Tag: One Direction

A Tale of Two Gigs, One Direction and No Hope of an Early Night

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

Tonight I am on the taxi duty from Hell. I have to drop off and then pick up Emily and Rebecca, as they attend the One Direction gig at the Etihad. I have been investigating ways in which I could parachute them in, and then undertake some SAS style extraction once it is all over, as the traffic will be like Mordor on a Monday morning.

How do I know it will be awful? Well, the last time the girls watched them was at the infinitely smaller Phones 4 U Arena, and the entire area was at a standstill for what felt like months. Secondly, on Friday night I got caught in the post 1D traffic after their first gig at the venue. At 11.00pm, it took over an hour and a half to get out of Manchester and home. I was not, you will not be surprised to hear, working late at the office until that time. No, instead, my brother and I attended a gig of slightly smaller proportions in the city centre.

When I saw slightly smaller I do of course mean the diametric opposite, as we were watching The Francis Dunnery Band at the Manchester Uni student union. Francis who? Well, he was big in the 80’s….a bit, with his band It Bites. The only hit anyone really knows by them is this one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKxre9Rjcj8

After that and a few minor follow-up hits they proceeded to have a decent career with albums and were worshipped by musos for their musical ability.

So fast forward a few decades and he is back in the UK from his American base, with a band, doing a small tour of even smaller venues. Not that there was a great deal of competition, but we were on the front row, and regardless of his now advancing years, and the size of the venue, it was still exciting to be so close to someone who was, and still is, a musical hero. Don’t let the fact that you haven’t heard of him persuade you that he isn’t one of the best guitarists in the world. The solo in this song should be proof enough of that.

By the way, that video was taken by my lovely new phone, which was the subject of a post a few weeks ago. It is a thing of beauty and a modern marvel of technical loveliness.

He played a mix of old and new stuff, and we had a great night. It is amazing how songs first heard in the mid eighties can be dredged up from your memory banks to prove you still know all the words. They can also transport you back immediately to that period of time, when I was mostly sat listening to those songs and wondering if I would ever be able to play like that. The answer was of course no I wouldn’t, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

So after that gig we set off for home, only to quickly stumble upon gridlock in every conceivable direction, caused by One Direction. I didn’t get home until Saturday morning, which is frankly unheard of at my age.

So tonight, think of me as I loiter in Manchester side streets, hoping for a painless route out of Manchester once the girls find me. We have to set off very shortly so I shall leave you in peace. For those who didn’t see it yesterday, Emily has posted her next blog which is all about the first part of her application process for Disney. Have a read if you are interested.

I am off to Hades!

Till the next time…..

Now is the winter of our discontent.

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

The persistence of the winter weather is doing nothing for my lack of WDW blues.  Or maybe the weather gods realise that as soon as I see daffodils and a couple of hours of sunshine I have to sacrifice a credit card at the altar that is Kayak.com.

My seasonal body clock is so conditioned to the spring booking of a holiday that maybe this prolonged winter is just God’s way of telling me that it isn’t to be this year.  Or, perhaps we are now in a four-year long winter, like those off of Game of Thrones, and anytime soon I’ll be having dwarf sex and expressing my road rage by cleaving someone’s head from their incompetent shoulders with a huge sword fashioned from the bumper of a Ford Fiesta.

Strange days indeed.  More strange happenings on Saturday when I found myself driving to the Trafford Centre, and I wasn’t at gun point.  Instead, Emily and I were on a mission to deposit her CV and desire to work at the Disney Store there.  The journey was horrific as someone had been incompetent enough to prang into each other on the M60 at a very inconvenient (to me) location.

Having taken much longer than it should, we battled our way through the throngs, using maximum body swervage and tuttage.  A brief chat with a Cast Member, CV left, and we were off again back to the car, keen to spend as little time in that place as possible.  If anyone happens to know the manager of said Trafford Centre Disney store do put in a good word.

On Friday evening, Emily and Rebecca went to watch One Direction at the MEN arena in Manchester.  We booked the tickets well over a year ago, so the fact that band still existed was a bonus.  Thankfully, at the ages of soon to be 16 and 18 they were more than capable of finding their own way there on the train.

Apparently, they had some obnoxious fellow travelers.

They wished they were not going in One Direction
They wished they were not going in One Direction

Of course they loved the gig, had decent seats, and screamed a lot.  Much as they did at the Jonas Brothers a year or two ago.  Ah, whatever happened to them?

I of course was on pick up duty after the gig, and upon the girls texting me that the second to last song had started I joyfully trotted to the car and headed for Manchester at 10.20.

The fact that I didn’t get back home until 12.20am was a major cause of a sense of humour loss.  Two hours you say?  Why on earth would it take two hours?  Well, the square mile around the MEN was at an absolute standstill.  So there I sat amidst hundreds of other driver Dads in their slippers, looking at the 1Ders walking past us in the pouring rain and answering texts from impatient and cold daughters asking where the bloody hell we were.

I’ve done so many post gig pick ups over the years but this was the worst by a mile.  Maybe EMO gig attendees walk home and don’t need Dads and Mums to pick them up?  I suppose the average age at a 1D gig will mean that parents are more likely to drive them home, but I also noticed that the major road through the city centre had been pedestrianised since last I did this taxi run.  At the risk of sounding like Alan Partridge, that didn’t help.

Can someone please reverse that before I have to pick them up from the MEN again please?

On the positive side, it meant that I missed a fair chunk of Comic Relief.  Having had to dress up in 80’s fancy dress at work this week, and have “fun”, missing Lenny Henry’s “katanaga” for the twenty fifth year was welcome I can tell you.  Me, miserable?  Never.  I don’t mind donating, just don’t inflict seven hours of folk being wacky and zany on me.

Does it make me a bad person that I really don’t want to hear Sharon from Huddersfield tell the nation she raised £300 by dressing up as a tampon and being dunked into a water tank?

The endless procession of Kevins from accounts dressed as teletubbies desperately trying to get into camera shot with oversized cheques just makes me want to self harm.  No doubt I am going straight to hell, where I shall have to watch Davina McCall and Claudia Winkleman present inane tosh for eternity.  It’ll be called Children in Red Noses Day.

Till the next time…..