

After we have eaten the nice food and drank the Austrian beer we find out that they haven’t been open long and are still establishing themselves. They usually get the post work crowd in between six and eight and not the tourists just arrived by slow train from Prague.

And as if by magic it’s eleven o’clock again, time flies when you’re stuffing yourself with curry. Another long day and long train journey, and a relatively early night calls so that we can attack the new city with gusto in the morning.

Around every corner…. Oh wow!

Full day one in Vienna and we just start walking, finding a café called Blueorange for breakfast. Now this may just be me, but if your orange is blue there’s something seriously wrong with it, much like the food ordering.

After sustenance we head off in what we hope is the general direction of central Vienna, and from the moment we walked into the market on Naschmarkt it was a case of wow, look at that building every few yards.

Around the area of the Hopburg Palace it’s just magnificence after magnificence. We wandered around quite happily in and through buildings with courtyards galore. They are quite happy for you to explore any part of any building from the outside for free. However trying to look inside any building is bloody expensive.

There is a lot of building and restoration work going on throughout Vienna, and where they have scaffolding over the fronts of buildings on main thoroughfares they have images of the buildings behind the scaffolding on the netting, so it isn’t obvious there is scaffolding there at first glance.

Apart from on churches. The Votivkirsche had a massive Huawei advertising hoarding over the front of the imaged netting, and the cathedral of St Stephan’s had various Samsung S10 adverts on their netting. It is curious that the adverts are only on the churches, as if they need to additional funding to have work done.

A lot of roads are cordoned off, and there were lots of people flocking along them towards the palace. When we got there via a very winding route we found out why. They were having a save the planet rally, the ones all the students around the world were going on strike for.

They left behind them a trail of rubbish, abandoned placards, beer cans, cigarette ends, plastic bags, and the works. Save the planet my arse. More like an excuse for a day off work or school and have a piss up. Bunch of hypocritical self-obsessed twats.

We carried on in the opposite direction to the demo, past more glorious buildings and to a café for lunch. And then back to the wandering, after a few minutes of trying to get bearings we headed in the right direction to get to the cathedral of St Stephan’s. They do let into this gothic masterpiece for free, well part of it anyway. To get to the central nave and south transept and behind the altar to the chapels there was an entrance fee. To get to the crypt and the treasury, there was a fee. To get to walk up the 285 steps of the south tower there was a fee. To get the lift up to the top of the north tower there was a fee. Which happened to be the cheapest fee and had a life – no steps, so we were happy to pay for that and to be able to get the views out over Vienna it afforded.

One of the great things about the cathedral roof, and a few of the roofs of other churches in the city is the tiling on their roofs. Multi-coloured and patterned instead of bare slate or lead. It makes them stand out. The exit was through the gift shop (yes, pen, fridge magnet and guide book) before we were back out on the streets to carry on wandering.

First up to see the grand Anker Uhr clock. An amazing time piece featuring twelve famous characters from Vienna’s history carrying the hour across the face of the clock a minute at a time. We had missed the change of character at the turn of the hour, and didn’t really want to stand around for forty-odd minutes to see the next one.

We had to get over to Karlskirche to pick up our tickets for the evening concert. Another spectacular baroque church. One we would get to see the inside of later. We walked past the university buildings that were now over where Vivaldi was buried to get to the metro station.

Tickets for 48 hours public transport were picked up to cover us up to the point where we needed to go to the airport. We head back to the hotel for a quick freshen up and a smarten up. An early start is required this evening if we are going to get food in before the concert.

Four Seasons (and then a few more)

Karlskirche is a wonderful baroque masterpiece in the centre of Vienna. It looks amazing during the day, and looks even better lit up at night (especially after the rain has stopped.)

Vivaldi’s Four Seasons is a well know musical masterpiece, written sometime between 1716 and its 1725 publication. Antonio Vivaldi himself was a musical maestro, who spent the latter years of his life living in Vienna. His funeral was at St Stephan’s cathedral and he was buried in the shadow of Karlskirche.

So put them together and having a concert recital of The Four Seasons in Karlskirche makes perfect sense.

