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I was impossibly excited about this concert, and one of the great things about it was how excited and delighted everybody was. I’ve never been to an event quite like it for the sense of shared delight, so many people feeling so privileged just to be there.
The Playhouse Theatre, Edinburgh
And with that level of anticipation, you could argue that we would all inevitably enjoy the show, however good, bad or mediocre it turned out to be. And you’d probably be right. But this was something very special indeed, and an experience that I wouldn’t have missed for the world. The reaction when I tell my friends and colleagues that “I’ve been to see Tom Waits” (and I must admit that I’ve probably talked rather too much about it since Monday night) is usually “Oh, that’s nice“, “Poor you“, or “Tom who?“, and never “Wow, you’re so lucky to have had the chance to see the world’s greatest performer“. But that’s how I feel – just very lucky.
It came to a head for me when, half way through the evening, the band went off for a break, and Tom took his seat at the piano. He chatted a bit, told a few stories, tinkled a few notes, and said “Now, what shall we play…“, before launching into “Tom Traubert’s Blues”, one of my all time favourite Tom tracks. It was an emotional moment, and one that I will never forget.
Nor will I forget seeing Tom the night before, after his first Edinburgh concert. We had decided to do the corny fan thing of waiting for him by the stage door, and, when the great man emerged into the small space between the exit and the car door, his face almost hidden by a grey hoodie, I shouted “Could I take a picture, Tom?” (“Tom“, you’ll notice, not “Mr Waits“, which I thought would be altogether too formal for one with whom I already felt such a strong rapport). At this point, he could have just got into the car, but instead he paused. (It would be an exaggeration to say that he posed, but he did pause, long enough for me to take a rushed picture, which turned out to be crap – see below – spoiled by the bright torch being shone at me by one of the security men.) “Thanks Tom“, I said. And then IT happened. He spoke to me. “Alright man“, he growled. It was unmistakeably his voice, and it was just as certainly directed at me, so I can safely say that Tom Waits has spoken to me. (And, given that a conversation can reasonably be defined as an exchange of spoken words, can I legitimately claim that I have had a conversation with him?!)
Anyway, before my memory of the encounter expands in my memory to become a deep and meaningful friendship, here’s the photo. That’s Tom on the right, in the hoody. I like to think that the security guy with the torch was trying to be helpful. And the one in the foreground looks especially sympathetic – I think he must have been a Beatles fan, because he kept saying “Get back“. The driver (on the left) was a nice bloke, and had been friendly to us earlier, but then led us to believe that Tom would be coming out of a different door. All very odd.
My new friend Tom
For more sensible, objective words about the show, see The Guardian, The Times, or The Independent. Strangely enough, they are all pretty much in agreement, that this was an extraordinary show from an extraordinary performer. Did I mention that I feel very lucky to have witnessed it?
Got an email from Ticketmaster this morning, reminding me of an event for which I’ve bought tickets. Well thank goodness for their efficiency! The Tom Waits concert, which I’ve been waiting 20 years for, for which I’ve paid an arm and a leg, and which I’ve woken every morning thinking about for the past 3 months, completely slipped my mind! Let’s just hope it lives up to my own hype.
What a wonderful time we had at the Open. It surpassed my expectations by a long way – a really well organised event in a magnificent setting (Royal Birkdale, north of Liverpool, a course which (of course) I’d love to play, but which I probably never will, thanks to the £180 price tag…). The icing on the cake was the success of Chris Wood, the young amateur from Long Ashton, who put together a remarkably consistent performance to win the silver medal for the top amateur, and 5th pace overall. Incredible stuff.
The football season will be with us before we know it, and I was delighted to hear last night that Bristol City have finally secured the services of a new striker. We’ve paid £1.5 million for a 3 year contract with one Emad Moteab (pronounce “Metteb”, apparently), who’s a regular player in Egypt’s national side. Given that our main (only?) weakness last season was an inability to score goals, this is great news, and makes me look forward with relish to hoisting the flag outside the house for our first home game. He seems to be the real McCoy, and a proper hero in Egypt – he even features in their Coca Cola adverts, which is as good an indicator of celebrity status as any in this day and age.
His signing has prompted some very interesting exchanges on the fans’ forum about, for example, how best to welcome Emad – some are suggesting that the club shop should start selling a City-branded fez, whilst others propose that we should all turn up to the first home game in Pharoah costumes – and whether such cultural references would be offensive or appreciated. And the presence of City’s first ever Muslim player will certainly challenge some of the less enlightened opinions and attitudes still lurking at Ashton Gate. Let’s just hope he scores a goal or two early on!
Off to the Open on Friday! (That’s golf, of course. And, it’s “THE Open”, not “The British Open”. That’s because it’s the original and most important, as opposed to “The US Open” , or any of the lesser tournaments. No offence.) Stephen and I are heading up to Liverpool on Friday, and plan to spend the weekend watching the world’s golfing heavyweights slug it out for the famous claret jug. Sadly Tiger Woods won’t be there, due to his dicky knee, but it’ll be nice for somebody else to have a chance for once.
My own glittering golfing career hit a bit of a stumbling block the other evening with a defeat in the Autumn Cup, a club knockout in which I had been doing rather well. I would like to have won, of course, but losing was made more tolerable by the fact that we had a great game, played in the most sporting and enjoyable way possible. After I wasted a couple of chances to win it during the final few holes, we were all square after 18, so had to start all over again, setting off down the first for a second time, in the drizzle and fading light. It was finally decided on the third extra hole, with a fine putt from my opponent after mine had finished just short. “Never up, never in” was never more true.
