Good / Bad

[lnr]

So, last night's gig. Doors were at 7, and actually seem to have opened on time yet again, which is becoming a continuing source of amazement. Support wasn't on until 8 though, and only had a half hour slot. This meant we had plenty of time to kill, in which burgers and chips from the Trailer of Life franchise were scoffed. Saves meeting up to eat beforehand and it's cheap and cheerful, if not exactly healthy. Anyway the chap doing support was called Declan O'Rourke and played us some vaguely folk tunes accompanied by acoustic guitar and harmonica on one song. He was competant, but dull enough that even his gentle Irish lilting voice couldn't rescue him. The crowd seemed to quite like him though, and applauded more than just politely.

Now the crowd, that was the thing with this gig. They were nice. Very very nice, and awfully civilised. And just a wee bit too grown up (and I mean that in terms of age and not behaviour d'oh! behaviour and not age! Even the young people were being very grown up). We made our way nearish the front for The Divine Comedy but it just seemed to rude to push such nice people - we could easily have been right at the barrier if we'd been just a wee bit less polite about the whole thing. Still the music was great. The set had a lot of new material since there's a new album out, but that wasn't entirely surprising. Neil Hannon turns out to have a very good sense of humour and comic timing, and there was a good sprinkling of old favourites. Ernie and I danced and sang along to the fast ones, but despite Neil commenting part way through that it was nice to see people bouncing to the music because that way he could tell they were enjoying it the crowd for the most part was very very static. They woke up a little for Charge which was definitely the highlight of the show, but when we can only see about 3 people other than ourselves in the front 5 rows of people who are dancing to Something For The Weekend which closed the encore then well, it couldn't help but seem a little flat. Still, someone complemented us on the dancing as we were queueing for the cloakroom on the way out.

So yeah, musically and in terms of between=track banter it was brilliant - the band were all incredibly good musicians and Hannon is a star, but overall as gigs go it was lacking a bit of an edge. I'd definitely see them again, and maybe I'm kicking myself just a little for not seeing them two years ago, but nah, it was the right decision at the time.

Since it was over by 10:30 I headed over to Mike's post-gig, which would have been a pleasant end to the evening but my horrible acid-reflux indigestion won. I was up throwing up with it twice in the night, which is not pleasant when you've already got a slightly sore throat anyway I can assure you. To be honest it's rather pushed me into being a bit more careful about my eating though - I *know* it's worse the fatter I am and yet at the moment I'm at my fattest ever and dwelling on how horrible I feel like I look far too often. So it ends here, for a while at least. I popped into Sainsburies on the way into work this morning when it opened at 8 and have lots of fruit and things for eating in the office, as well an ingredients for a nice chilli for dinner tonight. But still, even raspberry and cranberry yog with a tub of raspberries seems to be too much for me to make myself eat this morning, and I'm munching on indigestion tablets rather than finishing it. Hopefully stop feeling grotty soon though.

The BBC are running a "you're unfit and you know it" campaign at the moment, or at least in the run up to it. It occurred to me last week that I really do hate being this unfit. Only getting fit is extremely hard work, and what I dislike about being unfit is how hard work it makes everything. Hmm, awkward little situation that one.