A vast open old space such as a church in winter needs to be prepared for, and everyone wearing half a dozen layers wasn’t a surprise, being given blankets as you went in would be an unexpected bonus. Apart from for the one idiot sat there quite happily in his short sleeved shirt, jacket over the back of his chair. Not for the first time on this trip other people were looking at me as if I was mad and saying looking at me was making them feel cold.

I was expecting four pieces of music. There are four concertos. I mean the name Four Seasons gives a hint and a half. It would normally take 41 minutes. However there were a lot more than four pieces of music, and they kept wheeling out a classical singer to warble in a ridiculously high voice. It was great, but it did go on quite a bit longer than expected, like a remastered CD with added bonus tracks.

It did give me a chance to have a really good look around the church. It was also interesting as there was a massive ball installed above the centre of the nave. The ball was silver coated and therefore reflected down on the whole audience. With only the altar area lit up for the performers, there was very little light shining down on the audience, which meant that smart phones in use were very easy to see. At any point there would be half a dozen shining up. On the whole they were on briefly, apart from two that appeared to be on for the entire hour and fifteen minutes of the performance.

I was glad that spring comes first; it got the most familiar part of the music out of the way. The music that most EDFE Arkadin users since the noughties will have hear thousands of times as the hold music for conference calls.

I was surprised how much of the other seasons I knew. I’m always disappointed that the four seasons being played about aren’t salt, pepper, vinegar and mustard, but that’s just my silly sense of philistine humour kicking in.

I think that winter is my favourite part. Which matches my personality perfectly. I wouldn’t rush to a classical concert again, but if they are in such an atmospheric classical building then it adds to the experience and makes it so much more than just a classical music concert.

Schonbrunn Schloss

Our last full day on our magical not so mysterious European tour, and we’re once again a bit sluggish to get going. The rain isn’t helping; it’s putting a bit of a dampener on the day (and the standard of the puns). Breakfast is a leisurely affair. Not necessarily intentionally, but it did take longer to get a menu than to get food after it was ordered.

Again after eating we headed up to the Naschmarkt and headed through it in the opposite direction than the day before heading for the local metro station for the journey out to the Schloss Schonbrunn.

The Habsburgs certainly didn’t fuck about when it came to building palaces. As we came out of the station we walked to the main gate along what turned out to be the orangery. Which was longer than the road of terraced house I used to live on. The main gates lead to the courtyard, and the yellow façade of buildings all the way around it.

We had decided to pay to get in and see all the rooms that were open to us mere hoi polloi. Thirty-eight rooms (it should have been forty, but two are under renovation). They don’t allow photography inside. The more cynical part of me would say that is so they can flog more of the guide books (worked on me). However having a decent camera for the first time in my life, I’ve been somewhat snap happy on this European tour, much I’m sure, to Helen’s frustration, who’s had to stand waiting for me to finish snapping away like some kind of lemon. If they had let me loose with a camera in here I’d probably still be there now. Multiply that by every potential David Bailey with a camera slung around their necks, and the place would be clogged within five minutes of opening, and no one would ever get round.

There really is that much to see and take in as we tour the fraction of the rooms that are open. It is a wonderful mix of amazing décor, classic artworks, grand furniture and mind boggling displays of wealth. Well over an hour later we are exiting through the gift shop (yes, pen, fridge magnet and guide book), and out into the grounds.

Which are vast.

We ignored the zoo, the worlds oldest apparently, and made our way up past various statues based in Greek mythology and Roman history, up to the Gloriette. A magnificent yellow arcade on top of the hill parallel to the rear of the main palace, and offering great views over the western part of Vienna. They have a wonderful café in the middle of it serving cake – that’s all you need to know – cake. We didn’t get to see the rest of the menu.

Once refreshed we walked back down from the Gloriette past Roman remains, not from the Roman period, but recreated by the Habsburgs to enhance their prestige during the eighteenth century. Large fountains are dotted around, but like all water features we have encountered in Vienna they were empty.

It was when we got back to the bottom of the hill, level with the palace that we found the long building we had walked past coming from the station was the orangery. That and the various greenhouses along the side of it cover a hell of a lot of acres.

Palaced out, we headed back to the hotel to chill for a bit, eat some of the chocolates we bought in Berlin as gifts and get ready for the last night of our tour. Which could get messy, the last night is always supposed to be the kick ass one.

