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Dec. 20th, 2008 11:15 amThe lovely Julieann smiled sweetly at me late in yesterday's shift <3 I realised I hadn't given her a Christmas card, so rapidly wrote one and rushed over to her. By the end of the shift she'd handed me a reciprocal card, with a lovely message written in it.
From work it was on to London to see The Pogues - I'd bought my ticket and booked the hotel months ago so, even though it was going to be another £87 on my credit card bill for the hotel room, I decided the Age of Austerity could be postponed until this morning.
It had been a long-time desire of mine to stay at the Thistle Victoria hotel - or the Grosvenor as it now is - by Victoria station, so I'd booked a room there on acquiring my Pogues ticket back in the summer, long before any thoughts of the sheer size of the bill I was running up occurred to me... The Grosvenor was ever so posh, with a top quality carpet, a huge candle-laden Christmas tree and a piano in the main reception - when I went downstairs on my way out to the concert, a young lady was tinkling the keys, very pleasantly - and gold fittings everywhere. My room was very nice though, in truth, the rooms in the Elizabeth where I stayed before had all the same features as the ones here that I used.
Arrived at Brixton Academy a few minutes before the 7 pm doors opening, but this year the queue was nowhere near as bad - it just stretched round the front corner and about two-thirds of the way down the long side. I was inside the venue around five past. There was Guinness on a special promotion, so when in Rome...
This year I'd been able to secure a ticket for the seated circle. The support band, The Flaming Stars, weren't bad though not my kind of music. After them came the house DJ with an interesting selection of music; perhaps recognising the overlap of The Pogues' and Kirsty's fan bases, towards the end of his set he played There's A Guy Works Down The Chip Shop Swears He's Elvis.
The Pogues came on stage bang on 9pm and went for a barnstormer of a beginning to the set - Streams of Whiskey, If I Should Fall From Grace With God, A Pair of Brown Eyes (that song still reminds me of my intense unrequited love for Sarah in the summer of '90) and The Broad Majestic Shannon. After that classic quartet Shane disappeared for a few minutes (the male half of the couple next to me speculated that he was going for a piss) and the rest of the band gave us an instrumental and a lesser-known song before Shane returned to lead them in a cover of Cotton Fields.
They were superb as always. We had a varied set this time; the odd classic like Bottle of Smoke rubbed shoulders with less remembered numbers such as Greenland Whale Fisheries, Kitty and Poor Paddy. In truth their performance throughout was so brilliant that the absence of several songs that were usually staples of the set, like Rain Street and Thousands Are Sailing, went unnoticed. Shane took another jacks break two-thirds of the way through, allowing Spider Stacy his deserved moment in the limelight to sing Tuesday Morning.
They teased us to the max, keeping us waiting a long while for both encores. In the first encore we got Sally Maclennane, The Sick Bed of Cuchulainn and The Irish Rover. As was traditional, they saved Fairytale of New York up for the second encore, and had us holding on a whole ten minutes before coming back on stage for that - during the pause large sections of the audience gave them a subtle nudge by singing snatches of Fairytale themselves. Finally The Pogues came back on to a deafening roar, and Spider dedicated the song "to Jean MacColl, who's here tonight. Eight years on she's still fighting to have the bastards responsible brought to justice" and called for a big round of applause, which was immediately forthcoming. Then he introduced Ella Finer and she and Shane gave a heartfelt rendition of Fairytale complete with stage snow. After that came the closing number, Fiesta, with Spider Stacy allowed to spend the whole song manically headbutting a silver tray for old times' sake. Shane, after changing a line of the last verse to 'Kick you in the cojones', paid tribute to the brave anti-fascists of 1936, adding 'No Pasaran' at the end of the song.
On the tube a group of people had an impromptu sing-along of A Pair of Brown Eyes then, widening the Irish theme, The Auld Triangle and Whiskey In The Jar. I joined in but, alas, didn't get a chance to start The Fields of Athenry.
Home this morning, changing at Worthing, where a bloke in a claret and blue scarf saw me wearing HWFC colours and came over for a chat. He turned out to be a Worthing-based Burnley fan on his way to their game at Bristol City, and we talked about footie the whole journey till I got off at Fareham.