Ah well, c’est la vie. And it really isn’t all about winning. Good behaviour, honesty and courtesy are probably bigger factors in golf than in any other sport… and I often wish that footballers, many of whom are also keen golfers in their spare time, could take some of golf’s good bits back to their workplace.
Any day now, my new bicycle will arrive. I had hoped to keep my old trusty going for a bit longer, but it really has become a bit of a liability. I think it must be metal fatigue, brought on by 10 years of lugging my 15 stone frame around the potholed streets of Bristol – bits keep snapping, grinding and bending, so I took the decision a couple of weeks ago to replace it.
The new machine is being imported, just for me, from Germany, where teams of specialist engineers and steelworkers have been working through the night to construct a bike big enough for me. (Actually, it’s not that much bigger than my current bike (a Specialized Hardrock, with a 23″ frame), but just a couple of inches bigger in all directions, i.e. top tube, seat tube, and wheelbase, and I’m quietly confident that it will feel the “right” size for me, where the Specialized has always felt a tad small, complete with its stupidly long seat post, handlebar raiser, etc.) Last I heard, it was held up in customs – maybe they wanted to put an extra bit of tax on it or something.
But, talking of cycling, I found this excellent site the other day, all about looking good on a bike on the streets of Copenhagen, and it’s made me notice people on bikes around Bristol. I have to report that, in all honesty, we really are not a very stylish crowd. The reasons are, I think, varied but straightforward:
- The starting point – obviously, the inhabitants of Bristol are not, generally, as attractive in the first place as the impossibly good looking Danes.
- Judging by the pictures on the blog, Copenhagen weather is also rather more beautiful than our own. Bristol at the moment is in the middle of its unofficial monsoon season – it happened last July, and the year before, so I think we can reckon to be stuck with it. So one has to be prepared, with dangerously nerdy waterproofs, which even David Beckham would struggle to wear stylishly. (Unless you’re Jon, who turned up to work yesterday looking like a drowned rat, his excuse for not wearing waterproofs being that they were “under things”. Hmmm….)
- Copenhagers seem not to feel the need to wear helmets, which inevitably gives them a head start (geddit?) in the style stakes.
- Copenhagen seems incredibly well endowed with cycle lanes, with very few cars in evidence, so people look much more relaxed in their cycling than we do on the mean streets of Bristol. (This may well also account for the lack of helmets, although you shouldn’t be fooled, Danish fashionistas – your brain is far more likely to be damaged by your head hitting the pavement than by being hit by a car).
We recently heard that Bristol is going to become Britain’s “cycling city“, so maybe we can expect infrastructure like they have in Copenhagen. Wouldn’t that be great? And who knows, maybe the funding will also make us more beautiful, make the weather better, and get Jon’s waterproofs out from “under things”. Meanwhile, maybe we should start to make an effort to put Bristol on the cycling style map.
I work next to an estate comprised mainly of 1960s tower blocks. In one of them, a man has a serious sound system. On sunny days, he turns the volume up to maximum, and opens the windows of his flat. He plays many types of music, but favours rap, much of it featuring offensive language. Yesterday, the music went on for the whole afternoon, and I’m told that his “broadcasts” often last well into the evening, sometimes starting up again in the middle of the night. Whilst I have the luxury of pedalling off to the relative peace of Southville at the end of my working day, his neighbours do not, and I feel extremely sorry for the poor sods who live 500 yards away, let alone in the flat below.
There’s an organisation in the news at the moment. It’s a major employer, with huge wealth and power, which is more than a little old-fashioned in its approach to employment law and the promotion of its staff. Women, for example, used not to be allowed to get jobs in the organisation, and until now, purely because of their gender, have not been eligible for promotion to senior management.
In any other organisation, this would, of course, have been illegal. But the Church of England is special. And some of the senior team feel so strongly opposed to women becoming bishops, that they are demanding “safeguards” to protect them from the dangers of having to deal with a woman in a senior position, and are threatening to leave if they don’t get them. Well here’s a suggestion. Before they have a chance to flounce off on their high horses, why not just sack the bigoted old bastards?
One of my fish, a catfish, aged about 7¾, passed away during the night. So farewell, old friend. Nobody really liked you, and I suppose we both have to accept that you weren’t the prettiest of god’s creatures. But, as the song goes, they all have a place in the choir, and you did a great job of cleaning up the other fishes’ crap from the bottom of the tank. What a life you had – unloved and ugly, doomed to life imprisonment (and life really did mean life, didn’t it?) with nothing to eat but your cellmates’ shit.
I think that I was the only one who really loved you (in a purely platonic way, you understand). Visiting children were terrified of you, whilst others laughed at your Godzilla-wannabee looks. My son Daniel was the most vitriolic in his loathing of you, claiming that he felt physically sick just looking at you. Many’s the time I found pieces of paper stuck to the aquarium glass, preventing you, poor old thing, from being seen by the outside world – Dan maintained that the sight of you eating put him off his breakfast (but we know it was actually the other round, don’t we?). That must have really hurt, to be shunned and reviled, screened off from the outside world like some sort of aquatic Quasimodo.
Of course, what really set Daniel against you is that the aquarium occupies the place in our kitchen that was designed to accommodate a microwave oven. (It was hardly your fault that the boys regard themselves to have been deprived in the most extreme way by having spent their childhood without access to a microwave and all the shite food that it can process.) So Dan will be dancing on your grave (which could be difficult, given Dan’s dancing style and the fact that I buried you in the wheelie bin). Meanwhile, I feel just a little bit upset, and I’m missing you. People ask me if I’ll get another. Possibly, I tell them, but not just yet. At least not until the bin’s been emptied.
I rather like the sight of wind turbines, but I’m glad I wasn’t admiring this one at close range…