Stein Time

Our evening meal was in a traditional Austrian bar / restaurant, but with the added bonus one that had its own brewery attached. As it was the last night of the tour, why not go for the litre steins, I’d stuck to half litre ones all week, but one for the picture reel was needed.

It’s a daunting thing when it arrives and you try and work out the best way to pick it up and drink from it without either tipping it all over myself, or wrenching my wrist. I ordered in a rush, and to be fair mainly based on the pictures in the menu. The description said chicken strips, mozzarella sticks and onion rings, and that’s what the picture showed. When it arrived the basket was a lot bigger than expected, as the top layer of what was described on the menu hid a mountain of potato wedges.

A second look at the menu does mention the wedges. On a totally different non-contiguous line in a different font. There were more potatoes in the basket that I would even consider eating in a month. Part of my Irish genes are defective, I’m not a potato fan at the best of times, so I’m not enamoured by the prospect of trying to get through any of this mountain. I had a few and they were nice and crispy, and boiling hot, but far too much for me.

We had some shredded pancake concoction for desert; well it was more like shredded Yorkshire pudding, with raisins in, and another stein. Our evening in the restaurant ended sooner than expected straight after the Stark Brandy. The bill appeared with the message to pay on the way out. We took the hint and sought out somewhere else to carry on.

We found what appeared to be someone’s front room done out as a bar. It had the bartender and his mate in there. The bartender had to borrow his mate’s glasses to see what Helen was pointing out on the drinks menu as he couldn’t understand the word Amaretto. Then his mate was telling him that he should get his own glasses out, and after a brief search he found them in the till.

As with all European Union countries, the Austrians aren’t ones for the smoking ban. They were openly smoking in the bar, and the café we’d been to in the morning had had a smoking section, and the following day in the airport they had smoking booths lined up like telephone boxes.

The excitement of the bar was too much for us though, so we called it a night after the single drink.

Homeward bound (boo yah sucks)

The final day of the tour saw us having to pack, probably the worst point of any trip. We had intended on getting a late check out, but whilst looking up getting tickets to get from the city centre to the airport I saw the website saying they had luggage storage lockers for ticket holders.

So we checked out and headed to the Landstrasse Mitte station. Only to find they only had twenty-six lockers, twenty of which would struggle to fit a case in them anyway, and a queue to use them. A queue which might be there all day as there was no indication when the users of the lockers would return. If ever. The uninterested employee behind the CAT desk said there were other lockers in the station, but didn’t say exactly where or comment on the probability they were in use. Unable to find the other lockers, and with the information desk being shut and locked, we pressed an information button to ask where the lockers were.

The officious prick who answered said there were no lockers free and that we should try the Hauptbahnhof station. Which is neither use nor fucking ornament being a mile and two metro lines away and not on a route to the airport. Seriously you fucking halfwits, if you advertise left luggage for a city’s main station and transport link to the airport then you either need to get organised and have left luggage facilities to cope with the obvious need, or say there is only very limited space upfront so people can use the appropriate late check outs offered to them and not have to lug all the cases around the city because you’re incompetent twats.

Resisting the urge to rip someone’s head off and the guide book’s maps not reaching our intended destination, coupled with Google maps’ refusal to work it was by luck rather than judgement that we managed to find our way out to the Hundertwasserhaus. The social housing designed and built by Friedensreich Hunderwasser in the early eighties, very much with a feel of Gaudi’s Casa Mila in Barcelona.

We hauled our cases up to the first floor café and had a nice leisurely brunch in the sun. After brunch, the first completely successfully accurate meal in Austria, and a bunch of photos we got a tram over to the stop closest to the Jesuitenkirche. Hidden away in a courtyard at the end of a side street is another baroque masterpiece. The plain white stucco frontage with green capped towers gives no indication to the opulence inside.

It isn’t a large church, but every inch of it is amazing. There is a lot of gold, magnificent marble columns of different designs and colours. Almost jade green for some, and pink for a lot of others. Along either side of the nave are five chapels. Each fitted with vast paintings and more gold and marble. Above each chapel is a balcony where the great and good could watch the service without having to mix with the hoi polloi below them.