Julieann's Facebook page reveals she's married :'( Ah well, I couldn't have afforded to get into a relationship anyway - the Age of Austerity starts now.
From work it was on to London to see The Pogues - I'd bought my ticket and booked the hotel months ago so, even though it was going to be another £87 on my credit card bill for the hotel room, I decided the Age of Austerity could be postponed until this morning.
It had been a long-time desire of mine to stay at the Thistle Victoria hotel - or the Grosvenor as it now is - by Victoria station, so I'd booked a room there on acquiring my Pogues ticket back in the summer, long before any thoughts of the sheer size of the bill I was running up occurred to me... The Grosvenor was ever so posh, with a top quality carpet, a huge candle-laden Christmas tree and a piano in the main reception - when I went downstairs on my way out to the concert, a young lady was tinkling the keys, very pleasantly - and gold fittings everywhere. My room was very nice though, in truth, the rooms in the Elizabeth where I stayed before had all the same features as the ones here that I used.
Arrived at Brixton Academy a few minutes before the 7 pm doors opening, but this year the queue was nowhere near as bad - it just stretched round the front corner and about two-thirds of the way down the long side. I was inside the venue around five past. There was Guinness on a special promotion, so when in Rome...
This year I'd been able to secure a ticket for the seated circle. The support band, The Flaming Stars, weren't bad though not my kind of music. After them came the house DJ with an interesting selection of music; perhaps recognising the overlap of The Pogues' and Kirsty's fan bases, towards the end of his set he played There's A Guy Works Down The Chip Shop Swears He's Elvis.
The Pogues came on stage bang on 9pm and went for a barnstormer of a beginning to the set - Streams of Whiskey, If I Should Fall From Grace With God, A Pair of Brown Eyes (that song still reminds me of my intense unrequited love for Sarah in the summer of '90) and The Broad Majestic Shannon. After that classic quartet Shane disappeared for a few minutes (the male half of the couple next to me speculated that he was going for a piss) and the rest of the band gave us an instrumental and a lesser-known song before Shane returned to lead them in a cover of Cotton Fields.
They were superb as always. We had a varied set this time; the odd classic like Bottle of Smoke rubbed shoulders with less remembered numbers such as Greenland Whale Fisheries, Kitty and Poor Paddy. In truth their performance throughout was so brilliant that the absence of several songs that were usually staples of the set, like Rain Street and Thousands Are Sailing, went unnoticed. Shane took another jacks break two-thirds of the way through, allowing Spider Stacy his deserved moment in the limelight to sing Tuesday Morning.
They teased us to the max, keeping us waiting a long while for both encores. In the first encore we got Sally Maclennane, The Sick Bed of Cuchulainn and The Irish Rover. As was traditional, they saved Fairytale of New York up for the second encore, and had us holding on a whole ten minutes before coming back on stage for that - during the pause large sections of the audience gave them a subtle nudge by singing snatches of Fairytale themselves. Finally The Pogues came back on to a deafening roar, and Spider dedicated the song "to Jean MacColl, who's here tonight. Eight years on she's still fighting to have the bastards responsible brought to justice" and called for a big round of applause, which was immediately forthcoming. Then he introduced Ella Finer and she and Shane gave a heartfelt rendition of Fairytale complete with stage snow. After that came the closing number, Fiesta, with Spider Stacy allowed to spend the whole song manically headbutting a silver tray for old times' sake. Shane, after changing a line of the last verse to 'Kick you in the cojones', paid tribute to the brave anti-fascists of 1936, adding 'No Pasaran' at the end of the song.
On the tube a group of people had an impromptu sing-along of A Pair of Brown Eyes then, widening the Irish theme, The Auld Triangle and Whiskey In The Jar. I joined in but, alas, didn't get a chance to start The Fields of Athenry.
Home this morning, changing at Worthing, where a bloke in a claret and blue scarf saw me wearing HWFC colours and came over for a chat. He turned out to be a Worthing-based Burnley fan on his way to their game at Bristol City, and we talked about footie the whole journey till I got off at Fareham.
Julieann's Facebook page reveals she's married :'( Ah well, I couldn't have afforded to get into a relationship anyway - the Age of Austerity starts now.
