Two days in London, lovely
So two nights at Suede, and the best part of two days in London surrounding it, what a rare treat! Clare left the boy with her mum and dad and came to meet me at work Thursday lunchtime. We left the car at work and started our adventure from Westenhanger station. Took an old slow train up to London as we were in no rush, and meandered across on foot to our hotel in Victoria, via parks, shops, and one pub. Or perhaps more Pimlico. It was the Best Western Victoria Palace something and was a bit crap, the hotel looked nice enough but we were actually in an "annex", converted flats nearby, like a pretty pokey halls of residence. It wasn't super cheap at 170 for the two nights, but was one of the cheaper options available that was central to where we wanted, so that's what skimping got us. It was clean, but very small, and turned out to be quite noisy.
As Clare was ages getting ready I headed out to The Marquis of Westminster a nice pub near the hotel and finished my book, then we headed for dinner. We met Emma near Victoria station in the Pizza Express for a fairly quick dinner then off to Brixton.
For the first night we stayed in the Dog Star until just before Suede were due on, then headed to some kind of "new" usual spot for Brixton Academy. I have obviously not been for ages, I thought we always stood at the front on the left, but no, it's all changed to standing at the front on the right. This is near the entrance to the VIP and backstage and so was the prime spot to spot a TV megastar - yes, Richard Osman off Pointless. This genuinely is a spot we were pleased with as we watch Pointless whenever it's on, via the magic of iplayer, while we're having our tea. Richard is the brother of Suede bassist Mat Osman, so we thought he might be there. He really is very tall indeed.
Suede came on to Bodies by the Sex Pistols which I seem to remember they always used as their intro music. They powered through the whole of the first album in order, a bit too fast for Clare, but it suits the album. Not too much fiddling about! The band all looked great. For the encore we got High Rising, He's Dead, My Insatiable One, To The Birds, Killing of a Flashboy, Can't Get Enough, Trash and The Beautiful Ones. Yeah I had to look that up on suede.co.uk1 - I am sad enough to have been occasionally twittering during the gig but not enough to be making notes on what songs they played. Not this time anyway.
No special access for us so we headed back to the tube and picked up some junk food on the way home, to eat with the bottle of D'Arenburgh Stump Jump that we bought earlier in House of Fraser.
Paul Clarke's blog - I live in Hythe in Kent. Wed + dad to two, I am a full-stack web engineer, + I do js / nodejs, some ruby, other languages etc. I like pubs, running, eating, home automation and other diy jiggery-pokery, history, family tree stuff, Television, squirrels, pirates, lego, and time travel.