Each balcony had a cupola in the middle of it from the chapel below it. The huge organ that sits above the entrance alcove was being played by an unseen organist. Just sitting in one of the pews with the organ playing, taking in the ambience was nearly as good as being in Karlskirche for a concert.

The crypt was open and held a number of arched catacombs to one side, where three rows of interred bodies lay, some laid to rest as recently as this year, and others dating back to the 19th century. A simple altar sat the other side, and a bolted gate held an intriguing question. The tunnel behind it sloped gently into the darkness, with a hint of off shoots at what seemed to be the end. Where they go and what they were (are?) used for is something for me to try and find out at a later date.

From the church we slowly headed back to the Mitte station, our cases still in tow. The distance being nowhere near as far as the map suggested. The metro stop closest to the Jesuitenkirche was only two hundred yards away from the one at Mitte, so the walk above ground was a much better idea.

The train whizzed to the airport, with a conductor who felt his calling was in the performing arts, and actor or a comedian perhaps. We must have toured most of the airport in the process of checking our bags in, going through duty free, then passport control, more duty free and our last food on the continent – more pretzels and beer – before finally going through physical security at the entrance to the gate. Each gate having its own scanner and staff. It seems a strange way of doing things, but definitely had less overall queuing time.

We got the additional queuing time once we had boarded the plane. We were all ready to go on time, but were held back for an appropriate landing slot at Heathrow due to the shitty windy weather back at home. Just as it was when we left. Some things never change.

Back at Heathrow we came into terminal 3, which meant we had to try and work out the public transport back to where our car was, seeing as we’d flown out of terminal 5. We followed the signs for buses, all the way round to terminal 2 and the central bus station. But it was only a short hop from there back to the car, so it wasn’t that bad.

Overall it has been a great trip. We could probably do with another week off to recover from it, but a single day will have to do before it’s back to the terrible world of work.

Damn lottery numbers didn’t come up again!

Food Woes

That’s what I have forgotten to mention the food and drink chaos from when we arrive at Prague station.

It starts with asking for the bill in the bar at the station. It wasn’t the bill that turned up, but another beer that arrived at the table. A nice thought, but we don’t have the time. It wasn’t a wasted beer though; it wandered off to another table with another order.

On the train the steward was a bit too quick for his own good, or he didn’t listen, or just didn’t give a shit. Helen ordered a chicken and potato salad and two lemonades, and I ordered a quiche. The quiche turned up as ordered, but the chicken and potato salad had turned into a yoghurt with granola and compote, and the two lemonades turned into two macchiatos.

Moving on to breakfast, I ordered scrambled egg with bacon and a bagel and a small soda. I got a soda that you could see from space, and my bagel turned up as a breakfast tortilla wrap.

At lunch I thought I would try for a bagel again. And a bagel turned up, only it wasn’t the bagel I ordered. I had asked for a ham and cheese bagel, but an Italian BLT arrived instead. With an Italian restaurant on the agenda for the evening meal who knew what random food items would turn up on my plate?

We have check for an Italian as it is Friday night and therefore pizza time. There are a couple near the hotel, and a couple near to where the concert we’re going to is. So we head for one over there, we get shown in and seated and once comfortable we are handed the menus.

No bread items of any way shape or form. So I look for my staple Italian dish – lasagne, but they haven’t got that either. Cannelloni time then. Nope none of that either. I feel like taking the menu and shoving it up the waiter’s arse by this point. I take my fourth choice of gnocchi, and we only have the chance for one course due to time constraints.

The next morning, a new place for breakfast, one that took ages just to give us menus – in the wrong language – let alone take an order. I ordered a bagel breakfast (yes an ongoing theme), only for the part that was supposed to be prosciutto turns up with salmon in its place. Fucking salmon. Are these Austrian cunts doing this shit on purpose? Piss taking bastards.

At least mid-afternoon ice cream couldn’t be fucked up. Apart from missing the advertised hot coffee cream sauce. I dread to think what the Austrian restaurant this evening can mangle.

They managed to hide the fact that their “chicken basket” supposedly made up of chicken strips, mozzarella straws and onion rings was actually a bit of a cover for the mountain of potato wedges they had hidden underneath. If anyone is missing an alp I can tell you where it is.

Thankfully I’m going home tomorrow.